More than three decades ago Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror classic Alien introduced moviegoers to a menacing, insectlike, parasitoid extraterrestrial species. The film's sequels and spinoffs over time created a rich mythology of a universe in which the films' predatory antagonists and doomed heroes coexist, complete with terraformed colonies, interstellar mining and commerce, and a recurring role for the fictional Weyland Corp., whose relentless efforts to capture and control the alien species set in motion much of the film franchise's narrative.

Scott returns to this universe on June 8 with the opening of Prometheus, a movie set in the same cosmos as the Alien films but several years earlier than the original. Although the moviemakers are keeping many plot details confidential in advance of the film's release, Scott has made clear that Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien. Instead, the new movie centers on scientific exploration—sponsored by Weyland, naturally—on board a spacefaring vessel named for the Titan in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans—and paid a terrible price for doing so.

The Prometheus is following a star map found at various unrelated archeological sites on Earth. The commonality of these images leads the scientists to believe that the map may help them discover humanity's origins.

Scientific American spoke with Prometheus co-screenwriter Jon Spaihts about the film's scientific pursuits, its portrayal of late 21st-century technology and the dangers faced by humans in such a hostile cosmos.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]


Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien but both films are set in the same universe. What does this mean exactly?
If a prequel is a story that presets the conditions for another story—gives you everyone's back story and so forth—and is mated to a specific set of characters and a specific tale, then this is not that. This is a story that shares a storytelling universe with the Alien films, in particular the first film. There are also some scientific notions and some storytelling archetypes that we inherit, but we are really not telling the same story at all. We're opening up a whole new branch of science fiction mythology.

What storytelling archetypes did you inherit, and how did you weave the old and new mythologies together?
One of the things I was very aware of in composing the story is that in the Alien universe there are a number of dualities that leap to the fore. There's a core duality between humanity and the alien species, obviously. The Xenomorph [as the alien came to be known] wasn't just something dangerous but something demonic in the perfection of its adaptation to destroy us. And it made Ripley—the female protagonist of Alien and its sequels—feel that much more innocent, vulnerable, human, real. This conflict between human and alien is central to these films.

A secondary duality is between the human and the artificial person. Whether we're talking about Ash in the first film, Bishop in Aliens or David in the new movie, an android is always there, and there's always a tension between the human and artificial characters that seems intrinsic to these stories. And then there's also a duality between the humans and "the Company," an implacable and self-serving interest, a heartless force. Although these movies are science fiction, we can relate [because of] similar tensions in day-to-day life. People feel uneasy about our dependence on artificial intelligence and robotic appendages as machines get closer and closer to us. And there's certainly a widespread tension between us and the corporate forces in our lives. All of these forces become concrete representations in the universe where Prometheus and the Alien movies take place.

The Alien films never fully explained the origin of the Xenomorph creatures, even though the first movie presents the audience with a derelict ship filled with alien eggs that have seemingly been abandoned on a hostile planet. What approach does Prometheus take to exploring the origins of life?

17 Comments

1. 1. zendiver 10:47 AM 6/4/12

   It is astounding that a magazine such as SA would use the wrong word in its text. What Ridley Scott is referring to is the "canon" of work, i.e. the whole body of the work set in the Alien universe not the "cannon" which is an armament.

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2. 2. tru256 in reply to zendiver 11:31 AM 6/4/12

   Also interesting zendiver, is that the interviewee was Jon Spaihts co-screenwriter referring to Ridley Scott's 'canon' of work... not Ridley himself..If your going to criticize, you should at least make sure your correction is correct.

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3. 3. rmontenegro 11:51 AM 6/4/12

   It is unfortunate to have a film such a Prometheus with a reported cost of $130million to make with so many incoherencies in the plot! I will not extend myself there any person who has seen the film will hear the same comments at the exit! If the film really "created a rich mythology" this mythology, unlike the Greek one, is a little empty of meaning and psychology! I think the film looks great in terms of imagery there is no denying it but they should have taken a team of exobiology to advise them and make the plot a little more coherent with actual known biological facts (which a trait of great sci movies since the old star trek).
   
   rmontenegro
   

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4. 4. Bill Marvel 04:00 PM 6/4/12

   Just a guess here, but if this was an interview and not just an exchange of emails, the "canon"-"cannon" mistake may be the interviewer's, not Jon Spaihts'. The two words sound the same.

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5. 5. julianpenrod 11:58 PM 6/4/12

   A good question, as with any "explanation" of an insincere, gratuitous money maker of a film trying to pass itself off as "thoughtful", how much of this is and isn't hokum?
   Consider the elaborate "explanation" of "duality" as a "storytelling archetype". It can be referred to, less effetely, conflict. Most fiction has conflict and a greater proportion of bad fiction. You want an off the cuff "story" without an investiture of thought or spirit, represent some good guys being opposed by some bad guys. Then spread the fight out for some time, throw in some developments and complications, add a twist or two to spice it up, and include some sentimental side issue and maybe an unconventional ending to con the gullible into thinking it's not just a cynical money grab. "Alien" came out in the tidal wave of science fiction following "Star Wars". It's basically just "It! The Terror From Beyond Space" with a budget a hundred times bigger, and, frankly, dialog and acting less than half as good. Ash, also, was a twist, not necessarily so much of a case of "duality", and "The Company" was part of that, utilizing then still current mistrust of corporation corruption.

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6. 6. Bill Marvel 12:02 AM 6/5/12

   Funny, I've always thought the same about Beowulf and the Cyclops section of the Odyssey.

