Ridley Scott had a huge success with Alien and reused that aesthetic ( even completely lifting some of the primitive computer graphics “Purge”) in Bladerunner. And they were only 3 years apart in release date… same director… as much as Bladerunner is one of my favorite films ever, it wasn’t groundbreaking. Alien did the heavy lifting on that (and threw in cinema scifis first super awesome female protagonist to boot).
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I’ve always noticed that Alien was horror, Aliens was action/military and Alien 3 was almost drama/horror. Odd to have sequels changing genres. Love the first 2. Both in my top ten films ever… 3 not so much.
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+1 for sure!
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I’ll have to disagree with that. To my mind, anyways, it’s one of the few films that truly took the present and extrapolated it to a likely future. There is just something so grittily real in it, particularly when combined with the very jaundiced and realistic look at human nature. So, it was a future look on how the world is likely to be, not what bright eyed screenwriters imagine it as.
I am not a big fan of Alien (not my genre), but I do have to admit that it was the one film that showed commonplace spacefaring in a realistic light: the ship is a working ship, with dirt, dysfunctional systems and an overall dingy feeling. Not many films before it did this.
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I’ll have to walk back that statement… slightly. Officially it has not been greenlit.
But if you go by interviews, and responses from some higher ups in the studio world… It is looking VERY promising.
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I think that the impact of Blade Runner has been incredible and 2049 couldn’t match it. It was a good movie, actually much better than what I was expecting. It didn’t “change everything” like Blade Runner did.
I admit to have a soft spot for PKD, the electric sheeps are really purely Dick, with all the religious overtones which went more or less lost in the movie.
To go back in topic with this off-topic, if we manage someone to baby-sit the children, I would be really glad to go back to see a movie after all this time!!
There were parts of Electric Sheep that were totally cool that never made it in to the movie either, that probably would have worked well if they adapted it. I’m thinking of the entire fake police department full of stooges.
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You guys are awesome
Can’t think of another place I could discuss electric sheep
Back to our regularly scheduled programming
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My introduction to Dune was the 1992 video game (the adventure game, not the RTS). I absolutely loved it and fell in love with the world it created. Then I read the book a couple years later, and I did not like it at all. I felt it was boring, took itself way too seriously (don’t know what’s the right word to describe that in English), and I just couldn’t wait for it to end. Then I watched the Lynch movie, and I liked that even less. It just felt cheap.
I think Villeneuve’s Dune is probably what I’ve been waiting for all this time. It looks and sounds absolutely amazing, and really immersed me in that same world that I fell in love with 30 years ago. Can’t wait for part 2.
With BR2049 and Dune I think Villeneuve’s becoming one of my favorite directors. Just can’t go wrong with anything he does.
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Yeah I thought there were parallels between Alien and the Terminator series - in both cases the first part was a dark, relatively low budget horror / thriller and the second was a big blockbuster. The third part was hmmmm… and we won’t talk bout the rest
True. I might end up getting a couple of beers in and watching it in the IMAX
Mad Max is another one that comes to mind that does this. The first film also was a low budget dystopian psych thriller.
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If you’re ready to have your minds blown, if you watch Soldier, you’ll learn that Alien and Blade Runner are actually in the same universe.
All my friends and I thought it was a homage or joke - but nope.
https://screenrant.com/alien-blade-runner-movies-connections-themes-explained/
It’s real. They are apparently part of the same timeline.
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My GF and I love Lynch’s movie and watch it frequently. I think she’s more excited for the new movie than I am, LOL.
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Devil’s advocate, Dick didn’t conceive of Soldier or Alien when he wrote Sheep. Alan Dean Foster wrote Alien if I remember correctly. And they all build on Shelly’s Frankenstein themes.
Alien and Predator are in the same universe…that’s for certain. But I think the Sheep connection is pure homage. And building on Dick’s concept of an android. Really should read Android and the Human; think they are riffing on those themes.
I really like Soldier by the way, probably most watched movie of the three.
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Blade Runner is really only loosely based on Sheep though.
And yes Predator 2 made it quite explicit it was in the Alien universe, even before all the AvP stuff.
I went to see it yesterday, thoroughly enjoyed it. 40 years since I read the book! Back to rebuilding the bass now…
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Seen it in IMAX 2D. … WOW! … I had just a couple minor issues with the way how some lore and plot points were implemented. And actually soundtrack was kinda meh a few times. BUT! overall I am just blown away, absolutely blown away. I am quite not sure how they want to fit the rest of the story into 2nd movie, however, I am really optimistic and sad … that we will have to wait for 2 years until the second part.
WOW just WOW!
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I need to see this.
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Don’t stream it. Go to the cinema with the biggest screen possible, if possible. The cinematography is absolutely top notch. The way how Villenevue use camera to show the size and scope of things is something cinema students will study in future.
But the biggest achievement of the film IMHO is that it’s absoltely digestable both for someone who has no clue about the Dune universe (Friend of mine I was in the cinema with was blown away the same way as I was.) or someone who knows every nook and crany of the lore and the world. (me) … It’s a cinematic masterpiece.
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