Ridley Scott has been pretty tight lipped about his movie ‘Prometheus’ even to the point of warning film fans and bloggers about spoilers. “There is a lot of innovative and new stuff in the film and it would be a shame to ruin that [surprise] with leaks,” he said in July. So it comes with a bit of surprise that the writer of ‘Prometheus’, Damon Lindelof, decided to give details about the characters and how this movie links to the movie ‘Alien’ in an interview with MTV.
Although the interview occurred during last July’s Comic-Con, MTV decided the timing was right to post it now that the official synopsis has revealed. The interview has some great insights as to what to expect from Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron’s character so if you don’t want to know what role they play in the storyline of ‘Prometheus’, don’t read any further.
Although Fassbender has yet to reveal his role in the movie himself, Lindelof does it for him. “(Fassbender) plays a robot. One of the things that evokes the idea of ‘Blade Runner’ is, ‘What does the movie look like from the robot’s point of view?’ If you were to ask him, ‘What do you think about all of this? What’s going on? What do you think about these humans who are around you?,’ wouldn’t it be cool if we found a way for that robot to answer those questions?”
Charlize Theron’s role will be somewhat familiar to ‘Alien’ fans. “Her character’s name is Meredith Vickers and she’s sort of a corporate entity,” says Lindolof, “That’s another one of the familiar things from the ‘Alien’ movies — that there are corporate interests in play…I don’t think she’s slimy [like Paul Reiser’s character in ‘Aliens’]. She’s not the fast-talking, snake-oil face of the company… (but) what company is she a face of, I think is a big part of the fun.”
Regarding the overall feel of ‘Prometheus’, Lindelof likens it to the feeling of the first ‘Alien’ movie. “I think one of the really cool things about the first ‘Alien,’ if you watch it cold, Ripley is kind of in the background like one of the crew members, and you’re like, ‘Skerrit (Captain Dallas) is the hero of the movie,’ and he’s one of the first to go. And then you’re like, ‘It’s [the engineer played by] Harry Dean Stanton.’ And, no, he’s gone… and suddenly Sigourney Weaver, in the last 40 minutes of the movie, is the only one left alive. I think the idea of building a really cool ensemble and again presenting the audience with like, ‘Who’s going to be left standing at the end of this movie? Maybe all of them. Probably not,’ [that’s] part of the fun of what we set out to do.”
So the similarities of the ‘Alien’ movies and ‘Prometheus’ seem to be much bigger than originally thought. Although ‘Prometheus’ has been discounted as part of the ‘Alien’ bloodline, the spirit is eerily familiar. Who will survive at the end? Let us know who you think and what your thoughts of this new information about the movie below!
