FILM · 2012 · USA
Prometheus
- Directed by
- Ridley Scott
- Runtime
- 124 min
- Studio
- Dune Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Brandywine Productions
131 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.
131 Interesting Facts About Prometheus
Interesting Facts (88)
- #001
- #002
Director Sir Ridley Scott instructed the design team to aim for a look for the alien planet, creatures and technology that could logically precede the original Alien (1979), and therefore not to rely too heavily on Swiss artist H. R. Giger's famous original planet and Xenomorph designs. Nevertheless, almost all of the team's drawings ended up containing subconscious "Gigeresque" flourishes, and they also drew inspiration from several Giger designs that had gone unused for Alien. In the end it was decided to invite Giger himself, who approved the use of his old ideas and contributed further by reverse-engineering his original designs for the new film. More inspiration was drawn from the work of Russian 3D artist Gutalin (Alex Kozhanov). Giger died in 2014 from injuries sustained in a fall, and this was the last film related to the Alien series that he worked on.
- #003
Both the "Beginning of time" sequence at the start of the film and the collision sequence near the end were shot over two weeks in Iceland, after both Wadi Rum (Jordan) and Morocco were deemed too politically unstable at the time. Iceland's volcanic Hekla valley was used as the surface of the planet LV-223; rocks were placed in the landscape and computer-generated imagery (CGI) was used to provide the planet's otherworldly backdrop. The Engineer's sacrifice in the opening scene was shot at Dettifoss waterfall, a location so remote and hard to reach that the crew had to build roads to get there.
- #004
To prepare for the role of the android David, Michael Fassbender watched Blade Runner (1982) (another Sir Ridley Scott film), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) (for David Bowie's androgynous performance), The Servant (1963) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (which Peter Weyland mentions). Fassbender also studied Olympic diver Greg Louganis and drew on Louganis's physicality for David's walk.
- #005
According to Sir Ridley Scott, he was determined to show appropriately advanced 21st-century technology for Prometheus and its science team, such as slimmed-down spacesuits, holographic images and video screens inside fully spherical helmets. These helmets were inspired by the story of Steve Jobs building an office entirely out of industrial-strength glass: "If I'm in 2083 and I'm going into space, I want something where I have 360 vision. By then glass will be light and you won't be able to break it with a bullet." In behind-the-scenes documentaries Scott acknowledged that this creates an obvious inconsistency with the low-tech state seen in Alien (1979), explaining it by the fact that the Nostromo crew were blue-collar workers who had to work with a decades-old ship, old machines and hand-me-down bulky spacesuits.
- #006
Sir Ridley Scott decided that the original Xenomorph (the creature the film series is named after) would not appear in the film, saying "the sequels squeezed him dry, he did very well… and no way am I going back there." Instead, since this is an indirect prequel to Alien (1979), he decided to feature an ancestor/parent of a Xenomorph. However, after the film's release, criticism from fans complaining about the absence of the famous creature changed Scott's mind and led him to include the creature in the sequel Alien: Covenant (2017).
- #007
(at around 4 mins) The movements of the black goo consumed by the Engineer were based on the movements of starlings. To find a method of depicting the Engineer's DNA destruction, the visual effects experts carved vein-like structures from silicone and pumped black ink and oils into them, and then filmed the changes occurring over an extended period of time.
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- #011
(Around the 1-hour mark) One of the script drafts for Alien (1979) included a sex scene between Ripley and Dallas showing how crew members simply had casual sex to satisfy their needs during long space voyages. Sir Ridley Scott never shot the scene, but the idea was reused for this film in the exchange between Vickers and Janek.
- #012
In 2002, James Cameron discussed ideas for a fifth Alien film with Sir Ridley Scott, intending that Cameron would produce the film and Sigourney Weaver would return as Ripley. However, when he discovered that 20th Century Fox was developing the crossover film Alien vs. Predator (2004), Cameron halted all work on the project, believing the crossover would "kill the validity of the franchise." Although Cameron stated he would never work on the Alien series again, Scott eventually decided to turn his ideas into this film.
- #013
(At roughly 42 minutes) In the intense scene where the crew returns to the Prometheus with the Engineer's fossilized head (and David carrying the Black Liquid), the camera shows that the upper part of the dome-shaped structure has a skull-like face. It resembles the artwork H. R. Giger created for Baron Harkonnen's castle on Giedi Prime in Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune.
- #014
- #015
(At about 1 hour 55 minutes) The final Alien-like creature that bursts from the Engineer's body was named the "Ultramorph" in the script, but it was called the "Deacon" because of its pointed head, which gives it the look of a Catholic mitre. It was a practical effect: a rod puppet operated by several crew members, with the slime and goo added later in CGI. In the shooting script, after emerging from the Engineer it was to bite through its own umbilical cord and charge at Shaw and David, but it barely misses them as they board another Engineer ship and leave. The final shot would have been the Deacon screaming at the sky. In the end, all of this was omitted.
- #016
The Weyland company's three-triangle logo (visually similar to the real Weinstein Group's, though) was meant as a cross between the hieroglyph-like title in the opening title sequence of Alien (1979) and the Weyland-Yutani logo seen on the wall in Aliens (1986), which itself was based on an early Ron Cobb design for the original film. The logo can also be seen as part of David's fingerprint. The colorful rainbow-like ship uniform patches worn by the Nostromo crew in the original film were replaced with much darker equivalents on the Prometheus uniform to emphasize that Prometheus is a "fallen angel."
- #017
An innovative viral campaign consisting of several videos depicting the film's near-future world was used to promote the film. The first was a fake TED Talk given by Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce), titled The Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023 (2012). Later, two different versions of a commercial introducing the David 8 android (played by Michael Fassbender) and a video message from Earth to the Engineers (stated at the beginning of the film to have been sent but never answered) were released. These viral videos were designed by Sir Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof and directed by Scott's son, Luke Scott.
- #018
Sir Ridley Scott said he shot "the most aggressive film he could" without regard for MPAA ratings, and that he had the support of 20th Century Fox CEO Tom Rothman, who addressed Alien (1979) fans by saying he was "very aware of their concern" about such a bold move: "They can take it that the film will not be compromised either way. So if that means that the film is R, then it'll be an R. If it's PG-13, then it'll be a PG-13, but it will not be compromised." Scott pre-visualized and shot the film with both adult-oriented R and more accessible PG-13 content, so that when certain cuts were requested, more adult-oriented footage could be removed without harming the general presentation. In the end, the film was rated "R for Sci-Fi violence including some intense images, and brief language" and was released without any cuts.
- #019
- #020
(At about 25 minutes) As the Prometheus approaches the landing site, straight lines can be seen on the ground that closely resemble the Nazca lines in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru. The Nazca lines have been interpreted by a small number of fringe scientists/archaeologists as the runways of an ancient airfield used by extraterrestrial beings. This idea was popularized by the Swiss author Erich von Däniken and is generally considered pseudoscience. One of the more common and accepted theories suggests that the lines were part of the local people's religious practices. Other theories give them astronomical, cosmological or topographic significance.
- #021
(At about 1 hour 16 minutes) The scene in which Vickers refuses to allow the infected crew member aboard the ship is almost identical to the scene in Alien (1979), of which this film is a prequel, where Ripley refuses to let the crew bring the infected Kane aboard, including some of the same dialogue.
- #022
(At about 1 hour 55 minutes) Shaw's final message at the end of the film is the same as Ripley's final log entry at the end of Alien (1979). Both messages include an indication that it is a "final log entry," an explanation of the fate of the respective crews of their ships, and a description of themselves as the "last surviving crew member of the (Nostromo/Prometheus)."
- #023
- #024
(Around 8 minutes in) While the rest of the crew is in hypersleep, the character David is introduced as he roams around the ship. This is meant to quietly hint to the audience that he is in fact an android without yet saying so directly. This was actually an idea director Sir Ridley Scott had for the android Ash (Sir Ian Holm) in Alien (1979), but it was not used at the time. Incidentally, Lance Henriksen admitted during an interview about Aliens (1986) that James Cameron had considered introducing the character Bishop in a similar way and wanted Bishop working on the Sulaco while the Marines were in hypersleep. The idea was abandoned and Cameron instead decided to film the famous knife-trick scene as a way of showing the audience that Bishop was an android.
