Prometheus - Part 9

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

My copy should arrive today, cannot wait to see this movie again, loved it both times I saw it at the cinema, a really under-rated movie in my eyes.

 

[Doctor Jones]

This movie was even better the third time.

 

[chamber-music]

Screenwriter Jon Spaihts gave a new interview with Empire Online

"I did have a plan for multiple films and the conversations I had with Ridley was about a new franchise, from the beginning. We talked about a possible trilogy, or a duology, but more often as a trilogy. And I did have pretty broad notions as to how we were going to get from this world to the original Alien - the baton pass, closing the circle, if you will. So yes, I did have plans for two other films. I came up with an even more twisted sequence than the Medpod, but I cannot tell you what happens...

My vision of the trilogy would have involved the arrival of the Yutani Company and a couple of other major plays around the Engineers themselves: the revelation of an additional grand Engineer design, and the possibility of seeking an Engineer homeworld. That shot of the ship flying at the end offers a lot of creative ways to play with this. But it feels like it brackets you into the search for the Engineer homeworld and home civilisation. That's an interesting challenge."

Damn I really would like to see atleast another movie. I would be happy with a prequel duology if they can't do a trilogy.

I could see the Yutani Company going to LV-223 to explorer for themselves given that their rivals Weyland Industies sent a ship there.

We didn't get to enough tickets to the gun show fromm Noomi

 

[chamber-music]

From Jon Spaihts interview

"A lot of that push came from the studio very high up; they were interested in doing something original and not one more franchise film. That really came to a head at the studio - the major push to focus on the new mythology of Prometheus and dial the Aliens as far back as we could came down from the studio."

Its surprising that the exclusion of a heavily featured Xenomorph type creature in the film's final act came from the studio rather than Ridley Scott himself.

So one of Damon's major jobs when he came onboard was to replace the menaces of the xenomorphs with other things. Largely the other menaces in the film were present in my drafts as well - there was a black mutagenic compound that could change people in unpredictable way, Fifield did morph into a monster and become a real danger in his own right, and of course the Engineers, the Space Jockeys, proved to be terribly dangerous creatures. In my draft, as well, we did resurrect one and he tore off David's head. Much of the mayhem of the final film was present in the drafts I wrote, but the xenomorphs were the major change, as well as the stockpiling of this black liquid as opposed to Alien eggs.

We imagined that there might be eight different variations on the xenomorphs - eight different kinds of Alien eggs you might stumble across, eight kinds of slightly different xenomorph creatures that could hatch from them.

So Ridley and I were looking for ways to make the xenomorphs new.

Cool this is what I wanted different types on creatures

The medpod scene

The medpod sequence is one of the reasons I got the job in the first place. It's one of my favourite scenes and it's visually realised in an extraordinary way.


One of the things I realised was that we hadn't seen anyone survive a classic Alien chest bursting. And I was really intrigued by the notion that a character might be infected by the parasite and know that it was coming, know they had a timeframe of a few hours, and that we would have set up previously a nearly omnipotent medical device, designed to extend life for explorers in foreign places. Our heroine would have a short time to get to the machine and extract the thing inside her. It was a very gory sequence and it plays out very much like the sequence in the film. The main difference is in choreography. At the end of the sequence as I first conceived it, the heroine manages to get the creature extracted from her and it is expelled from the pod and she's sealed inside, whereas in the final film it goes the other way.

Then she lapses in and out of consciousness for a number of hours as the machine puts her back together. As she comes back to consciousness, she sees the thing growing in the cabin outside and even killing people. So by the time she emerges from the pod eight hours later, the thing is abroad in the ship and big enough to be a huge danger. That was the original conception of the medpod scene.
In the final film, obviously, that monster has been de-Alien-ised and become something a little more new and hybridised. And it's trapped inside the medpod while she rolls out, and it grows into something dangerous that's pushed to the end of the film.

Facehuggers and David

I did have facehuggers in my original draft. David, as he began to get fascinated by the science of the Engineers, doesn't deliberately contaminate Holloway with a drop of black liquid. Instead, Holloway hubristically removes his helmet in the chamber, is knocked unconscious, facehugged and wakes up not knowing what had been done to him, and stumbles back into the ship. In my draft, he returns to his cabin, is embraced by Shaw, who is delighted to see him having feared that he had died, and the two of them make love. And it's while they're making love that he bursts and dies. So that lovemaking sequence echoed my original lovemaking sequence where he explodes! It was messy.

