Prometheus

[copylight]

I like how Prometheus' trailer pays tonal homage to the original 1979 Alien trailer. The same atmospheric, haunting clang-clang music , the fast editing to a crescendo, the way the words appear on screen...

Here ->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLamj-b0I8&feature=related

Classy marketing in my view.

[Pete23]

Here's a breakdown of the trailer: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/1178902/prometheus_trailer_analysis.html

The Space Jockey is definately going to be more human than I'd hoped; Ridley Scott talked about him wearing "armour" in a recent interview and in the breakdown above there is a still where you can clearly see the big human bastard approaching the famous gun-seat-thing (from the right).

[Still Not George]

Apart from The Wire, has Idris Elba ever been in anything decent?

Ultraviolet.

If you diss Ultraviolet, I will hurt you. Really slowly, over 6 episodes mainly shot in blue filter, with ominous orchestral music accompaniment throughout.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

I remember Ultraviolet - it was really good.  I didn't realise Idris Elba was in it though!

[El Unicornio, mang]

He was also in The Office.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

He wasn't in mine, I would have noticed.

[Benevolent Despot]

The Space Jockey is actually

Spoiler alert

Patrick Moore.

[close]

[mobias]

I've seen a couple of interesting analysis of the trailer however everyone seems to be stuck on the fact that this film is a prequel to Alien and therefore a slave to the events that lead up to that movie. All of that doesn't seem to be  the case though, even the cast are down playing the film's relationship to Alien in interviews merely now saying the film takes place in the same universe but other than that there is no continuity. Ridley Scott himself has stated only the last 8 minutes of the film have any 'Alien DNA' in them.

[Marv Orange]

I've seen a couple of interesting analysis of the trailer however everyone seems to be stuck on the fact that this film is a prequel to Alien and therefore a slave to the events that lead up to that movie.

People seem pretty hung up on this its not like 'the thing' prequel its more or less a blank slate up to the point a bunch of eggs get laid by something.

[Harpo Speaks]

I like how Prometheus' trailer pays tonal homage to the original 1979 Alien trailer. The same atmospheric, haunting clang-clang music , the fast editing to a crescendo, the way the words appear on screen...

Here ->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLamj-b0I8&feature=related

Classy marketing in my view.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

He was also in The Office.

You sure? He was in Family Affairs (shit channel 5 soap) however.

[El Unicornio, mang]

You sure? He was in Family Affairs (shit channel 5 soap) however.

Yes, he's in seven episodes of season 5

[Zero Gravitas]

You may want to note that's the american one Unicornio.

[mjwilson]

I've seen a couple of interesting analysis of the trailer however everyone seems to be stuck on the fact that this film is a prequel to Alien and therefore a slave to the events that lead up to that movie. All of that doesn't seem to be  the case though

I heard Lindelof on a podcast saying that that was one of the things he'd changed about the script.

[Cohaagen]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a5b_Usp0tWc/TvSMiE87ayI/AAAAAAAACYc/Wmts_s76qFI/s1600/vlcsnap2011122211h13m08.png

The above image, from Valaquen's superb Strange Shapes blog, along with Scott's comments on the subject, basically confirm that it's true that the pilot/Space Jockey, whatever you want to call him, is - without any irony - literally the guy in the suit.

What a fucking joke. It reminds me of one of the worst missteps in science fiction history, the last Odyssey book written when Arthur C Clarke was well gone from age, scuba narcosis, and boys. This was when he revealed that the Monolith - along with Maria from Metropolis, one of the greatest sci-fi glyphs of all time, a totem for a vast, unknowable intelligence - was actually a sort of intergalactic iPad, and is destroyed when some dudes download a computer virus onto it. The book also featured pet miniature dinosaurs. I'm not even making that up.

