Ridley Scott Prometheus: NOT the Alien Prequel Details

Well, I hope he still has the ambition to do something great. At the end of the day, directing anything is hard work. With Alien, the ambition in design and the collaborative effort with Geiger, OBannon, and Sigourney; everyone was at the top of their game. I still think he's a very good director. And he's got a wonderful sense of design. What will the new aliens look like? I can't wait to find out.

As long as he stays away from those artsy camera moves and camera tricks he's been using in later films that is more an annoyance than anything interesting and go back to a normal camera operation this may be interesting. Bust any Gladiator flickering or GI-Jane zoom-in-zoom-out all the time and I'm walking out and asking for my money back, as I didn't go to the movies to get sea-sick.

Good luck to him, but I don't know... for me, the space jockey and the derelict are so perfectly mysterious, so perfectly beyond experience, it seems a shame to just explain that all away, to bring the jockey and the derelict into the ho-hum realm of the known and the explained. It would deflate the powerful dream-sense of the original scene in 'Alien'. Seriously,for that reason, I might stay away...I know I'd miss some good stuff, but I'm sure nothing in the film can have the impact that derelict scene had in 1979. The memory of that impact is more important to me.

I agree, Colin. I've got a bad feeling about this. Just doing it as a prequel at all seems to indicate they're buying into the Aliens fan mythos that the derelict was destroyed somehow, perhaps by the atmosphere station blast, despite being a very long way from the colony. If they're going to canonise that bit of silliness then there could be a lot of room for other, worse things. And a whole new alien threat...why?

Additionally, CG spaceships lacking any involvement by the original design and model crew just aren't going to look as good. Not that much of the audience will care about that level of geekery, and all, but you know...

I agree as well Colin.

There's something wonderfully odd and intriguing about the Derelict and the Spacejockey. Filling in that backstory to me would be a little like a magician revealing how the trick was done, but a big part of me really wants to see this film all the same.

If Geiger does indeed get involved in the Alien designs that would be great, but I don't see why the creatures as a species would need to look all that different only 30 years before the first film.

Nwerke said:

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Just doing it as a prequel at all seems to indicate they're buying into the Aliens fan mythos that the derelict was destroyed somehow, perhaps by the atmosphere station blast, despite being a very long way from the colony. If they're going to canonise that bit of silliness then there could be a lot of room for other, worse things.

Yeah umm... I've been a fan of Aliens since '86. This is the first time ever that I heard the Derelict was destroyed (in expanded universe etc).

In fact I wrote a short story based on the premise that it wasn't destroyed by the atmosphere processor explosion. And in the AvP PC game it is alive and well on one of the levels. Far as I'm concerned it is still on LV-426.

So I'm kinda not seeing how a prequel "canonises" the Derelict being destroyed (which again- I hadn't heard in the first place). But I'm just one fan.

Personally I'm glad Scott is at the helm- and reading between the lines of his MTV interview, I'd say he thinks that the franchise has been completely trashed (which I totally agree with).

But I've been burned by what Hollywood has churned out these days- so I don't want to get my hopes up.

Kevin

Why do filmmakers have the desire to go back and explain the mysterious to audiences? Didn't you like Boba Fett better when you knew less about his past? I don't understand this compulsion to connect the dots storywise.

Kevin, it's just my guess. There seems to be this attitude around that you can't go back to the Derelict for further research. IIRC there were even comments to this effect in behind the scenes stuff from the making of the second and third sequels (but don't quote me on that, it's a foggy memory). The fact that this one's a prequel seems to confirm that the studio doesn't think they can kick off from Acheron again, at least not after the time of Aliens.

OTOH, perhaps we'll get to see the Derelict again. Perhaps even the original model can be dug up and restored! ("resculpted" would be a better word given the state it was last seen in).

That would be nice...

Ever since they adopted that whole alien takes on the characteristics of its host bit, they can now make 'space jockey aliens' if they want to. Maybe they'll also include a prison planet made entirely of wood.

The original full-sized space jockey was burned to the ground.

