Ridley’s ‘Believe IT OR NOT'
Shrouded in secrecy, ‘Prometheus’ is director Scott’s return to ‘Alien’ universe
In the 33 years since a toothy little beast burst out of actor John Hurt’s chest almost an hour into “Alien,” terror has never been the same.
And one scene from the 1979 scifi horror flick has haunted fans eager to know more about the film’s mythology.
Specifically, it’s a brief early glimpse of a giant, fossilized creature in a huge pilot’s seat — a being that fans have come to call “the Space Jockey.”
What was that thing, and why was it transporting a dangerous cargo of alien eggs?
With “Prometheus” landing in theaters Friday, director Ridley Scott may finally provide an answer.
The acclaimed, knighted British filmmaker — who’s also made epic films (“Gladiator,” “Robin Hood”), highprofile events (“Hannibal,” “Black Hawk Down”) and small gems (“Thelma & Louise,” “Matchstick Men”) — has spent a time away from sci-fi since his gamechanging “Alien” and “Blade Runner” (1982), movies whose influences are still felt today. (Getting passed over in favor of James Cameron for the 1986 sequel “Aliens” also still apparently stings the 74-year-old director.)
Scott has promised that “Prometheus” “shares the same DNA” as “Alien,” and his collaborators say one more reason he’s returned to this world now is because CGI and 3D effects have caught up to his imagination.
The movie centers on a team of scientists — led by archeologist Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) — on a mission to a remote planet to find the wellspring of human life. Humans have discovered pictograms in ancient caves across the world that seem to provide a road map to the stars. Financing the expedition is Weyland Industries — the corporation that will later launch the doomed space freighter Nostromo and its crew, including Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley (and make some disatrous colonization choices in “Aliens”).
Also aboard the spaceship Prometheus are an android (Michael Fassbender) and an even colder-blooded executive (Charlize Theron), both monitoring for their corporate overseers.
It doesn’t really matter who’s in charge once Prometheus lands, however, since they’ll all soon be running for their lives.
It’s what they're running from that’s been veiled in secrecy.
And of all the mysteries that surround the movie — built and marketed as an enigma, similar to the first “Alien,” which emphasized only a creepy space egg on its poster — the biggest question mark is how closely it will attach itself to its forerunner.
‘When I was filming, I didn’t really think about ‘Alien,’ but when I saw the movie later on, I could really see that there were similarities,” says Rapace.
“I could really see moments in this film that are almost like puzzle pieces; there’s a ‘Crack!,’ and then all of a sudden something’s gone. That definitely reminds me of when I saw ‘Alien’ for the first time.”
When the project was first announced several years ago, it was labeled a direct prequel, something the “Alien” series hasn’t done through 1992’s the lesspopular “Alien3,” 1997’s “Alien: Resurrection” and 2004’s “AVP: Alien vs. Predator” (a crossover attempt with the creature first seen in the unrelated 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger flick).
However, there was a change in philosophy during the script’s gestation period.
“The problem with prequels is that they’re inevitable,” says Damon Lindelof (“Lost,” the “Star Trek” reboot), who cowrote the screenplay for “Prometheus” and says he’s been obsessed with “Alien” since he first spied a scene from it on TV at age 9 — through fingers he used to shield his eyes.
The reason, Lindelof says, is that “the ending of a prequel is the beginning of the movie [that you’ve previously seen] — and it’s not really that exciting watching a story when you know how it’s going to end.
“It’s much cooler connecting the dots, not knowing what the picture is going to look like.”
“One of Scott’s biggest frustrations he had making the original ‘Alien’ was, he couldn't escape from the ‘man in a monster suit’ problem,” says Ian Nathan, author of “Alien Vault: The Definitive Story of the Making of the Film.”
“He had to hide the monster and edit his way around it.”
Scott ended up creating a virtue out of necessity, says Nathan. Like Steven Spielberg with the famously malfunctioning mechanical shark in “Jaws,” Scott opted to show as little of his H.R. Giger-designed monster as possible. That ended up making “Alien” even scarier, since the audience filled in the blanks.
So, says Lindelof, why not continue showing as little as possible, at least until the movie opens? That explains the new film’s tantalizing series of trailers and featurettes that leave you wanting more.
Of course, as for secrecy, it helped that “Prometheus” was shot inside a closed soundstage at London’s Pinewood Studios — and, partly, in a remote area near Iceland’s Mount Hekla, a place scientists were monitoring for imminent eruption. In that kind of space, no one can watch you scream.
“There are not a lot of paparazzi willing to brave the volcanic plains of Iceland,” jokes Lindelof.
No matter how form-fitting Theron’s spacesuit was.
Scott returned because CGI and 3D effects have caught up to his imagination.
Long before she kicked up a hornet’s nest of Hollywood’s attention with her breakthrough role in the Swedish film version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” Noomi Rapace was a 13-year-old watching “Alien” for the first time.
While most first-timers cringe at the deadly monster stalking Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, the then aspiring teen actress was fixated instead on the movie’s heroine.
“It made a mark on me in a way, because I had never seen anything like it, because she was so cool and fearless,” says Rapace, now 32. “She wasn’t trying to be sexy, she wasn’t trying to be beautiful, but she was just so stunning. I remember when I saw the movie I thought, ‘Oh my God, she’s the coolest woman I’ve ever seen.’” Rapace gets her chance to follow in Weaver’s foot
steps after landing the lead in “Prometheus,” director Ridley Scott’s return to the “Alien” universe.
Ripley was a pioneer that paved the way for future female action stars — including Linda Hamilton in “Terminator 2” and Angelina Jolie in “Tomb Raider” — but Rapace is no slouch, says Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf.
“If there’s any pressure for Noomi Rapace at all, maybe it has more to do with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” than “Alien”: she has to live up to the expectations created by her complex, idiosyncratic protagonist in that international hit,” says Insdorf.
Scott would probably agree — he cast his new action star after being mesmerized by her turn as Lisbeth Salander in “Tattoo.”
And the 32-year-old stunner can pack a punch: She did her own fight sequences in her Hollywood debut, last year’s “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.” That proved to be just a warmup for “Prometheus.”
“I did so much running in this rubber suit, super skin-tight and no protection, because I didn’t put pads on,” she says. “When we finished, my knees were filled with some kind of fluid.” She’s come a long way since spending part of her childhood living in a remote village in Iceland. Well, actually, not that long a way since she returned to the country to film “Prometheus” last summer. “I did my first movie as an extra when I was 7 in Iceland and my dream about acting started there,” says Rapace. “Just coming back with Ridley and doing this weird, disturbed part of the movie there, it made a really strong impact on me. I was so afraid I would wake up in my bed in Sweden and realize it was just a beautiful dream.”