- #025
(Around 1 hour 21 minutes) The fact that the medical pod in Vickers's living quarters is programmed for men is a clue that Weyland is alive and aboard the ship. If the pod were intended for Vickers's use, it would at least have been programmed for both male and female anatomy; the fact that it is specifically programmed for men indicates that it is for Weyland.
- #026
Jon Spaihts's original script contained many more recognizable elements from Alien (1979), as well as several scenes and an ending that were removed or completely rewritten in later versions. Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) appears only at the beginning and does not appear again. His obsession is not eternal life but the desire to retrieve the Engineers' profitable terraforming technology. Millburn (Rafe Spall) is still killed by a Hammerpede that later bursts out of his body and kills another crew member with its acid spit; Janek (Sir Idris Elba) and the others kill it with axes. Fifield (Sean Harris) is affected by the black liquid from the ampules and transforms into a Xenomorph-like creature; it is Shaw (Noomi Rapace) who runs him over with a vehicle. The mortally wounded Janek teaches Shaw how to operate the Prometheus so that she can fly it into the Engineer's ship (called the "Juggernaut"); after setting a collision course, she launches the escape pods along with Vickers (Charlize Theron). The Ultramorph/Deacon that emerges from the Engineer originally had a much larger role: after the Juggernaut crashes, it emerges from the wreckage and chases Shaw to Vickers's suite, where it kills her. Shaw, stranded on the planet, explores different regions of the planet and finds other underground corridors and rooms. The film would have ended with Shaw discovering a frozen underground lake beneath which lay a vast garden and a terraforming chamber.
- #027
Sir Ridley Scott approached SOAS, University of London, in 2011 to find experts who could help create a new Engineer language for the film. Linguist Anil Biltoo from SOAS' Language Centre worked to create the language, as well as the alien script, which can be seen throughout. Biltoo reasoned that the Engineers' language would be closely based on Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the common ancestral language spoken until around 2500 BC that later spawned the European and Indian languages (explaining why David knows how to phonetically speak it). As a test, Biltoo successfully translated Rutger Hauer's final speech from Blade Runner (1982) into Engineers, and became the movie's language consultant. Biltoo can be seen briefly in a scene with Michael Fassbender. Other SOAS staff members appear briefly and are credited, including Wambui Wa-Ngatho, Sonam Dugdak, Shin-Ichiro Okajima, Wannaporn Rienjang, Zed Sevcikova, and Reynir Thor Eggertsson.
- #028
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- #031
In the original concept art for Alien (1979), the Facehuggers were also squid-like but much smaller than a Trilobite. The Trilobite was called a "Troglybyte" in the original Prometheus script, when it was still called 'Paradise'. Paradise refers to the Engineers' home planet, since it is made clear that LV-223 is not their home and that they came from somewhere else. Also, in this script the creature does not escape the MedPod and remains trapped inside until Shaw releases it.
- #032
- #033
(Around 11 minutes) The clip David watches, showing a man extinguishing a burning match with his fingertips and saying "The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts," features Peter O'Toole and comes from Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023 (2012), the promotional video for the film set 70 years earlier, Peter Weyland actually opens his TED Talk by recounting precisely this scene.
- #034
The Last Engineer seen in the climax scene is different in appearance from the Engineer who sacrifices himself at the beginning of the film. Not only does he wear different clothing (an armored spacesuit with a design very similar to H. R. Giger's) but he also has gill-like growths on his neck. The Sacrifice Engineer required almost full-body makeup that took 7 hours to apply; transforming Ian Whyte into the Last Engineer took 'only' 5 hours because of the spacesuit.
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- #037
Because the producers could not decide which name to use, the company's CEO Tom Rothman had to give the film the title Prometheus (one of his earlier suggestions had been "Paradise"). "Alien: Paradise" was later proposed as the title of the sequel before it was renamed Alien: Covenant (2017).
- #038
Shaw and Holloway discussing their worldwide findings at the conference aboard the Prometheus was originally meant to be their introduction scene; a new introduction showing them during one of their excavations was shot months after production wrapped on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. In Prometheus, the words "Eilean a' Cheo" can be seen in the background. This means "The Island of Mist" in Scottish Gaelic and is the nickname of the Isle of Skye, whose full name is "An t-Eilean Sgitheanach."
- #039
A promotional video set in Prometheus's fictional universe (included on the Blu-Ray), Peter Weyland Files: Quiet Eye, Elizabeth Shaw (2012), contains a text from Peter Weyland co-written and approved by Sir Ridley Scott and writer Damon Lindelof. In it, Weyland mentions that the moon LV-223 is Elizabeth Shaw's "primary site of interest" (possibly because it is the only moon capable of sustaining life). Weyland also notes, however, that his science division has detected a very faint transmission coming from the neighboring moon LV-426 that promises "great risk" (this would of course be the 'warning signal' the Nostromo receives in Alien (1979)). Weyland goes on to explain that David was brought onto the Prometheus mission to "address and exploit whatever assets we secure on [LV-]223" and that David will conceal the information about the LV-426 signal from the entire crew (including Vickers) "until the time is right." In Alien, the system clearly consisted of a ringed gas giant and three small moons; the hologram seen at the start of Prometheus shows the gas giant, LV-223 and a small planet, but LV-426 is strangely absent. When scanned, it may be behind the gas giant (which would easily explain why Prometheus does not receive its signal), or the Company may have deliberately left it out so as not to draw the expedition's attention. Needless to say, after the failure of the mission on LV-223, David is in no position to check the signal on LV-426.
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- #046
At roughly 1 hour 35 minutes, the schematic of the Engineer's ship shows a layout almost identical to the Derelict discovered by the crew in the original Alien (1979). In this film, the ship is called "The Juggernaut" by the crew; it was originally going to be a complete circle, but in the end it was made only slightly rounder than its equivalent in Alien so that it could move more convincingly on the ground. Large sections of the ship were built to scale at Pinewood Studios in London, where 007 was also shot. The studio hangar, originally 300 ft (90 meters) long, had to be expanded by a third to 400 ft (135 meters) so it could accommodate the entire Juggernaut set.
- #047
At roughly the 56-minute mark, while printing her notes, Elizabeth wonders whether the Engineers suffered some kind of epidemic. A minute later Charlie comes in. As he hands her the rose, the projected image of the dead Engineer stands upright within it, and he holds the rose to his chin, making him look as if he is inside a coffin. Of course, several hours have passed since David infected him with the alien seed.
- #048
As soon as the film was greenlit, Sir Ridley Scott set up an office next to the production design team. Scott, himself a storyboard artist, produced many drawings (nicknamed "Ridleygrams") that he sent to the designers, and the convenient proximity to the team meant a constant exchange of ideas, allowing Scott to discuss and approve his designs quickly.
- #049
Although David states that he feels no emotion or desire, he clearly does feel. His resentment toward his human creators is evident in the rejection he receives from his "father" and "sister" (Peter Weyland and Meredith Vickers) and in the abuse he suffers at the hands of Doctor Holloway, who treats him quite badly. David's psychotic behavior in Alien: Covenant (2017) likely stems from the abuse he suffered from Holloway and Weyland.
- #050
(Around the 39th minute) During the sequence in which Shaw, Ford, David and Holloway explore the interior of the room in the Giant Head chamber, they see various things inside the room. In a very brief shot, when David points out the "beautiful pictures," the wall paintings can be seen to contain animal-like shapes resembling horses. The wall painting resembles the one Holloway and Shaw found on the Isle of Skye at the beginning of the film.
- #051
(Around 1 hour 45 minutes) Although many viewers mock the depiction of Shaw and Vickers fleeing directly along the path of the rolling ship, it is quite accurate: while moving out of the ship's path would be smarter for them, many people in a state of violent panic experience an irresistible urge to flee directly away from the danger, with little or no ability to think or strategize. A solution that seems painfully obvious to an outside observer may not occur to the person in that situation. Contrary to popular belief, Shaw and Vickers do not see the ship's shadow overtaking them until it is too late to run sideways.
- #052
In an alternative version of the scene in which Shaw and Holloway argue about the dead Engineer (available as a deleted scene on the Blu-Ray version), Holloway mockingly suggests that Shaw came all the way to the planet "to ask God why he traded you for your mum," implying that Shaw's mother died giving birth to her.
