Debate Magazine

Forget Prometheus - REBOOT THAT ALIEN PREQUEL - Back to Basics

Posted on the 27 April 2013 by Freeplanet @CUST0D1AN
so, for the longest time during the long and expensive publicity phase of Prometheus (2012) we were led to believe that Ridley Scott was making a prequel to his 1979 film Alien. Then it turned out that Damon Lindelof was brought on board to perform a 'thematic polishing' of Jon Spaihts original Alien-prequel script and Prometheus became a 'parallel story' within the 'alien universe'. 
Whatever the fuck that means.
They attempted to make all the Gigery-stuff look like it did in the 1979 original but it really wasn't. It was sanitised, de-edged and de-sexualised, like the whole Prometheus franchise/TV-series will become; nothing more than a once-Alien-fan's Stargate. I promise you.

Forget Prometheus - REBOOT THAT ALIEN PREQUEL - back to basics

ALIEN (1979) the moment when it all went soooooooo wrong


During the set design phase for ALIEN, Ridley Scott had the effects crew bosh together a Giger creation in balsa wood and plaster. Allegedly, Giger didn't even get to add the finishing artistic touches to his gigantically enormous cinematic centrepiece before Scott had made some child-sized space suits and had children occupy the set, for the purposes of scale.
AND IT WORKED.
Visually, it worked. It was an iconic moment in cinema history. When mankind first met a gigantic intergalactic race of Giger's 'biomechanical humanoids'. And if the thing hadn't have been 'fossilised' i.e. from a hundred thousands years ago, it would have been a very sexual experience for the orifice-carriers of the Sulako crew. We can even guesstimate the size of ALIEN's Space Jockey (the above hyperspace telescope driver) by saying that man's about as tall as that thing's torso. A human torso is 1/5th of the height of a human. So, if a human is six foot, multiply by five gives us a THIRTY FOOT space jockey, that's NINE METERS tall.
When I say, "it worked," of course, it failed very badly. 
The crew of the Sulako descended through an acid-hole in the floor of that set to an Egg Silo cargo hold and were never seen again in the Alien franchise. Other things that were never seen again (and this was mostly due to an editing error by Scott) included a scene where the human-chest-hatched Xenomorph transformed one of the Sulako crew into an Egg and this image on a mural in a pyramid temple that was never seen (due to budgetary limitations).

Forget Prometheus - REBOOT THAT ALIEN PREQUEL - back to basics

ALIEN (1979) xenomorph life cycle


For those who don't know, the Eggs in ALIEN contain Facehuggers that leap onto the face of a humanoid and infect him with a chestburster that then escapes as a growing xenomorph. No Alien Queen. No Prometheus Engineers. So, what's the basic story here that we're all missing, including the makers of Prometheus?
Isn't it obvious?
Potentially MILLIONS OF YEARS before man exists on planet Earth, the original space jockey was transporting HUMANOID cargo, and the first thought that comes to mind is Noah's Ark. I'm not even sure if, in this narrative, ONE of the humanoids should have made it to earth and got it on in the Garden of Eden i.e. a primitive Earth, kinda pre-modern human. For me, it could have taken more than a few weeks of stalking adventure for the xenomorph to TRAP AND CONVERT ALL THE HUMAN CARGO INTO EGGS.
There's a real human character piece hiding under the Giger-cloth of this alien story.

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