Last week, the first trailer for “Prometheus” debuted on the web, and most of us were pleased with what we saw.
Bloody Disgusting posted stills of the trailer and analyzed what their meanings could be, and I was inspired to do some of my own analysis, not only of the “Prometheus” trailer, but of how it compares to a trailer for 1979’s “Alien.” I’ll be referring to some of what Bloody Disgusting has already highlighted along the way.
But first, let’s take a look at both trailers to get our bearings.
Here’s the 2011 “Prometheus” trailer:
And here’s a trailer, (one of multiple ones I’ll bet) for 1979’s“Alien”:
I watched both, and a few things came to mind.
First, in both trailers, the sound and background music is punctuated by a high-pitched whining / screaming sound. It’s likely meant to mimic a real-life human scream and lets us know we’re watching the trailer for films that have been made to scare us.
I found the whining / screaming sound in the “Prometheus” trailer jarring. It seemed to interrupt the smooth flow of everything else that we hear, which could’ve have been the studio’s point for putting it in there in the first place.
Second, both trailers include a statuesque female character running, presumably in panic or distress. Notice how Charlize Theron starts running at around 0:36 in the “Prometheus” trailer and compare it with Sigourney Weaver running at around 1:00 in the “Alien” one.
Both Theron and Weaver are tall and striking, and both are shown running in their respective trailers. It remains to be seen, however, if their characters will be similar. We all know that Ellen Ripley, played by Weaver, was the heroine of “Alien,” but Theron’s character may not be the heroine of “Prometheus.” Other articles have claimed that another female character, played by Noomi Rapace, will fill that role.
Both trailers exhibit the same ambience: a futuristic setting with spaceships; remote, dangerous planets; dark, mysterious interiors; and a group of people who seem unprepared for what they’ve encountered.
It’s interesting to note that we see, at 1:41 of the “Alien” trailer, our first glimpse of a scary creature from that film. It’s one of those spidery face hugger creatures that grow in eggs filled with weird, soupy fluid. We see SOMETHING like that at 0:35 in the “Prometheus” trailer when Michael Fassbender’s character picks something slimy up out of a container. It looks like it may be the beginnings of what could grow into one of those spidery creatures, or something like that. This is all theory on my part, but since “Prometheus” is a prequel that sets the stage for “Alien” and explains where the xenomorphs came from, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.
And it’s possible that both trailers are similar in what they DON’T show us. Except for the aforementioned face hugger, the “Alien" trailer doesn’t show us any xenomorphs at all. The “Prometheus” trailer doesn’t show us any of those either, or any other extraterrestrial creatures to speak of (except for the Space Jockey head, or helmet, which shows up at 0:34 on an operating table). But we all know that “Alien” featured one of the most famous and magnificent movie monsters of all time — the trailer just didn’t show it to us. So does that mean the “Prometheus” trailer is hiding a scary monster from us as well? And if it is, will it be the same xenomorph we’ve seen before or something completely different?
There’s only one way to find out, really. It’s just too bad there’s still so much time between now and June 2012, when “Prometheus” actually comes out.