Big things have small beginnings. But Prometheus was a wrecking ball of expectations from the very moment the idea of it burst out of 20th Century Fox. What happens when a legendary director returns to one of the most beloved science fiction franchises ever and then suddenly tells its fans… maybe it’s not a part of that franchise after all?
Did the studio’s intentional vagueness about whether or not Prometheus was part of the Alien franchise backfire and forever haunt the film, not to mention its possible sequels? How did one of the most beautiful and ambitious sci-fi blockbusters you’ll ever see become a point of frustration among so many? This is what happened to Prometheus.
As it seems is always the case with the franchise, the tires on a new Alien sequel had been kicked multiple times long before Prometheus gestated. As far back as 2002, Ridley Scott was considering a return to the franchise that, at that point, hadn’t had a new feature film since 1997’s wild-ass Alien: Resurrection. James Cameron considered working with Scott on Alien 5, even going so far as to start work on a script. But when, by 2004, Fox announced they were going forward with an Alien vs. Predator film, Cameron backed out and was done with the franchise for good. Simply because he felt the franchise would never be taken seriously again after such a stunt. You can’t blame him for thinking it, but Cameron would later admit Alien vs. Predator “was actually pretty good” and ranked it third in the franchise at the time.
The franchise then lay dormant until 2009, when Ridley Scott announced that a new Alien movie was again being made. The only problem was that he didn’t want to direct it. The Gladiator director hired a commercial director named Carl Erik Rinsch, which sounded insane. Fox thought so, too. There was also a rumor that Rinsch was romantically involved with Scott’s daughter at the time. But that’s none of our business.
Fox put their foot down and said they weren’t interested in paying the high-end price to make an Alien prequel unless Scott himself planned to direct. Eventually, they worked it out, and Scott agreed to direct himself. We were off.
Scott then sat down with writer Jon Spaihts for a meeting. While it seemed as though Spaihts only had a single film credit to his name at that point in the underwhelming Emile Hirsch sci-fi movie The Darkest Hour, his script for the film Passengers (not actually made until 2017) had been on the Black List in Hollywood for some time. The writer, now an executive producer on projects like Dune, was completely unprepared when Scott asked him what he would do with the opportunity to write an Alien prequel. Spaihts quickly racked his brain, spoke for about forty-five minutes, and walked away with the job. He says it was just one of those things where you are asked a question and an idea leaps out of your mouth fully formed. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of us would have completely shit the space bed in that moment and regretted it for the rest of our lives.
Spaihts says that his initial pitch to Scott still forms a large part of Prometheus’s spine, despite the many changes the script would undergo during pre-production. The main thing that Spaihts had won Scott over with was the idea of connecting the Alien saga to humanity. This core concept would turn into a kind of retcon, specifically when it comes to the mystery of the Space Jockey seen in the first film.
In 1979’s Alien, the figure appears as a seemingly organic creature with a chestburster-sized hole in its fossilized body. In Prometheus, they turn the Space Jockey into the armor for the “Engineer” character who lies inside of it. The Engineer is thought to be a part of the species that created mankind and is humanoid in nature. Just big and cooler looking.
After four drafts and a lot of hard work, Ridley Scott announced that the script was done and they were ready to film… before he called Lost creator Damon Lindelof and asked him to look at the script. Lindelof appreciated what Spaihts had accomplished with the script but felt as though it tied too closely to the Alien stories that had come before. He saw many of the previous Alien staples as diluted by overexposure at the time, and if they wanted to make a true prequel that could stand on its own legs, it needed to separate itself from what had come before. He also wanted to incorporate a Blade Runner-type feel into the mix.
Both Scott and Fox agreed, and Lindelof was hired to work on Spaihts’ script. Lindelof gives the credit for what happened the rest of the way to Ridley Scott. He says he simply sat across from Scott for three or four weeks asking him questions and putting his answers to paper. He says, self-deprecatingly, that he more or less just bullied Scott into dictating the movie to him and then putting his own name on it.
If you were confused at the time whether or not Prometheus was actually going to be an Alien film or something else entirely, you weren’t alone. Nor were you wrong.
Lindelof, Scott, and Fox decided to go full light-speed ahead into original-project territory as Lindelof pulled more and more franchise callbacks from the script. The way they saw it, a Prometheus going into a Prometheus 2 was a much better plan than the story of Prometheus ending at the beginning of 1979’s Alien.
