New Prometheus featurette : Origins

[SpeedyMaxx]

You don't like Noomi Rapace?

She's a lovely girl.  Think broader.

[Deuterium]

Of course, I take your point, and I agree that it will be enjoyable no matter what. I do have to tell myself to relax when I see little inaccuracies though, especially when they would have been so easy to avoid. I personally do not believe that accuracy needs to be sacrificed to artistry - why else do people lap up real images of planets from space missions?

I would have loved to be a science consultant on this thing, or - *cough* - on any future projects....yeah? I mean I would do anything...
Anything
Like, who do I have to f*ck around here...?

I was niggled by an inaccuracy in Star Trek, where the Enterprise emerged from Titan's clouds to show Saturn with a great swathe of tilted rings in the background. Titan orbits in Saturn's equatorial plane - you'd only ever see the rings edge on. And their science consultant worked on the Cassini mission to Saturn !!!

amazing!!!

btw, did the ringed planet change positions?

Good catch.  Two things are possible.*

1)  The FX team didn't do their homework (didn't hire me as a consultant), and they F@&Ked up. 
As Prometheus appears to have landed on a moon which is in orbit around a massive, gas giant, it is almost certain that the moon would be tidally locked to the parent gas giant.  A tidally locked moon makes one revolution about it's axis in the same period as it makes one orbital revolution around it's partner planet.  That means, it always shows the same face to the gas giant.  This also means that the main "planet" will  appear fixed at the same point in the sky, for any given observer's location on the moon (presuming they are on the hemisphere which faces the planet, of course).  As an example, the Apollo astronauts would always see the Earth in a fixed, unchanging position in the sky.

This situation occurs with the Earth-Moon system, as well as the moons around Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.  Pluto and Charon are approx. the same size, and they are mutually tidally locked.  Therefore, unless the Prometheus ship moved, and changed orientation, this could be an oversight/mistake on the part of the production team.

2)  Per my last point...it is possible that the Prometheus has moved position and orientation between these film sequences/clips.  I suppose it is even possible that they have left one moon, and moved on to another moon in the system.

*EDIT:  I may have been too hasty in my analysis.  Looking closer at the two pics, it does appear that the ringed planet remains "behind" the front of the Prometheus (with the Prometheus bow/cockpit facing the camera)...at least in these two pics.  The small change in the planet's relative position is simply a change in the perspective/view of the two shots of the Prometheus. [

A lot of shots that are in more than one trailer/featurette have flipped sides.
For example when Shaw jumps the gap.
And other things have been changed over time as we all know.

Well, I guess that would make a third possibility.  However, when the film is finished (in the can, so to speak), then possibility #1 holds, and the planet should stay in the same position in the sky, relative to the observer.  In other words, if we see the planet "behind" the front of the Prometheus at one point in the film (and assuming the Prometheus doesn't move), then we shouldn't see it on the opposite side, in some other shot.  For example, when we are viewing the crew convoy either approaching or moving away from the front of the Prometheus, then the planet should never appear "behind" the convoy, as that is the opposite part of the sky.

Also, the large angle/inclination of the planet's rings, as observed from the moon, makes for an aesthetically pleasing image...but not one that would be typical.  Even "artistic" paintings of Saturn, as hypothetically viewed from the surface of one of it's moons, typically show the rings at a significant angle.  However, this is not the case in reality.  In reality, on Saturn's natural moons, the rings would be almost invisible, since the moons orbit almost exactly along the same plane as Saturn's rings...and the rings are so incredibly "thin" when viewed edge-on.  The exception would be small, captured moons, which were not an original part of the Saturn-moon system.  Captured moons (typically very small in relation to the natural moons) can orbit at extreme angles in relation to the planet's rotational plane (and rings).

[OpenMaw]

She's a lovely girl.  Think broader.

Broader...

Ah! Team Fassbender, then? 

[SpeedyMaxx]

Something along those lines.

[szkoki]

"Ofcourse what i want to do is scare the living shit out of you"

made my day

[Salt The Fries]

"Ofcourse what i want to do is scare the living shit out of you"

made my day

Same here, made me laugh out loud

Holloway looks seriously like he's caught a serious case FUBAR in that new shot!

Why on earth would Shaw even consider banging him in that state? 

My girlfriend got horny on me in her work (at a university) after we had a fallout and she wanted to make out (don't read it as something more than just "make out", pervs! ) in a staff room...Girls have sometimes uncontrollable and weird cravings. I can totally accept this Shaw-Holloway scenario as plausible.

[LarsVader]

Clicky clicky! 













SPOILER! *seriously*

Spoiler

Man down!

[close]

[whiterabbit]

So Shaw rather have her answers and be dead... maybe the space jockey offers her the chance to give birth to god and she takes it?

[JaaayDee]

Clicky clicky! 













SPOILER! *seriously*

Spoiler

Man down!

[close]

Download link for the 1080p vid?

[Zenzucht]

It seems to me that the fact they had to shot on the Iceland instead of the Morocco was win. The Iceland landscape has terrific cinematic qualities.. Like the early version of the Giger's Alien landscape. This will look magnificent in IMAX I hope for some looong shots.

[Salt The Fries]

Morocco would be like Lawrence of Arabia in space...

[Predaker]

Astronomers already know of roughly Earth-sized planets, and I think it will be a matter of 10-20 years before we have seen real Earth analogues, where we can observe the signatures of water, oxygen, and maybe even life.

More like 2-3 years.

The two stars are somewhat deficient in metals, having only 60% of the proportion of elements other than hydrogen and helium as compared to the Sun. For reasons that remain uncertain, they have an anomalously low abundance of beryllium. Both stars are considered unusual because they have a lower luminosity than is normal for main sequence stars of their age and surface temperature.

Sure sounds like someone is harvesting the stars power. Maybe a dyson spear? A similar idea is seen in the orerry.

Interesting. If it were a complete Dyson Sphere you'd expect only to see the star in the infrared. There are reasonable explanations for all the observations of the two zeta reticuli stars; in other words you don't need to resort to possible extra-terrestrial engineering. But I don't think it can be ruled out either....

It definitely would make for a good sci-fi story and that is what Prometheus has morphed into. It has gone form a story about space jockeys and xenomorphs to a "what if" all of that ancient astronaut bullshit is true. A what if idea working around feasibility. To me that is what a sci-fi movie is supposed to be about. I know it's a tight rope but it's similar to how the new star trek movie, aside from names and universe, was not a star trek movie at all. There was no real attempt to insert any "feasible" science fiction nor moral delima in it. I think Ridley is really trying to put the sci-fi back into science fiction movies. If that makes any sense?


Oh and xenomorph cameo.

Another ALIEN reference! beautiful

[ikarop]

Clicky clicky! 













SPOILER! *seriously*

Spoiler

Man down!

[close]

Download link for the 1080p vid?

• http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2561706/POrigins.mp4

[Nightmare Asylum]

Wow, that featurette was excellent

[Eva]

Nice to catch the HD version just before bedtime 

A couple of (new) details
- that medpod is now smeared in blood stains on the inside - was it like this in previous clips?
- Janek is the one who gets to torch someone on the floor
- the jockey holograms seem to play out at various locations throughout the ship/temple - not just the control room

...and I'm mystified by LarsVaders pic of the jockey in the chair. In the new origins featurette, the hose between the helmet and the ribcage is shorter than it is in Vaders screenshot - it doesn't connect to the opening ribcage. But in the screenshot above it does... What kind of black magic is this...?