The Prometheus panel at the San Diego Comic Con has minutes ago wrapped up. Instead of a trailer being shown, some sort of featurette containing behind-the-scenes footage and movie footage was screened instead. After this Damon Lindelof and Charlize Theron presented the panel with Ridley Scott and Noomi Rapace joined in via satellite uplink from Iceland.
The footage and panel revealed this about Prometheus:
- Many of the sets, spaceships, space suits and the look in general appeared very reminiscent of Alien. Repeated comments are that the sets are “epic and expansive“.
- In the footage the “Prometheus” title card slowly faded onto screen much in the same manner as the original “Alien” title.
- Michael Fassbender’s character, David, is shown looking curiously at a drop of blood on his finger.
- Charlize Theron’s character, Vickers, was also seen doing naked push-ups and wielding a flame-thrower. Vickers is revealed to “be a suit“. IndieWire is taking this to mean she’s the head of Weyland-Yutani. Theron also comments that: “She[Vickers] runs a tight ship… but she’s somehow ‘going to be a problem“.
- Ridley Scott comments on the long wait for his return to science-fiction: “I was busy doing other movies and exploring other genres and, frankly, I never thought about sci-fi until I realized there was something in the first Alien that no one ever asked a question about. In the next one, still no exploration of that big question, so maybe that can be the centerpiece of what we just complete. But we’ve decided to go a complete other direction… In the last few minutes of the movie… you’ll actually understand what I’m talking about . “
- The majority of the film is shot practically with very little CG. However, it was all shot entirely in 3D which is a format that Scott is quite taken with. “I’ll never work without 3D again, I loved the whole process… 3D opens up the universe even in a small dialogue scene, so I’ve been very impressed with that.”
- According to Ridley there will “maybe be two” androids featuring in Prometheus. We’re already aware that Fassbender’s character, David, is an android so this leaves the second a mystery.
- Noomi Rapace comments on how “demanding” working on Prometheus has been. “It’s been the best journey ever. When I read the script, I was thrilled. Then when we started to work on this, I completely forgot about everything, it felt like we were discovering something that I haven’t been in before.”
- A bombshell was dropped in that Fox are wanting Prometheus to be rated PG-13. Lindelof asked: “has the PG-13 rating inhibited you?” to which Ridley replied he has a responsibility to Fox but he also wanted to make sure he had both opens. In all likelihood we’ll see a PG-13 theatrical release and an uncut Blu-ray release.
- Bleeding Cool state that: “Scott has said that he hasn’t held back and has covered stuff that might not make the PG-13 cut, but that he and Tom Rothman “will watch the footage in that big theatre at Fox” and decide what is the best way to go with the film.”
- According to Empire they saw: “a creature getting flamethrowered” during the footage. This could possibly be the footage with Vickers and the flamethrower.
Thanks to First Showing and Coming Soon for their fantastic live blogs. You can also check out Bleeding Cool’s impressions/report from their first hand seat at the panel.