Anticipation for Prometheus, Ridley Scott's sort-of-prequel to Alien, is almost on the neurotic end of breathless by now. Some aspects of it are closely-guarded secrets, and plenty of the core audience live in terror of hearing a single thing about it before paying on opening night. Some things we know, though: it's going to be more or less a new story, only the very end of which will connect us up with the science fiction mythos Scott originally established in 1979. The question Scott began this film wanting to answer, which Alien's sequels hadn't explored, is best put in his own words: "Who's the big guy in the chair?".
On stage with his top-lining cast members Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, Scott took questions this morning at a private preview, after a selection of scenes - what you might call an exposition reel - setting up the movie's premise. Those who've banned themselves from even watching the trailer should stop reading right this instant, but nothing was spoiled which the movie won't lay out for us in what I'm assuming is its first half-hour.
We start, from the look of things, with a discovery on the Isle of Skye, in the company of Rapace's archaeologist, Dr Elizabeth Shaw, and a colleague played by Logan Marshall-Green. It's a 35,000-year-old cave painting depicting a faraway solar system, including one habitable planet with a moon. Fast-forward to 2093, and these two awake from hypersleep on a 17-man exploratory space vessel, their mission to probe the secrets of LV-223 -- which buffs will note is not LV-426, the dread-filled planet from Alien and Aliens.
Rapace, Scott confirmed, is the closest thing to a Ripley figure here; Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers is an employee of the traditionally nefarious Weyland Corporation, charged by her late boss Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, briefing us in holographic and aged-up form) with ensuring that the search for signs of life goes to plan. Meanwhile, a blond-dyed Michael Fassbender is David, the ship's creepily effete android butler, who calls Theron "Ma'am" and has been quietly watering plants for two and a half years while the rest of his crew-mates switch off.
"It's categorically not a secret what he is," says Scott about David, explaining that the role is a nod of sorts to Ian Holm's Ash, but that holding onto his identity as any kind of mystery would have been too clichéd. Fassbender, in shaping the character, relied less on memories of Holm, Lance Henriksen and Winona Ryder (!) in the earlier films than recent viewings of Scott's Blade Runner, Dirk Bogarde in The Servant, Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Apparently there's even a bit of the Olympic diver Greg Louganis in there -- something about his weirdly efficient walk. He looks fantastic in it, and so, in a more vulnerable and human way, does Rapace.
Theron's character, who gets straight out of the hypersleep chamber and does push-ups while her colleagues are spewing into buckets, looks to be a coldly enigmatic functionary, but she wanted to find ways to make Vickers brittle and afraid, inspired in part by Tilda Swinton's Oscar-winning performance as a panicked lawyer in Michael Clayton. Idris Elba's the pilot, and the supporting cast is a roll call of British character actors, from Sean Harris (24 Hour Party People) to Benedict Wong (Sunshine) to Kate Dickie (Red Road) and Rafe Spall (Anonymous). No sign yet of Patrick Wilson, who I've read somewhere is playing Rapace's father.
For Scott the starting-point - how the big bone creature from Alien came to be there - became less and less important as the new movie took over, or, as he says, "adjusted itself into much larger questions". The origin story ended up "barely in its DNA" - the last seven minutes provide the link. He worked on it design-first, persuading Fox to spend some money blueprinting the entire visual scheme of the film before a script was green-lit. It's his first feature in 3D, but he bats away the idea that this posed any particular headaches. "It's not brain surgery. It's actually pretty straightforward."
Exposition over, we were treated to that tantalising trailer montage of everything going gloopy and haywire – unfamiliar egg chambers, things entering people's eyes, screams of "What IS that?" and "Take us HOME!". This is what aficionados of cinema's greatest science fiction series, and the Star Wars faithful who are now furious with me, will be waiting for. If Scott and his cast can deliver on their movie's huge promise - only heightened by the careful, intelligently-played establishing scenes just unveiled - they'll be responsible for the blockbuster event of the year.
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