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7. 7. ayahuasca 08:16 AM 6/6/12

   I found very little "science" in Prometheus and much that was inspired by Erich Von Daniken. I found the whole "humans descended/engineered by aliens" motif to be hard to swallow, given what we already know about life on Earth and human origins. The movie appeared to be asserting that humans have an off-Earth origin, yet the 'Space Jockeys' share our DNA. Given that we most of our DNA is common to all life on Earth, and that the Jockeys also have DNA, surely that suggests that THEY came from Earth? Yet this was never implied. Of course, this is sci-fi and one must be prepared to suspend a degree of disbelief, but even so-called soft sci fi usually has to respect existing scientific knowledge.

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8. 8. monicaelisabeth 05:27 PM 6/6/12

   Oh, gimme a break! It's just a SF movie! Stop babbling as if you all were CERN or NASA scientists!
   And, yeah, I love Ridley Scott!

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9. 9. scilo in reply to rmontenegro 05:56 PM 6/6/12

   Why in the world would we expect interplanetary biology to be as ours is? What mythology, it's alien.
   Of course, as with any US made film, it will have it's holes. Hype is ticket one!
   I find I enjoy movies better when I leave my brain at home.

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10. 10. scilo 06:06 PM 6/6/12

    No one mentioned the music score. Please don't tell me it sucks.
    The last time I watched X-Files, I walked out of the room to get something, and got a load of that brain deadening music without the visual stimulation. Please don't say it's like that, or I won't go.

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11. 11. Bill Marvel 07:49 PM 6/6/12

    Yikes! Remind me never to go to a movie with a bunch of scientists. This is like sitting down to a hot fudge sundae with a nutritionist at your elbow.

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12. 12. hoamingin 09:40 PM 6/6/12

    I sat in a cinema recently and watched trailers of a succession of films based on vampires, magic, cartoon characters with super human powers and aliens. Entertainment they might be, but scientific they ain't.
    
    The main target of scientific research should be the attraction of the human brain to metaphysical concepts and explanations.
    
    Like the Greek explanation of humans getting fire from the gods, every recorded early culture had its mythologies which explained physical phenomena by metaphysical intervention of spirits or powerful creatures or individuals with super human abilities.
    
    The metaphysical beliefs of early humans did not morph into religions until humans began to form the first complex, centrally organised societies 6,000 years ago when a long hot dry spell forced them to concentrate into fertile river valleys, creating the first cities.
    
    It seems to me no coincidence that the biblical beginning of the world dates back to the origins of complex human society as we now know it.
    
    The histories of complex societies and religions are being revealed by excavations of ancient sites. But we still have the artifact that created those histories and mythologies dating back to our hunter gatherer past, the human brain.
    
    Human societies and human knowledge have changed dramatically in the 10,000 years since humans began to relinquish their hunter gatherer lifestyles, but there is no evidence that the human brain and its workings have changed.
    
    The inevitable conclusion is that humans in modern complex societies use the brain in ways the brain did not evolve to be used. The proliferation of metaphysical themes in entertainment in a supposedly rational world is a sign of the brain's basic mechanisms poking through.
    
    The true scientific target should not be the themes (vampire, alien, super powerful cartoon characters, magicians) that create their own mythologies by repeating details from earlier fictional works until they become "facts" - the relationship between werewolves and the moon, and people crossing over after death.
    
    The true scientific target should be the mechanism of the brain that evolved over millions of years among hunter gatherer ancestors and is still with us, giving sufficient plausibility to these movies that people pay huge amounts of money to see them.

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13. 13. babby 01:16 AM 6/7/12

    Please -- give me Star Trek or Avatar updated. I never liked Alien anyway.

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14. 14. Bill Marvel in reply to hoamingin 01:57 AM 6/7/12

    Your post seems to me nothing more, really, than the ancient argument against human imagination. (See Plato's Republic.)
    Ban the imagination that makes myths possible and you make impossible all sorts of other human endeavors, including science itself. Pseudoscience is the product, not of human imagination, but of ignorance. Those I've met who adamantly reject evolution almost invariably turn out to lack imagination. It's quite common for them, for example, to forbid their children to read fantasy or fairy tales.
    I find likewise that those who come down so hard on myth, religion, and "metaphysics" (a word they confuse with something else), commonly underestimate the flexibility and sophistication that of the human brain, which they imagine is lodged developmentally somewhere in the Ice Age.

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15. 15. Profitsup 03:18 PM 6/10/12

    Here is one of the Alien visit people -
    
    http://www.daniken.com/e/index.html

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16. 16. brublr 10:59 PM 6/10/12

    Just as Prometheus rebelled among the Olympians, we are immediately introduced to 'our own' progenitor as rebel in the movie. Alone, with the suicidal intensity we see today among Tibetan monks, he fecundates terrestial dna and pays the classic, terrible price. This sets the story of the battle between the rebels and ruling elite of his own people who, like the Republicans of today, fear the spread of intelligent life can only lead to a socialist galaxy and will use any means to wipe out any such contagion. So harp on Darwin as you will but the movie would have to change its name to accommodate you. Myself, I'm a pushover; it's 5 stars and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

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17. 17. Quinn the Eskimo 10:06 PM 6/17/12

    Okay, you've all convinced me; Ridley Scott for the Nobel.
    
    Clearly, he's the finest Astrologer we've ever created. Blessings unto us for being in his presence. Amen.

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