Taking a break from defending his show “Lost” from detractors on Twitter, along with writing some of the most talked-about upcoming studio projects, “Prometheus” scribe Damon Lindelof sat down with MTV to talk Ridley Scott‘s “Alien” prequel/sequel/spinoff and gave a few hints that may be a bit spoiler-filled for some. Careful, you’ve been warned.
With the official “Prometheus” synopsis now on the web (a newer, slightly tweaked version just hit Facebook), it appears as if MTV decided this would be the perfect time to roll their interview with Lindelof from the past summer’s Comic-Con, and we have to admit he drops some intriguing morsels of info about Scott’s latest sci-fi endeavor.
First off, he discusses the casting of Michael Fassbender, who is set to play a robot in what Lindelof calls a “Blade Runner” fashion. This suggests that Fassbender will be doing a little more than walking around as a scrap of metal, with Lindelof adding, “He plays a robot. One of the things that evokes the idea of ‘Blade Runner’ is, ‘What does the movie look like from the robot’s point of view?’ If you were to ask him, ‘What do you think about all of this? What’s going on? What do you think about these humans who are around you?,’ wouldn’t it be cool if we found a way for that robot to answer those questions?”
Lindelof goes on to add that much like Paul Reiser‘s character in “Aliens,” Charlize Theron will be representing a “corporate entity” in the film — playing the head of “the company” — a common thread in the “Alien” series. Lindelof even implies that Theron got hand- on during the creative process as well, adding, “I feel like Charlize brought a new spin on that old variation. It’s a remix…I don’t think she’s slimy. She’s not the fast-talking, snake-oil face of the company. By the way, ‘What company is she a face of?,’ I think is a big part of the fun. As we were developing the script, she had some really cool ideas that made it not the suit you’re used to.”
Finally, for anyone worried that Lindelof is going to keep this star-studded ensemble intact for the film’s entire running time, Lindelof assures fans of the series that he’s got “Alien” bloodlust as well. “I think one of the really cool things about the first ‘Alien,’ is, if you watch it cold, Ripley is kind of in the background like one of the crew members, and you’re like, ‘Skerrit’s [who played Captain Dallas] the hero of the movie,’ and he’s one of the first to go. And then you’re like, ‘It’s [the engineer played by] Harry Dean Stanton.’ And, no, he’s gone…and suddenly Sigourney Weaver, in the last 40 minutes of the movie, is the only one left alive. I think the idea of building a really cool ensemble and again presenting the audience with like, ‘Who’s going to be left standing at the end of this movie? Maybe all of them. Probably not,’ [that’s] part of the fun of what we set out to do.”
We wonder what Scott would have to say about the stream of information Lindelof poured out to MTV, especially since he didn’t seem eager to allow impatient fanboys to spoil the film for themselves beforehand. Anyways, Lindelof is saying a lot of what we want to hear about the project, specifically that it’ll hew close to the spirit of the original “Alien” series, even if it isn’t necessarily a part of that bloodline directly. So who will be left alive at the end of this one? Theron? Fassbender? Rapace? We’ll find out next summer.