For me, the derelict and its pilot were always far scarier than the Alien itself. The unknown provokes a neurotic's imagination, as I'm sure any twelve year old could also tell you. When a 3/4 replica of the pilot was installed in the lobby of the Egyptian Theatre for the opening of Alien in 1979 a bunch of religious nuts were so frightened they burned it down. The fucking idiots involved in Prometheus just couldn't leave well alone though. We're beyond even incest as a metaphor for our cultural laziness now. This is more like uroboric, Ron Jeremy-style autoinsemination. Man in a suit. That shit is weak, and lamer than fucking Korton.

Incidentally, I watched a shonky alien monster movie called Skyline on Sky the other night. A pile of derivative crap, it was devoid of ideas up until the last five minutes, when it totally redeemed itself with a fucking amazing scene in a horrible spacecraft where

Spoiler alert

Eric Balfour's brain is sucked out of his head, installed in a huge alien humanoid with compound eyes, which he then somehow gains control of and uses to rescue his bird. ERIC BALFOUR! BRAIN SUCKED! IN A HUMANOID!

[close]

[Cohaagen]

Just to add: I desperately hope that I'm wrong about this. Sincerely. I only speak out of an abiding love for a great cinematic creation. But if I'm right, then I swear that I will go to Victor Morris, buy the biggest samurai sword I can find, and fucking chop Damon Lindelof in half lengthways from skull to winking arsehole.

[Borboski]

I dont really understand what you mean about "the guy in the suit"?

[Cohaagen]

On every DVD commentary and interview Scott has ever done, he's always bitching about the "man in the suit" quality that the Alien had, and how he wanted to avoid that aspect. Now he takes the other great creature from the film and makes it a tall human-looking Star Trek type alien wearing "armour", because obviously that's much creepier than just having, y'know, a huge 20ft tall sort of biomechanical alien elephant that's growing out of a big gun.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I don't see how that could be him, he looks nothing at all like the space jockey.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

A suit certainly would be a disappointing reveal. As you say it was the fact that it seemed fused to the chair that made the Space Jockey so, well, alien.

[mobias]

The above image, from Valaquen's superb Strange Shapes blog, along with Scott's comments on the subject, basically confirm that it's true that the pilot/Space Jockey, whatever you want to call him, is - without any irony - literally the guy in the suit.

What a fucking joke.

And there's strong rumours going about that he or it's played by Mike from Neighbours. I don't actually really trust Ridley Scott to pull off an amazing movie. All the actors in the movie have been quick to say in interviews thus far that they were so honoured to work with such a cinematic genius, a genuine auteur. Ridley Scott is a bit like Brian De Palma for me - a small handful of truly amazing films and an awful lot of incredibly well directed duds.   

[mobias]

I don't see how that could be him, he looks nothing at all like the space jockey.

Ridley Scott has already confirmed the space jockey as seen in Alien is a guy in a weird space suit. So what you see in the picture linked to above is him without his space suit on. He looks like a cast member from Star Trek.
See this is what worries me about Prometheus. Alien was great in part because it created a lot of mystery and left so much up to the viewers imagination, so often where fantastical cinema is at its best. Damon Lindelof said in an interview that he wanted to go back and answer the mystery of the space jockey and I just thought this is going to be shit, its only going to be naff, especially when Lindelof said he had written the whole thing from a fanboy's point of view - never a good thing. 

[Replies From View]

On every DVD commentary and interview Scott has ever done, he's always bitching about the "man in the suit" quality that the Alien had, and how he wanted to avoid that aspect. Now he takes the other great creature from the film and makes it a tall human-looking Star Trek type alien wearing "armour", because obviously that's much creepier than just having, y'know, a huge 20ft tall sort of biomechanical alien elephant that's growing out of a big gun.

In promotional footage for Prometheus, Scott has asserted that the "space jockey" we saw in the first Alien film was a suit, not some kind of skin or a skeleton.  Perhaps retrofitting, but it's up to him.

That's different from the first Alien looking to some (including Scott himself) too much like a man in a suit, though.

