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Hello All: Unless you've been living under a rock for the past several weeks, you are well aware that Fox has finally released the official trailer for Prometheus, which is slated for a June 2012 release. It is obvious from the jump that Ridley Scott's promise for the film to be a sweeping epic has been fulfilled. Despite the concerted effort on the part of Fox Entertainment and Ridley Scott to reinforce the idea that Prometheus is not a strict Alien prequel, there are both subtle and overt indications that the film will fill in the details as to the origin of the derelict spacecraft from the original movie, Alien. Though I have little doubt that Ridley Scott and his team will achieve a grand masterpiece with Prometheus, I did have a slight bittersweet tinge of emotion while I watched and picked apart the trailer. One sticking point for me with the Alien franchise has always been the mystery shrouding the origin of the species. Even now, so many years after first being introduced to the fims, I still find myself puzzling over where the Alien came from, and what godforsaken world could give birth to such a fascinating and endlessly brutal creature. In some small way, I inexplicably find myself almost guarded about finally learning where the Alien came from. I'm wondering if something so vital to my interest in the series could be tainted if it doesn't live up to my sky-high expectations. That said, I have the utmost faith that Ridley Scott knows the grand stakes of this game and approaches the subject matter with the care and attention to detail that the story deserves... 

Well enough about me, on to Prometheus... I spent some time trolling the depths of the internet to provide you with a great write-up about the Prometheus trailer.  Hands down, the best breakdown of the day goes to Brendon Connely of BleedingCool.com, whose in-depth frame by frame analysis really hit the nail on the head. I included his review and the corresponding high def screen shots below for your review. I'll check in soon as more interesting tidbits make their way into the ether...

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The trailer for Prometheus had been a long time coming, and well teased too, but it’s been with us for a few days now.

And having had the chance to live with it a little, I’m still as absolutely fascinated as I was when the first footage rolled at Comic-Con in the summer.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some questions. Indeed, looking closely – very closely – at the trailer, I’ve seen some things that have left me not satisfied that Prometheus is going to be as tidy and muscular as the original Alien. There are ideas here that could go either way – provocative and exciting, or goofy and a little bit disappointing.

Let’s take a close look at some images from the trailer and see what we can’t work out.

First observation:  more or less every one of these images features the slowly revealed title card, white text appearing in sequential fragments. The word Prometheus fades up during this trailer just as Alien did in the opening minutes of the original film.

This titling conceit is one of the most absolute and convincing pieces of evidence we have against the official Fox position thatPrometheus is not an Alien prequel. They’re contradicting themselves by building a trailer to so specifically make this association and then denying it in official statements, and I’ll be blown if I can work out what the motivation for such caginess is.

The film most definitely is a prequel. I was told that a year ago and I never doubted it for a second.

So. From the top.

What does it mean that the Fox and Scott Free logos distort like this? It carries connotations of weakend signals from other places. This is how the Nostromo was led into danger… is it also the bait for the Prometheus?


I love that the camera retains the alignment of the ship and the planet rotates in the background. We’re very much “with” the ship here.

The vehicles are marked with the Weyland Yutani logo, as was witnessed on set earlier in the year.

I believe this shot is framed to recall one in Alien as an indication that we’re in the exact same location. Note that the tunnel is free of the strange, biomechanoid-looking surfaces, which I’d assume is because the Alien alien hasn’t yet taken over and made this place into home.

And when we go into the next room with the ampules, the same kind of shot recycling occurs. Last time, though, these were alien eggs and there was no giant head. The question is: if it’s the same room, which I am 100% convinced that it is, how do we get from what we see here to what we saw in Alien?

Suddenly, one of the characters is grabbing their helmet in fear and there’s some kind of smoke. From what we’ve seen in the other Alien films it might be assumed to be from an acid burn of some sort. But who is this character?

I think it’s Holloway, as played by Logan Marshall Green. There’s a shot of him later in which he looks like this:

You can see that his face has changed a little – some kind of bumps or, god forbid, bubbling. If you’re not sure of his identity from such a strained expression, take note of the name label on the top of his head.

It seems like a reasonable guess that Holloway may have removed his mask here to let some deadly gas out.

But I’d also guess that he was too late. Here’s how I think his mutation is going to continue:

And here’s what that character looks like, zoomed in a little:

We got another look at the burned, disfigured character in one of the countdown clips:

So, it would seem that Holloway becomes somehow affected by something, and ultimately, he ends up fighting with his unaffected fellow space peeps. A bit Sunshine-y that, maybe?

Now the trailer is about to get into something really exciting. Look at what they have in the lab here, on the scanner bed.

Is that the head of a space jockey? I’m going to contend that it isn’t, in fact… but we’ll get to that shortly.

