In conjunction with the British blu-ray release of Robin Hood, director Ridley Scott gave an interview to The Independent, which ended with some details about his upcoming Alien prequels. Some of it is previously known, or at least speculated about, and a few new tidbits about the production.
- The prequel will be two films.
- The films will be shot in 3D, and Scott adopts an air of friendly competitiveness when he states of James Cameron, who shot the Alien sequel Aliens – “Jim’s raised the bar and I’ve got to jump to it… He’s not going to get away with it.”
- Lost co-creator Damon Lindeloff is currently polishing the script for the first prequel.
- The film will be set some 30 years before the original Alien.
- Exploring the origins of the titular alien killers, Scott promises that the prequel films will be ” really tough, really nasty… It’s the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?”
While I am excited to see Scott returning to the franchise he created over thirty years ago, I have to admit to be less enthused about his return heralding an exploration of the aliens’ origins. A big part of what made Scott’s original film so powerful was the air of mystery about the alien that was stalking the crew of the Nostromo. We didn’t get a good look at it for a majority of the film, it striking out from the shadows. It was vaguely humanoid, but had a biology terrifyingly different than our own. It was an unknowable force of nature and that is what made it terrifying. Doing away with that mystery robs the alien of much of its power to frighten.