The studio also deliberately muddied the waters in its marketing, hoping to drum up more press for the film. Is it an Alien movie? Guess you’ll have to show up at the theater to find out. Which undoubtedly led to some of the backlash the film received from fans when it released. More on that later.
They changed the film’s title from Paradise to Prometheus, worried that the allusion to John Milton’s Paradise Lost would give away too much of the plot. No biggie there; the story had already been referred to in the press as everything from Alien Origins to Alien Zero.
Interestingly enough, in one particular draft of the script, Scott admits that there was a plot line where the Engineers, definitely sick of the humans’ shit at this point, had once sent one of their own down to Earth to try to tame our aggression. But here’s the kicker: It was 2,000 years ago. And they crucified him. If you’re picking up what he’s putting down, that was supposedly Jesus Christ. Scott pulled the thread on that storyline, however, feeling like it was too on the nose.
Either way, the official script, sans Jesus, was finally complete, and it was time to recruit the team that would put it into action.
Ridley Scott had originally wanted a $250 million budget and an R rating from Fox, who balked at that large of an expense for an R-rated film. In the end, Scott would receive somewhere around $130 million to create his newest science fiction epic and kind of a maybe about the R rating. This would make it all the more impressive that Scott was able to create such a visually stunning film with such a stacked cast. There’s no $20 million Tom Cruise on the roster or anything… but there’s a lot of talent.
For the true lead, and you could ironically argue the soul of the film, Michael Fassbender could not have been more perfectly cast as David, in a long lineage of fantastic synthetic actors. He carries within his acting bag the ability to be diabolical while maintaining a strange likability amidst all his shenanigans and ominous stares. In one moment he’s watching your dreams and invading your privacy. The next he’s dying his hair and watching Lawrence of Arabia. He’s amazing.
Noomi Rapace plays the female lead, Elizabeth Shaw, who was deliberately written to have a personality far from the original Alien badass, Ripley. Though she does manage to eventually end up half naked and fighting for her life in white linens, their paths to get there and intentions couldn’t have been more different. Though Noomi was tough as nails and looked like she could throw down with an alien if the moment called for it.
Idris Elba doesn’t have nearly enough screen time as Captain Janek, but he makes the most of what turns out to be a charismatic role where, in the end, he is the hero of the day. I would watch a prequel about that guy’s life any day of the week.
Guy Pearce was brought in to play old man Weyland in what one has to imagine was a rather thankless role. “Okay, let’s put you in a shitload of makeup, have you hobble around for a while, and then get your head ripped off.” But whatever floats your boat.
Speaking of thankless, Logan Marshall-Green plays the lead archaeologist and unending douchebag, excitedly running through the film being very punchable. Which, to be fair, is exactly what the role calls for. I think.
Fellow The Odyssey cast member Charlize Theron plays Weyland’s tightly wound daughter, Vickers. To put it lightly, her personality makes you wonder: “If she’s here, who is running Hell?” And Theron nails it.
There are plenty of other notable and memorable faces throughout Prometheus, such as Benedict Wong and even Patrick Wilson in small roles.
But let’s get into the movie itself.
The movie opens with some of the most breathtakingly gorgeous landscapes you’ll ever see put to film. A spaceship hovers above as our first look at one of the Engineers comes into frame, looking like the prime-time Shaq of his species, before getting down to his tighty-whities and popping off a Jell-O shot. Only it’s not a Jell-O shot. It is a dangerous black goo that will tear him apart and end up spreading his DNA about like a seed that could quite possibly be the beginning of mankind.
The year is now 2093, and we are on the Scientific Exploratory Vessel Prometheus, brought to you by Weyland Corporation. We’re then introduced to the star of the show in our new synthetic David. I could watch an entire movie just about what he does on that spaceship while everyone else is in hypersleep. He takes in new information, even the dreams and memories of the ship inhabitants while they sleep, which is not cool, and practices his impersonations in front of the mirror while brushing his hair. He’s amazing.
We meet the crew, Weyland’s peachy daughter, and Weyland himself as a hologram because he’s supposedly dead. He looks dead. Even post-mortem, though, he takes a dig at his hot daughter by saying that David is the closest thing to a son he will ever have.
Holloway and Shaw then explain that they are there because they found multiple tablets and drawings from different ancient cultures depicting man worshipping giant beings who point to the stars. They then use these drawings to find the planet he was pointing to and draw a map to Moon LV-223, believing they were being invited to meet their makers.
We learn that David has spent two years studying ancient languages and is confident he will be able to communicate with the Engineers upon arrival.