Well. In my view, the explosion didn't look at all big enough to wipe out the Derelict, so to me the Derelict is still sitting on that vacant rock just waiting. That's the whole charm of it. Clearly The Company is too stupid to realize this, since they didn't go back, but they never struck me as very clever. Since they recovered the escape pod from the Sulaco they would have a note about the LV-426 processing plant suffering an thermo nuclear explosion - I think it would be easy for Ripley to exaggerate things a bit in her report to likely prevent anyone from going back there.

Hehe... yeah... the other movies just seriously mess everything up.

But... if Ridley just have the Derelict just sitting there like in the first movie... then that's just rather... well... boring. And it did look like it had been there for many, many thousands of years... though... could have crashed because of something humans did. Maybe it wasn't a bomber... maybe it was a bomb-disposal craft and humans shot it down deliberately to get the cargo - pirates looking for treasure - or unintentionally downing it.

Kick off there, follow the trail, end up in an unexplored part of space, find the civilisation that sent it. Or what's left of it.

I don't know about the 'thousands of years' part though. The big guy wasn't crumbling to dust or anything, and the ship itself was intact.

Nwerke said:

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The big guy wasn't crumbling to dust or anything, and the ship itself was intact.

Neither are mummies and the pyramids!

Too Much Garlic said:

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Well. In my view, the explosion didn't look at all big enough to wipe out the Derelict, so to me the Derelict is still sitting on that vacant rock just waiting..

Well, the trick is that we don't know how far the derelict was from Hadley's Hope. The film mentions that the Jordens were only gone for around a week (if I'm remembering the dialogue correctly), and despite the crawler, they can't make good time over that kind of terrain. I'd imagine they didn't get more than a few hundred miles from the colony. Combine that with Bishop's statement about a "ball of dust the size of Nebraska" from the explosion, and it's very likely that the ship was caught in it. Whether it was completely vaporized or simply blown to pieces, we have no idea.

I seem to recall one of the novels made a mention of it, specifically saying that the ship had been destroyed, and that the company had gone to what was left of it and was unable to recover anything useful. I'll have to look it up, I think it's in Resurrection.

While I'm not super-jazzed about this new film (it's far too early for that), I do have faith.. it's Ridley Scott, for cryin' out loud. He MADE that franchise. If anybody can take the series back to it's roots, it's him. It would be like Jim Cameron making another Terminator film. There could be no wrong!

Remember Bishop's quote-
"This place is going to be a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska."
And the derelict ship was within tractor driving distance from the Acheron Colony.
It must have been destroyed but what does any of that have to do with a prequel anyway?
I hate prequels but at least this has Ridley at the helm and Dan O'Bannon was working on it when he died.

I think it will be great. The man is a cinematic genius. The look and feel of the original will be intact, the used,worn functional hardware and designs! Maybe a Nostromo like designed ship in new condition.

I can't wait

If Ridley is behind it, I look forward to it. If he feels like he has more to tell then it's gotta be good.

The whole space jockey story was covered in one of the Dark Horse comics in the '90s. Don't know if they'll roughly follow that idea or not, but it was quite interesting.

Personally, I'm really really looking forward to this. I'll eat up any Aliens crap the studio puts out, whether it's good or bad.

TheMechanic said:

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Remember Bishop's quote-
"This place is going to be a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska."
And the derelict ship was within tractor driving distance from the Acheron Colony.
It must have been destroyed but what does any of that have to do with a prequel anyway?

Okay not to labour the point-

The Derelict was located past a mountain range (the "Illyum Range"), it could just as easily be argued that it was protected from the blast. However as already mentioned it is a moot point since this is a prequel.


However I have another theory about all this...

What if the Derelict was not a cargo ship/bomber?

What if that "cave" on LV-426 (that Kane lowers himself into) was there before the Derelict? What if it wasn't a part of the ship itself (which has always been assumed).

So in other words- the fate of the Nostromo crew paralleled the fate of the Space Jockey. The Space Jockey either investigates a signal (or sign of life on LV-426), lands (or crashes) above that "cave", and is subsequently face-hugged.

The Alien that would have "birthed" from the Space Jockey could have died off hundreds of years before the Nostromo crew encounters it.


