Trivia / Prometheus

• All-Star Cast:
  • Noomi Rapace as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw.
  • Charlize Theron as Meredith Vickers.
  • Idris Elba as Captain Janek.
  • Michael Fassbender as David.
  • Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland.
  • Patrick Wilson as Shaw's father.
  • Benedict Wong as Ravel.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Charlize Theron was originally cast as Elizabeth Shaw, but had to decline the role due to scheduling conflicts. Later, another change in schedule freed Theron to do the film, thus allowing her to take the role of Meredith Vickers, as Noomi Rapace had already taken the role of Shaw.
• Creator Backlash:
  • A relatively mild case, as Ridley Scott still likes the film, but during the release of Alien: Covenant he admitted he'd completely misjudged what the fans would want from his return to the franchise.
  • Jon Spaihts, the original writer of the film when it was called Alien: Engineers has hinted that he is unhappy with the final product and wasn't happy at all with the decision to bring Damon Lindelof aboard.
  • Damon Lindelof had referred to himself as being "snubbed" by the Razzies for his work on this movie.
• The Danza: One of the mercenaries, Vladimir, was portrayed by Vladimir Furdik. Later material gives almost every character not given a forename in the film the same first name as their actor- Idris Janek, Rafe Millburn, Kate Ford, etc.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Prior to the film's release, Ridley Scott said that 20 minutes of deleted scenes would be included on the home video release of the film. Several moments seen in the trailers are not present in the film - most notably, the mutated Fifield attack scene was intended to be much longer and set at a different point in the film (happening just as Weyland, Ford and the mercenaries head out for the structure).
  • Peter Weyland's conversation with the Engineer was originally longer. His motivation for contacting the Engineers was driven by his search for immortality. The Engineer could have killed Peter and David in reaction to wanting this knowledge. In the final version, there is no indication why the Engineer is lashing out.
• Enforced Method Acting: In the scene where Hammerpede erupts from a corpse's mouth, director Ridley Scott controlled the puppet using wires and made sure that nobody on set told actress Kate Dickie about what was about to happen. As a result, her startled screaming reaction was completely real.
• Executive Meddling: A fairly egregious example: it was the studio who hired Damon Lindelof to 'edit' Jon Spaihts' original script; if you watch the making-of doc The Furious Gods it becomes clear that this muddled too-many-cooks factor is what led to a lot of the confusing and unclear plot elements. Spaihts flat-out says that he wasn't thrilled with the decision to hire Lindelof, but understands that the studios wanted a well-known name in the credits.
• Fake Nationality: Swede Noomi Rapace playing a British woman. German-born Irishman Michael Fassbender playing an "English" android. Brits Idris Elba and Rafe Spall playing an American. And so on.
  • Rapace's native accent trickles through quite a lot, which is a little jarring, especially as her younger self is played by a child actress with a clearly native English accent.
  • Subtly lampshaded in story - David bases his accent and mannerisms on Peter O'Toole's performance of Lawrence of Arabia - another Irish actor playing a Fake Brit.
• Flip-Flop of God/Shrug of God:
  • Whether or not it's an Alien prequel. Upon actual viewing it most certainly is. Supposedly, however, the (hoped-for) resulting franchise is going to go its own way in regards to plot, presumably focusing more on the Engineers. This turns it into some ungodly hybrid of prequel, Spin-Off series from Alien and Backdoor Pilot for Alien.
  • Another Flip-Flop occurs in regards to the Engineers/Space Jockeys. In Alien, the signal picked up by the crew of the Nostromo is revealed to be a warning to stay away, and some of the characters muse that the race must have been extremely noble to make their last act such a warning (not just for their own kind, but any species). In Prometheus, the Engineers/Space Jockeys are revealed to be nowhere near that noble, and according to Word of God now, actually are all monstrous assholes. Then again, it HAS been nearly 35 years since Alien, long enough for Ridley Scott to change his mind/get more cynical.
  • Whether Peter Weyland's company was Weyland Industries or Weyland Corporation. The original script and official website for Prometheus use the former, but the film uses the latter to distance itself away from the AvP series.
• Lying Creator: Ridley Scott seemingly made some real effort to misdirect people about the film, likely to create some degree of surprise when it was actually released.