Who’s this in the glasses on the left, the fourth explorer in this tunnel? And what is that other explorer looking at on the floor? And what are the red lights doing?

I’m pretty sure this bedroom shot features Holloway sitting to the right, and Noomi Rapace as Shaw on the left.

What’s he so ashamed about? Or despairing of?

Here, Michael Fassbender’s character, David, is pulling something with organic components from some sort of container. The similarities to the facehuggers in the eggs in the previous Alien films are immediate and striking.

Now, here’s Charlize Theron as Vickers, running and stripping. Note that she is upright in relation to us but the corridor is not – is this after a crash landing of some kind?

Where’s she headed and why is she stripping? And can we assume that the next shot follows somewhere down the way?

Notice how the vehicles are racing back to the Prometheus on a “road”. Something industrial if not civilized has been working on this planet in some respect. It seems most likely that it would be the Space Jockey or Engineer characters, and that they are on this planet to terraform it.

Here’s a shot from Iceland, I believe, where Scott was filming “the beginning of time.” It seems like the birth of everything was presided over by a relatively featureless giant disc thing.

I don’t know who half of these people are but there’s some old man make-up lurking over there on the left, I’m sure of it. But who is this rubber faced “Little Big Man” in space?

I think it’s the same character we can see in a wheelchair in this shot of Shaw collapsing, bloody and beaten.

Now, my best guess is that it’s either Guy Pearce or Patrick Wilson under the makeup because I can’t confidently place either of them elsewhere in the trailer at all, and they’re both on the billing.

Why is he in a wheelchair in this shot, and not later? I assume he’s getting fitter after some time in suspended animation, is later seen to be building up his muscles sufficiently.

Several shots from the end of the trailer show the Space Jockey’s ship apparently crash landing but the most important, I think, is the one with a mid-air explosion. Is this the result of a collision – and if so, with what?

If we assume that the collision is with the Prometheus that explains why that ship’s landing gear can be seen burning on the ground in another shot during the sequence.

And that assumption, in turn, possibly places this shot, in which a torn-off landing gear appears, somewhere after the crash. But what’s causing the big blast? Has something exploded?

I don’t think we have enough info to be sure about that chronology, but it’s encouraging to know that the string of cause and effect is obviously bigger than we can seen in just this trailer.

One of the most isolated shots in the whole trailer is this inverted close-up of Noomi Rapace as Shaw.

She looks to be in a great deal of pain. But I don’t think we should think the shot just happens to be upside down. What’s going on that would lead Scott to film the shot this way? The most likely assumption, I think, is that she’s lying on a surface and characters are standing at her head end. This shot could cut into that sequence in several ways.

And so if she’s lying down, why? Well, a shot I saw at Comic-Con suggested she had something inside her. Something growing. Gestating.

And, finally, we get to this trailer’s big reveal.

I was saying that I don’t think the specimen under investigation in the lab/scanner scene was a Space Jockey head. That’s because I think we see the Space Jockey’s head elsewhere. In this next image, in fact.

Standing to the right of the frame is a tall humanoid character. Based on the scale of this room as presented in Alien, I’m guessing he’s at least ten feet tall, maybe twelve or even fifteen. Here’s a close-up.

Perhaps this is the character that Guy Pearce is playing, or maybe even Patrick Wilson – they have IMDB credits linking them to other roles but, well, that’s IMDB and I’ll believe it when I see it elsewhere.

I imagine Scott’s using performance capture technology for the Space Jockey character – or, if there’s more of them, thesecharacters.

I believe that they are being referred to as Engineers, and I think this relates more to their involvement with bio-engineering than mechanical engineering. Or, this being an Alien film, that they meddle with the biomechanical, blending the two.

If you look at the control chair you’ll see the “mask” open where you’d see the head in the shots of this cockpit from Alien. It seems that the Space Jockey gets inside the big bio-mech exoskeleton to pilot his unusual ship.

Many of us had actually assumed, or at the very least fantasised, that this was case since seeing the first film.

The Space Jockey’s face looks a little bit like Ralph Fiennes, I think, but even more like the giant head. Here’s an image of that from the countdown clips:

So, there’s an awful lot more in the first full trailer for Prometheus than there needed to be – but something else was conspicuously absent.

The following is a grab from a very quick shot revealed in the first countdown clip:

What is that thing? And where in the story does it fit? Is it human?

Or… was it human?

It’s surprising that this image was released officially, but not used in the trailer proper.

Prometheus seems to feature humanoid aliens, odd spacecraft playing a part in the beginnings of time, and humans that mutate into… into other things.

Compared to the clean and lean monster house set-up of the first film, I’d say this picture is  looking mighty complicated, and suddenly the rumoured plot ingrediants of gene-altering bioformer chemicals and humans transforming into the familiar starbeast Xenomorph don’t sound so unlikely.

