Delving Deeper Into Prometheus Trailers - Here's Our Theories
2,544 word essay on our thoughts on the stunning trailers released this week for Ridley Scott's new sci-fi epic.
However, in amongst all the hype of seeing these wonderfully familiar visuals, were still getting told that this is only loosely based on the Alien franchise, that Prometheus only has passing connections to Ridleys original Alien and theres a bigger mystery to be discovered with even bigger questions being raised in the realms of science fiction but are there really?
In a world where studios are too damn scared to give the audience something new or something taxing to the brain cells (especially when released as a summer tentpole movie), have Twentieth Century Fox really allowed Ridley Scott to create a subtle, intelligent science fiction epic they are allowing to keep hush hush or have they once again given away the majority of the new films beats in the trailers?
***Here I intend to delve into all of the trailers and try to cobble together what I feel is the much guarded Prometheus plot. Whether youd consider this spoilers is going to be down to the individual so beware reading forward***
A few notes first. I could mention character names and locations as a lot of this stuff has been revealed online but as this article only tackles the trailers and not any interviews or discussions about names and places, I will only refer to details that could be lifted from the footage weve seen so far.
Okay so the international trailer released earlier this week started this little article rolling. Fox basically created a trailer that most Marvel superhero movies throw out nowadays, in that we now dont really need to see the first twenty odd minutes of the film because its all laid out here for us.
Two explorers (one of whom we know is called Elizabeth Shaw due to her name on the sleep pod in trailer 2) have cobbled together that many ancient civilisations have used the same image in their artwork and under further investigation we are told that this is a star map. Shaw believes this is an invitation from an alien species. Presumably Weyland Industries have backed this discovery and under the care of the Prometheus crew, head to LV-426 (if its not the same planet as in Alien/Aliens then this whole Derelict spaceship connection really will come with a few surprises).
When finding the ship (lets keep calling this U-shaped vessel The Derelict for nostalgia's sake) we see the crew in and out of their space suits, so my guess is The Derelict is a sealed ship so they can take their helmets off. We know for example that its underground, under a giant metal door within a mountain that seems to be a built structure, so my guess is our Prometheus crew venture into the giant mountain on their first trip out and dont even realise they are in or near a ship until a later venture where they do the scan that we see in the trailers and conclude they are inside an alien spacecraft.
On the first trip, I also guess they find the alien helmet, similar to the Space Jockey in Alien and investigate further, trying to forge a history of the species that has invited them here. Exciting times.
So trip two and now were in The Derelict and the helmets are off. The odd shots we see have the inside of the vessel full of familiar imagery. There seems to be a hint of classic Xenomorph on the wall (possibly a blueprint more on that later folks) and Im not sure what were seeing in the corridor shot but this seems to be possibly some other species that have found The Derelict previously. This is where big theory number one comes into place.
The species that The Derelict belongs to, lets call them Space Jockeys for consistency, have sent their invitation across the galaxy, as assumed by Shaw earlier on but what that invite is for is the key twist in this tale I feel. Judging by what we've seen, the Space Jockeys are thin on the ground. We only see the lone giant dude spotted through all the trailers (as far as we know) and this indicates he may very well be the same lone Jockey in the chair with a hole in his chest from the original Alien movie. So my guess is they are either a dying species or our Space Jockey is a God like figure. Either way these Space Jockeys are looking for a species that they can mix their DNA with or they could indeed be organisms they have created to make the next step in a controlled evolution. These organisms are housed in their containers under the watchful ominous Face and when the Prometheus crew find their way into the room, things begin to change.
Now here it really begins to get sketchy and a lot of my thoughts here really are guesswork but bear with me. So, David the robot (Fassbender) finds the room with the holographic star maps (which I feel is the same room as the classic Space Jockey scene in Alien - more on that later) and haphazardly reveals where the Prometheus crew have come from, or even more likely this is part of the invitation and this projection informs the Space Jockey where their guests have originated from.
Also with the Prometheus crew finding the room with the big face and a ton of odd containers containing the very much alive micro-organisms (we are shown them alive and squirming and even the goo between fingers seems alive and thriving) we delve deeper into what's going on here. As a further stab in the dark, some sort of natural safety mechanism sprays acid (as a guess) on one of the crew members masks and were off just like in Alien. Adding to this, during the international trailer we hear the Prometheus recordings and the voices say Are these things moving? Theyre opening up from the inside and My throat, theyre in my throat which to me sounds like these organisms are doing a very early version of what our classic Facehugger aims for and is forcing its genetic material into its host.
At this point it's pretty much everyone on this scouting party gets a bit of this infection or at least a couple of them (the wiggly tail thing forcing its way into someones suit is very creepy and bigger than simple little organisms so I'm not sure what that is) and the team rush back to Prometheus to recover. I also guess that David takes one of the containers of organisms as the trailer shows, for further research and this is where the Prometheus title comes into play.
