Ridley Scott: I've "Done Enough" With ALIEN

[AndyDursin]

Actually, Ridley, you did too much! (with ALIEN COVENANT).

At least he's been willing to hand it off after taking control. ROMULUS was fun and the FX series from Noah Hawley might be alright too...when all is said and done, though, there's only so much you can do to make the xenomorph compelling.

[Paul MacLean]

I didn't care for Prometheus or Alien Covenent.

However Alien Romulus was the best movie I saw in 2024, with the most appealing lead in an Alien sequel since Ripley in Cameron's film.

[AndyDursin]

I liked a lot of PROMETHEUS, at least it was trying hard, had some good atmosphere, and Noomi was solid. Then it sort of fumbled its way to the end. Either way I can't watch it again knowing the whole concept was tanked in ALIEN: COVENANT.

I mean, how misguided was Scott -- let's take the aliens OUT of the PROMETHEUS script (and they were there originally) because "I don't want to just retread the concept," only to rehash the concept in one of the worst movies of the entire franchise. And not only that, ruin any single thing that the previous movie did well, thinking the audience was REALLY there not for the aliens but Michael Fassbender's psychotic android. Nice going!

[Paul MacLean]

"I don't want to just retread the concept..."

There were things about Prometheus I liked, but it was as much a remake of Alien as a sequel (spaceship lands on strange planet, crew is infected by some kind of organism while exploring a large structure, treacherous android protects the organism at the expense of the crew).

I agree on Noomi Rapace, but for me the film spoiled much of the the mystique of Alien. In the 1979 movie you didn't know exactly what the mummified "space jockey" was, or where the aliens came from, etc. -- and that ambiguity gave enormous atmosphere and almost a sense a mythology the the original film. To "learn" that he's just a guy in a space suit who manufactured biological weapons was (to me) a very unimaginative direction in which to take the story.

[AndyDursin]

You're right, it spelled out things that didn't need to be spelled out. The mystique of ALIEN would have been better had it been left as is. Still, I was willing to go along with it, until Scott threw it all away with a hackneyed script that was like a typical STAR TREK episode where they beam down to a planet and nothing is as it appears to be!

And the ending...one of the worst in cinema history