The veil of secrecy surrounding 20th Century Fox’s great hope for next summer, Prometheus, has been dense enough to allow the misinformation-spreading monkeys of the internet to have a veritable field day. However, given that seeing is believing, there can be no doubting the veracity of the newest Prometheus materials to surface, they being a fresh batch of high-resolution pictures. Unofficial, phoney and official – such has been the story of the last seven days for Prometheus, the sort-of Alien prequel directed by Sir Ridley Scott. It was all unofficial last weekend, when a test trailer leaked online and duly alluded to a sci-fi movie with a more prevalent action element than perhaps had been anticipated in some quarters.
Then the start of the week witnessed the detonation of a bullcrap bomb, when a bit of fan fiction that had been posted on IMDb began to be circulated under the guise of a detailed plot synopsis. Some gullible were taken in (okay, I admit it. I was fooled and hugely overexcited for about 10 minutes, but then I thought Rebecca Black was an internet-created android, so what do I know?).
And now we’re onto the officially-sanctioned stage of the adventure, as we have the opportunity to pass our eyes over the new set of pictures released into the public domain. Not much of a substitute for a full trailer, but hey, better than nothing, right?
Okay, so we start with this shot of Logan Marshall-Green, a flame-haired Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, who plays the android crew-member of the titular spaceship Prometheus. Curiously, they’re all wielding torches, despite the room they’re in not being particularly dark. And they’ve been kitted out with fancy collars which made me think of Robin Williams’ King of the Moon from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Then there’s Charlize Theron and Idris Elba on the bridge of a ship, presumably Prometheus itself, the decor looking somewhere between the sheen of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (which shares a scripter, Damon Lindelof, with Prometheus) and the battered steamer-look of Scott’s original Alien.
And speak of the devil, here’s Sir Ridders himself, directing leading lady Rapace.
Here’s three of the crew in the so-called Ampule Room (Ampule: a small container; container for hypodermic use. Least that’s what it says in my dictionary). Check out the so-Giger-it-hurts quality of the curving design of the chamber.
And is that a dead ‘space jockey’ from the original Alien in the foreground?
Is that glowing orb from his, or her, head?
Finally, here’s some kind of alien-yet-familiar space-face.
Even ignoring the discredited synopsis, most seem to agree that Prometheus will deal with a human crew attempting to discover the origins of Earth on the edge of the universe – they finding that humanity has been guided by outside help in that classic Arthur C. Clarke manner. Looking forward to it.
Prometheus is out in the US on 8 June 2012. It opens in the UK a week earlier
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