- #053
Although it is never stated explicitly, LV-223, where most of the film's action takes place, is the neighbouring planet of LV-426 from Alien (1979). LV-223 and LV-426 are two of three planetoid moons orbiting the ringed gas giant Calpamos; in Alien, Calpamos and its rings can be seen in the sky when the Nostromo homes in on the mysterious signal from the Derelict Ship and lands on one of the moons. Calpamos and its rings can be seen in the sky on several occasions in both Alien and Prometheus. LV-426 is also the planet where the Hadley's Hope colony in Aliens (1986) is established several decades later. In Prometheus, Holloway's system hologram clearly shows Calpamos, LV-223 and a smaller planetoid, but LV-426 is strangely missing (possibly missed because it was behind Calpamos when the scan was made). In the first draft of Prometheus, Calpamos was named 'Epsilon' and the action was to take place on LV-426, but this was later changed to LV-223.
- #054
(At about 46 minutes) During the first exploration of the pyramid's interior, Elizabeth Shaw and her team discover a decapitated Engineer corpse in the Giant Head room. When Shaw tries to 'revive' the body's head in the lab, she behaves in a completely unprofessional and reckless manner for a scientist of her calibre, but the theatrical film offers no real explanation for why she acts this way. However, in the extended and alternate scenes on the film's Blu-Ray and Digital releases, a severely drunk and angry Holloway confronts Shaw in her quarters about her obsession with talking to the Engineers instead of getting an answer from God. He considers a range of options such as the meaning of life and the forgiveness of her sins, but most importantly expresses her anger at God for taking her parents from her at a young age. Similarly, viewers questioned Millburn's (Rafe Spall) poor judgement when he approaches the Hammerpede and even touches it (at about the 63rd minute); a deleted scene that was meant to come earlier shows him finding small creatures (actually small worms in the process of turning into Hammerpedes). He immediately picks them up and starts talking to them, suggesting that Millburn is a hands-on, Steve Irwin-like biologist whose enthusiasm quickly overrides his logic.
- #055
When the remaining Prometheus crew find Millburn's body, the Hammerpede bursts out and dives back into the liquid; it is never seen again. On the set of Alien, Ridley Scott had not told the actors, except John Hurt, exactly what would happen in that exciting scene. The director used a similar trick for the scene in which the Hammerpede bursts out of Millburn's dead lips, giving Kate Dickie (Ford) only vague information. Scanlan commented: "Ridley had indicated something was going to happen. We attached the Hammerpede to the end of a monofilament wire, loaded it onto a rolled-up Milburn dummy. When we pulled it out, it was a huge shock for her. The screams are real. I think she stumbled backwards and fell, and that's real too." Rafe Spall added: "I think Kate Dickie still has nightmares about it."
- #056
In one of the first drafts, the Company was named the Weyland-Tyrell Corporation, suggesting a merger between Peter Weyland's firm and the Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner (1982) and confirming that both Alien and Blade Runner take place in a shared universe. Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner) was even to appear in Prometheus as one of Peter Weyland's secret bodyguards.
- #057
It is often debated among fans whether Vickers is a human or merely another android like David, albeit a more advanced model. Evidence for being human: Vickers sleeps in a cryo-chamber in the beginning of the film, something which is not necessary for an android as they do not require sleep. Vickers is later seen doing push-ups to presumably work off the disorientation from hypersleep. When Janek informs some of the crew members at the Engineer ship of a storm incoming, Vickers can be briefly seen in the background, exhaling cigarette smoke, showing that she is a smoker. It is implied in one scene that Vickers engages in intercourse with Janek, although this is never referenced again. Originally, footage was filmed of Vickers telling Janek, "You were a terrible lay, by the way," before she heads to the escape pod when Janek elects to crash the Prometheus, but it was removed from the final cut. Vickers constantly expresses emotions such as anger and shock and also expresses fatigue during the more physical scenes; David shows no emotions or fatigue. Vickers expresses jealousy when Peter Weyland states David is the closest thing he'll have to a son. Vickers calls Weyland her father. Vickers and Weyland constantly argued over the ownership of Weyland Corp as stated in the film. When Holloway ask David why he wears a space suit, David says that it is to blend in with humans, implying that it is not necessary for androids. If this is the case, Vickers would not have bothered to put on a space suit when fleeing the Prometheus. Damon Lindelof, the co-writer of Prometheus, has said that Vickers is not an android. Evidence for being an android: Janek jokingly brings up the possibility that Vickers is an android and the scene ends with the two of them heading off for implied sex which is something that is never referenced again (as stated above). Both Vickers and David refer to Weyland as their father, despite David being an android. The MedPod seen in the film is only capable of performing surgeries on males, which is very odd considering its use is for Vickers. However, it is likely the MedPod is actually for Weyland. When Weyland passes away, she expresses no emotion to the news. However, this could be a result of her deep hatred for him. Despite the fact that Vickers slept in a cryo-chamber, it is worth noting though that in Alien (1979), Ash slept in a cryo-chamber as well to hide the fact that he was an android; the same could also be applied for Vickers if she is an android. Regarding the possibility of Vickers being an android, some fans have theorized that Vickers might not be aware of the fact that she is an android and has spent her whole life believing she is a human. If Meredith Vickers is indeed an android this would make her the second female android seen on-screen in the franchise with the first being Annalee Call from Alien: Resurrection (1997).
- #058
Creating a working replica of the Engineer's chair from Alien (1979) posed significant difficulties. The original plans by H. R. Giger had been lost, so designers had to work from old models and screenshots from the original film. The new chair also needed many moving parts that the original design had not accounted for, forcing the team to find ways to move the chair as the film required while preserving Giger's original design.
- #059
(Around 13 minutes) The scene in which Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) does push-ups was shot two different ways, one in which she wears underwear and one in which she is completely naked. Some early cuts shown at test screenings included the nude version, and footage was shown at San Diego Comic Con during the film's promotion, where it drew great interest; even Sir Ridley Scott confirmed in an interview that the scene was in the film. For some reason, however, the underwear version was used in the final film, and the nude version was never released. It has also been said that another nude scene with Vickers was scripted and perhaps even filmed but deleted, though no further details about this scene are known, aside from some saying it was supposed to be "very much like shuttle scene in ending of Alien (1979)" — apart from the famous scene Scott initially wanted to shoot with Ripley completely naked as she hides from the sexually aroused Alien watching her through the shuttle window. This may also be a reference to an earlier draft that had a similar last-minute horror scene in which a nude Vickers, aboard the lifeboat with Shaw, is attacked by a creature similar to the film's Trilobite and undresses to prepare for the encounter. She was reportedly seen taking off her dress in early trailers, though this could have been from another scene.
- #060
(Around 1 hour 30 minutes) Much criticism has been aimed at Dr. Elizabeth Shaw being able to run without tearing her fresh abdominal incision. However, a close view of Dr. Shaw's abdomen shows post-surgical staples, and it is clearly visible that the incision itself has already healed and faded significantly. This indicates that these staples not only serve as stitches but also promote wound healing (though they appear to have little effect on post-operative pain).
- #061
David idolizes the British First World War hero T. E. Lawrence. In the First World War, the British Army, including Lawrence, used a machine gun called the Vickers. Peter Weyland, who also quotes Lawrence of Arabia (1962), is David's inventor and synthetic father, as well as Meredith Vickers's biological father.
- #062
(Around 15 minutes) The hologram message Weyland sends to the crew bears a striking resemblance to the series of hologram messages Hari Seldon sends to the people of Terminus in Isaac Asimov's Foundation. Seldon is also physically diminished, reveals the true secret nature of their mission and secretly manipulates people from beyond the grave — although in Seldon's case he is actually dead.
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- #064
The Engineer ship seen in the opening scene required a different design, because this ship would predate the famous horseshoe-shaped ship from Alien (1979) by millions of years and looked quite different. A pyramid shape was briefly considered before a saucer-shaped design was settled on.
