The Big Picture

Like he did on the set of
Alien
, Ridley Scott didn’t provide the
Prometheus
cast with all the details when shooting a particular scene in order to capture their authentic reactions.
Scott didn’t tell actress Kate Dickie that a hammerpede was going to shoot out of a fake corpse on set.
Unlike its predecessors,
Prometheus
explores more visceral horror and uses graphic violence to explore different themes.

Since Prometheus marked his first return to the science fiction genre in several years, Ridley Scott went back to his roots for the prequel — and in more ways than one. Going back to the famous chestburster scene in Alien forty-five years ago, the director has always enjoyed scaring his actors half to death, and the prequel continues this minor tradition. Although her role in Prometheus is relatively small, Kate Dickie was the latest actor to be subjected to Scott’s trickery during the scene where Millburn (Rafe Spall) is killed, with the serpentine prop eliciting a genuine reaction from her.

Even without such moments, the shooting was still a difficult one for many of the actors, with the surgery scene being particularly intense for Noomi Rapace. Such scenes serve to demonstrate just how different Prometheus is from its predecessors, featuring horror that can feel much more visceral and graphic by comparison. For a creation story with religious and mythological themes, one should not be surprised that the film takes a more repulsive and intimate approach to its biggest scare tactics in the origin story of a franchise that is just as resilient as the monsters its characters are fighting.

Prometheus Following clues to the origin of mankind, a team finds a structure on a distant moon, but they soon realize they are not alone.Release Date June 8, 2012 Main Genre Sci-Fi Writers Jon Spaihts , Damon Lindelof Runtime 124 Expand

How Ridley Scott Gave Kate Dickie the Fright of Her Life
In Prometheus, humans are journeying to distant worlds in hopes of learning about the origin of humanity in an era long before Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) first fought the xenomorphs. Given that this is an Alien film, it’s easy to guess that the mission Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) has led ends in tragedy and disaster. The franchise is well known for its many casualties, but such killings often start very sparingly and the prequel is no exception. During their first hostile encounter with life on this new planet, most of the crew get back to the ship and only two, Fifield (Sean Harris) and Millburn, are left stranded in a temple created by the Engineers. With spectacularly bad judgment, the reckless Millburn approaches a serpentine alien, which strangles him to death from within and gives Fifield a face full of acid for his efforts to help. When the rest of the crew discover what is left of Millburn, a medic is startled by the still living alien leaping from his gaping mouth.

Although Dickie has only a small role in the film, Ridley Scott made sure her few days on set were memorable by making her the latest victim of the classic jump scare. Since the cast was not allowed to view the storyboards of the film, they had no actual idea about what was coming as the alien prop was launched from the mouth of the dummy only inches away from them. Already unnerved by the decaying state of the fake corpse, Dickie was completely caught off guard, and her screams of terror in the film are entirely genuine. The scene itself is brief and nowhere near the best moment of the film, but it still highlights the authenticity that Scott demands from even his minor actors.

When Producing the Alien Franchise, Deception Is an Art Form

Although he is primarily known as one of the best directors of all time, Ridley Scott also has a reputation for being both precise and flexible with his actors on the set. By his own admission, even in a healthy environment, he still enjoys secretly toying with his performers, and this trait can be seen even in the origin of the franchise. The chestburster scene not only featured real animal organs in place of fake blood but was so stressful that Veronica Cartwright fainted after the cameras had stopped rolling. In addition to being one of the most famous horror scenes of all time, the practical effects were advanced for their era, so much so that an infamous perfectionist like Stanley Kubrick was left totally stunned by the achievement. Given the nature of the scene, the cast knew that an alien would emerge and some of them were allowed to see the puppet, but they did not anticipate the event would happen so suddenly and violently. Today, the scene has become one of the most parodied in history, and its shocking nature gave birth, literally and figuratively, to what might now be the most famous depiction of an alien in cinema.