[Replies From View]

See this is what worries me about Prometheus. Alien was great in part because it created a lot of mystery and left so much up to the viewers imagination, so often where fantastical cinema is at its best. Damon Lindelof said in an interview that he wanted to go back and answer the mystery of the space jockey and I just thought this is going to be shit, its only going to be naff, especially when Lindelof said he had written the whole thing from a fanboy's point of view - never a good thing.

This is what prequels do, in general.  Their mission seems to be to pick up what wasn't explored in sequels (ie the atmosphere and mystery, as opposed to plot strands) and pick away at them until very little is left.  It takes a special prequel indeed to not do this (can we think of any examples?).  The promise of Prometheus "sharing DNA" with Alien rather than straightforwardly leading into it and undoing it is what made me think it might be different.

I have to say though, I'm personally not very hung up on the space jockey and don't mind what it ends up being.  I can imagine that this or any explanation will ultimately upset a lot of people, though.  I feel like fans of the Alien films have been calling out to know "what the space jockey actually is" for as long as they've been keen to see the Alien xenomorph and Predator share a film.  The fact that so many people long for "explanations" baffles me really.

[El Unicornio, mang]

This is what prequels do, in general.  Their mission seems to be to pick up what wasn't explored in sequels (ie the atmosphere and mystery, as opposed to plot strands) and pick away at them until very little is left.  It takes a special prequel indeed to not do this (can we think of any examples?).

Godfather II?

The Alien franchise has already been kind of ruined with the sequels after Aliens, and AvP, but it doesn't really spoil my enjoyment of them as standalone films (I don't watch Aliens and think "you're wasting your time, Newt is going to die anyway!") and I can even watch the Alien director's cut and it doesn't bother me that the cocoon sequence is inconsistent with the explanation given in Aliens as to how the eggs are made, but I am a bit perturbed by this. I could try to just watch it as an "alternative vision" of the space jockey, or something.

[Replies From View]

I can even watch the Alien director's cut and it doesn't bother me that the cocoon sequence is inconsistent with the explanation given in Aliens as to how the eggs are made, but I am a bit perturbed by this. I could try to just watch it as an "alternative vision" of the space jockey, or something.

This is interesting.  I think there's something particular about having something like the space jockey given in more detail (as opposed to having a sequence that contradicts and can't be fitted into accepted events, for example), if what made the space jockey intriguing in the first place was its very lack of detail.  Sometimes I've had a similar effect just by watching a beloved film with higher definition equipment.  Sometimes graininess and murkiness can be integral to what you get out of a film, where vague shapes come out at you, and features blend together.  Using the cut egg sequence in the first Alien film as an example, I found it a lot less horrifying when it was edited into the director's cut, partly just because Dallas and the wall around him no longer seemed so smudged together.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Yep, it's definitely a creepier scene when you watch it as the unpolished version (similarly, the Burke cocoon scene from Aliens which I've only seen as a shoddy recorded with a camera phone youtube clip).

[Replies From View]

Yep, it's definitely a creepier scene when you watch it as the unpolished version (similarly, the Burke cocoon scene from Aliens which I've only seen as a shoddy recorded with a camera phone youtube clip).

I wonder if it's something of this lack of polish that comes across in the space jockey sequence.  Obviously it's visually sharp on DVD and Blu Ray, but it's an unclear sequence insofar as you can't tell what it is - what's organic and what's mechanical etc.  There's something jarring when you're told "it's a suit" because H.R. Giger's design work isn't so clear cut!

[VegaLA]

[copylight]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMPXIcB1huM

After reviewing the origanl SJ scene in Alien again and hearing one of them say

....dead for a long time.... looks like it's grown out of the chair...

Not into it. Arguing for Scott's case that it was a suit, distorted and slightly enlarged perhaps - fitting a 7ft tall humanoid inside of it.

I can suspend my disbelief that far but the problem I have echoes others in that he looks like a naked bodybuilding Romulan with tats from the side.

Here, I've increased the levels a bit to highlight his glutes->