van HellSing on 23/12/2011 at 05:01

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Unless it's a massive trolling effort, there's no way it's not connected to Alien in some way. It might not feature the xenomorphs themselves, but everything else just SCREAMS alienverse.

Literally, too - the repeating distorted scream is the same one used in the Alien trailer.

demagogue on 23/12/2011 at 05:38

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They could try to have it both ways by having the movie itself be agnostic on it. It's not billed as a prequel, but have it consistent as a prequel anyway, like this trailer, little pieces that actually fit with the later movie(s) when you notice them. There is something viral about that. (Lots of species, hell all of them, may be connected to a hub.)

Edit1: Unless "our origins" is speaking from the aliens perspective.

Edit2: Re: the bioengineered angle, the first time I heard that idea was from a Omni article about seeding our DNA into space to fly out and perhaps eons later reach a habitable planet and populate a new human line or gene-modify an existing species to be human-like, and then ending with the bombshell idea (to me) that maybe it'd already been done. I thought it was such a cool & fresh idea at the time I wrote a story about it. It's not as cliche as some other ideas yet, but anyway I can't recall a major story or movie that's established it in the way that Matrix does for the "brains in a vat" or Bladerunner does for sentient cyborgs. Even cliches need a good representative.

I'm thinking even if it is that, there'd be a bit more to it, like something that's been embedded in the bioengineering for all this time that suddenly switches on. I don't know. Since I put a lot of love into my own story on the idea, I've always liked it and wanted to see some other good stories with it.

Thirith on 23/12/2011 at 07:34

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I can't figure out whether you're being ironic, disingenuous or naive, or whether I misunderstand your post somehow. This trailer practically screamed Alien, in terms of its pacing, visuals, audio design, even down to the way the titles appear. It goes out of its way to remind viewers of Scott's earlier film. If Scott & Co go for such blatant call-outs to Alien and then give us something that takes place in the same universe "but that's as far as it goes", they're pretty much trolling the audience.

Scots Taffer on 23/12/2011 at 09:00

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Then I guess he's trolling? Not sure what you want me to say.

I think with the very sly and self-aware marketing choices they are making that Scott is saying this is a "spiritual successor" to the Alien franchise. It's a very calculated move.

I'm not blind - I can see all of the parallels in the art and audio direction, Obviously the presence of the space jockey and that ship is straight out of Alien and yes, even the way it displayed Prometheus is EXACTLY the same as the Alien/Aliens titles (and made me grin), but every single media release about this movie since it was titled is that it is NOT an Alien prequel/sequel.

I imagine this all takes a long time before Alien and that the story around the space jockey will be an entirely self-contained narrative with no references to xenos etc. And yes, I think that story will be about mankind's origins being alien in nature.

Edit: Bang on, Sulphur, that's exactly what I think it will be and to be perfectly frank I think the divorce from the formula will be the single most creatively liberating feature of the movie..

Firefreak on 23/12/2011 at 10:31

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Thanks - Well, I'm easy - that trailer truly got me excited, finally a SciFi flick to look forward to again.

This is me, avoiding any further spoilers or misguided ideas from this thread, signing off.