- #065
One of the elements that survived from Spaihts's version to the final film was the Hammerpede, a snake-like creature that derives from ordinary worms (portrayed in the film by mealworms) being exposed to the black liquid. The creature's first idea — as designed by Carlos Huante — belonged to a precursor of the Facehugger; the artist envisioned a creature with centipede-like anatomy, complete with numerous grasping limbs. The creature was named by the production team because of the strange hammer-like shape of its head and the initial impression of a centipede. As the design process progressed, the Hammerpede's appearance increasingly abandoned arthropod-like limbs in favor of a softer, limbless and more worm-like configuration. The final design was realized digitally by Martin Rezard. As seen in the film, the Hammerpede was inspired by translucent deep-sea animals, with distinct "arteries and veins and organs sitting below the surface of the skin," as special effects supervisor Neal Scanlan noted.
- #066
When Milburn tries to touch the creature, the Hammerpede bites him, coils around his arm and then breaks it. A special Hammerpede model was used to wrap around the actor's arm; off-screen it was puppeteered by Ridley Scott himself. As the creature tightened its coils around Milburn's arm, MPC also added muscle strain. The broken arm was achieved with a prosthetic mechanical arm mounted on Rafe Spall's shoulder and another special Hammerpede puppet. When Fifield tries to cut off the creature's head, the head instantly regenerates; a radio-controlled Hammerpede head and neck section was used along with the computer-generated regrowing head. The creature then proceeds to violate Milburn's mouth; a digital shot.
- #067
Spaihts's original version of the story featured various Aliens and Alien-like creatures. Both Scott and Spaihts always wanted strange, new kinds of Aliens in the film. "[Scott] was always trying to find a way that Alien biology could evolve. That way we tried different paths. We imagined there could be eight different variations on the Xenomorphs, eight different kinds of Alien eggs you could encounter, eight kinds of slightly different Xenomorph creatures that could come out of them. And there could even be a rapid evolutionary process still going on in these Alien laboratories where these Xenomorphs are developed. So Ridley and I were looking for ways to make Xenomorphs. New."
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There is an extended version of the scene between Vickers and Weyland that adds much more depth to his final moments and shows why Vickers is so interested in his last breath on camera. It also nearly confirms that Meredith Vickers is Weyland's human child rather than an android like David.
- #073
The Hammerpede was made by Waldo Mason and Martin Rezard. The design actually contained various 'layers,' from the outer skin to the internal organs and muscles. Each 'layer' was sculpted and molded separately and then combined into the final model, which incorporated the mechanical features by Jim Sandys and Steve Wright. The Hammerpede's skin was molded in translucent silicone. Scanlan commented: "In the end the detail comes from this beautiful skeletal structure with muscle underneath that we painted with lots of pearlescent paint and strong color tones. Plus we created a very light-textured, very clear skin, and in the right light you could see inside the creature and really see something quite interesting. The first impression was something smooth, muscular and powerful, like the body of a cobra."
- #074
Among the drafts, the Fifield mutant, another survivor, was initially going to be a much more monstrous character; later he was played by an actor with somewhat deformed makeup. Huante initially thought the mutation would cause Fifield's body to revert to an embryonic form, a concept called 'Babyhead'; the design ancestor of this concept was an unused alien concept proposed by Huante himself for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Eventually the design moved toward a more monstrous iteration with Fifield's recognizable tattoo on his forehead. Weta's digital animation referenced aggressive animals such as big cats and gorillas. Despite the efforts, it was ultimately decided to cut the design from the film, and practical makeup was applied to the actor Sean Harris instead. Fifield's mutation as shown in the film came from skin deformity and a swollen head.
- #075
In Spaihts's draft, Holloway was infected by a proto-Facehugger creature and later died in the middle of intercourse when a tentacled Chestburster burst from his body. In the new version, Holloway was deliberately infected with the black liquid by David, and his mutated seed caused Shaw to become 'pregnant' with the Trilobite. This new dynamic combined the Trilobite with another Chestburster, which was what Shaw originally had to surgically remove. Although it was one of the first 'finalized' designs of the production, the baby Trilobite went through many different incarnations until the creature's final appearance was approved.
- #076
(At about 1 hour 16 minutes) In the scene where Vickers burns Holloway, there are many reasons Vickers does not want Holloway on the ship. Besides following quarantine procedures, the main reason Vickers does not let Holloway onto the ship and, more importantly, into the Pauling Med-Pod, is her concern that the black liquid infecting Holloway may be contagious and could infect her father, Peter Weyland. When Weyland speaks with Shaw, he reveals he has less than a week to live.
- #077
(at around 1h 50 mins) There is a similar exchange in both Alien (1979) and Prometheus between the female protagonist and the android: in the former, Ripley asks "Ash, do you hear me? Ash!", and the android Ash replies " Yes, I can hear you." In Prometheus, the android David asks "Dr. Shaw, can you hear me?", and Elizabeth Shaw replies "Yes, I can hear you."
- #078
- #079
(At about 15 minutes) The briefing scene in Prometheus resembles the briefing in Aliens (1986), including that most of the crew were not told the purpose of the mission before going into hypersleep. In Aliens, this was because a communications disruption meant the Sulaco had to be sent to LV-426 as quickly as possible; in this film, the highly classified nature of the mission to LV-233 was probably the reason the crew were not informed in advance, to prevent them from sharing their destination with others.
- #080
The birth scene that brought the Trilobite to the screen for the first time was deliberately designed to be especially chilling; Martin Hill himself was surprised by how sensational the scene was meant to be. "When the initial pitch came in for this, our jaws hit the floor and we couldn't believe they wanted to do something that uncensored," he said. "Then when we called them, it was, 'Really? You want it that open?' The whole sequence is very similar to the chestburster sequence."
- #081
Messing's concept art was mainly based on horse foals being born; the Deacon's skin was in fact designed after a horse's placenta. "Foals are gangly and ungraceful but have to grow quickly," Scanlan explained. "A foal or a giraffe, if they're born in the wild, out in the open, they have to get up on their feet and walk very quickly. They're ungainly but they develop fast, and that's what we wanted, so that was the Deacon's strategy. Steve managed to achieve that -- something between terrifying and beautiful, with the quality of the surface treatment. It had a kind of iridescent quality. We really wanted that, so it was very beautiful and very frightening." In keeping with the series' tradition, the designers also tried to imbue the creature with human elements. Like the original idea for the Alien, the Deacon included feminine elements in its design because of its 'genetic cocktail'. "It came from Shaw and Holloway, which then produced the Trilobite," said Neal Scanlan. "We tried to hold on to some Shaw, some femininity. It was born of a female before being born of a male."
- #082
- #083
A total of 15 models of the Hammerpede were produced, each with different purposes. These included a cable-controlled model with full head movement (including the cobra-like opening and closing of the 'hood'), a puppet that could coil around Millburn's arm, and another puppet that could break the prosthetic arm. The puppets had cable-operated understructures made of several vertebra-like pieces that allowed for quite fluid movement. "We used every conceivable combination to enable Ridley to do as much practically as possible," said Scanlan. "And I also shot clean passes to allow for a few shots that could be realized in CG." Some shots required MPC's digital Hammerpede (for example, the head replacement). Shots used either a fully digital Hammerpede or a digital extension of the practical puppet. The CG model was sculpted in zBrush by Martin Rezard. The Hammerpede's 'layered' structure was faithfully reproduced for the creature's digital copy. Visual effects supervisor Charles Henley added: "[The practical Hammerpede] had a translucent skin. To get a translucent look they had built an inner muscle layer and a second silicone layer. We scanned both layers and created a displacement map for the muscle tissue. We re-created it in CG with a two-layer system and got all the light scattering based on the prosthetic, and looked at how that worked."
- #084
Holloway's Chestburster became a pale white Alien conceived by Carlos Huante with a pointed, bulbous Beluga-like head. Three other Aliens that were supposed to resemble Giger's original were also meant to appear on screen; and at the end of the film, the Engineer is killed when an Ultramorph bursts from his chest (a remnant of the accident that destroyed the Engineers at the military facility). The Ultramorph was then fought by Shaw and killed with a diamond-tipped saw. Ultimately the Aliens were cut from the script, and Holloway's Alien and the Ultramorph (whose big final fight was also removed) were merged into the Deacon. "The genesis of that character came after a conversation I had with Ridley," Huante said, "about the progression of the creatures' design toward the xenomorph in the first film. I went home and thought about it but continued with Gigeresque Ultramorphs. Then, while working, I thought, 'wouldn't it be great if these Aliens, born of humans and not yet genetically mixed with the Engineers, looked more human and less biomechanical' -- of course that was for a different version of the script, but that's exactly where the Deacon (or Bishop, as it was originally called) later became an Ultramorph, and after I left the series, as the script changed somewhat, it eventually turned into that thing."
