Ridley Scott's Alien prequel Prometheus was highly anticipated by sci-fi fans everywhere. To a certain extent, though, it ended up disappointing many. The most common qualms fans had with the movie can be found in this hilarious Honest Trailers parody. But jokes apart, many people were definitely expecting a different movie.
Now, after a fan site published an early draft of the script, we can take a peek at an alternate universe in which Prometheus is really a different movie. How different? So much so that it's not even called Prometheus. Its title is Alien: Engineers.
The script was written by Jon Spaihts before Damon Lindelof, of Lost fame, took over the screenwriting duty. After the leak, Spaihts confirmed it was legit. "That's authentic," he tweeted.
In Spaihts' version, the movie features more aliens — including "facehuggers" — than the actual Prometheus. And they have a prominent role as well. In this version it's a facehugger that infects one of the main characters, Charlie Holloway, while investigating the engineers. Then Holloway has a "chestburster" come out of him while having sex with his partner, Elizabeth Shaw (who is named Jocelyn Watts in the early script).
To find out more about the movie Prometheus could have been, watch the video above.
BONUS: The Secrets of 'Prometheus' Explained by Reddit
This Reddit thread explains that we were seeing the creation of life on a planet. (According to Ridley Scott, whether this planet is Earth or not is irrelevant.) This is how Engineers brought life to otherwise lifeless planets. This single Engineer is dropped off by his people's ship and left to a mission that results in his own demise.
Once ingested by the Engineer, the black goo merges with and breaks apart its host. (The Engineer is a bit like the fertilizer it needs to jump start growth.)
Reddit users discuss whether or not the Engineer was aware his task would cause his own destruction. In his initial post, Cavalorn points out the similarities of this scene to the "Thy will be done" moment during the eve of Jesus's death, implying that the Engineer was aware of the price of his actions.
We are then led to assume that the goo-infused DNA of the Engineer is spread by the water and creates life on the planet.
Image courtesy of flickr, m'sieur rico
Darthfuzzy posits that the black goo is "sin" incarnate: "I think that the slime makes more sense if it was explained as 'sin' in physical form. If we're going off the Christian undertones and parallels, the black slime is literally the mud that created Adam and Eve (aka the Primordial Soup), and the Apple that Eve took. In the hands of the creator, the slime creates life. In the hands of someone who is self-interested, the slime takes on its own creation and evolution, until it leads to death incarnation."
stubble has the same basic idea but interprets the slime as Chi. "I think the black slime is better described as Chi (Qi) which can manifest in both positive and negative aspects (yin and yang) and develop along either route, accordingly. Especially as the black slime is a powerful creation catalyst in the first instance but only become a destructive force later."
Before Shaw and crew enter the chamber with the vases, they remove their helmets, directly exposing themselves to the atmosphere. The slime picks up on the human's presence, and since the Engineers were very mad at the humans (more on that in the next slide) it took on a destructive form. With this destructive form, the black slime transformed simple worms into dangerous mutant creatures.
Since David is an android and lacks actual life, the goo didn't react to him. Therefore, he needed to use Holloway to elicit a reaction. (More on why David did this in another slide.)
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
While David is an android and is supposed to be void of any human emotion or motivations of his own, you might have found yourself questioning some of his actions.
By "poisoning" Holloway with the black slime, David ultimately brought about Holloway's death. Why did he do it?
Here is literatim's theory: "I think he infected Holloway to see if the black goo would heal him or give him some kind of super human abilities, so he could heal Weyland later."
McFearless10 points out that David stealthily got Holloway's consent before poisoning him. After David asks Holloway what he is willing to do for the mission, Holloway replies, "Anything and everything."
Bam, David has consent and a mission. Perfectly logical.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
If there was nothing except for death-evolution goo in store for us, why bring humans to this moon?
There are a few differing ideas among Redditors. One theory mirrors Shaw and Holloway's in the film: The Engineers regularly checked in on mankind's progress and left clues to be followed when man had become advanced enough. However, once things went awry 2,000 years ago (Space Jesus), the Engineers switched their welcoming committee for a death trap.