While many films have been known to go to extreme lengths to get genuine reactions from their actors, the Alien franchise has long had a tradition of capturing unscripted moments and employing deception for its personal benefit. As difficult as the first film was for the entire crew during filming, the sequel was even more complicated. Aside from the famous “Game Over” speech by Bill Paxtonbeing improvised on set, James Cameron also took his inspiration from Ridley and essentially tricked a reluctant Sigourney Weaver into joining the project. While the film further projected her into stardom even more than the original, she was also ironically the crucial mediator when the cast and director inevitably started to bump heads.

Related Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’ Isn’t Like the Alien Movies, and That’s Why It’s Good Ridley Scott interprets the source material differently but still gives us a powerful film.

‘Prometheus’ Is a Different Beast From Its Predecessors

Although it is clearly a part of the horror genre, the Alien franchise has often explored different themes and styles throughout its lifetime. For instance, while horror elements are still clearly present, Aliens is arguably closer to a war movie than the slasher style of the original film, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Continuing this big trend, Prometheus is closer to a mythological creation story, reflecting many religious themes of procreation and human sin. Most evidently, this is seen in the title itself, a reference to the Titan from Greek mythology who gifted humanity with knowledge through fire, but it also manifests through the relationship of Shaw and Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green). During the film, their sexual encounter directly leads to the creation of the first ever xenomorph through the use of Shaw as a carrier. Despite saving them from the Engineer in the short term, it not only contributes to great misfortune down the road, but Shaw is brutally punished for her lapse of judgment. Nowhere is this clearer than the surgery scene, where she is forced to bear witness through her own eyes to the birth of the closest thing space has to a hellspawn.

Unlike slasher films, which often thrive through their excessive nature, Alien is much more atmospheric with its horror, taking advantage of the claustrophobic nature of space but never being truly graphic with its kills. As the exception to this rule, Prometheus does not have many brutal killings, at least in terms of blood and gore, but the film more than makes up for itwith a cesarean section scene. Written to explicitly invoke fears of a botched pregnancy, the scene was nearly as grueling to film as it looked, far more intimate and repulsive than even what John Hurt had to endure as the first chest-bursting victim. Although Noomi Rapace insisted upon using practical effects and a dummy was created for specific incision shots, that did not make it any less intense to shoot, as she still needed to go to a very stressful place to capture the grim emotions required for such an event. The actress did not emerge entirely unscathed, either, as she later confided that she was left with nightmares for weeks after filming was completed, although she had no regrets about working on the project.

Although it feels very different from its predecessors and never got the sequel it deserved, Prometheus still has plenty that fans of the series can appreciate. Not only does the film expand the lore of the franchise, but it also continues traditions behind the scenes and uses graphic violence to explore different themes in a way no other installment had done before. For a series often plagued with production problems, to the point of some directors disowning their own work in retrospect, it remains nice to know the actors can appreciate a good prank on the set and capture grim violence without needing to fear an unsafe environment. Well, most of the time, anyway.

Where Does the Alien Franchise Go After ‘Prometheus’?
Image via 20th Century Fox

Initially, Prometheus was meant to be the start of a new trilogy, allowing the sequel to explore more religious themes and the backstory of the Engineers. However, the series soon went in a different direction with Alien: Covenant, with little involvement from Scott himself. Although the film helped bridge the gap between Prometheus and the first Alien film, it never earned a sequel, either. Since then, the series has moved on in two very different directions.

On the big screen, the franchise will continue with Alien: Romulus, which takes place between the first and second films with an entirely different crew. Taking influences from both films, director Fede Álvarez will attempt to pay tribute to both, while still creating something new. Needless to say, this is easier said than done and Cailee Spaeny remarked that making her lead character the new Ellen Ripley would be an impossible task. “I could never be her. But I injected whatever I have in me into that character, and tried to make it three-dimensional.” The series will also make its television debut with a new series, simply titled Alien. Taking place seventy years in the future and three decades before the original film, the series will tackle the birth of the infamous Weyland-Yutani Corporation and will be the first installment to take place on Earth. As for the events of the two prequel films, showrunner Noah Hawley has stated that, while he has respect for them, the technology and world building will be much closer to the first two movies.

Prometheus is available to watch on Hulu in the U.S.

Watch on Hulu