Carl Rodd, the owner of the Fat Trout Trailer Park in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, has a sign on his door. It reads: Do not wake before 9am under any circumstances. When two FBI agents defy those instructions, he’s understandably dazed and angry. In a movie full of surreal terror, it’s a perfect moment precisely…
Alien: Covenant may not have been the movie that everyone wanted but, at the very least, Ridley Scott kept up his long tradition of working with practical effects. A new, behind-the-scenes featurette shows part of the process for making the ooey-gooey xenomorph eggs in Alien: Covenant.
Alien: Covenant may not have met our expectations, but it was undoubtedly visually compelling. The dark sci-fi tableaus sketched out by director Ridley Scott and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski are lush and vivid, regardless of anything that does or doesn’t happen in them.
For eons, humankind has looked up to the sky and wondered if it was alone. While we still haven’t answered that question just yet, fiction has stepped in to show us what that moment of first contact might look like. Sometimes it has led to a golden age of human space exploration. Sometimes, it brings on death,…
Simply put, Ellen Ripley is the Alien franchise. Even though her adversary gets the title, Ripley is the star of the first four films, and her story is what ties everything together. So the fact that director Ridley Scott has an idea to work her back into his films isn’t a surprise. But the way he wants to do it might…
Alien: Covenant was released in China on Friday, and moviegoers were quick to point out quite a few significant changes. Not only were several of the alien scenes removed, having them on screen for less than a couple of minutes... but Chinese censors also pulled the film’s gay kiss.
Though Alien: Covenant was basically met with the audience equivalent of a shrug, director Ridley Scott has plans for at least one more Alien prequel film, with a script already in hand. We have no idea where the story is heading next. But as rabid Alien fans, we have some suggestions... and some demands.
Honestly, this is usually the bit of Toy Aisle where we tease the rest of the fancy toys and merchandise we’ve spotted over the past week. But when you learn that there’s a goddamn giant Mickey Mouse mecha that turns into a truck, Optimus Prime-style, do you really need to know what else there is in here? Let’s just…
Not heroine. Hero, period. While it’s rad that Ellen Ripley happens to be a woman, that doesn’t at all impact her level of badassery—though it does inform her character in ways that make her much more interesting than virtually any other cinematic hero. She’s complicated, she feels real, and I have total confidence the…
Salutations, my pensive postage meters. In honor of Prometheus 2: The Search for Michael Fassbender’s Severed Head’s Gold, I bring you an answer to the biggest mystery in the Alien universe. Plus, the best Game of Thrones episode, the age conundrums of both Gotham and the Star Wars prequels, and... (dun dun dunh) I…
No one argues that Alien and Aliens are the best films in the Alien franchise. It’s an objective, undisputed fact. After that, though, nothing is certain—is Alien 3 a good movie? How bad is Resurrection? Do the Alien vs. Predator movies count? Did you like Prometheus? The debates go on and on.
Fans of the long-running series might want to skip Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant. The director’s follow-up to Prometheus is not only disappointing, it somehow manages to make both films worse. It’s not a complete loss, though, thanks to talented stop-motion artist Serene Teh who made this amazing Alien:…
What if an alien invasion could be done remotely, ordering humans to do all the dirty work for you from the comfort of your alien spaceship? A new scifi short is about humans achieving First Contact, but the signal basically turns you into one of The Infected from The Last of Us.
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's roundup of the merchandise most likely to burn a hole in our wallets this week. Today we’ve got a Boba Fett-inspired Nerf blaster, some retro Batman action figures, a cool way to build your own Lego Transformers, and an alarmingly adorable Xenomorph plushie.
With Alien: Covenant coming out next week, lots of people have been discussing or revisiting the film that came before it: Prometheus. That even includes the director of both films, Ridley Scott, who admitted fan reaction to Prometheus influenced Covenant.
Unsurprisingly, witnessing a xenomorph emerge from its host from the xenomorph’s perspective is really, really gross.
When British actor John Hurt passed away in January, news editors around the world quickly started broadcasting clips from the actor’s many iconic roles. But it was maybe not the smartest idea for one of them to air Hurt’s most gory (and memorable) movie moment immediately after kids finished watching Saturday morning…
Here’s a sentence I’m just incredibly sad to type: Alien: Covenant is bad.
Not only won’t happen, Scott says it was never that close to happening. His Covenant and whatever comes after it will be the only development in the Alien universe for a while.
Ridley Scott is at the helm of a nearly 40-year franchise of films about killer aliens who are smarter and deadlier than us. It’s not a coincidence, since Scott thinks that could happen in real life.
