The Week In Geek: Sequel-Palooza! Alien! Pirates! Hobbits! More!!

Alien Rumors Spread, Are Just As Quickly Debunked. 

There was a small flurry of rumors hitting the internet this week about Ridley Scott’s upcoming prequel to Alien, and no sooner did they hit, than within 24 hours a Fox rep went and debunked just about all of them. For the record, here is what was rumored: That there would be not one, but two back to back filmed prequels (apparently false) that the movie had been pushed back from 2012 to 2013 (again, false) and that the movie would be called “Paradise” (false…well, it might be a cover name, kinda like Blue Harvest was for Return of the Jedi. But that is it). Apparently, there is only going to be ONE Alien prequel, not two. Well, at least not yet. The movie is still scheduled to come out in 2012, and there is no way that Fox isn’t going to have the word “Alien” in the title somewhere. Still rumored for the lead, and not debunked so far, are actresses Olivia Wilde and Noomi Rapace. No doubt the rest of 2010 going into 2011 is going to be filled with Alien rumors yet to come. 

Elves Return To Middle Earth…But Where Is Elrond??

It was announced this week that both Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom are set to return to Middle Earth for Peter Jackson’s two films based on The Hobbit.  What is interesting is that neither  of their respective characters, Galadriel or Legolas, are actually in the original novel, which makes one wonder just how different this version of The Hobbit is going to be from Tolkien’s.  A character that WAS in both the original book and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was Elrond, played in the movies by Hugo Weaving, but interestingly his name has yet to be announced for the movie officially. Are they switching him out for other elves? I imagine we will find out soon one way or the other, as shooting begins in early 2011.

Pirates, Pirates and More Pirates

Speaking of back to back sequels, it appears that the plan is for Pirates of the Caribbean parts 5-6 to take the route of Pirates 2 and 3, and shoot back to back. While I obviously have not seen Pirates 4: On Stranger Tides yet, it seems from everything I’ve read that this fourth installment is meant to be a clean slate after the overly long and bloated Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End.  Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly are not coming back, and this is meant to be merely another adventure for Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, without much reference to the other movies. And I think that is a great idea.

I personally loved the original Pirates flick; It was such a surprise how good it was, considering it was based on a theme park ride of all things (albeit and awesome, classic theme park ride). But the following installments went the route of The Matrix sequels; the filmmakers and the studio made bloated, convoluted back to back sequels where they tried to pull off  this whole “we planned a trilogy the whole time!” bullshit that was very clearly not the case.  They were so obviously trying to do a riff on The Empire Stikes Back/Return of the Jedi structure, when instead they should have been ripping off the structure of Lucas’ other iconic trilogy: Indiana Jones. Each film should have been a separate adventure of Jack Sparrow, since he was the only character anyone really loved from the original (ok, maybe Barbossa too. And the monkey.) With Part 4, it seemed they realized this fact, so why go back now Disney? One movie at a time! Is that too much to ask?

(Ed. Note: They actually did successfully rip off a Lucas property in the end… The Monkey Island games! And even though THEY can say different… it’s pretty clearly not the case. Maybe there’ll be a ton of Grim Fandango in Stranger Tides.)

The Super Sequel That Could Have Been

With all this talk of sequels, how about news on a sequel that never happened? It seems this week that the outline for Bryan Singer’s proposed sequel to Superman Returns leaked online over at IESB.net, and it sounded kinda…epic? Here is the basic quickie plot synopsis:

The Kryptonite Island that Superman floated into space in the previous movie becomes a new satellite, dubbed New Krypton. This new planet attracts what appears to be another Kryptonian survivor, who comes to Earth and is celebrated as a new hero.  He introduces advanced alien technology to humans way before they are ready, which pisses off Kal-El. This of course, makes humanity annoyed at Superman for holding back on us all this time. Eventually, Superman discovers that the new Kryptonian is actually an Artificial Intelligence who survived Krypton’s destruction….yup, you guessed it: Brainiac.  We also learn that Brainiac is responsible for Krypton’s getting all blowed up as well.  He was going to download all the information on Earth, then destroy it too (this is almost identical to the version of Brainiac from the Bruce Timm Superman animated series and Justice League series, in my opinion the coolest version of old Brainy). After a massive brawl, Brainy’s last body would have been destroyed and would need to download into the only other Kryptonian DNA it could find: Superman and Lois’ son Jason. It would artificially age him up, and a Brainiac possessed Super Kid and Clark would have battled it out, Father vs. Son (very Arthurian there, Singer). Eventually, Super Kid would die, although probably not by Superman’s hand… I see a last minute self sacrifice, or maybe his possessed body just burns out. 

I’m in the geek minority when it comes to Superman Returns; while I don’t think it was the right way to re-start the franchise, as a film I loved it. It seems history has painted SR as a big flop, when in truth it made $200 million (only $5 million less than the previous year’s Batman Begins) and got mostly good reviews from critics. (SR had a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score, Batman Begins an 84%…again, not a huge difference).Yet Nolan got a chance to continue his story, while Singer didn’t. In any event, this sounds like a fairly awesome movie, and in my opinion, it is a shame we never got to see it. Considering how much better X2 was to X-Men, I think we really missed out on something potentially cool. Let’s hope Zack Snyder does us one better with his Man of Steel flick. (Ed. Note: Superman Returns cost $270 million to Batman Begins $150 million. That $5 million difference is actually a $125 million difference! And that’s not counting the roughly $200 million in marketing promotion! No sequel for you!)