If the "incident" 2,000 years ago wiped out all of the Engineers, perhaps the Engineers were caught off guard and their plan was incomplete.
sgtpppr explains, "They had stockpiled all the black goo weapon, but there was an accident and the weapon wiped them out before they could send the payload. Humans made it out there thinking it was an invitation when it wasn't. I saw the engineers as both creators and destroyers. David openly said that sometimes, to create, you have to destroy first."
There isn't really a definitive answer to why the Engineers led man to LV-223. But Redditors largely agree that if the Engineers wanted to simply wipe out mankind, they would have just flown to Earth and done so.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
Jesus?
In order to understand why the Engineers were intent on destroying humanity, Ridley Scott provided a bit of backstory in a Movies.com interview.
In earlier versions of Prometheus, the Engineers sent an ambassador figure (Jesus) to Earth to correct the wrongs that mankind was doing. And, what did mankind do to Jesus? They killed him. This angered the Engineers and caused them to make a plan of destruction for mankind. As Cavalorn says, "Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him."
While this idea was scrapped from the film because Scott and team thought it was "too on the nose," it definitely could help fill in some of the story for us.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
Darthfuzzy expands on his idea that the black goo is "sin" incarnate -- it affects its hosts differently based on the individual's motives.
Of the worms, Darthfuzzy says, "They have no sins. They only exist to survive. Note that the worms killed the two scientists, but that the scientists showed no chest busting. The worms did not reproduce, they only killed. They did it to survive, and this is where the worms' DNA comes into play...[T]he more that the geologist struggled, the harder the worm tried to kill. It has no self-awareness and no consciousness. It retained some of the properties of the Xenomorph, but not a pure form of the xenomorph. Thus, it only leaped in evolution, and didn't embody sin."
When Shaw was impregnated with the alien fetus, she suffered the results of the black goo meeting humanity in an unnatural manner. Why did the fetus look like a mutant squid? Redditors are just as baffled as everyone else.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
At the end of Prometheus, we see an ancestor of the Xenomorph from the original Alien film.
How did this powerful species evolve so quickly out of so few evolutionary links? Darthfuzzy asserts, "The Xenomorph is an anti-creator. It is death incarnate. It is the grim reaper. It is created from sin, and once it embodies all the sins, it takes on the ultimate Xenomorph form. This explains why, at the end of the movie, the Xenomorph is not a perfect evolution. It has only reproduced in two ways, lust and rage...I also believe that the xenomorph can only be created from a higher thinking life form. Because the DNA of the Human and Engineer are almost exact, the Xenomorph couldn't evolve from the worms."
Image courtesy of flickr, Pug50
This Reddit thread explains that we were seeing the creation of life on a planet. (According to Ridley Scott, whether this planet is Earth or not is irrelevant.) This is how Engineers brought life to otherwise lifeless planets. This single Engineer is dropped off by his people's ship and left to a mission that results in his own demise.
Once ingested by the Engineer, the black goo merges with and breaks apart its host. (The Engineer is a bit like the fertilizer it needs to jump start growth.)
Reddit users discuss whether or not the Engineer was aware his task would cause his own destruction. In his initial post, Cavalorn points out the similarities of this scene to the "Thy will be done" moment during the eve of Jesus's death, implying that the Engineer was aware of the price of his actions.
We are then led to assume that the goo-infused DNA of the Engineer is spread by the water and creates life on the planet.
Image courtesy of flickr, m'sieur rico
Darthfuzzy posits that the black goo is "sin" incarnate: "I think that the slime makes more sense if it was explained as 'sin' in physical form. If we're going off the Christian undertones and parallels, the black slime is literally the mud that created Adam and Eve (aka the Primordial Soup), and the Apple that Eve took. In the hands of the creator, the slime creates life. In the hands of someone who is self-interested, the slime takes on its own creation and evolution, until it leads to death incarnation."
stubble has the same basic idea but interprets the slime as Chi. "I think the black slime is better described as Chi (Qi) which can manifest in both positive and negative aspects (yin and yang) and develop along either route, accordingly. Especially as the black slime is a powerful creation catalyst in the first instance but only become a destructive force later."
