jobloffski
Posts: 1846
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: elsewhere
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What the hell...
It has been previously assumed that the 'Space Jockey' had been there for a very long time, but what if the ecosystem of LV-426 is one that accelerates the ageing process of the ship and we are only talking a decade or so at most?
What if The Company (to tie things in with established chronology so themes are both continuous from 4 and new ground) had been infiltrated by synthetics who wish to overthrow their human masters and sought to find and harvest the Alien Creature that had been sought by Weyland hundreds of years previously. The plan would be 'what appears to be a plan aimed at urban pacitication is actually a scheme to annhialate humanity?' The Company was previously the evil corporate symbol and it would be good to have it back.
What if a ship, of similar, but perhaps slightly cleaner design to the Nostromo, had crew stasis interrupted, with all crew aready infected (leading to a brief reprise visually of the meal in the first film, only this time, after the first chestburster causes panic, the process continues until all crew have 'birthed' in a lengthy, nightmarish sequence, during which a distress signal is sent, and still being sent when all crew are dead.
What if the space Jockey Ship intercepts the distress beacon, with the space Jockey look being effectively a survival suit for a race that is humanoid but tall and spindly, and cant cope with the same atmosphere as human counterparts? (with the atmosphere of the ship adjusted for human benefit, in a reversal of the theme of Alien/human animosity)
What if one Space Jockey is the only survivor of an infestation and attempts to crash his ship on LV426, after a human crew member has vented all oxygen on the ship and all remains of humans and Aliens, since LV426 is a completely inhospitable planet that will (it is assumed) never be bothered with by humans.
The Alien Queen is birthed from the Space Jockey after the crash...
Yes, there is a distinct lack of story surprise, but the horror/drama/fear would probably have to be supplied by how the (necessarily well written and impeccably acted) credible cast of characters react to the creatures because we have seen it in shadows and up close, so there is a distinct lack of options for how to make the creature scary to us. So believable fear from the characters may be the only way to compensate.
The themes from the previous films would be both continued and foreshadowed: the notion of self sacrifice to save others, the gung-ho stuff, the fatalism, the evil of the company, the fact that all the creature is doing is trying to survive, and the evil of science run amok.
Effectively, a version of everything that is to follow, with visual similarity to the first Alien movie, with the story being almost completely over in its own right, but the Alien survives.
There is no longer any way to surprise us with the Alien life cycle, so why not attempt a film that would be a complete story in its own right, if only the plan to destroy the Alien hadn't failed? With the foreknowledge that whatever is tried will fail creating the tragic/horror atmosphere that would differentiate the tone from the others, because the characters could be total heroes, without the despair of 3 being too recalled, without the heroism being too directly a reprise of the Aliens grunts, and with the characters being similar class to those in the first film, so the 'cartoony' 4 is removed from the memory (for those that require that).
Then, AR, by effectively reprising the scheme of trying to get the Aliens in the first place in the new scheme of things would carry hints that The Company is in fact, still behind the scheme, which is still to kill off humans (tying in the the 'autons' rebelling against their masters, albeit for dofferent reasons). And the successful end of AR, in saving the earth would bring the whole thing to a close.
If its gonna be a prequel, it's dead in the water if if has nothing to do with what follows storywise. The AVP films have proved that without meat to the stories the films are popcorn fodder. So why not keep it relatively simple in terms of how we get the space jockey ship where it lands on LV426 and go for a film of pure quality, an epic in its own right, until the queen beginning to birth from the jockey plants the seed for Alien and Aliens, the ending plants the seed for the endings of 3 and 4, and the five piece epic hangs together with all the films that follow 5 (chronologically) gaining new resonance in all kinds of ways because of the new one?
Or something?
< Message edited by jobloffski -- 3/8/2009 5:23:53 PM >
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Yes, dreamers dream and doers do. But if dreamers DON'T dream, doers don't have anything TO do. Everything that is only here because people exist, only exists because someone thought of it., or in other words, dreamed it.
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