Subsequently, David, fascinated by these creatures, begins delaying the mission and going off the reservation on his own, essentially because he thinks he really belongs with the Engineers. They're smart enough and sophisticated enough, great enough, to be his peers. He's harboring a deep-seated contempt for his human makers. So at one point Shaw goes to stop him and David ties her up and deliberately exposes her to a facehugger. He caresses an egg open and out comes a facehugger. David doesn't smell like a person - his breath isn't moist - so he can handle the thing like a kitten. It doesn't want him; it's not interested. But then he exposes it to her and it goes for her like a shot. He toys with her for a bit and then lets it take her. That, in my draft, was how Shaw was implanted with the parasite that she had to remove with the medpod sequence.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

From Jon Spaihts interview


Its surprising that the exclusion of a heavily featured Xenomorph type creature in the film's final act came from the studio rather than Ridley Scott himself.




Cool this is what I wanted different types on creatures

Some of that sounds great, while I loved what we got, this all sounds closer to Alien than what we got. Maybe some of this can be included in Paradise.

 

[Slushy]

I watched the deleted scenes and IMO wouldn't have helped out had they been reincorporated so I can see why Ridley would want it the film the way it is.

 

[DyeLorean]

So the studio doesn't want another movie?

 

[MLSkinner]

so lindelof was brought in to ruin what was going to be a fantastic story which would've lead to a trilogy bridging how the ship in the original alien came to land or crash on LV-426. Thanks Fox. I liked prometheus but thought Spaihts plan was bigger and better. Instead of having the ship carrying eggs to destroy worlds, lindelof replaced it with black goo. the guy ruined Lost, no wonder he messed this up as well.

 

[CConn]

Personally, I like that they made it more ambiguous. It expands the mythos, creates something new, and ultimately us even scarier due to how little we know of the black goo.

And I think the film greatly needed that aspect of the unknown. In the original movie, we new nothing about the Alien, and that made it even more terrifying. Now, 5 movies later, we know its every strength and weakness. That air of mystery is very much removed. By having the black goo, but having different resulte come from different DNA matching...that aspect of the unknown returns ten fold.

 

[Solidus]

so lindelof was brought in to ruin what was going to be a fantastic story which would've lead to a trilogy bridging how the ship in the original alien came to land or crash on LV-426. Thanks Fox. I liked prometheus but thought Spaihts plan was bigger and better. Instead of having the ship carrying eggs to destroy worlds, lindelof replaced it with black goo. the guy ruined Lost, no wonder he messed this up as well.

Actually it is explained, look at my latest post.

One thing that made much more sense, was why it's not LV-426 for a few reasons. And actually it does explain how the derelict got there but not in a straight forward way.

First how the derelict got there on LV-426 is simple, on LV-223 it was clear there was an outbreak, many of the engineers were killed and had chestbursters pop out and kill them all. There are hundreds of ships on this planet. One got impregnated, tried to escape and take off, somewhere on his journey near LV-426 he gave birth, killing him and crashing the ship on LV-426. The engineer outbreak was stated in Prometheus that it happened two thousand years ago. Which coincides with Alien, when Dallas says it's fossilized and has been dead a long time. 2000 years not 30. It was clear from the look of everything it had been dead a while. So to me it's self-explanatory "now..I admit I did not get this at first."

On top of that LV-426 could not be the place they made in LV-223 for a few reasons. LV-223 had to be bigger, because this place hand tons of these installation and ships, on such a small planet such as LV-426 everyone would have found that stuff right away, especially in Aliens and you know where it would go from there. I never thought of that either, making it LV-426 would have been the wrong choice. Originally I was pissed they did not make it LV-426, but first it would have made no sense, and Prometheus actually does explain how in a very light way, but does explain what 99.9% happened. An outbreak, one tried to escape, gave birth crashed the ship.

 

[DyeLorean]

Personally, I like that they made it more ambiguous. It expands the mythos, creates something new, and ultimately us even scarier due to how little we know of the black goo.

100% agree. And it applies to most sci-fi movies too.

