Lindelof sells Prometheus

Leading from
 Scriptwriter: Damon Lindelof

Damon Lindelof

Damon Lindelof in his interviews for Prometheus made some comments that perhaps aimed at self depreciating humour but on another side served words to state that it would be an inevitable disappointment  and there would be the opportunity for people to tell him that he screwed up a Ridley Scott movie and this statement would be the thing to have on his head stone. He may have said these things in jest but one might expect him to have more respect for his work on this multimillion dollar project that he's helping to sell to the public.

1. Damon Lindelof: Everyone wants to know what the relationship is between the movie and Alien. And one could argue that we've set ourselves up for inevitable disappointment. But look who're you're talking to. If there's anybody known for inevitable disappointment, it's me, I'm Mr. Inevitable Disappointment. (Entertainment Weekly, May 18th, 2011, p36)        
   
2. Damon Lindelof: I would rather have people for the rest of my career say, "you screwed up a Ridley Scott movie" than not say that to me than like, hey, like I got to be involved in a Ridley Scott movie.
   
   Interviewer: I got to screw up a Ridley Scott movie.
   
   Damon Lindelof: Not only did I screw up a Ridley Scott movie, I screwed up the first Ridley Scott scifi movie in thirty years, like, um, that, if that's not going to go on your head stone than what should?  (The Verge, (5th May, 2012, 34min 20secs))

Prometheus Afterthoughts

Leading from

Prometheus

The Question of the Space Jockey as a suit
(i) The Space Jockey as a suit (ii) Just like "Fire in the Sky"
(iii)The "Independence Day" 's biomechanical suit

 Deacon Blues and the blue Deacon 

The Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman influence?

1) Gerald Scarfe inspired WETA's alternate Fifield monster?  
2) Ralph Steadman inspire the Final Fifield monster?
3) Gerald Scarfe inspired Trilobyte tongue? 
 4) Gerald Scarfe's Mick Jagger's influence on the Deacon?

Gary Larson and the Deacon's pointed head

 

Holographic Universe as a theme?  

Henry Moore's "Prometheus" drawings

Alien Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels 

"Alien Apocalypse" influence on Prometheus?

Moebius' influence on Prometheus?

Exorcist: The Beginning & Dominion's influence on Prometheus?

Clock head from Dark City inspired Prometheus head? 

Max Headroom as a running theme? 

Ganesh with breathing pipe trunk  

Georgiou Tsoukalos of Ancient Aliens and Joe Rogan talk about Prometheus

Prometheus' loose ends

leading from

Prometheus

1. Star Map invitations and Mysteries of Planetoid Numbers

Star map invitations & mysteries of Planetoid Numbers?

leading from
Prometheus' loose ends

a)  Invitation or not?
On one instance, Damon Lindelof didn't want to state whether the Engineers wanted the humans to visit them, and on another instance he did want to say yes, but still there was was something fascinating about humanity deciding to perceive it as an invitation. He notes that looking at the cave wall image leads to different interpretations, such as "This is where we come from" or "We want you to come here" and there is a question about where we are drawing that from

b) LV426 - LV223 = 203 LVs
Next in line from Damon is the idea that the moon the Prometheus lands on is LV223 and we know that LV426 is in Aliens the name of the moon where the derelict in Alien is found and Hadley's Hope in Aliens is built. For some reason he asks because of that whether they are actually in the right place, and I don't actually know why. There are hundreds of LVs around the galaxy and 203 LVs labeled since LV223 was catalogued, and in Aliens just over 300 surveyed worlds.

c) Zeta II Reticuli?
It is possible that Damon expects people to assume that Alien took place in the Zeta II Reticuli star system and as far as I can understand, it simply took place in an unnamed star system where the nearest known one was Zeta II Reticuli but these days a lot of fans just want to assume it must be Zeta II Reticuli because it seems easier , as does the producer of the Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set, and indeed Jonathan Spaihts in the script that was released to the public online jumped onto the idea that the planetoid must be within the Zeta II Reticuli star system as well.