- #085
Janek acknowledges his radio communication with the crew using the phrase "copy that." The term dates back to the mid-19th century, when the first telegraph operators had to write down or "copy" their coded messages. In the era of audio signals it became widespread with radios, CBs, two-way and shortwave radios: message received and understood. The film slyly suggests that this old-fashioned term survived more than 200 years of technological evolution.
- #086
- #087
Standing about one and a half meters tall immediately after its horrific birth, the Deacon was described by the producers as the ancestor of Giger's Alien. Most of the artists involved in the creature designs for Prometheus tried to imagine the creature, and Huante led the creative team. The creature takes its name from the pointed shape of the back of its head. "It looks like a bishop's mitre," Max said: "the evil deacon's pointed hat." All of the concept artwork retained a long head configuration with a pointed rear end. "First impressions are usually the best. When we joined the project, I remember there was a drawing by [Neville Page] of a fairly silvery, metallic-looking Deacon - Deacon being the description of the pointed back of the head - that still hadn't been approved. It was quite impressionistic, but it was wonderful," said Neal Scanlan. The final design was the result of a long brainstorming process that included Neville Page, Carlos Huante, David Levy and Steve Messing, whose work had the greatest influence on the final design.
- #088
In the final film, a digital counterpart of the Trilobite was used in most of the scenes featuring the creature. It was animated by Mike Cozens's team. The number of tentacles and parts that had to be animated simultaneously, and the synchronization required with Ian Whyte's performance, made the digital Trilobite shots a difficult job. Hill said, "With a tentacled creature, it's always a big challenge to build an animation rig that doesn't collapse or twist but still gives the animator full control over where the tentacles go. Also, making sure the stretching is even along the tentacle and that one section around it isn't stretched more than the others challenges the creature's flexibility and causes it to look unnatural. Beyond that, a tentacle wraps around the Engineer or is pinned to the ground. It needs to be fixed there, but it also needs to be able to compress and deform against the surface it touches. Our Creature Supervisor used a layered deformer approach that makes muscles taut and relaxes them under pressure. This was then passed to a solver that would wrinkle the skin where it was compressed further. The same tension and compression properties were also passed to the shading system when the skin was taught. And when it's taut it becomes lighter and brighter, the folds of the wrinkles become harder and darker. Beyond that, there was a secondary peeling/blistering skin that sat on top of the other deformers and was anchored at the base of the underlying structure's peeling skin, but was not stretched by the main tentacle movement."
Production Story (8)
- #089
Before the film's release, Sir Ridley Scott said he was open to the possibility of an extended Director's Cut, similar to several of his films for which he created altered versions. There were also previews of several deleted scenes that would clarify some of the questions raised by the theatrical version. However, shortly before the DVD and Blu-ray release, Scott stated that he had turned down the studio's offer to let him make a longer version, because he considered the theatrical version to be his preferred cut of the film. Instead, thirty minutes of deleted scenes were included on the film's home video release. These include several moments seen in the trailers but not in the film; most notably, the mutated Fifield attack scene was much longer and was planned to take place at a different point in the film (right as Weyland, Ford and the mercenaries set off toward the structure).
- #090
(Around 16 minutes) The early drafts of the script had different opening scenes. In the first, the mission begins after alien hieroglyphs are found during an underwater excavation on Earth. In another, they are at an excavation site on Mars, where Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) has created a large terraforming colony. Other scenes showed his Earth office in Amsterdam as well as his biosphere in space, resembling a large wheel containing buildings. Although concept art for these ideas was completed, all these scenes were never filmed due to budget and pacing reasons, and were replaced by Shaw and Holloway's introduction on the Isle of Skye. The only remnant of Weyland's terraforming colony on Mars can be seen in the background of the hologram message aboard the Prometheus.
- #091
The film was initially envisioned as a direct prequel to Alien (1979) through a script written by Jon Spaihts (in high demand because his previous script had landed on Hollywood's unofficial "black list" of best unproduced screenplays). Spaihts was actually asked to write an Alien prequel by Sir Ridley Scott's production company Scott Free while discussing other projects with him. He immediately felt it should be about the creature called the "Space Jockey," the giant dead creature in the chair seen in Alien, and how its race figured in the history and evolution of both humans and the Xenomorphs. After Spaihts's first drafts (titled "Alien: Engineers"), the studio insisted on a more experienced writer to rein in the many elements that made it a recognizable Alien film (including being set on LV-426, the location of the Derelict Ship in the first two films) and to focus more on the Engineers. Scott then contacted Damon Lindelof to get advice on the script and make the film more original. This, combined with Spaihts supposedly constraining Scott's vision, led to Lindelof being hired to rewrite the script. It took four more drafts (and over a year of pre-production) to bring the script to a point everyone was happy with, and even then the cast and crew (as evident from their comments in the Blu-ray materials) seemed convinced they were making a prequel to the original film.
- #092
At roughly the 19-minute mark, during the briefing aboard the ship, Holloway and Shaw do a great deal of work on hieroglyphs from different civilizations, depicting an invitation for the Engineers to eventually come and find them. It is also possible that the Engineers were initially trying to warn humanity to stay away from the planet where the Black Liquid was released; much like the message in Alien (1979), this was not an SOS signal but a warning. However, many fans have disputed this view: not pointing the way to a place the Engineers wanted humans to stay away from would have been more effective, since the odds of accidentally finding such a distant place would be astronomical. Moreover, the Black Liquid disaster occurred about 2,000 years ago, and since all the hieroglyphs are much older than that, the Engineers could not yet have known about the outbreak. Most likely, the hieroglyphs were a genuine invitation from a time when the Engineers were still enlightened and benevolent, but their nature has since changed greatly for the worse, which explains the Last Engineer's violent outburst against Weyland's team.
- #093
- #094
The original script explicitly stated that the action took place on LV-426, the same planetoid as in Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). This idea actually persisted through many rewrites of the script and even during shooting. Director Sir Ridley Scott initially wanted to shoot the scenes of LV-426's surface in Wadi Rum in Jordan or in the Moroccan desert, but due to political unrest in the regions the shoot was moved to Iceland. Scott wanted to explain the contrast between LV-426's clear appearance in this film and its dark appearance in Alien by the periodic electrical storms and volcanic eruptions that severely affected visibility on the planet's surface in the original film. In the end, it was decided during post-production to change the planet to LV-223, the neighbouring planet of LV-426 within the same system.
- #095
- #096
(Around 1 hour 17 minutes) Dr. Shaw refers to the structure as a "pyramid" for the first time; in the original script of Alien (1979), the Alien eggs were found inside a pyramid native to the planetoid, but this idea was abandoned during later rewrites and replaced with the Derelict Spaceship. In the first drafts of the Prometheus script, the crew could find only one of the Engineers' abandoned outposts until the pyramid was reintroduced at Sir Ridley Scott's request. A pyramid was also the setting for much of the action in Alien vs. Predator (2004).
Behind the Scenes (11)
- #097
(Around 1 hour 16 minutes) For the scene in which Vickers sets the infected Holloway on fire, Charlize Theron used a real flamethrower that produced real fire. She was excited to act out the scene when she read the script, but began to have second thoughts when she realized she would actually be setting a stuntman on fire. She ultimately agreed to do the stunt, and her shocked look as she set him alight was her genuine reaction. The take was kept in the film because the producers felt the crack in the character was a good reaction for the normally cold and emotionless Vickers.
- #098
(Around 1 hour 10 minutes in) Sir Ridley Scott repeatedly told the crew not to tell the actors certain things or let them see story outlines, so that he could get more genuine responses. In particular, for the scene in which the Hammerpede bursts out of Millburn's body, Scott did not tell Kate Dickie what would happen in the scene, so her scream was a real reaction. This trick for authenticity went one step further than what Scott did while shooting Alien's (1979) notorious chestburster scene, where the actors knew something would come out of the body but did not know they would be sprayed with blood.
