The original draft of the film ‘Alien: Engineers’ errr ‘Prometheus’ penned by Jon Spaihts, surfaced on the intertubes this past week. Personally, I didn’t think ‘Prometheus’ was a bad film when I caught it over the summer. In fact, I went to a midnight screening AND pre-ordered the Blu-Ray leaving my significant other to question ‘You liked it that much?’. I did and I do. I still do.
A few days after the Spaihts script ‘leaked’, Collider.com posted up ‘Paradise’ which was confirmed by Damon Lindelof to be his early draft of ‘Prometheus’.
So far, I have only read the Spaihts version (I’m sure I’ll get around to ‘Paradise’ soon enough). In comparison from the leak to the movie that was made, both have their strengths and their weaknesses. My gut impression, I think I liked the direction that Lindelofs re-writes took: it’s a prequel that isn’t trying desperately hard to fill in the blanks from the previous films, which is, in my opinion the best kind of prequel. However, the Spaihts script had a LOT more Aliens for an ‘Alien’ movie.
Granted, if you haven’t seen the movie…be warned as I am going to get into A LOT of spoilery tidbits.
What I liked:
-Different types of goo.
In ‘Prometheus’ the movie, if you consume it, it breaks down your DNA and creates new life. If you touch it, it changes your DNA to a violent creation. Is this to wipe out species on planets and restart life or a MacGuffin? With Spaiths’ script, it creates a bug that injects you with the “poison” and knowledge/evolution gets sped up. I like the idea of obvious human roots, infected man impregnates non infected woman who gives birth to the literal mother of all Facehuggers.
-Weyland’s motivation for funding the mission is reasonable and consistent with broader Alien mythology. And as a bonus, he’s not on the ship.
The companies tagline is ‘Building better worlds’ so it’s more appropriate given what we know about the legacy Weyland left behind. You could say that Terraforming, and the Fountain of Youth play essentially the same role in both versions of the story. Weyland is interested in Terraforming because it allows him to create and engineer worlds or to be like a god. Defeating death and becoming eternal does as well.
Regardless both show Weyland as a man with a huge ego and god complex. This is a man who sought to break free of any limitations or boundaries placed upon him. That type of person isn’t going to fund an expedition like this just so he can keep some alien technology. He wants to meet the “engineers” because he believes he is like them and do whatever it takes to pursue his selfish desires.
-Fifield and Milburn are grunts, not scientists.
Milburn and Fifield both still get lost and the script goes ahead and recognizes they’re idiots:
They raise cups and drink. Even the crew moved by the moment. But Janek smiles crookedly and toasts again.
JANEK To Milburn and Fifield.
The first human beings to freak out, get lost, and sleep in their suits in the ruins of an alien civilization.
-Watts (Shaw) kicks ass. The surgery scene is even more visceral and tense.
Watts (Shaw) is outright implanted with a Chestburster, not a hybrid. The “twist” is that as Shaw regains consciousness, she sees the auto-doc arms still working on repairing her abdomen, and sees the Alien warrior outside chewing up the soldier’s body.
Reading it, its this REALLY nail biting scene, race against time, intercutting between if the Xenomorph notices her, the timer on the surgery winding down, and then ultimately the pod opening.
-Did I say there are more ‘Aliens’?
You got Scarabs (basically the goo), the Hammerpede (snake monster), the boneless Facehugger/Chestburster that becomes a white proto-alien, standard Facehuggers and Xenomorphs, mutated Fifield (who is becoming some sort of Xenomorph), and the ‘Ultramorph’ (a jumbo Xenomorph that pops out of the last engineer).
-LV426
The original draft places the Engineer outpost on LV-426, which is the same planet from the first two films. It confirms my initial suspicion that it was always supposed to be the same planet, and that the crashed ship is the one found in ‘Alien’, and that the distress beacon the Nostromo answered could very well have come from the lifeboat in this film. It seems to add a bit more continuity and connection between the original quadrilogy and this prequel. Prometheus is set on LV-226 instead.
What I didn’t like:
-The ship being called ‘Magellan’.
It’s nitpicky I know, but ‘Prometheus’ has a better ring to it.
-David being more outright villainous
I like a more ambiguous David way better than a straight-up villainous one the way the original script had.
-Too many ripoffs versus homages.
The now-dead formula used in the previous six movies has been kicked enough for me. Ideas that have been wrung dry. Move on. It just feels more like one of the bad sequels, different Aliens running around killing people, evil android that has an agenda. Same old song being a typical prequel. Some things show their age and not in a good way.
-The Ending
Shaw is sans Davids head in this version. In the film, I love that the extreme opposites are the only ones who actually connected with each other throughout ‘Prometheus’. “I am still searching”. Aren’t we all, Shaw? Aren’t we all’.
While the film that was made reeks of a script by committee, I appreciate the direction they took it.
Were the filmmakers trying to purely sever as many “prequel” ties between ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Alien’ as possible? Was the main purpose of the rewrite(s) to remove the more direct references? Were they also trying to avoid a whiff of horror movie trope?
The ‘is there more to life than the horror of being alive?’ theme doesn’t hold together in the Spaihts version the way it does in the finished product.
I’ll choose challenging creativity over rote repetition any day.
-Dagobot