Before Shaw and crew enter the chamber with the vases, they remove their helmets, directly exposing themselves to the atmosphere. The slime picks up on the human's presence, and since the Engineers were very mad at the humans (more on that in the next slide) it took on a destructive form. With this destructive form, the black slime transformed simple worms into dangerous mutant creatures.
Since David is an android and lacks actual life, the goo didn't react to him. Therefore, he needed to use Holloway to elicit a reaction. (More on why David did this in another slide.)
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
While David is an android and is supposed to be void of any human emotion or motivations of his own, you might have found yourself questioning some of his actions.
By "poisoning" Holloway with the black slime, David ultimately brought about Holloway's death. Why did he do it?
Here is literatim's theory: "I think he infected Holloway to see if the black goo would heal him or give him some kind of super human abilities, so he could heal Weyland later."
McFearless10 points out that David stealthily got Holloway's consent before poisoning him. After David asks Holloway what he is willing to do for the mission, Holloway replies, "Anything and everything."
Bam, David has consent and a mission. Perfectly logical.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
If there was nothing except for death-evolution goo in store for us, why bring humans to this moon?
There are a few differing ideas among Redditors. One theory mirrors Shaw and Holloway's in the film: The Engineers regularly checked in on mankind's progress and left clues to be followed when man had become advanced enough. However, once things went awry 2,000 years ago (Space Jesus), the Engineers switched their welcoming committee for a death trap.
If the "incident" 2,000 years ago wiped out all of the Engineers, perhaps the Engineers were caught off guard and their plan was incomplete.
sgtpppr explains, "They had stockpiled all the black goo weapon, but there was an accident and the weapon wiped them out before they could send the payload. Humans made it out there thinking it was an invitation when it wasn't. I saw the engineers as both creators and destroyers. David openly said that sometimes, to create, you have to destroy first."
There isn't really a definitive answer to why the Engineers led man to LV-223. But Redditors largely agree that if the Engineers wanted to simply wipe out mankind, they would have just flown to Earth and done so.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
Jesus?
In order to understand why the Engineers were intent on destroying humanity, Ridley Scott provided a bit of backstory in a Movies.com interview.
In earlier versions of Prometheus, the Engineers sent an ambassador figure (Jesus) to Earth to correct the wrongs that mankind was doing. And, what did mankind do to Jesus? They killed him. This angered the Engineers and caused them to make a plan of destruction for mankind. As Cavalorn says, "Yeah. The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him."
While this idea was scrapped from the film because Scott and team thought it was "too on the nose," it definitely could help fill in some of the story for us.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
Darthfuzzy expands on his idea that the black goo is "sin" incarnate -- it affects its hosts differently based on the individual's motives.
Of the worms, Darthfuzzy says, "They have no sins. They only exist to survive. Note that the worms killed the two scientists, but that the scientists showed no chest busting. The worms did not reproduce, they only killed. They did it to survive, and this is where the worms' DNA comes into play...[T]he more that the geologist struggled, the harder the worm tried to kill. It has no self-awareness and no consciousness. It retained some of the properties of the Xenomorph, but not a pure form of the xenomorph. Thus, it only leaped in evolution, and didn't embody sin."
When Shaw was impregnated with the alien fetus, she suffered the results of the black goo meeting humanity in an unnatural manner. Why did the fetus look like a mutant squid? Redditors are just as baffled as everyone else.
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp
At the end of Prometheus, we see an ancestor of the Xenomorph from the original Alien film.
How did this powerful species evolve so quickly out of so few evolutionary links? Darthfuzzy asserts, "The Xenomorph is an anti-creator. It is death incarnate. It is the grim reaper. It is created from sin, and once it embodies all the sins, it takes on the ultimate Xenomorph form. This explains why, at the end of the movie, the Xenomorph is not a perfect evolution. It has only reproduced in two ways, lust and rage...I also believe that the xenomorph can only be created from a higher thinking life form. Because the DNA of the Human and Engineer are almost exact, the Xenomorph couldn't evolve from the worms."
Image courtesy of flickr, Pug50
Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
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