  • He constantly moved back and forth over whether the film was a prequel to Alien to the point it was finally "confirmed" as being loosely set in the same universe. The actual film is definitively a prequel and firmly part of the Alien canon with several notable nods to the film. Then again looking at all the promotional features and trailers all but confirms it anyway.
  • He also claimed that Vickers was the Final Girl from the outset. During the film, there are some hints the character could be this after all. However, it turns out to be a Red Herring, as only Shaw and David survive.
  • Lastly he claimed that there would be no xenomorphs. However, a form of xenomorph makes a brief appearance in the last scene.
• Method Acting / Enforced Method Acting: All over the place. As seen in the making-of documentary The Furious Gods, Scott repeatedly told the crew not to tell the actors certain things or to let them see storyboards to procure more genuine responses, notably in the scene where a snake-like creature bursts from the dead Millburn's mouth; the actors were unaware that that was going to happen, and Kate Dickie's shriek of surprise is quite real. Theron also noted that she was very nervous about (repeatedly) setting the stunt man on fire for the scene in which Vickers kills Holloway, thus giving the character a believably conflicted attitude. (Her mild Heroic BSoD over it is expanded upon in a deleted scene with Janek.) And mutant!Fifield was originally going to be an entirely-CGI creation, but they eventually decided to let actor Sean Harris do the scene himself with extensive prosthetic makeup. Harris was perfectly willing to be set on fire for the sequence, prompting even Scott to call him a "crazy bastard."
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The idea of alien buildings containing Xenomorph-related perils was in Dan O'Bannon's original Alien first draft. The same draft had the crew taking the Engineer's head with them to analyze, and hinted at the existence of Trilobite-like creatures through some hieroglyphics inside the building.
  • In one of the screenplay drafts for Alien, there was a sex scene between Ripley and Dallas, to show how crew members would engage in casual sex during long space travels, simply to fulfill their needs. Ridley Scott never filmed the scene, but the idea was reused for this film in the exchange between Vickers and Janek.
• Troubled Production: Like previous installments in the Alien franchise, the film ran into a lot of this:
  • The film was originally envisioned to be a straight-up prequel to Alien, via a script written by Jon Spaihts (who was in-demand at the time due to his previous script being on the unofficial Hollywood "black list" of best screenplays) called "Alien: Engineers".
  • Ridley Scott then contacted Damon Lindelof for advice on the script, and was told to rein in many of the parts that made it an identifiable Alien film (including the fact that it was originally set on LV-426, the site of the Derelict Ship from the first two films) and make it an original creation. This, coupled with Spaihts supposedly constraining Scott's vision, led to Lindelof being hired to rewrite the screenplay. It took another four drafts (and more than a year of pre-production time) to get the script to a point where everyone was happy with it, and even then the cast and crew (as evidenced by their remarks in the Blu-Ray materials) seemed convinced that they were shooting a prequel that led into the original film.
  • The character of Elizabeth Shaw was originally named Elizabeth Watts, but was renamed due to fear of confusion for Fox's President of Production, Emma Watts. It took the CEO of the company, Tom Rothman, to name the film Prometheus because the filmmakers couldn't decide on what title to use (with their previous suggestion being "Paradise").
  • Following this, the film ran into trouble in the editing room, with a behind-the-scenes tug-of-war between Scott and Fox executives over various aspects of the film. There was much confusion on set and in public forums over whether the film was intended to be PG-13 or R-rated, with Scott stoking the fires for months by apparently submitting to FOX's demand to make a PG-13 cut for theatrical release. The main hangup was Noomi Rapace's "surgery scene", where she removes an alien embryo via self-surgery. Although the film was eventually released in an R-rated cut, chunks of the plot were taken out in the editing room - notably, a much longer final confrontation between Shaw and the Engineer, and an entirely different Fifield attack sequence that took place just as Weyland and the Mercenaries were leaving for the Engineer ship.
  • Charlize Theron had significant trouble running in the Icelandic shooting location, during the sequence where she and Rapace run from the rolling Engineer ship.
• Viral Marketing: Includes a futuristic TED conference with Peter Weyland, the unveiling of the new "David 8" model and an "official website" linking to Weyland Industries, detailing the timeline of the company and its accomplishments. When the end credits finish rolling, there is a Weyland Industries logo and a date; 10.11.12.
• What Could Have Been: See the franchise's page.
• Working Title: Paradise.

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