d)  Open guesses
However Lindelof asks how close were they to where the pictures on the wall was directing them. He asks if the fact that they got where they did was because they were just extrapolating “This is the system that has the sun with the sustainable life.” and says that it is only guesswork. We don't really have much to go on let alone have a discussion about since nothing actually relate to anything like a fact in this universe.


e) Those that were unaware
We have found out that the planetoid known as LV426 was the intended destination of the expedition in the earlier version of the script by Spaihts and so they changed it to another planet LV223 shortly afterwards.


f) Cinefantastique reviewers thought that Prometheus took place on LV 426
Some people who went to see the movie, and here we can point out the seasoned reviewers for the Cinefantastique website, Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French and Dan Parsons, really were not aware that the planet where Prometheus lands in Prometheus was not the planet where the derelict ship in Alien was found. Steve Biodrowski could not believe that they were the same planets because the planet in Prometheus was much more Earthlike than the one in Alien that had an almost primeordial atmosphere. Lawrence French was so sure it was supposed to be the same planet because there was the crashed derelict space ship and the space jockey and felt that maybe the atmosphere had changed in the decades between Prometheus and Alien. They had gone to see the movie without reading the interviews and trying to be informed by other materials outside of the movie that would have spoiled the plot and indeed were not alone as viewers who imagined that the planets in Prometheus and the Alien movies were the same unaware of any significance in the name given to this planet LV-223 rather than LV-426 which came from James Cameron's Aliens film. Since the film has come out, these reviewers may well have found out why the planets seem to be different.

Source Quotes

1. IGN: Let’s get specific then – in your opinion, do these aliens want us to visit them?  
   
   Lindelof: That’s an excellent question and one that I’m not going to answer. But I will say that there’s something fascinating about humanity where we perceive it as an invitation. You look at a cave wall, there’s somebody pointing at some distant planets, and one interpretation is “This is where we come from” another is “We want you to come here.” Where are we drawing that from? I think another thing that’s interesting about the system that they visit is that the moon they land on in Prometheus is LV 223. And we know LV 426 is where the action takes place in Alien, so are they even in the right place? And how close are they to the place that these aliens on cave walls were directing them. Were they just extrapolating “This is the system that has the sun with the sustainable life.” So there’s a lot of guesswork.  (http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/11/the-secrets-of-prometheus-with-damon-lindelof 11th June 2012)   
2. Hey You Guys: Was there a juggling act with regards to explaining the unanswered questions about Alien while asking new questions?
   
   Lindelof: Prometheus is promoting a question which is where we created by these things and did these things invite us to this place? The answer to that is yes. 
3. Steve Biodrowski: When they landed, Alien, the planet, I remember the line because it's one of the few that survived from Dan O'Bannon's script, the atmosphere was almost primeordial and  it's certainly not the atmosphere we're dealing with here, there were not signs of.
   
   Lawrence French: Yeah, but the atmosphere could change after all that time
   
   Steve Biodrowski: Yeah,  but not that much, there's not that much time that lapses between the two for that kind of change and there's no sign of an Earth ship that crashed there, you know, and it's a totally, and there's, your know, there's no water or anything on the planet. The planet's almost Earthlike in this movie.
    
   Lawrence French: Well that's the
   
   Dan Parsons: Mmhmm
   
   Steve Biodrowski: Well, there's a lot of explaining you need to do to get from this movie to what we saw.
   
   Dan Parsons: Yeah
   
   Lawrence French: Except that you've got the alien ship sticking out exactly like it does and the space jockey, so it's just, it's too much for anybody who's seen Alien, I think, to to just ignore it, if you have to say, I mean, is there another space jockey on another planet, it could be but, I didn't. (Listen to Prometheus podcast at cinefantastiqueonline.com)

Alien Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels

Leading from:  Prometheus Afterthoughts

 

In 1999, about dozen years before Prometheus came out, a comic book series called Alien Apocalypse :The Destroying Angels was published, taking place around 20 years after the events of Alien exploring the mystery of the derelict and its pilot the space jockey and its cargo of alien spores.  The comic book series was a very thoughtful in the way that it roughly exploring some of Ridley Scott's ideas for a sequel for Alien involving archeology although it ignored the idea that Ridley had about that the alien was being carried around by the space jockey's ship as a bioweapon since in the Dark Horse Alien mythos, this wasn't a direction they were exploring but it explored the suggestion that the alien life form had been to earth before.  What also made the comic book story interesting  is that the artists showed a genuine interest in exploring Giger's biomechanic architectural designs.

