alienex plorations: April 2012

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Michael Broom designed some Alien inspired entities for the movie Cabin In the Woods by Joss Whedon released in 2012. It was the intention that he should design something as a homage to Giger's work, while his earlier designs looked as if they were displaying familiar imagery, the final design seen at the bottom of the page quite possibly could be said to look the least like Giger's work than anything else that he drew for this project and perhaps belonged to a comedy film.

David Leroy Anderson: “Everything in Cabin was an homage to something and this is the design picked to fill the need to acknowledge Giger. So Mike Broom had to channel Giger"(source http://monsterlegacy.wordpress.com/)
Michael Broom: “We did about 30 or 40 designs, some of which were very, VERY Giger-ey (bear in mind that every other director wants ‘Giger’ inpired aliens in their movie)… but this [the final design piece] was what they selected.” (source http://monsterlegacy.wordpress.com/)

Background creature with Alien inspired foetal head and side pipes

Background creature with split version of an Alien head and two tails

Final design for the creature inspired by Giger

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Space Jockeys Renamed Engineers

a) Introduction scene spacecraft or Juggernaut alternative?

We find curious alternate alien space craft designs by Steve Messing and David Levy, both bearing a similarity as if they were alternatives based a same simple sketch. They're known to be alternative designs for the Juggernaut ship before Ridley went back to the old basic shape for the derelict.

Storyboards reveal the Primordial ship to be the vessel in the introduction scene of the movie. The second storyboard may well feature a different design to the first one but the landscape is the location in the Isle of Skye used in Prometheus, which features a rock formation known as the Old Man of Storr.

Primordial ship over landscape design by David Levy

So are these concepts for one scene or just a general landscape to present different ideas for the film if the writers commentary on the Prometheus DVD suggests that the ship design was supposed to be an unused idea for the Juggernaut.

Information from the Q&A with Neville Page, Steve Messing and David Levy at Gnomon on 17th September 2012 were recalled by members of the AVPGalaxy forum. A user by the name of Fangface recalled that there were different classes of Engineer ships to be featured in that opening scene and one ship had a guitar-like design to it, before the the content of the scene was trimmed down to a minimum

Fangface: "Yeah, if I remember correctly, there were different classes of Engineer ships to be featured in that opening scene (with the elders getting out and milling around, etc.). One ship had a guitar-like design to it.

However, Ridley & Co. felt it all looked too much like a Star Trek film, so they cut back on the ships and other Engineers. " (Source AVPGalaxy.net, see: Prometheus Q&A with Neville Page, Steve Messing an...)
AVPGalaxy's review of the the Prometheus scriptwriters commentary informs us that "The Primordial ship was originally meant to be the Alien Derelict/Juggernaut ship in Lindelof’s draft, but Ridley Scott thought it would be cooler to show something else." (AVPGalaxy.net 23rd September, 2012)

b) However both crafts are T shaped, presented with the bar of the T at the front and so we will call that side the front even if it turns out to be incorrect and the base and neck of the of the T suggest that is is shaped like a stringed musical instrument such as a lute or maybe some abstract design for a
pretzel or curtain hook.

c) Along the bar of of the T are placed the engines of the crafts, and down the centre of the neck is a split. Well known science fiction spacecrafts with engines placed at the front are the General Grievous Starfighter from the movie Revenge of the Sith and a spacecraft featured in the Roger Corman movie Battle of the Stars.

d) The David Levy picture has two hammer like tips facing forwards either side of the ship at the front resembling the flat hammer head like tips of the arm seen on the right of the

pictures of Giger's derelict.

e) Steve Messing's attempted to create the engines in a slightly different way, using the pitta bread shaped structures suspended on the sides of the arms of Giger's derelict ship, and having straightened them out stuck them along the T shaped front.

f) David Levy's design has almost smooth surface while the main body in the Steve Messing picture which has the main body seen to almost resembles a pretzel while the patterning across the surface
makes a greater attempt to resemble Giger's biomechanics style

g) The two new designs both present spacecrafts that are symmetrical while Giger's derelict was asymmetrical.