In 1974, writer Dan O’Bannon teamed with up-and-coming director John Carpenter to make an absurdist sci-fi comedy film called Dark Star. It centered around the crew of a space freighter on a 20-year mission to clear a path in space by destroying planets that are in the way of navigation routes. They soon encounter a runaway alien that looks like a beach ball. After the film was released, Carpenter went on to bigger projects like Halloween, Escape from New York, The Thing… and Memoirs of an Invisible Man. However, Dan O’Bannon was struck with a thought: what if the alien from Dark Star wasn’t a beach ball played for laughs, but a truly terrifying monster from the unknown? Re-tweaking the idea into a “haunted house in space” story, he met with director Ridley Scott to create 1979’s Alien.
The film was a massive success and made a star out of Sigourney Weaver. Instead of continuing on with a sequel, Ridley Scott parted ways with the franchise. James Cameron took over directing duties for 1986’s Aliens, which changed the genre from horror to action; the resulting film achieved even more box-office success than the original. In 1992, acclaimed music video director David Fincher the solemn Alien3, which took the series in a darker direction than before; the negative reaction from the fanbase was widely spread. And it would only get worse with 1997’s Alien Resurrection. Despised by its screenwriter (future Marvel’s The Avengers director) Joss Whedon, the film was even less well-received than Alien3.
At the same time, Ridley Scott’s career continued to flourish with films like Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, A Good Year and American Gangster. Still, fans of the Alien series were wondering when its first director was going to return to the franchise he first started and bring it back under control. For years, Scott had seemingly avoided science-fiction projects. In reality, Scott had been thinking about doing a prequel to the Alien series, while still maintaining an original storyline. This developed into 2012’s Prometheus.
Where do we come from? Who created us? And where did they go? These are the questions being asked by Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace). She and an exploration team aboard the starship Prometheus – funded by elderly billionaire Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) – travel across the galaxy to a remote place to search for the mysterious “Engineers” that created us. The crew aboard the ship includes good ol’ boy pilot Janek (Idris Elba), Shaw’s closest confidante Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), calculating businesswoman Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and curious android David (Michael Fassbender). When they arrive, they begin exploring an ancient structure. What they find there launches another mystery which leads to questions about the true nature of their mission and a horrifying conclusion that awaits them.
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