In the story, another derelict ship is discovered, one inspired by one of Giger's unused sketches for the derelict space ship. 

Giger's derelict sketch 374b

derelict ship from Alien Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels

A star chart found aboard a derelict alien spacecraft leads the explorers to the homeworld of the space jockeys where they encounter a vast underground city. The space jockeys were a race that had colonized perhaps thousands of worlds.

However the Alien life form turned out to be something that had been destroying life through the universe, and had been found to have destroyed all life on Earth 3.2 billion years ago and cut the population of the space jockeys back. It was perceived as a life form that somehow restored the balance when space explorers intent on colonisation had over stepped the limit.

In the underground city,  a carefully sealed chamber is found where giants were subjected to some form of "catatonic suspension". On the verge of being exterminated by the Aliens on the planet, the giants resorted to an attempt to hibernate and outlast the alien life forms. However only one was able to survive the three billion years.

space jockey in hibernation

The Space Jockey in this story appeared to be an elephantine headed humanoid creature with a thick scaly hide and the long pipe running down the front of its chest ran beneath the skin and a thick ribbed slug like lower body. There was no attempt to define how this space Jockey's body was exactly structured. Many images in the comic book showed the dead partial remains of many with the lower part disappearing into the architecture

space jockey temple environment

space jockey's underground cityscape

 An alien spore was placed by a human upon the sleeping Space jockey to  see what happens when an alien gestates within the Space jockey, and it results in one of gargantuan proportions.

The next question that comes is whether some key ideas about the Alien mythos from the comic book series influenced the Prometheus movie. See also  similarities between Prometheus and the Alien Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels comic book series.
 

"Alien Apocalypse" influence on Prometheus?

Leading from:  

 Prometheus Afterthoughts & 

 Similarities between Prometheus and the Alien Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels.

a) a star map appears to lead homeworld of the space jockeys

Aboard a derelict spacecraft found in space, an elaborate chart
showing a fantastically detailed description of the Space Jockey's
journey is found

In Prometheus, a  reoccurring star system pattern is found on various ancient
tablets and the wall of a cave

b) Piles of bodies of multitudes of space jockeys have all be found dead with their bodies bursted open, in a corridor because of the alien life form released in the biomechanic environment.

 

c) A lone space jockey found alive aboard its civilisation's homebase in a some form of long term hibernation resting in a pod while the rest of his people have long since died

Discovery of Space Jockey found alive in "catatonic suspension" sitting in a
pod while his fellow space jockeys found around the ship in similar devices
have long since perished because of the Alien life form. The creature has an
abundance of pipes leading from the surrounding machinery into its body.

Discovery of Engineer found alive in a hibernation capsule while his fellow
engineers, many in the dome and some in hibernation capsules have all long
ago perished from a biological weapon that got out of control which through
hibernation, this Engineer had outlasted until unfortunately the humans who
woke him up and unleashed the biological weapon again. The humanoid has
an abundance of pipes leading from the surrounding machinery into his body

Moebius' influence on Prometheus

Leading from:
Prometheus Afterthoughts

Master Burg from Aedena, 
image from the illustration
for the Moebius collector cards

a)When the Engineer was revealed to be a tall ethereal bald man with a bridgless nose that flowed from the forehead, straight into the ridge of the nose. I asked myself if there was a tall bald man in Moebius' artwork that might have been a starting point for Ridley Scott. Perhaps I remembered something from the Gardens of Aedena book but I didn't have it at hand to look at. Very soon after that, on April 28th 2012,  a Frenchman by the username of NGR01 at AVPGalaxy suddenly posted a drawing by the French comic book illustrator Moebius of a character named Master Burg. He had a lot more familiarity with Moebius' artwork than a lot of people on the site. NGR01's statement was : "The Engineers looks a lot like a cross between a Moebius character (master Burg from EDENA for exemple who is a giant humanoid) mixed with a Giger biomechnical suit."

