So Ridley Scott surprised us all a year ago by making good on his promises to 'do an Alien 5' and 'revisit the origins of the Alien/Space Jockey', his tempting musings were later confirmed by the announcement of the quizzically-titled Prequel 'Prometheus'.
Having said he was 'done with' the Xenomorph creature as a concept, as Scott had seen his terrifying beast un-enigmatically jump through hoops for audiences in 3 sequels and 2 terrible spin-offs, and emblazened in the kid-friendly surroundings of Disneyland (much like the dumbing-down of, I suppose, the Daleks - so when's the new Hitler stuffed toy coming out?), but in the DVD commentary for his 1979 arty sci-fi horror masterpiece, Alien, he said that the mystery of the Space Jockey scene was still unexplored.
Now if you know the film Alien, you will know the scene he's talking about. In the spooky 45-minutes of non-event that provide the prelude to the film, 3 astronauts are tricked into visiting a derelict crashed spacecraft on a remote planet. On board they discover the frightening skeleton of an Alien creature known from then on as the 'Space Jockey' - but never seen in the series ever again. Of course, we are introduced to the plague spawned from the eggs (or perhaps, bombs?) that the dead Space Jockey was carrying in his ship, the Xenomorphs, the 'Alien' acknowledged by the film's title, but in none of the subsequent sequels do we ever understand what the Space Jockey was, or why he was carrying his impossibly dangerous cargo of killer hive animals.
That, from all we can assume about the Trailers now released, will finally be addressed in Prometheus, a not-entirely-direct prequel that ignores the Xenomorphs completely, but builds upon both the established mystery of what we *don't know* about the Alien Saga's universe, and expanding on the already well-known antagonists of 'The Company', Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a business-full of immoral suits and their advisorial androids (Synthetics) who seek to exploit the newly-explored Galaxy's secrets for their own superiority.
I'm looking forward to it. In June this year, on a planet illustrated by the black sands of Iceland (a well scouted shooting location, with a dark Alien sheen!) we will get to see whether or not Ridley Scott can make his comeback to sci-fi and create a serious extension of the layered horror he created in the late 70s.
(And apparently, with minimal use of CGi? Which is always the preferable option!)
-LMF
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