But since this prequel only takes place a mere 30 years before the events of ALIEN, it would negate this "fossilized for thousands of years" theory.

That is if the story takes place before/during the Jockey's flight to LV-426.

Kevin

Totally agree re the Derelict. The atmosphere station could have been a Tsar Bomba and still not taken the thing out. It was a week's drive away over rough terrain and a mountain range; there's no way the shockwave at ground level would have hurt it. Or probably an exposed human for that matter. This is something designed to withstand FTL interstellar travel and atmospheric re-entry. The cloud of dust the size of Nebraska may have happened, but that's atmospheric. It'd make more sense to say the volcano which damaged it previously erupted again, if you absolutely have to have the Derelict wiped out.

As for the "cave", it sure looks like part of the ship to me! (The alien goo coatings we saw in Aliens were nowhere near as structured and regular.) What happens in the film is that the crew enters the ship at almost ground level, climbs to the Jockey's dome chamber, which is at the very top of the ship, then lower Kane into a room below the floor of that. The ship is hundreds of feet wide in all, so all in all I think the likeliest explanation is that the room is located in the middle bulk of the ship; the crew just climbed *past* it through the labyrinth of internal passages. The edits while they're inside the ship's passages are not linear or "real time"; also I think this is supported by the matte and concept art - in paintings you can see that the room's shape follows the 'elbow' curves at the ends of the central section of the ship.

Your idea is harking back to the original script version though, where the creatures came from the native-built pyramid, and the derelict WAS just an unlucky visitor.

Personally, I do also hope the Jockey is already dead on LV-426 at the time of the prequel. Adds that bit more mystery and whatnot.

Nwerke said:

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As for the "cave", it sure looks like part of the ship to me!

Well... it looks exactly like the Space Jockey chamber. This is because when shooting the "cave" scene... all they did was remove the Space Jockey from the set. They reused the set for the "cave".

Trust me I've always believed it was a cargo hold until recently. Of course it is all supposition on my part- I have no evidence.


Oh and I totally agree about hoping the Jockey is already dead- I don't want the mystery ruined as well.

Kevin

Yeah, yeah! Those big concave ribs were all fibreglass castings btw. They just removed the Jockey platform and added the transverse floor rib things, oh and eggs obviously.

The room itself was subscale, as was the Jockey. Would have been great to see a room built to scale with Giger's concept art. My god - huge!

What I wouldn't give to have a couple of those fibreglass panels.

SSgt Burton said:

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What if that "cave" on LV-426 (that Kane lowers himself into) was there before the Derelict? What if it wasn't a part of the ship itself (which has always been assumed).

As Nwerke said, the detailing on the walls in the space jockey room and down in the egg chamber - the bone structures are in both. I highly doubt it wasn't part of the ship from the beginning. Looked way too integrated into the whole design of the ship and of the space jockey itself having some of the same anatomical features as the alien creature.

SSgt Burton said:

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But since this prequel only takes place a mere 30 years before the events of ALIEN, it would negate this "fossilized for thousands of years" theory.

That is if the story takes place before/during the Jockey's flight to LV-426.

Yeah... there is no telling whether the space jockey will be alive or sitting fossilized as we saw him in the first Alien. But... having another crew go to the same crashed ship and getting infected is rather stupid.

But then again... I really don't want to see the space jockey alive or learn anything about it. Ruins the mystery... so Ridley has to have a cool idea for having to go back there...

Nwerke said:

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What I wouldn't give to have a couple of those fibreglass panels.

Seconded. The whole design is so haunting and beautiful.

Too Much Garlic said:

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As long as he stays away from those artsy camera moves and camera tricks he's been using in later films that is more an annoyance than anything interesting and go back to a normal camera operation this may be interesting. Bust any Gladiator flickering or GI-Jane zoom-in-zoom-out all the time and I'm walking out and asking for my money back, as I didn't go to the movies to get sea-sick.

YES! His strobe-stutter camera crap looks so bad. Such a tacky gimmick from a once-talented director. He had the guts to linger so lovingly on his shots in Alien and BR. Now, he's just as condescending as every other director who thinks we'll fall asleep if he's not jumping around trying to give us all seizures.