the engineer in prometheus

Master Burg was a character who had the ability to shift his form, and was a representation of the character Major Gruber who often appeared in Moebius' drawings as a gentleman wearing a Pith helmet, but Master Burg was a mentor to the characters Stel and Atan. Some depictions of him make him appear near enough man sized and when he appears in Stel, he is shown to be at least a good foot taller than Stel who is a young adult male, here Master Burg appears to be near enough the dimensions of the Engineer in Prometheus.

page 8 from Moebius' comic book Stel,  
depicting Master Burg as a giant 
(source: http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com)

b) In the first weekend of February 2013, I picked up my copy of The Gardens of Aedena and read the scene where Stel and Atan, bald humans, wake up after a deep sleep and find themselves aboard a space ship. They find a control desk which they don't know what it is for, and then it turns out that it plays music that activates a domed shutter that pulls up unveils two seats that are for a small flying vehicle.

In Prometheus, the engineers plays a pipe and activates computers and a green globes forms infront of him, and shortly after that an intergalactic orrery suddenly appears. Despite differences, both activated technology by playing music and we know that Ridley Scott was using Moebius's comic books as reference.

panel from Moebius's The Garden of Aedena.  
source of image:theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/

Engineer from Prometheus activating the Juggernaut's 
controls by playing a flute 
(screenshots from the movie)

c) It soon became very obvious as soon as the first trailer shots of the Engineer fighting with the creature known as the trilobite in Prometheus, had been released had been inspired by scenes from  Moebius' illustrations for Dan O'Bannon's comic book story The Long Tomorrow. As evidence, the comic book pages containing those images were up on the wall in the art studio shown in the Charles De Lauzerika's documentary "The Furious Gods, Making Prometheus" that came on the Blu-ray edition of the film. Another point to note was the muscular physique of the bald man being attacked by the amorphous creature in the comic book story that might also be a part of the background of the inspiration that drove Ridley's vision of the engineer.

Moebius panel of  illustrations for Dan O'Bannon's
comic book story The Long Tomorrow. 
(source http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com)

Stills from Prometheus of the Engineer trying to fight off 
"the trilobite"
(screenshots from the movie)

Still and enlargement below from shot of Max in the art studio, 
that shows the Moebius comic book page,  from Charles De 
Lauzerika's documentary "The Furious Gods, Making Prometheus"

d) Once people made the connection between Prometheus and inspiration from Moebius' illustrations for O'Bannon's The Long Tomorrow. More images were revealed from the concept work on the Blu-ray set that bore echoes from the same source. A chestburster scene know as the sexburster that never made it into the final film, the naked man has the same pose as one of the panels from the same page in The Long Tomorrow.

One of Moebius illustrations for Dan O'Bannon's The Long Tomorrow

Holloway Chestburster Love Scene by Carlos Huante

"Sex Burster" concept work for Prometheus by Steve Messing ?

e) A copy of Moebius vol 4 "The Long Tomorrow" can be found beneath
the multi-tailed chestburster drawing by Carlos Huante as it lies upon the desk as he sits having a chat with Ridley Scott in the Furious Gods documentary.

Moebius vol 4 "The Long Tomorrow and other science fiction stories" can be found beneath the multi-tailed chestburster

Moebius vol 4 "The Long Tomorrow and other science fiction stories"

f) Following on looking for other inspiration from Moebius' comic book visions I continued to look further . Moebius' characters Stel and Atan turn up in Moebius' short comic book story Les Réparateurs, exploring an alien planet where in the side of a mountain they encounter a doorway that leads into an underground tunnel complex where they encounter Moebius the artist himself inside a glass cylinder, it may well be inspired by Paul Verhoeven's movie Total Recall . See theairtightgarage.tumblr.com for the full comic book story. The drawings here appear to me to have had some influence on the entrance to the pyramid, and the cargo bay of the juggernaut

