For a while now, Ridley Scott has been evasive about the exact connection between his upcoming film Prometheus and his 1979 classic Alien. Prometheus had originally started out as a straight up prequel to Alien, but then reportedly grew into something that was set in the same universe as the Alien films, but was only tangentially related with Scott stating that “keen fan will recognize strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak.”
In a newly excerpt from an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Scott has expanded on exactly how that DNA sharing will actually work –
The last eight minutes of the Prometheus story evolve into “a pretty good DNA of the Alien one.”
So will we wind up seeing some of the classic xenomorphs and facehuggers that the Alien franchise is famous for in this new film? Perhaps. Many of the unconfirmed rumors surrounding the film hint that the story will take its characters on a journey that ends with the revelation as to where the alien killing machines originated. And that could possible jibe with the film’s official story synopsis –
[I]n which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.
Scott goes on to address the mythological connections of the film’s title, the ancient Greeks’ story of a mortal who dared to steal fire from the gods and was punished for it.
The central metaphor of Prometheus is about a “higher being” (Scott’s words) who challenges the gods, and the gods don’t want to give him fire. “Fire is our first form of technology,” Scott says, and so by taking fire, the higher being is punished “in perpetuity in a horrible fashion.”
Some interesting hints and clues, which I am sure will become clear and obvious when Prometheus hits theaters on June 8, 2012.
Prometheus stars Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Guy Pearce, and Patrick Wilson.
