prequels

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I haven’t seen Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3-D yet (which came out this past Friday). That no doubt comes as a shock to everyone who knows me as being perhaps too much of a Star Wars fan for one’s own good. Perhaps this coming week or so is when I’ll finally check it out. In the meantime…

A few days ago Timothy Sexton authored this intriguing – and no doubt controversial – essay in which he argues that the “prequel trilogy” of the Star Wars saga is better than the three originals which George Lucas produced between 1977 and 1983. It is Sexton’s contention that Episodes I, II and III “are deeper, better structured, and more politically astute than the final three. Not only is that why the prequel is superior, it is also a pretty decent elucidation of the original trilogy’s greater popularity.”

In the ...

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Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien is on my very short list of all-time greatest and most favorite movies. I first got to watch it in 1984 and even today, after countless numbers of times of watching it, it has never failed to thrill and enthrall. Alien is the perfect science-fiction and horror film. Its 1986 sequel Aliens is one of the darn few movies widely regarded as being just as good, if not better even, than the original. But that was mostly an action movie: Scott’s Alien was nearly pure unbridled terror of the classic form.

Unfortunately what happened to the Alien franchise after that hasn’t been anywhere as up to par with what Ridley Scott and James Cameron did. Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection well, let’s put it this way: they both had their moments, but I don’t regard them as being true “Alien”-ish canon. Maybe they’re just bad ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

The guys at /Film have come through with the first pic of the set for the as-yet-untitled prequel to The Thing: John Carpenter’s classic 1982 science-fiction horror movie…

That’s the Antarctic research camp that the SwedesNorwegians have, before they make their icy discovery and all hell breaks loose. The prequel (scripted by Ronald D. Moore, the mastermind behind the revamped Battlestar Galactica) is gonna show us what happened at the SwedishNorwegian base that made it as bad as MacReady and Copper found it (i.e. mass suicide, burnt corpses, etc.)

As John Carpenter’s The Thing is on my personal short list of all-time greatest movies I am going to remain cautiously optimistic about this prequel project, but optimistic all the same. I trust Ronald D. Moore and his respect for the material, I like how the CGI is going to be kept to a minimum and I ...

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