In the TED viral video with Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), he tells us the story of Prometheus and how Prometheus had stolen fire from the Gods, unleashing the Gods wrath. There seems to be a direct relation to our film. The very first image we saw of Prometheus has a crew member flying through the air in a dust storm and carefully placed in the shot is an egg like shape. I feel at this point we stay aboard The Prometheus while our infected crew member(s) recover and/or are monitored in some kind of medical bay. I feel there are changes afoot for our crew from here on in. We see glimpses of an infection sweeping the crew.
Shaws partner checking out a wriggly watering eye in the mirror, the bandaged face of the crew member who got some acid type stuff on him and then theres the shots of the crew member, who I believe is Shaw, in the medical pod, blood all over the glass and some sort of creature locked in a clamp at the end of the pod with a whipping tail and possible legs flicking above her. I dont know if someone is trying to put an organism in her ala Burkes plan in Aliens or its come out without incident but it raises questions about the real mission Prometheus is on.
All of this is a series of blink and youll miss it frames in the second trailer and the short one minute trailer but they are very intriguing. Plus with that added to the Prometheus voice recordings in the International trailer theres a real sense that Prometheus has gone through a real descent into madness because of what they found on The Derelict.
Okay, next up the space maniac jumping around the ship. This doesnt feel like the Space Jockey to me but rather an infected crew member (possibly the one with acid over his face). He certainly seems strong, throwing people around and such and I suppose it could be a Space Jockey, leading into the shot with a very Alien-esq suited body standing above Shaw in the second trailer.
This raises two questions. First, does the Space Jockey enter the ship to take back their organisms? Or second, is this a crew member changing into something more alien'? Hinting that our Prometheus crew members will eventually become the aliens leading onto the first Alien film? In my mind, it all seems to be going that way.
Here we reach another fork in the road. Im not 100% sure whether The Derelict taking off is mid movie or end of movie but my feeling is that its towards the end once the Prometheus crew discover the true intention of the Space Jockey. My stab is, with the Space Jockey aware of the planet the Earth folk are from and placing the blue location globe David confirmed in the holographic star map, the map room suddenly launches its centre piece, the Space Jockeys chair. The Derelict gets ready to go, taking off and ready to head to Earth to spread its organisms.
The Space Jockey starts his engine up and this causes the explosion of sand and dust (though there seems to be two versions of this. A red sand storm and a night time storm so maybe theres a ship take off and a natural harsher storm, more like we expected from LV-426). This will add a pace to the end of the film and in turn represent the wrath of the Gods but in actuality its probably the Space Jockey readying himself for stage two he's seen that the organisms can successfully bond with their new hosts and its time to go to the planet David unintentionally revealed.
Shaw realises this and here informs the crew back on the Prometheus that they have to stop the alien vessel from leaving the planet. Judging by a few choice shots in the trailer this involves Prometheus hitting The Derelict side on causing the crash that has been a huge image used to sell the movie.
In amongst all this Charlize Theron seems to be in a rush to leave the ship and gets into an escape pod which is potentially the thing we see launch from the side of Prometheus as it heads towards The Derelict. Of course as with all of this article, this is conjecture but it certainly seems to add up.
Now after this event I dont think weve seen any footage but my ideas on where this story might go has the remainder of the crew literally tuning into aliens. Of course, early versions of the Xenomorph and a stage in their evolution towards the first Alien flick . The ship has crashed, the human/alien hybrids can make eggs, crossing the micro organic history with a more human based approach and were in place.
As a rough guess the Space Jockey, locked in his chair gets the first proper impregnation and while we're on the subject, I have the impression the Space Jockey may actually turn out to be something of an interesting character. Just for that one shot that appears to be the Jockey looking at the infection in his own skin - maybe the Jockey's didn't make the alien micro-organisms at all, maybe they just suffered the same fate as the Prometheus crew but the blending didn't quite work for them or even more interestingly, maybe this is not a Space Jockey at all but the lone survivor of the Prometheus crew still changing and this is actually one of the closing images of the film?
As another side note and a big tidy bow on the piece, I guess the planet might get nuked or something (possible from the totally baffling big round ship (?) in the trailers) to mess up the atmosphere (ala Alien and Aliens) creating a convenient reason to prevent Weyland coming back until the story in the first Alien movie. Who knows?
All of this is literally pulled out of the air at this point (or at least out of what the trailers WANT us to think) but the big closing events have to involve Charlize Theron somehow, because lets face it, shes a big name and so far there seems little reason for her to take this role. Additionally there is no Guy Pearce in here at all so far and his name was credited at the end of the trailer. What age he'll be, how he'll fit in with the story and how much of a hand he'll have in the fallout of everything is a huge element to uncover it seems and of course the role David the robot will play in here is something that's also hinted at and will no doubt be vastly interesting.
Lastly there was early talk about two movies, so maybe this instalment doesnt have to have such a clean ending to tie it in with Alien.
I guess we'll see how many of these ideas pan out and just how much we've been let in on or how much of this is a red herring to hide the bigger story in here but until then, I hope you've enjoyed my rantings. God knows, these trailers have been so good they're all I have been thinking about - hence the article. If anything they might stir up a bit of discussion about other ideas floating around so feel free to throw in your ideas about Prometheus below. June cannot come quick enough