- #099
During production, Sir Ridley Scott kept the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) as low as possible; Scott recalled the advice visual effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull had given him on the set of Blade Runner (1982: "If you can do it live, do it live") and also argued that practical visual effects were more cost-effective than digital ones. Monster effects such as the Deacon and the Hammerpede were done practically wherever possible; CGI was used only for complex shots that genuinely could not be done for real. The giant Trilobite facehugger was a full-size model used in several shots and served as a reference for the computer-generated version used in other shots. In total Weta Digital and Moving Picture Company provided 1,300 CG shots for the film, mostly for digital landscapes, space scenes and adding texture and fluidity to the practical effects.
- #100
(Around 1 hour 23 minutes) For the scene of Elizabeth Shaw's abdominal surgery, Noomi Rapace was fitted with a fake silicone body from the shoulders down. The small Trilobite inside the amniotic sac removed from her fake body was an animatronic creature wrapped in a condom filled with fake blood. A crew member punctured the condom with a razor blade so the amniotic sac would burst violently (this was removed in post-production). To secure the R rating they first experimented with an amber, milky fluid, but in the end they were allowed to use a red, bloody version. Stapling the wound afterwards was director Sir Ridley Scott's idea.
- #101
(at around 24 mins) For the scene of the Prometheus' descent to the alien moon LV-223, visual effects art director Steven Messing referenced NASA imagery and aerial photographs of locations in Iceland and Wadi Rum. Messing painted over these images, and combined them with 3-D set extensions, to create a realistic altered landscape.
- #102
Fifield's appearance after being mutated by the black liquid was initially very different. The creature he transformed into had a translucent cowl covering its elongated head, immediately notable for its resemblance to the translucent dome covering the skull of Xenomorph Drones. Sir Ridley Scott described it as a hybrid between the Deacon (which emerges from the Engineer) and the Hammerpede (the snake-like alien), and the creature slowly decayed like the Engineer's head earlier in the film. The scene was shot practically with Sean Harris and stunt performers, with additional CGI effects and textures later replacing Harris's performance (though 90% of the flames were real). However, this design was changed late in production due to a desire to move away from the official original Alien (1979) film and because Scott felt the monster's appearance needed to be more "grounded." The special effects for the original version were nearly complete when the sequence was changed, and a nearly finished version is included among the deleted scenes on Prometheus home video releases. In Jon Spaihts's original script for Prometheus (titled Alien: Engineers), Fifield's transformation was even more extreme: he actually transforms into a Xenomorph form with an elongated skull, dorsal tubes emerging from his suit and large clawed talons growing from his hands.
- #103
Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski convinced Sir Ridley Scott that it was possible to shoot the film in 3D with the same ease and efficiency as a typical film shoot. The 3D company 3ality Technica provided some of the hardware and equipment to facilitate 3D shooting and trained the film crew on how to operate it properly. Because 3D films require high lighting levels on set, the traditional dark, shadowy atmosphere of the Alien films was added during post-production grading processes, while the 3D equipment was based on post-Avatar (2009) technology.
- #104
Achieving the birth sequence was difficult. Noomi Rapace, who had prior experience with belly dance and a degree of digital enhancement, initially simulated the creature's movements inside her belly. A dummy was built for the lower part of her body; as in the chestburster scene in Alien, Rapace sat on a chair beneath the set so that only her head and neck were visible. Scanlan's team placed the Trilobite animatronic inside the dummy and maneuvered it from below to create the impression of the creature writhing inside Elizabeth Shaw's body. When the creature is finally removed, the shot includes the computer-generated creature, the machines and the incisions. Real caesarean sections were used as reference for the scene. "While it's in the placenta sack," Hill said, "it's completely digital. There was a model of the placenta with a baby inside, but the internals weren't articulated and we wanted it to shake as it was pulled out, which meant we had to do a lot of spreading work on the image to make sure all the volumetric information was working on the blood and goo inside the placenta sack."
- #105
Ridley Scott had felt that the early takes on the creatures, including the Deacon, were "too monstrous" in appearance, and distant from reality; as such, he decided to tone them down for them to remain confined in the "realm of real". It is noteworthy to mention that after the idea of the creature and most of its aspects were established, the concepts (among all of the other creatures') were shown to H.R. Giger, who designed his own version of the Deacon ultimately not considered for the film. Once Messing's design was selected, it was translated into a full-size sculpture, which served as the base for the Deacon puppets and for the digital model. For the creature's gruesome birth sequence, a hollow dummy of the dead Engineer was created, and filled with internal organs and a puppet of the Deacon which was compressed in a three-foot-diameter latex embryonic sac. The Engineer dummy was operated from beneath the set, in order for it to convulse and for the Deacon to burst out and fall on the floor. In this sequence, the Deacon was a combination of a rod puppet with digital enhancement and a completely computer-generated creature. "We sculpted the Deacon quite late in the day," added Scanlan, "we knew, practically, how we were going to do it, but artistically we were still unsure, so we started to sculpt a full-sized creature. It stood about four feet tall and was one of those things that once we were on the right track, the ideas started to flow in 3D. Ridley came in and we worked with him for several hours on a Saturday and Sunday and just pushed the sculpt until everybody felt, especially Ridley, that that was the way it should look. He's very smooth, metallicy [sic]. He's full of mercury-like material, silvers and metallics." Huante commented on the final Deacon's iridescent, dark blue skin an allegedly serendipitous addition: "Why it was blue? I don't know. The illustration was blue so as to emphasize its whiteness in a dark blue setting and I was following some inspirational paintings that a contemporary Russian painter did of a man's head that Arthur had sent me from Ridley. The creatures were all supposed to be albino. They were supposed to look simple, beautiful and ghostly like a Beluga whale in dark Arctic water." Weta augmented the digital Deacon's muscles and joints in order to make them feel more natural and realistic. Due to the creature's unique pearlescent skin, a custom shader specifically designed for the project was used to render the way it reacts with light, combined with blood and mucus layers. The lighting was matched by Florian Schroeder and Adam King.
- #106
Although the Trilobite's main influence is cephalopods, Neville Page did not intend it to look directly like an octopus. "The fact that it had seven tentacles, that was a struggle [for] me for quite a while," he said: "Because we didn't just want to make an octopus - and there were a few photographs early on where it looked like an octopus. But in the end, it was about a single pose that would give it a single sense of movement and make it seem as if there were strength and power in those tentacles that would really lift it off the ground." The Trilobite's movements were also based on various mollusks. The creature designers were also influenced by illustrations the artist Jean Giraud made for the comic book The Long Tomorrow, written by Dan O'Bannon and published in 1975. In particular, the inspiration was an 'Arcturian,' an extraterrestrial shapeshifting entity that had previously disguised itself as a woman and attacked one of the characters in a series. The struggle between the Engineer and the Trilobite is somewhat similar, but the outcome is not as bright for the pale humanoid. Scanlan commented on the Trilobite's design: "[Page] sent in a design where you could see the origins of the human on it. You could see where it came from, the prehistoric elements, and yet the alien-like qualities of the character." The special effects team built a full-scale animatronic with complex head and mouth mechanisms and enormous tentacles.
- #107
The newborn monster initially looked like a cephalopod very similar to its adult counterpart. Neville Page designed the final creature, described as an embryonic form. Its tentacles are initially fused, but they gradually grow and split into more tentacles as the creature grows. Neal Scanlan Studio built a full-scale animatronic used when the creature is seen being held by the retaining arm of the health capsule; the sculpture was made by Ivan Manzella, built by Simon Williams, Andy Colquhoun and Joshua Lee, and puppeteered through a performance system designed by Matt Denton. The creature's slithering movements were achieved with a multi-section animatronic spine. The cables controlling the creature were hidden in the clamp arm on it so that it could easily be filmed from every angle.
Characters & Cast (3)
- #108
Noomi Rapace took the role of Elizabeth after a planned meeting with producer Michael Costigan in Los Angeles turned into an unexpected meeting with Sir Ridley Scott. When Scott explained that he had watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) three times and was very eager to work with her, Rapace immediately accepted the offer. However, since Rapace was not yet a major star, the studio first insisted on a screen test. An old warehouse was quickly redesigned to look like the interior of a futuristic ship, and Rapace did her test for the role of Shaw opposite Rafe Spall, who was originally cast as the Englishman Holloway (later recast as the American Millburn). After that, she was hired for the role.
