"The Alien prequels are better than the Predator sequel" Topic

While Ridley Scott's Alien prequels may have been divisive among fans and critics, they ultimately hold together better than THE PREDATOR. Both the original Alien and Predator are fundamentally B-movie concepts; a monster stalks an isolated group of characters, picks them off one at a time until it's defeated by the last survivor. Of course, if they were nothing but silly horror flicks they wouldn't be considered classics now. Alien has Ridley Scott's taut direction and uncanny eye for visuals, a great ensemble cast and – of course – H.R. Giger's nightmarish creature design. Predator has a perfect high-concept idea, a script dripping with quality one-liners and Arnold Schwarzenegger at the peak of his stardom.

I have to agree. 'Prometheus' and 'Alien: Covenant' may be flawed, but they are still better than the mess ' The Predator' is in terms of story.

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I saw Prometheus. I never bothered with Alien Covenant.

I can't say I ever really dissected Prometheus to consider its' merits, but one thing always bugged me. Perhaps someone could explain this nagging question.

IF Prometheus was supposed to be a prequel to Alien, we should be able to expect that all the elements we found in Alien have been set into place in Prometheus.

If that is correct, then why does the Space Jockey/Engineer buy it on the lifeboat, instead of in the navigator's seat? How will the Nostromo crew find him where he's supposed to be when he isn't?

Am I missing something?

I quite enjoyed THE PREDATOR on a plane, but I was not thinking of it really as a sequel.

KPinder, that question has bugged the hell out of me since I watched it as well! That fact basically ruined that movie for me, and Covenant was just a mess.

IF Prometheus was supposed to be a prequel to Alien, we should be able to expect that all the elements we found in Alien have been set into place in Prometheus.

If that is correct, then why does the Space Jockey/Engineer buy it on the lifeboat, instead of in the navigator's seat? How will the Nostromo crew find him where he's supposed to be when he isn't?

A fair question. And the most popular geeky answer (like it or not) is that they're not the same space jockey.

We are NOT supposed to believe that the crashed ship at the end of Prometheus is the same one boarded by Dallas, Kane and Lambert in Alien and here's why. 1. It's been said publicly that it's not a direct prequel. 2. As told by the character Lambert in Alien, when they're approaching the source of the signal, it is LV-426 a small rocky, dark moon in the Zeta Reticuli system which is 39 light years away. The planet is only 1200 km (about 700 miles) wide and the days and nights are very short there, approx 2 hours for a complate rotation 3. The orange text that appears on the screen when we first see the Prometheus in space tells us that it is 3.27 x 10^14 km from Earth… that's 34.5 light years away from our solar system, and even if there was a straight line from Earth through LV-233 and Lv-426, they would be about 4.5 light years away from each other …. roughly the distance from our solar system to Alpha Centauri. The moon LV-223 is larger, brighter and has a longer rotation period, as well as signs of intelligient life. (5 apparently idential domes lined up in a straight line, and more leylines in front of them.) There's no heat sources indicated, whereas LV-426 is volcanically active. Also the Space Jockey scene in Alien has important differences. We don't see ANY stasis beds on the disc surrounding the Space Jockey's pilot seat, nor do I recall seeing a chair for operating the holograms that David (the android in Prometheus) activated. It's a different bridge, with a different space jockey, on a different ship on a different moon in a different star system. We don't know the origin of the ship on LV-426… but that's not a problem of the Prometheus film… it was never explained anyway, and it might still be unexplained after the sequel to Prometheus, but we can always speculate that we will see some reference to an outbreak affecting a pilot who then crashes somewhere near Zeta Reticuli system…

You have to admit, whoever came up with this answer dissected it to death.

I didn't dissect it to death, but when I saw the movie it was obvious that the planet was not LV-426. The long version of Aliens -- I guess it's the director's cut -- shows a lot more of LV-426, and it doesn't look like LV-233 at all, even after extensive terraforming and atmosphere creation.

Prometheus suffered from not being able to figure out which movie it wanted to be. Was it "At the Mountains of Madness"?
Was it an Alien prequel?

RS really tried to be all things. It didn't work.

Alien Covenant was a rather crappy return to Alien that riffed off I Robot/Hal from 2001.

Both movies were less than the sum of their parts.

Prometheus had promise though. A recut might make it worthwhile.

Covenant was simply a mess.

Joe Collins

Y'all makin' mah head hurt.

Covenant: Was this the "B" Arc?

Bugs Bunny pops his head up. Sees sign that says LV 233. "Dis ain't LV 423??? I KNEW I should have taken that left at Al but COY kew?!?

Prometheus got a huge re-write at some point when they decided that they were going to make it a trilogy instead of a single movie.

So, a lot of the elements that were intended to make the planet be an earlier version of LV426 were still there in the final version of LV233.