i09 has just posted up an incredibly detailed and juicy description of the Prometheus footage shown at SDCC:
“And then the actual footage from the film starts, and its a huge flood of creeptastic imagery that recalls Alien but also a bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are guys in pressure suits exploring an ancient chamber with weird hieroglyphs, and a guy in a spacesuit walking through a sliding door into a clean white chamber. And a guy (who might be Michael Fassbender) pulling a weird jelly-looking thing out of a canister. And as Ridley Scott’s voiceover notes that things that may look small in the film will turn out to be important, there is a shot of a drop of blood on a finger. There is Charlize Theron on a table with bandages wrapped around her breasts, as though she’s waking from hypersleep.”
Be sure to make sure you read the entire thing. This is easily the most exciting report I’ve seen so far. Thanks to Ikarop for the news.
QuoteAnd then we see Charlize Theron doing pushups naked.
Quote from: chupacabras acheronsis on Jul 22, 2011, 12:10:51 AM
alien + 2001 = all of my money
Quote"Of course, what i want to do is scare the living shit out of you."
Quote from: SpaceMarines on Jul 22, 2011, 01:20:10 AMQuote from: chupacabras acheronsis on Jul 22, 2011, 12:10:51 AM
alien + 2001 = all of my money
Took the words right outta my goddamn mouth.
QuoteI realize that what everyone wants to know is how the footage looked. In short, I loved it. Alien is real touchstone film for me, and while Ridley Scott says that the DNA of Alien is in Prometheus and everything else will be different, that's not what the footage says. The footage very clearly comes both from the man who made Alien and takes place very much in the same world and is connected to that tale. What exactly was shown? How about Michael Fassbender crying, Charlize Theron seemingly doing naked pushups (something Damon Lindelof referenced on stage a few times), a shot of a giant head, some very beautiful images of space-suited characters in various states of distress, and a lot more. Read more after the break.
What we saw wasn't a trailer, but more like a behind the scenes featurette. Ridley Scott is seen on the massive 007 stage at Pinewood studios, with some of the very Alien-like production design in the background. (Think of the look of the interior of the derelict spaceship in which the characters in Alien first find the xenomoprh eggs and you'll get the idea.)
There is quite a lot in the footage shown that looked very specifically Alien: a giant open space that looks like it is missing only a huge fossilized Space Jockey; other massive spaces with curved striated walls and floors covered with ordered rows of what look very much like xenomorph eggs. The tone of Alien was there, too — the environments we see aren't quite as blue-collar and run down, but the feeling of dread and atmosphere is there in spades. Oh, and when the title screen came up at the end, letters in Prometheus formed in much the same way the title for Alien forms in that film.
The footage we see of Michael Fassbender seems to support the rumor that he plays a Bishop-like android. He's got a slightly stylized look that isn't quite human. (Ridley Scott said there might be two androids in the film.) Other elements of the design depart slightly from the core Alien template, but don't feel out of place. Keeping with the sense that this isn't taking place on the same sort of working-class ship seen in that film, the space suits are a little nicer and more pretty, the environments are more clean and gleaming. Some of the shots bear a rather stylized look that is somewhere between the clean, symmetrical aesthetic of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 and a slightly different 'clean space' vision that is a little bit Blade Runner and a little bit Mass Effect.
It was all very tantalizing and very much made me want to see more. With luck this reel will end up online at some point because after just the one viewing, which contained a lot of quick shots that were difficult to parse (including the shot that showed up as a still earlier today), I think I've missed a lot of detail. But the bottom line is: I'm very ready for more, rather than turned off by this Ridley Scott return to sci-fi.
QuoteAnd then we see Charlize Theron doing pushups naked.
QuoteClip starts...but it's just a Ridley Scott sizzle reel from previous movies? Even ROBIN HOOD? Not for long, thankfully. We see Ridley on a new set, then images of a spaceship control room full of lit panels. A giant room that looks like the Giger-designed spaceship in the first ALIEN where they find the eggs, though it's filled with things that look more like Egyptian coptic jars – though they may still be eggs. It does seem like something bio-mechanical is inside.
We see Michael Fassbender examining them. Green-glass sleep pods. Bubble-helmets – the aesthetic is an odd mix of the original ALIEN H. R. Giger designs and pulp comic-book Buck Rogers-type stuff. Charlize Theron is doing push-ups naked. There's a large, ringed planet.
QuoteEgyptian coptic jars
QuoteThe first image from 'Prometheus.'