- #109
Sir Ridley Scott initially wanted Max von Sydow for the role of the elderly Peter Weyland. However, Scott and Damon Lindelof later devised a scene in which the android David (Michael Fassbender) would interface with Weyland while he was in hypersleep and, because Weyland was obsessed with immortality, would see Weyland imagining himself as a younger man. In the dream, Weyland was a handsome playboy on a luxury yacht surrounded by sexy women, jet skis and sports cars. The sequence was storyboarded, designed and prepared to be shot in Alicante, Spain, but Scott objected to it in order not to spoil the surprise that the elderly Weyland was always in Prometheus. Because the scene was cut late in production and never filmed, Guy Pearce had already been cast for the role and had therefore undergone extensive makeup to appear old. Fortunately, Pearce was also allowed to appear as the young Peter Weyland in The Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023 (2012), giving a TED Talk in one of the film's promotional clips. A longer version of this clip is available as a bonus feature on the home video release. Pearce would later appear briefly as the young Weyland in Alien: Covenant (2017).
- #110
Many famous actresses were considered for the role of Shaw, among them Abbie Cornish, Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron (who ultimately played another character) and finally Natalie Portman. 20th Century Fox executives initially wanted Portman to play Shaw. However, after watching Noomi Rapace's intense performance in the original 2009 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sir Ridley Scott made her his only choice and pushed to cast Rapace as the lead instead.
Easter Eggs & References (6)
- #111
- #112
Among the Blu-Ray special features titled 'Peter Weyland Archives' (the film's promotional videos, including the David commercial), there is a clip titled Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023 (2012) and a text screen in which Peter Weyland mentions 'a mentor and a long-departed rival' while promoting a corporate merger between his own company and Weyland's company. The document describes the mentor as a man who ran his company "like a God on top of a pyramid overlooking a city of angels" and who tried to replicate the power of creation unoriginally by copying organic humans instead of robotics. Weyland also mocks the mentor's use of fake memory implants to control "genetic abominations," something that "literally blew up in the old man's face." This entire document, written by Blu-Ray producer Charles de Lauzirika, is a clear reference to Dr. Tyrell and the Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner (1982, also directed by Sir Ridley Scott), who created organic Replicants to be sold off-world as cheap slave labor but was ultimately killed by one of his own creations, which crushed his skull. Although this suggests that the Alien and Blade Runner series exist in the same fictional universe, De Lauzirika stated that these bonus features are meant as hidden references rather than actual canonical information. Nevertheless, since the information itself came from Scott and writer Damon Lindelof, and Scott himself approved these bonus features, they can be considered canon. Scott later stated that he actually believed both universes were connected.
- #113
At roughly 1 hour 25 minutes, before Fifield's attack, the Prometheus crew finds him folded up on the ground outside the ship, at which point he 'unfolds' and begins his rampage. This scene may be a reference to a scene cut from Alien (1979), in which Ripley would encounter a strange box-like shape in one of the Nostromo's corridors, only for the shape to open and reveal itself as the Alien.
- #114
(Around 19 minutes) The name of the moon in the film (LV223) is an unmistakable reference to the biblical verse Leviticus 22:3 — "Say to them: 'If any man among all your descendants throughout your generations approaches the holy gifts that the sons of Israel dedicate to the LORD, while he has an uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from before Me; I am the LORD.'" (New American Standard Bible). This foreshadows the events of the film, including the fate of the crew.
- #115
Throughout the film, the character David frequently quotes and references Sir David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Lean was the first choice to direct an adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune; the project was taken over by Alejandro Jodorowsky, who brought in the Swiss artist H. R. Giger and many other influential artists as concept artists. After Jodorowsky's Dune fell apart, the film was bought by the De Laurentiis Company, and Sir Ridley Scott was set to direct. Instead, with the help of Giger, who designed the iconic creature and served as art director, and other artists, he made Alien (1979).
- #116
The Deacon's jaw structure was based on the goblin shark, a real abyssal species with a unique 'extendable' jaw. This feature was initially attributed to the Holloway Alien and was later inherited by the final Deacon. "There is a shark," Scanlan said, "that Ridley showed us as a reference from the very beginning; it has a completely new jaw that opens from inside the skull, so that the jaw opens and a secondary jaw comes out. If someone told me I'd think that was pure fantasy, but when you see the real creature, it's magnificent. Ridley also cited an anglerfish, which has a light in front of its head, and that too is a wonderful thing to see." Huante had based his first designs on the same shark; however, according to the concept artist, these were quite different from the final result. "[The Deacon has] some of the mouth structure from the goblin shark," he said, "or at least the concept of how its mouth juts out. The goblin is very delicate, and my creatures weren't delicate. I wanted them to be elegant but terribly powerful." Huante later added: "I really thought they were going to make my Deacon, but for a really strange reason they chose what was on the storyboards, which wasn't my character or my design. The board artist illustrated it for storytelling purposes for the story outlines, but not as a design. I had done that. I made a few attempts at the open mouth for the documentary, but those were for an even different version, so after the Deacon, when I thought about making the creature even more human, the real Deacon's design was abandoned."
Deeper Meaning (15)
- #117
Sir Ridley Scott named the film "Prometheus" because he felt the name suited its themes: "It's the story of creation; the gods and the man who stood against them." In Greek mythology the Titan Prometheus was an immortal servant of the gods; he stole the fire of the gods and gave it to humanity, an immeasurable benefit that changed the human race forever (for better or worse). This made humanity dangerous to the gods.
- #118
In the original script, the awakened Engineer is said to have taken a child from Earth to his own world so his kind could learn its values, and then sent him back to Earth to stop humanity's growing aggression, but the child was later crucified; the implication is that he was Jesus of Nazareth. However, Scott felt this would be too overt a religious allegory for the film. There are nevertheless subtle hints of it in the film: Shaw's cross, Prometheus landing on LV-223 on Christmas Day, and the Engineers' plan to attack Earth and destroy humanity roughly 2,000 years ago, shortly after Jesus's death.
- #119
Sir Ridley Scott described the Engineers as "tall, elegant dark angels." Some early designs made them look more elephant-like to match the appearance of the dead Space Jockey in Alien (1979), but it was later decided that this look was their exoskeleton suits and that the Engineers looked more humanoid inside them. Concept designers Neville Page and Carlos Huante used classical statues of Greco-Roman gods, J. W. Turner (a painter whose trademark was luminosity) and William Blake (a painter who used religious symbolism), the Statue of Liberty, Michelangelo Buonarroti's statue of David and Elvis Presley as visual influences on the design of the Engineers.
- #120
The film was initially intended to be a true prequel to Alien (1979), and the first draft of Jon Spaihts's original script (titled 'Alien: Engineers') contained far more elements from the Alien series. For example, it may have taken place on LV-426, the original planetoid of 'Alien' featuring a mysterious pyramid. It has containers holding earlier forms of Facehuggers (proto-Facehuggers), one of which 'impregnates' Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green). Unaware of what has happened, he returns to the Prometheus and, while having sex with Shaw (Noomi Rapace), a tentacled chestburster tears away from him and slowly pulls itself out of his chest. David (Michael Fassbender) is a much more malevolent character in this draft; he hates his human creators so much that he even plans to help the Engineers kill them all. Shaw tries to stop him, but David ties her up and leaves a Facehugger on her, impregnating her with an Alien as well. This creature is surgically removed without tearing through her chest, but it escapes from the medical device and, while Shaw recovers within a few hours, the creature grows and begins killing people. Shaw would finally fight the Xenomorph Ultramorph emerging from the dead Engineer, and the film would end more ambiguously with Shaw and David's remains stranded on the planet. The mutagenic black compound that turns Fifield (Sean Harris) into a raging monster and David's death were part of Spaihts's original treatment. According to Spaihts, 20th Century Fox studio executives demanded that recognizable elements be softened to make the film more standalone and give it its own mythology, so major rewrites were done by Damon Lindelof.
