One of the things that distinguishes the original Alien movie is the extent to which it doesn't even attempt to explain the alien phenomena its protagonists encounter. It's almost devoid of pseudoscience talk. If you've seen the original Alien, you've seen the remains of the enigmatic giant—whom the fan community calls the "space jockey"—who has died in the derelict wreck. This character is the great, unopened door of that original film—the great mystery. Who is that? Where did that derelict ship come from? How did that giant die?
And it's in that mystery that the story seed of Prometheus takes root. There is some inevitable kinship between the two stories in terms of xenobiology. But the titular creature of Alien is very much confined to the shadows and is not at all the focus of Prometheus, which is driving in a new direction. With Prometheus, the origin of the menace and forces that our heroes encounter is essentially the central mystery of the tale itself. So the story is very much about people prying into the shadows and trying to shed light on these mysteries.
As with any science fiction film, technology sets the tone by establishing the film's look and to a large extent determining what the film's characters can (and cannot) do. What was your vision for the technology in this film?
That it should look real. One of the things that Ridley Scott has done as a director is pioneer for us a grungy vision of the future. His films Alien and Blade Runner plus the original Star Wars directed by George Lucas taken all together showed us a future in which everything was well used, rusted and battered. And that was a real leap from the gleaming and spotless future of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Prometheus likewise wants to feel like reality. So the vessels, vehicles and tools in the movie are designed to be things that are somewhat familiar to us while also representing an optimistic vision of future technology.
Given that Prometheus is set prior to Alien, how did you devise a set of technologies that would appeal to an audience in 2012 without making Alien's 1979 vision of the future seem outdated?
There's an inevitable trickiness around the chronology just because technology in the real world and technology in filmmaking have come so far in the years since the original Alien. But for me a lot of that is easily rationalized by virtue of the fact that the Nostromo, the original ship in Alien, is an industrial tug. It's a rust bucket that itself might be 150 or 200 years old at the time that we see it. The Prometheus is a state-of-the-art scientific exploratory vessel. So it's only reasonable that it be sleeker and technically vibrant.
Along those lines, how did you invent David, the android in Prometheus? Did you take into account that he would not be as advanced a piece of technology as the robots from the Alien movies?
As with any archetype that's been touched on in previous films, you need both to honor its place in the canon and at the same time find some new insight, some new approach to it. The exciting thing about David is that perhaps there isn't yet a habitual place in society for machines like this at the time Prometheus takes place. In the sequels to Alien it's more normal to have an android on a starship crew as a matter of corporate protocol. But perhaps that's not the case in the new film. Perhaps David doesn't quite know his place in the universe, how humans will interact with androids and what's expected of these robots. And perhaps the human members of the crew are not yet accustomed to working and living with a crew member who is artificially intelligent.
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Add CommentIt 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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso 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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt 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).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrmontenegro
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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA 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?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsider 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.
Funny, I've always thought the same about Beowulf and the Cyclops section of the Odyssey.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI 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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, gimme a break! It's just a SF movie! Stop babbling as if you all were CERN or NASA scientists!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd, yeah, I love Ridley Scott!
Why in the world would we expect interplanetary biology to be as ours is? What mythology, it's alien.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf 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.
No one mentioned the music score. Please don't tell me it sucks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 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.
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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI 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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 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.
Please -- give me Star Trek or Avatar updated. I never liked Alien anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour post seems to me nothing more, really, than the ancient argument against human imagination. (See Plato's Republic.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBan 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.
Here is one of the Alien visit people -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.daniken.com/e/index.html
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.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOkay, you've all convinced me; Ridley Scott for the Nobel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClearly, he's the finest Astrologer we've ever created. Blessings unto us for being in his presence. Amen.