shared universe | the m0vie blog

Is Avatar a Revisionist Take on Aliens?

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Darren

I know this isn’t exactly a new idea, but it’s one I’ve been mulling over quite a bit lately – especially since my aunt picked up the Alien Anthology on blu ray for Christmas. It’s been fairly frequently remarked, on-line and in-print that James Cameron’s Avatar bears remarkable similarities to his Aliens. However, it’s not the similarities that interest me, it’s the differences which reveal quite a bit. Most fascinating – at least to me – is the idea that Avatar represents an attempt to revise Cameron’s work on Aliens.

Killer queen...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 20th Century Fox, alien, aliens, avatar, Entertainment Weekly, films, james cameron, metafiction, Movies, revisionism, Sam Worthington, sequel, shared universe, sigourney weaver, Unobtainium, Viet Cong, xenomorphs | 10 Comments »

Post-Modern Prometheus: Ridley Scott’s Alien “Prequel” and Shared Universes…

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Darren

So, what exactly is Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus? The director was all set to make an Alien prequel a few months ago, but all the rumours coming out of the production seem to be throwing me for a loop – I’m not quite sure what to make of them. To quote Scott himself:

While Alien was indeed the jumping off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place. The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative. I couldn’t be more pleased to have found the singular tale I’d been searching for, and finally return to this genre that’s so close to my heart.

We’ll spot “strands of Alien’s DNA”, but it’s a “new, grand mythology”? I’m not quite sure what to expect of it. And that, to be honest, excites me quite a bit.

Great Scott!

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: alien, DNA, Ellen Ripley, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, HR Giger, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, ridley scott, shared universe, Space Jockey | 6 Comments »

The Tommy Westphall Hypothesis

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Darren

I’m a sucker for meta-fiction – the idea of storytelling outside the story. One of the more fascinating notions suggested by Marvel’s recent spate of movies is the notion that all the individual stories in Iron Man, Thor and Captain America will be tied together to be revealed to be part of a larger canvas (in this case, The Avengers in 2012). I love it when television and films are shown to occupy the same fictional reality (for example, the Star Trek franchise, spread across five television shows (possibly six) and eleven feature films). So it goes without saying that I adore The Tommy Westphall Hypothesis.

And I thought I had an active imagination! (Click to enlarge)

For those unfamiliar with the hypothesis, it basically states that most television takes place within the head of an eleven-year-old autistic boy.

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Filed under: Movies, Television | Tagged: continuity, crossover, discontinuity, fiction, meta-fiction, meta-text, shard, shared universe, storytelling, The Tommy Westphall Hypothesis, tommy westphall, what happened happened, worlds | 2 Comments »

The Incredible Avengers…

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Darren

The Avengers has gone form being the movie project I was most skeptical about to one of my most anticipated movies of the comic years. Indeed, the summer of 2011 is looking to be one for the books with a whole rake of massive cult and comic book films coming out – Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern and, should Gary Oldman be believed, Batman 3. However, the culmination of Marvel’s planning within the cinematic world will be the release of The Avengers in 2012. I’ve never been much of a Marvel fan, but I will concede that they have pulled off an amazing movie-making feat. They have created a fully-integrated film universe from a variety of disparate sources building to to a clear target.