- #121
Costume designer Janty Yates gave the characters unique outfits to represent their natures: Vickers wears a futuristic corporate suit resembling ice-silver silk mohair, symbolizing her icy nature. David's clothing was given finer lines to give it a more linear look and emphasize his robotic nature. Holloway wears a hoodie, fisherman pants and flip-flops to look relaxed and comfortable; Janek wears a canvas-greased jacket to represent his long career at a ship's helm. Blond hair and elegant, feminine clothing were tried for Elizabeth Shaw, but were ultimately replaced with a flight suit and brown hair because they looked best on Noomi Rapace.
- #122
The "Yutani" part of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (often mentioned in the Alien series) is never used in this film, indicating that at this point they have not yet merged with Weyland Corporations. However, in The Peter Weyland Files: Quiet Eye, Elizabeth Shaw (2012), a Blu-Ray disc feature, there is a clip in which Elizabeth Shaw makes her science proposal to Peter Weyland, and the words "Yutani Corporation" can be seen overlaid on it several times. In the text accompanying this video, Peter Weyland implies that this "Yutani" had received and analyzed her video first, before forwarding it to Weyland himself. Weyland also mentions that "Yutani's new ECIU software" deciphered an extraterrestrial signal. This suggests that Yutani's company was a subsidiary or partner of Weyland's companies involved in data analysis before the companies merged. However, the novel 'Alien: Covenant - Origins' (a prelude to Alien: Covenant (2017)) explains that Yutani Corporation bought Weyland Corp during a hostile takeover 6 years after Weyland's death; the "Weyland" part was kept in the name for marketing reasons.
- #123
In the extended, deleted version of the final confrontation scene between Shaw and the apparent Last Engineer on the planet, footage of the video transmission Holloway had previously sent to establish first contact with the Engineers' planet can be seen; primarily showing images of a young Shaw playing the violin. After entering the lifeboat, the Engineer appears fascinated by the video, with an almost impressed expression on his face, perhaps implying that the Engineers did not expect humanity to be such advanced beings.
- #124
Prometheus (originally called 'Magellan,' after the famous 16th-century Portuguese explorer) was designed to resemble a cross between an oil platform and a giant walking insect. The large, faceted, wraparound front windows are the insect's eyes, and the downward-descending hangar bay resembles eggs carried beneath its belly. The exterior was created with visual effects overlaid with textures resembling the Nostromo from Alien (1979). The hangar and garage were physically built on the backlot of Pinewood Studios in England, and the ship's interior was built entirely inside the studio across a two-level structure; the front window and the "floating" crew positions projecting toward it were recycled from original unused designs for the Nostromo's bridge. The rest of the interior is in fact a relatively faithful copy of the Nostromo's layout, but compared with the low-tech, cramped Nostromo — a mere tug filled with old technology — it is far more modern and spacious, befitting the Company's scientific flagship. Vickers' quarters were designed to represent her high status aboard the ship and were furnished with modern and futuristic elements such as Swarovski chandeliers and a Fazioli piano. Other sections of the ship (especially the Mess Hall) were rearranged for these quarters, and the breakfast table was replaced with the Med-Pod.
- #125
The Trilobite shares its name with a species of extinct marine arthropods known for their extensive fossil record; this namesake stems from the fact that the first designs for the creature in Prometheus were based on the Dicranurus trilobite genus, an arthropod with two horn-like extensions on its 'head'. However, the final design seen in the film has nothing to do with real-world creatures. The creature's pale skin was inspired by the flaky, pale tones of dead organisms preserved in formaldehyde.
- #126
In scenes deleted from the Digital and Blu-Ray releases, there is a long dialogue sequence in the climactic confrontation between the Engineer and Peter Weyland, in which Weyland explains his reasons for wanting more life. He uses David as an example of how he has become a god, and therefore believes he is entitled to eternal life, saying he wants to perfect his own creation and thus implying that David is merely a stepping stone to something better. David most likely uses this in Alien: Covenant (2017) as motivation to begin his experiments creating Xenomorphs from Shaw's body. This also potentially explains why the Engineer is so horrified by David and Weyland, decapitating the former and using his head as a weapon against the latter: the Engineers were probably an arrogant race that did not want their creations to put themselves on an equal footing by copying them and creating new life, so his attacking David first is meant to break Weyland psychologically before the killing blow.
- #127
(At about 5 minutes) The film can claim one of the largest time jumps in mainstream cinema. Assuming the opening scene takes place on a primordial Earth before early life began to develop, it is implied to be around 4 billion BC. After this scene, the film jumps to 2089 AD. This surpasses the time jump of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which begins somewhere around 3.4 million BC and then jumps to 1999 or 2000 AD.
- #128
Screenwriter Jon Spaihts wrote the first script during many conversations with director Sir Ridley Scott, and often had to change days worth of writing when Scott proposed a new idea. While trying to follow Scott's wishes for the story, Spaihts created a kind of board game with wooden pieces representing the locations in the film and the characters he could move around.
- #129
(Around 1 hour 19 minutes) Shortly after it is revealed that Shaw is pregnant with an alien fetus, David says that Shaw feels her god has abandoned her, since Holloway died under circumstances similar to her father's death, and it was later revealed that her father died of Ebola. Depending on how you look at the scene, it can be implied either that her father died of Ebola or that he contracted Ebola and was sacrificed like Holloway to prevent an outbreak.
- #130
The film went through many script drafts and many titles, beginning with "Untitled Alien Prequel" and going through "Alien: Engineers," "Alien: Genesis" and "Alien: Origins." Because over time the focus shifted to the Engineers and the Aliens increasingly became a footnote, other titles such as "Alien: Tomb of the Gods," "LV-426" and "Paradise" were also devised. The final title, "Prometheus," was a surprise to many because it had never come up before. However, the mythology of the Greek god Prometheus, who helped humans by giving them fire, neatly summarized the theme of the Engineers creating humanity and guiding it. The ship in the film was initially named "Magellan" (after the 16th-century Portuguese explorer) but was later renamed "Prometheus."
- #131
The 'adult' stage of the creature was designed by Neville Page after a long design process that included the contribution of Carlos Huante and other artists. It is in this point of its growth that the creature effects team initially wanted to incorporate traits from an actual Trilobite and thus labeled the character with said nickname. "One of the things I came across that I thought was appropriate," explained Arthur Max, producer, "was a creature out of the Cambrian era you could buy a petrified version of online called a Trilobite, which is basically a very early arthropod. This particular one had feelers and a nasty kind of patina because it was petrified and was kind of an inspiration." The specific Trilobite type Max referred to was Dicranurus, a genus of these ancient arthropods that sported two curved horn-like protuberances. One of the concept art pieces by Neville Page displayed the influence from these ancient creatures most evidently. The look of the creature, however, would progressively abandon the actual Trilobite-like traits and lean towards cephalopods. Although the creature is an 'ancestor' of the Facehugger, the designer did not want the Trilobite to be an obvious representative of the latter creature from the Alien series. Page said: "We weren't going to do the Facehugger, and we weren't going to do any kind of metaphor to the first film, but at the same time this Trilobite creature became like the uber-metaphor of the Facehugger in a way, because it's very tentacular, it's in the same way somewhat sexual. And honestly, when I was done with the 'face' of it if it even has one it has the most vulvas that I've ever put into a design! It was a celebration of vulvas, really, which seemed appropriate." Earlier concept art pieces also incorporated crustacean-like traits, that ultimately did not make it to the screen-used design. The creature that appeared in the film was mainly based on cephalopods. In particular, octopi and squids in formaldehyde were thought to be interesting by Ridley Scott due to their decayed skin, which was used as reference for the Trilobite adult's multiple and invertebrate-like skin layers. "There's something about formaldehyde that turns everything pale," explained Neal Scanlan, "It's very insipid. So the colour is lost, and this milky white sort of creature, crammed into a jar, left a lasting impression on everybody, including Ridley."Arthur Max added: "There was a giant squid in yellow formaldehyde in a huge glass jar which I showed Ridley photographs of, and he said, 'that's it, that's the quality I want to this creature'."
Related pages
- The Martian — Prometheus comes up in the facts on that page
- The Light Between Oceans — Prometheus comes up in the facts on that page
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