Until today, little was known about Ridley Scott's next film Prometheus, and even the main detail was one that Scott has intentionally muddled: It's a prequel to Alien ... but not really. Today at Comic-Con, though, Scott, screenwriter Damon Lindelof, and stars Charlize Theron and Noomi Rapace lifted the lid on Scott's sci-fi thriller and showed off the first footage ever.
Less a teaser trailer than a behind-the-scenes look with stray shots from the movie, the Prometheus clip showed actors like Theron, Michael Fassbender, and Idris Elba navigating huge alien caves in their retro-cool spacesuits topped off with giant bubble heads. With little plot to be sussed out from the footage -- the crew finds some elongated vase-eggs that look less like the ones from Alien and more like something that just came off a potter's wheel -- the look of the film was what impressed us most. Black and white with pops of clean, bold color, Scott breaks up the white of Fassbender's spacesuit by placing an orange basketball in his hands, and cuts through the dark interior of the spaceship with the fluorescence of a yellow-visored helmet or a blue flashlight beam.
And though word on the street is that Fassbender plays an android in Prometheus, the footage showed him crying one single, clear tear, not the milky-white substance you'd normally find secreted by the androids of the Alien world. When pressed by Lindelof to reveal whether there was indeed a robot in the movie, Scott (who appeared via satellite as he finishes up the movie in Iceland) said coyly, "There may be two."
And those departures from the Alien canon are what most intrigued Scott. "There is the DNA of the original Alien. That's as far as it goes," the director said. "Everything else is completely different." Well, not everything. Scott says that there's a big question from the first two Alien films that finally gets answered in this one, teasing, "In the last few minutes of the movie, you'll understand what I'm talking about."
"I certainly hope so," added Lindelof.
"So do I. So does Fox," Scott said.
And there's another tradition kept: As in the first Alien, the female empowerment is leavened by a little interstellar cheesecake. Referring to a brief bit from the clip where Theron's character, Meredith Vickers, is glimpsed doing push-ups while wearing virtually nothing, Lindelof joked, "I just want to say that I find it disgusting and exploitative, and it's pandering to this crowd."
Theron leaned in with relish: "I know how to sell a movie."
Quote from: 8bitAngel on Jul 22, 2011, 02:47:50 AMQuoteEgyptian coptic jars
Wasn't there something in the original Alien script about jars or urns? Or maybe in one of the old Giger paintings? That they contained facehuggers or something?
Quote from: MrSpaceJockey on Jul 22, 2011, 02:54:45 AMQuote from: 8bitAngel on Jul 22, 2011, 02:47:50 AMQuoteEgyptian coptic jars
Wasn't there something in the original Alien script about jars or urns? Or maybe in one of the old Giger paintings? That they contained facehuggers or something?
In the (???)Dan o'Bannon script, the crew of the Nostromo mistake the alien eggs for urns. I got the same vibe also.
Quote from: SpaceMarines on Jul 22, 2011, 05:39:34 AMSame here bigmouth (;))
I'm loving this Alien meets 2001 and Mass Effect stuff everyone keeps mentioning. Goddamn, excitement for this has spiked.
Quote from: 8bitAngel on Jul 22, 2011, 02:47:50 AMQuoteEgyptian coptic jars
Wasn't there something in the original Alien script about jars or urns? Or maybe in one of the old Giger paintings? That they contained facehuggers or something?
Quote from: BonesawT101 on Jul 22, 2011, 07:36:23 AM
I'm wondering what the 'big question' from Alien that has been left unanswered is? My guess is that it could very well be - what came out of the spacejockey's chest?
Quote from: Gigerapparition on Jul 22, 2011, 09:11:44 AMThere was this big controversy with a movie in 2010 (can't remember the name) where they got stuck with an NC-17 rating (only one besides the normal PG, PG-13, and R ratings) which basically made it so they couldn't show trailers on TV and they couldnt play it in most theaters. So meeting at that middle ground is something Riddles definitely shouldn't do
Mounting and palpable anticipation here. But why the sly move form Fox again with the PG-13? The big question for my is why not have a happy medium and do a 15 rating? Is there a 15 rating?