Is not a surprise for me, though. I'm a Lost fan, and I know how Lindelof works, I knew what to expect.
If you listen to his interviews during the Lost period, you can hear some great things about mythos, what to reveal, what not to reveal, and how you can play with people's expectations.
It's a shame we won't get to discover what he/they had in mind with this universe they created. But apparently that's just me.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Lindelof likes discussion and polarizing reactions. He has been this way since Lost. He doesn't deliberately do these things to piss people off it's just not everyone shares the same opinions as him.

I prefer his view myself. Like this movie or not, unlike most movies this year, this movie set the internet on fire with massive amounts of discussion, theories and debates. It stayed with you. Those are his intentions, it happened, so I think it succeeded in that regard.

I mean that mosaic of the xenomorph above the green crystal thingy. "This is just another tomb." Goddamn I love that. That suggests, not says. It's just so much more interesting to think about than giving a definitive answer and putting it to bed. It's just a whole mythology that he opened up in different directions and we can discuss where they can lead.

 

[Solidus]

So the studio doesn't want another movie?

I heard they were wanting to do it. Especially if the film went over 400 million WW, and it did.

 

[Gold Samurai]

Sooner or later they will release a DC cut or alternative cut of the movie with Sir Ridley's blessing or not. Fox loves them dollar dollar bills y'all.

Two years later...

"Prometheus: The Criterion edition"

 

[Primal Slayer]

I was about to say...didnt FOX want to do a sequel? I sure as hell hope they do.

 

[Boom]

Well this looks sufficiently terrifying:

 

[DoomsdayApex]

Well this looks sufficiently terrifying:

 

[DoomsdayApex]

I was about to say...didnt FOX want to do a sequel? I sure as hell hope they do.

I thought it was confirmed already?

 

[chamber-music]

I think Fox have already said they want to do a sequel and Ridley is up for it. Spaihts will be probably be back but Lindelof has said he won't be.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Lindelof likes discussion and polarizing reactions. He has been this way since Lost. He doesn't deliberately do these things to piss people off it's just not everyone shares the same opinions as him.

I prefer his view myself. Like this movie or not, unlike most movies this year, this movie set the internet on fire with massive amounts of discussion, theories and debates. It stayed with you. Those are his intentions, it happened, so I think it succeeded in that regard.

I mean that mosaic of the xenomorph above the green crystal thingy. "This is just another tomb." Goddamn I love that. That suggests, not says. It's just so much more interesting to think about than giving a definitive answer and putting it to bed. It's just a whole mythology that he opened up in different directions and we can discuss where they can lead.

I loved the movie anyway, but this is so true, this movie stayed with me for weeks after I saw it, both times, and a lot of it is still with me now, I cant wait to see it again on BD. I have enjoyed other movies this year, The Avengers was great, as was TDKR, but neither of them stayed with for long, especially The Avengers. Prometheus has stayed with me since I saw it, loved it, and havent been able to stop thinking about it.

I prefer that than a straight up prequel which answers everything.

I was about to say...didnt FOX want to do a sequel? I sure as hell hope they do.

Fox confirmed a sequel when the movie was at $320 million WW, it has since gone on to earn just over $400 million WW, along with DVD/BD sales, I think Fox definately want to do a sequel

Well this looks sufficiently terrifying:

That looks amazing, hope we see something like that in the sequel, I wonder what they going to do with The Deacon in the next movie, its stuck on LV-223 but surely they have plans for it after that ending focusing on it.

 

[dude stannis]

I heard they were wanting to do it. Especially if the film went over 400 million WW, and it did.

Actually it was announced as soon as it hit $300 million. The extra hundred is gravy.

 

[marvelman2006]

Well this looks sufficiently terrifying:

I wonder how that would have played out on screen had it made the cut. I love the design and think it honors the original alien design but offers something new and different. The head looks similar to what we got in the original ending but I like the grey skin much more then the dark tone.

 

[craigdbfan]

The Beluga whale type skin is a nice touch.

 

[Schlosser85]

Part of me wants to have seen the scene with David tying Elizabeth up and putting a Facehugger on her.

 

[CConn]

Oh yeah, there sounds like there were a ton of cool action/suspense scenes in the original script. But they also all seem to make the movie much more obvious.

I like that David's motives and morality is as ambiguous as it is. Having him do anything that overt would tip the scales in the direction of downright evil.