When they arrive on the awe-inspiring planet, they find a tomb with a giant sculpture of an Engineer’s human-like head and a room full of organic pods before a storm sends them back into the ship, where they examine a severed head they found. Which, of course, explodes into a bunch of nasty goo.
David, secretly running on his own agenda provided by the actually still-living Weyland, takes a drip of the black goo from one of the pods and dips it into Charlie’s drink while Charlie is too busy being a condescending baby to notice.
Meanwhile, these two idiots are left behind and find a snake-like creature. They attempt to radio back to the ship, but no one is there because Idris Elba used reverse psychology and an accordion to convince Vickers into bed. The absolute idiot tries to play with the snake creature, and it turns into some sort of alternate facehugger boa constrictor, breaking his arm. When they try to cut it, it obviously bleeds acid, and the two die seemingly some of the most horrific deaths you could imagine. Conor McGregor’s face is melted off, and the snake-hugger enters the other guy’s body via his mouth. It’s ultra gnarly.
Finally, Charlie gets sick and starts to turn into something even more heinous than he was before. So Vickers takes a flamethrower to him like she’s Leonardo DiCaprio fighting a hippie.
We then find out Shaw is somehow three months pregnant with an alien baby after sleeping with Holloway after he was poisoned. She escapes David, who has unveiled himself as a synthetic psychopath, and jumps into the fancy pod where she commands it to remove the organism from her body. The machine lasers her open, and a Toy Story claw comes down and rips out of the hole in her stomach the most frightening ball of octopus goo you’ve ever seen.
Somehow… Fifield returned and is murdering the hell out of everyone.
Meanwhile, Shaw has stumbled upon the true cause of the mission: the still-alive Weyland asking an Engineer for a longer lease on life.
David, Weyland, a beat-up Shaw, and some muscle head into the darkness to make contact.
Leave it to the smooth and wise Idris Elba to be the voice of reason. He says that this isn’t the Engineer’s home planet. It’s a military installation where they created weapons of mass destruction that turned on them.
They wake up the Engineer, who promptly rips David’s head off and beats Weyland to death with it. So, I mean, I guess he’s pissed.
We find out, as the ground opens up beneath Shaw (or so it seems) that the Engineer is taking off in his own ship. She assumes he’s SO pissed that he’s taking the goo of death and mass destruction to Earth. The only way they can stop it is to sacrifice themselves by using the non-war ship’s propulsion to slam the Prometheus into the Engineer’s ship.
Vickers obviously has no interest in this and hits the escape pod, but Idris and the other two gentlemen don’t even blink. These are just some solid dudes willing to give up their lives to save others. But also, it’s not like Shaw has the best track record with being right. What if he’s just headed somewhere else?
Anyway, they heroically take the ship down, but it falls right on top of Vickers, who apparently doesn’t have the ability to move laterally. Right up there with the IQ of the guy who tried to pet the alien snake.
Now it’s Shaw with an axe and some painkillers like Laurie Strode in Halloween H20 versus her alien baby.
We have a little Alien: Isolation-type moment before the now EXTREMELY pissed-off Engineer shows up to kill Shaw but ends up tangled up with octo-baby and getting… well, face-hugged by it.
Shaw collects David’s severed head because he tells her he can pilot one of the Engineers’ left-behind ships to go home, but she doesn’t want to go home. She wants to go to the Engineers’ home and ask some questions. Because some people never learn.
Meanwhile, the Engineer gives birth to a kind of cute but mostly scary, almost-Xenomorph that some idiot will probably try to pet eventually. And that’s Prometheus.
To create the underappreciated landscapes and visuals of Prometheus, the studio began by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire scientists and artists to assemble Ridley’s vision as accurately as possible. Lindelof recalled the first time Ridley took him there, where a team of computer designers was working together behind a locked, foot-thick metal door.
But the legitimate nature of Prometheus didn’t stop there. The film used practical special effects whenever possible and used CGI only when necessary. No more than six green screens were used throughout the entirety of production. And it paid off.
Filming lasted just over 80 days and moved from sound stages in England, where practical sets were built, to Iceland, where the awe-inspiring exterior shots were filmed.
Filming took place at the foot of Iceland’s Hekla volcano during a time when some news reports were saying that the volcano was “about to blow its top any moment.” When asked about this, Scott simply quipped that “if one is afraid of nature in this profession then it would be best to find a different job.”
