Prometheus (2012) :: Film ~ Pozoriste ~ Televizija

Filmophilia posted a new interview with director Ridley Scott in which he talks about his upcoming sci-fi movie Prometheus. Here are excerpts.

EGE: So you are linking this directly with the Alien films?

RS: Not at all.

EGE: Not at all?

RS: No.

EGE: No?

RS: I mean, you could actually say, and there’s a quote I did, a pretty good quote: By the end of the third act you start to realize there’s a DNA of the very first alien, but none of the subsequent aliens. To tell you what that is is a pity, and I’m not going to tell you, because it’s actually pretty good, pretty organic to the process and to the original. But we go back, we don’t go forward.

EGE: The tone of the film, according to the official synopsis, and the tone of the premise, sounds a lot more mythological than the original Alien films. The original Alien films revolved around industrial settings and premises and social situations rather than anything mythological.

RS: The original Alien was a pretty savage engine. I’ve always said it was a C-movie done in an A-way. Because it was the Old Dark House, you know. Seven people in the Old Dark House, and they’re all going to die. (He laughs) And they’re gonna die horribly and that in itself is a tricky exercise, because you can do it well, you can do it badly. But somehow that worked. It turned out pretty well.

I think one of the reasons why I’ve never gone back to science-fiction, even though I’ve often noodled around, thought about it, looked for story, looked for material, is that there’s a nice purity to the original Alien. It’s fairly pure. And this one does actually raise all kinds of other questions, because if someone could, a being, could be as monstrously clever to create something like we experienced in the very first one – I always figured it’s a weapon, and I always figured that [the ship in the first Alien] was a carrier of weapons. Therefore, who is that, inside that suit? That wasn’t a skeleton, that was a suit. And if you open up the suit, what do you get inside it? And why were they going, where were they going?

Also, I ring off of… there’s a writer, Erich von Däniken. One of his most famous books was called Chariots of the Gods. Everyone thinks he was out of his mind, you know, for number one, “we are the creation of gods”, if you go back to the 19th century anthropologists, Darwin, and say if you go look at Darwin for the moment and look at the Darwinian idea, the Darwinian thesis, which is seemingly very logical. You know, you’re going from something that gradually comes to two legs and gradually here we are. Then you can go beyond that and you look more mathematically at the feasibility of how we’re able to be sitting here, right now, in this place. I’m talking to you, and I’ve got this thing (he picks up his cellphone) which looks like Star Trek. This is “Beam me up, Scotty”-stuff. You wouldn’t have believed this thing could exist thirty years ago.

[Editor's note: And here is where he really takes off:]

Things have changed so dramatically that you can start looking at the idea that all our history can be completely wrong and misguided. Because at some point someone has to put a statement down and have their own thesis, have their own theories. That was then later accepted or later is gradually dissolved and re-drawn or reworked. So now you’ve got the whole changed attitude with NASA, the church and I think even Hawking. Over the last thirty years have gone from “It’s highly unlikely that there’s anyone else in our galaxy, any other force, being in our galaxy,” to now, where they’re conceding that there are probably thousands of different lifeforms in this galaxy. And I think Hawking actually said, “Let’s hope they don’t visit.” And I think the church has conceded as well that it would not be against the word of God if we conceded that there are other lifeforms in this galaxy.

So, if you take that out, then the door is open. To me, it’s entirely logical. It’s entirely ridiculous to believe that we are the only ones here. That’s why my first thought is that for us to be sitting here right now is actually mathematically impossible without a lot of assistance. Who assisted? Who made the right decisions? Who was pushing and pulling to adjust us? That’s a fair question.

EGE: Final question. I have a feeling what the answer will be, but many want to know. Will we see the original xenomorph in Prometheus?

RS: No. Absolutely not. They squeezed it dry. He (the xenomorph) did very well. (He laughs) He survived, he’s now in Disneyland in Orlando, and no way am I going back there. How did he end up in Disneyland? I saw him in Disneyland, Jesus Christ!

The full interview is here.