Stel and Atan enter a wide low cielinged chamber supported by columns 
in Moebius' Le Monde D’Edena, Tome 6: Les Réparateurs, (Source: theairtightgarage.tumblr.com)

Wide low cieling entrance to Pyramid supported by columns in Prometheus

'natural' underground stalagmite/stalagtite structures supported by three columns 
 in Moebius' Le Monde D’Edena, Tome 6: Les Réparateurs,
(Source: theairtightgarage.tumblr.com)

David encounters three columns of ampules in the Juggernaut's cargo room 
in the film Prometheus

Gary Larson and the Deacon's pointed head

a) Dalekman61 at the AVPGalaxy forum came up with an image that's rather worrying in terms of Prometheus' Deacon. The shape of the head with the back point looks very similar to a Gary Larson's Alien Family Dinner cartoon featuring the Aliens from 10-5-1986.

b) Gary Larson was an American cartoonist, the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to over 900 newspapers for 15 years. The series ended with Larson's retirement on January 1, 1995

Max Headroom as a running theme ?

leading from

Prometheus Afterthoughts

a) Arthur Max's team designed the mysterious chamber known at some point as "The Ampule Room" and also as "Steve Messing" was able to mention, "The Head Room". One might take the "Head Room" and Arthur Max's surname, connect them together and get "Max Head Room" and wonder what sort of a connection Arthur Max might have felt towards this semi-computer generated character. Numerous people were making the connection with Max Headroom seeing the head dominating the room since Max Headroom was such a popular character.

b) By 14th November 2013, on Facebook, I noticed that a certain Tracey B came to ask without this knowledge why David the android in Prometheus looked remarkably like Max Headroom.

c) I took another look at Arthur Max's background and found that back in June 1st 2012, Brendon Connelly of www.bleedingcool.com was able to trace Ridley Scott and Arthur Max's first meeting to when they made a Max Headroom Coca Cola commercial in the mid eighties. On his page he has a link to the commercial

Arthur Max,  Production designer of Prometheus

source quotes

1. Arthur Max : My relationship with Ridley is one that began about 27 years ago, working on a commercial in London and it set the tone for our way of working together. It was probably the only other science fiction project I’ve done in my whole career. It was for Coca Cola and set in a dystopic future. I had to create a universe on location, a dark vision of a city, with vehicles. On that project I began to learn how he works and what his priorities were and very much the same sort of ideas have continued through every project we’ve worked on since. Ideas of how to use the light, and he’s particularly interested in the camera. He’s a painter and so he’s interested in composition. Then he likes to operate the camera himself so he likes to consider how he’s going to move it through the set. All of these elements have remained unchanged throughout our working relationship, no matter what the genre. (Arthur Max to Brendon Connelly. bleedingcool.com, June 1st 2012)

Holographic Universe a theme in Prometheus?

leading from

Prometheus Afterthoughts

a) Once I had seen the cover for Cinefex 130 released in June 2012, an emotional light shone from it in terms of what lay at the heart centre of Prometheus to say what it was really all about , the idea of this hologram of an orrery with representations of star systems and galaxies floating around, and as a vision of wonder, it subjectively asked me if the universe that we live in is a hologram and if so the discoveries in Prometheus that seemed out of context with Alien might in some way have their place if we take a look at the idea of a holographic universe and the other possibilities that might arise because of that.

b) Later in March 2013, Magictorch the illustrator created an illustration for BBC's Focus magazine that dealt with science and technology,  proclaiming the same idea "The Universe You Live In is a Hologram" with artwork inspired by the scene of the holographic orrery from Prometheus. The article was about the Fermilab holometer that would soon be used to find out if "the Universe is actually a hologram, - a 3D representation of an underling 2D reality. It would mean that we - and the planet on which we are - are holograms."

Carlos Huante

Ridley Scott with Carlos Huante

 1)  Carlos Huante's facehugger centipede

2) victim's cranial transformation concept

3) Carlos Huante's Babyhead

4) Origins of Carlos Huante's Babyhead

5) Carlos Huante's Pilot (not completely directed related to Alien)