While Iceland only took up about two weeks of filming and accounted for only around 15 minutes of the film, it remained the soul of the movie and provided some of the most gorgeous landscapes you’ll ever see put to film. The terrain turned out to be a perfect-looking representation of what could have been the beginning of all time. Another glorious shot was taken at the waterfall Dettifoss, one of the most powerful waterfalls in existence.
Scott felt he had a responsibility to Fox to present a PG-13 cut if necessary, but he still filmed Prometheus as he felt the story dictated. This ended up as an R rating due mostly to the alien baby removal via medical pod, which would have been impossible to cut. In the end, Scott was able to present his full Prometheus vision without any cuts being made to the film, and we can all agree it was probably better for it.
The haunting and heroic score for Prometheus was crafted by composer Marc Streitenfeld with a 90-piece orchestra. Streitenfeld says that he wrote the sheet music backward for his orchestra and then flipped it digitally, giving it an unsettling sound. Which is cool as hell.
To build the ships for Prometheus, set designer Arthur Max made digital 3D models and physical miniature replicas of the sets within them. They took rock samples from Iceland to replicate that setting for other shots. Even the vehicles driven on the alien planet were built to look futuristic and to travel across rugged terrain. The alien creatures found on the planet were given biological functions and purposes.
The Engineers’ designs were created by applying bulk aesthetics to live actors to present the eight-foot-tall beings. They used digital effects after the fact to add more emotion to their faces and perfect their look. In short, the Engineers weren’t all natty, but they still looked awesome and are one of the top ten coolest alien renditions ever put on film. If you can call them aliens? They are kind of… us? Anyway.
I don’t know if you remember or not, but the fandom was in a fever pitch back in 2012. The anticipation for Prometheus was insane. Between endless marketing from Comic-Con to online viral campaigns and Alien franchise fans still trying to figure out what the hell this movie was, it felt right up there with something like Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises in terms of anticipation.
Somehow, the film still came up financially short of what the studios’ hopes and dreams held for the ambitious project. Still yet, it wasn’t exactly a financial loss for Fox, pulling in more than $400 million worldwide by the end of its run against a $130 million budget.
Critics were generally positive but noticeably divided. They praised Scott’s visuals, atmosphere, and ambitious ideas about creation and faith, as well as Fassbender’s unforgettable performance as David. But like many fans, they were frustrated by the movie’s unanswered questions and the characters’ dumb decisions.
Many fans were even more annoyed by this. Moments where a scientist tries to pet a space snake, Vickers can’t understand how to maneuver laterally with a spaceship about to crush her, and so on and so forth. But what a lot of fans were mostly unable to get over was their disappointment with a lack of Alien connections and explanations in the script. Some were annoyed and unsatisfied with the unfulfilling answers about the promised origins of their favorite franchise. Some were just confused about what the hell was even happening in that universe. Meanwhile, some were just trying to scream over the noise, but the movie still rocked despite all those, albeit valid, reasons.
In the end, Prometheus immediately came out as one of the decade’s most debated blockbusters. Hell, these days it feels like people are fighting with each other every week about whatever new movie is releasing. But it was a palpable reaction back in 2012.
James Cameron himself noted that he would have changed a thing here or there, as he would with any movie. But he enjoyed the film and felt like it was Ridley returning to science fiction with gusto. I couldn’t agree more.
When you let the expectations melt away and take the film as what it is, Prometheus is one of the most beautiful-looking films I’ve ever seen, asks some really interesting questions about the universe, has some badass creatures in it, and Michael Fassbender’s David. My only complaint is that we never truly received a Prometheus 2.
We DID receive a short prologue before the next sequel, in which we learned that David and Shaw did indeed make it to the Engineer planet. In an amazing-looking scene where the ship hovers above the planet, with Shaw in hypersleep, David walks into frame and says, “Look on my works, ye mighty and despair” like someone who is about to unleash a bunch of black death goo on an entire planet. The line is from an 1818 sonnet titled “Ozymandias,” and the idea, or so it seems, is that David has decided he doesn’t want to meet the Engineers or God. He wants to destroy them with the very black pathogen they created. Perhaps he viewed them as hypocritical, imperfect gods who did not deserve their power. Perhaps he was just pissed that they ripped his head off and beat the shit out of his dad with it. Maybe he just wanted to use their planet to do his experiments and become a creator himself, lording above all other creations.
All we know is that Alien: Covenant did NOT go where many fans of the Prometheus storyline, in particular, were hoping it would. But that’s a story for another day.
And the trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts. And that is what happened to Prometheus.
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