It was only a minute’s worth of footage but this trailer has had me thinking for hours. Here’s hoping the film can manage the same ratio.

Posting, October 2011: Long time no see people. Now is a great time to be a fan of the Alien series. Come next year we're going to be sitting in packed theaters with lights dimming and bated breath waiting for Prometheus to begin. Many details have started to emerge about the storyline and general tenor of the film and I for one am ecstatic. It is obvious from the shadowy stills that have surfaced that this film is on track to be a crowning achievement in Ridley Scott's career and a full fledged masterpiece which will flesh out the mysteries of the Alien franchise. CGI has finally reached that critical point where a director of Scott's caliber can spin the ultimate tale unimpeded by the limitations of technology.

The casting of this film in particular assuages any lingering doubts I had about the seriousness with which this project is being approached. For years and years I have longed for the franchise to return to its dystopian roots while expanding to the epic scale that the franchise is due. Next year my friends, our collective wish will be realized and the Alien saga will once again sear its mark into the imagination of a generation

3/25/10 - What's up Alien Fans/// I've noticed a lot of traffic through the site lately and have been getting a lot of feedback (thankfully positive)... There's a lot of chatter about a new Alien 5 movie in the works with Ridley Scott directing and a potential 3D release. I'll be updating the site a lot over the next month or so with as many articles I can dredge up from the depths of the web. Keep your eyes peeled and the site bookmarked... As for my Alien status lately, I've been on a major kick since the release of AVP on XBOX360. I really enjoyed the game. AVP was extremely well designed and played on all the strengths of the movies. The Aliens actually move like they do in the movies which elevates the gameplay tremendously. The game is a claustrophobic masterpiece with slick play and fantastic design.... All in all, the excitement of the game got me watching the movies through again, a bit of Resurrection, more of Alien, even more of Aliens, and all of Alien 3... respect to all the haters, but I have a soft spot for Alien 3. David Fincher created a gothic masterpiece that was underappreciated considering its slowdown from the adrenaline fueled epic of Aliens. Enough ranting for now... Talk to you all soon. Brad

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 Today on Electric Playground TV, Victor talks to Tim Jones, project lead on the new Aliens vs. Predator game!
http://www.elecplay.com/watch/19/312/3/25
Note: I just got the XBOX360 version of AVP and it's awesome!!!! Definitely pick it up.

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Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 16:43:35 -0800
From:
XXXXXX@yahoo.com
Subject: I love your ALIEN/ALIENS webpage. Its awesome.
To: gauthierbrad@hotmail.com
 
I love your ALIEN/ALIENS webpage. Its awesome. Its very interesting & well made. I appreciate & respect your views & thoughts about the ALIEN(S) films & the creatures especially. 
Personally, I like both lifecycles (asexual via eggs from cocoons & the Queen-based method) for the ALIENS equally. I have come up with theories for how BOTH methods of reproduction can be valid & non-contradictory.
 
What do you think ALIENS would havde been like had James Cameron stuck to the original method of asexual reproduction for the ALIEN(S)? Thank you.

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Hi James: Thank you for the interest in my Aliens page. I'm currently in the process of re-vamping a few sections and adding more content. As always, it's a work in progress... As far as your inquiry, I have to agree with you about not preferring one lifecycle over the other. The original movie's premise is groundbreaking but James Cameron just took it to a whole other level. It's hard to imagine what Cameron's ALIENS would have been without the Hive-centered model. His progression and expansion upon the first movie was so natural that it becomes difficult to envision an alternate path. That said, I've thought a lot about the original idea of asexual reproduction for the Aliens. (At the risk of getting a little too deep) I'm particularly fascinated by this aspect of the species because it upends our collective perception of the earthly lifecycles of advanced organisms and simultaneously removes any vestige of humanity from the Alien. The thought of a species designed and destined for a cold and solitary existence works to disassociate the creature's purposes and motives even further from that of man. Though James Cameron re-defined the Aliens with great vision and success, there is something profoundly darker and more unsettling about the Nostromo's encounter with the Alien. Thank you again for your interest, and I'll make sure to post this on my page. Brad

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Featured Site: The Anchorpoint Essays: The largest and most comprehensive look into the biology and behavior of the deadliest Xenomorph that human-kind has ever encountered:
 

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       The Alien devised by H.R. Giger is the most brutal and efficient organism that has ever penetrated the collective imagination of the Sci-Fi community. This site is forever dedicated to providing each fan with the most comprehensive, realistic, and up to date information on the Alien, the speculative biology of the species, and the artwork of H.R. Giger, the inspiration of it all. Your interest and support are infinitely appreciated.......


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