So I was surprised when someone recently described PROMETHEUS as a "maybe-prequel" to ALIEN. I've done everything possible to keep my distance from any PROMETHEUS intel, basing my desire to see it on the rep of the director, the series, and what I've seen in the first couple of trailers.
From that, I was pretty certain that this movie would reveal to us how the shipwreck that Ripley and company discover in ALIEN came to happen. The scale of that shipwreck, along w the fossilized, chest-bursted, remains of the alien pilot(?), seemed to point to a race of giant humanoid dudes. This ship and its crew apparently fell prey to the Alien. I was never quite clear on whether the Alien eggs were cargo or the worst kind of luck for the giant guys, laid in a subterranean chamber of Acheron (or whatever it was called - can't remember) that the ship's crash/landing exposed.
For now, I'm gonna go with cargo.
Jumping back a bit in time... Human archaeologists uncover a message left by extra terrestrial visitors in ancient times, found in the remains of cultures from all over the globe. They decipher it as a map and an invitation. The map leads them to this planetoid and an outpost of the Giants. It being an invitation, they expect to be warmly received. Not exactly what happens. Their arrival wakes the Giants and their outpost from a long sleep. Their mission: return to Earth and wipe it clean of its intelligent spacefaring race so that they can pillage it for its resources and tech (no pesky radiation or the like). Their tool of choice: the Alien.
Hrmm... I wonder if the Giants have an anti-Alien? Or maybe there's some later form of the Alien that is more dormant or docile and we've never lived long enough to observe it...?
Or maybe what they need a race of intelligent hosts - humans - to turn into an army of mature Aliens for use in some star- and centuries-spanning war with another species or culture...? Predators? Hrmm...
Anyhow, the invitation turns out to be bait. A puzzle, a test that only spacefaring cultures can pass. The Giants, for whatever reason, have judged other space travelers to be threats, perhaps to themselves or their dominance, perhaps to the well-being of the galaxy in general. So, they once their outpost fully powers up, it launches its massive ship of eggs at Earth. The naive humans figure it out, almost too late, and end up sacrificing themselves, and probably their beautiful ship, to knock the Giant ship out of the sky.
I wonder who triggers the warning beacon that lures the Nostromo down in the first movie... The humans, or that actual Giant pilot we see fossilized.
This sort of p/re-appearance of the misinterpreted message has me feeling like there may be a motif/plot-resonance between PROMETHEUS and ALIEN the way there was between TRON: LEGACY and the original. Also, the Company regulation android - Fassbender's whoever / Holm's Ash. I could see him being a stealth android, like Ash was. That would fit in the prequel world easily, right?
But hey, like I said at the start, someone called this a "maybe-prequel..."
That got me thinking... What if this happens between ALIEN and ALIENS? Would the Company know anything about what happened in ALIEN before they recover Ripley's shuttle? Well, Mother and Ash communicated enough or had enough classified protocol to follow that they were ready to put an infected member into cryosleep in order to bring a sample of this weaponizable biology back home. We've gotta believe that the Company KNOWS. I mean, establishing Newt's colony before ALIENS is no coincidence, right?
So, when these archaeologists find out that their invitation points to this planetoid, the Company happily underwrites the mission. Maybe these guys visit the Giant ship after Kane and friends, but have the tech and know-how w them to power it back up, or inadvertently trigger it.
Hrmm... And Kane and friends disabled the warning beacon, right? They'd have no clue.
Interrresting. Doesn't change all that much, except maybe on their way in they might encounter some log or record of the Nostromo's encounter that they only decrypt after they land and probably just about when the Giant poop hits the Giant fan, eh?
Right, well, I guess I'll found out later today! =)
In space, no one can hear you scream... Woo-hoo!
Keep on keepin on~