Quote from: Prize on Jul 22, 2011, 04:39:11 PM
The concept behind the film sounds good, but I am majorly disappointed, in the news that this film will be rated PG-13!! I mean; H-E-L-L-O!! W-T-F??? Just how the hell, is Prometheus supposed to "scare the living shit out of us" when the films PG-13? I dont want to hear that B.S, about how; if the original "Alien" were released now-a-day, it would get by, with a PG-13 rating! It would not!!! And neither would the sequel "Aliens"!! Prometheus should be the same. A few months back, we were told that the creatures in Prometheus, do "Very bizzare things!". Well, sorry to rain on your parade Ridley, but in PG-13 movies, nobody will be doing anything, that would be even remotely bizzare! The suits want a PG-13 rating, so they can market the merchandise at a target age group.Nobody wants to go see PG-13 rated horror movies. This, in my view, is a very sad state of affairs indeed! PG-13 and in 3D?? In the immortal words, of director David Lynch, when asked for his opinion, on the idea of watching films on your i-phone - GET.... F***KING REAL!!!!
I apologize for my use of swear words in this post.
Quote from: Sgt. Apone on Jul 23, 2011, 06:11:44 AMQuote from: Prize on Jul 22, 2011, 04:39:11 PM
The concept behind the film sounds good, but I am majorly disappointed, in the news that this film will be rated PG-13!! I mean; H-E-L-L-O!! W-T-F??? Just how the hell, is Prometheus supposed to "scare the living shit out of us" when the films PG-13? I dont want to hear that B.S, about how; if the original "Alien" were released now-a-day, it would get by, with a PG-13 rating! It would not!!! And neither would the sequel "Aliens"!! Prometheus should be the same. A few months back, we were told that the creatures in Prometheus, do "Very bizzare things!". Well, sorry to rain on your parade Ridley, but in PG-13 movies, nobody will be doing anything, that would be even remotely bizzare! The suits want a PG-13 rating, so they can market the merchandise at a target age group.Nobody wants to go see PG-13 rated horror movies. This, in my view, is a very sad state of affairs indeed! PG-13 and in 3D?? In the immortal words, of director David Lynch, when asked for his opinion, on the idea of watching films on your i-phone - GET.... F***KING REAL!!!!
I apologize for my use of swear words in this post.
PG 13 just means they're not using as much language as a rated R film. Many people have said that if you take away a lot of the curisng and gore in ALien, you'd be left with a PG-13 film.
Quote from: Federick Gonsa on Jul 23, 2011, 07:30:34 AMQuote from: Sgt. Apone on Jul 23, 2011, 06:11:44 AMQuote from: Prize on Jul 22, 2011, 04:39:11 PM
The concept behind the film sounds good, but I am majorly disappointed, in the news that this film will be rated PG-13!! I mean; H-E-L-L-O!! W-T-F??? Just how the hell, is Prometheus supposed to "scare the living shit out of us" when the films PG-13? I dont want to hear that B.S, about how; if the original "Alien" were released now-a-day, it would get by, with a PG-13 rating! It would not!!! And neither would the sequel "Aliens"!! Prometheus should be the same. A few months back, we were told that the creatures in Prometheus, do "Very bizzare things!". Well, sorry to rain on your parade Ridley, but in PG-13 movies, nobody will be doing anything, that would be even remotely bizzare! The suits want a PG-13 rating, so they can market the merchandise at a target age group.Nobody wants to go see PG-13 rated horror movies. This, in my view, is a very sad state of affairs indeed! PG-13 and in 3D?? In the immortal words, of director David Lynch, when asked for his opinion, on the idea of watching films on your i-phone - GET.... F***KING REAL!!!!
I apologize for my use of swear words in this post.
PG 13 just means they're not using as much language as a rated R film. Many people have said that if you take away a lot of the curisng and gore in ALien, you'd be left with a PG-13 film.
Many movies, if they were rated now instead of now, would lose a rating level (like R becoming PG13). Times change and sensitivities too. A movie's rating is should not be a discouraging factor. Its like saying, if its not for adults, its not good. Just look at current shows on cartoon network, even if you are not a child, you may find the shows entertaining and funny. The same should go for pg-13 movies.
QuoteI've seen thing you people wouldn't believe. Ridley Scott's greatest hits. Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, Thelma And Louise, and of course Alien. "Ridley Scott returns to the genre he redefined": Prometheus. Bridge of a ship, very Alien ship-looking set, and what look suspiciously like small eggs scattered on the ground of an alien-looking set. Fassbender opens an egg and finds some kind of black film on his fingers. Hard not to see this as an Alien tale thus far; even the font is pretty much the same. Fassbender and his crew emerging from deep sleep. A bit of a first-person view, looks somewhat like the Marines segment of Aliens, although this crew looks more like the original Alien, more scietific, although there is gunfire and a woman looking down at her chest...which isn't shown. "They find dangerous elements that are capable of eviscerating them." Very Giger-esque set designs. "Has the DNA of the original Alien, but that's as far as it goes. All I want to do is scare the living shit out of you."