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WE CONTINUE TO SUPPORT MICHAEL-AN AWARD WINNING ACTOR

Congratulations to the cast and crew of "12 Years a Slave" winning an Oscar for Best Picture

Michael is currently filming "MacBeth"

Watch "12 Years A Slave" and "Frank" in theaters

Watch "The Counselor" and "12 Years A Slave" on DVD available now

Michael is set to star and produce on a film version of the video game "Assassin's Creed"

Completed projects: X-Men, Untitled Malik project

Upcoming projects Assassin's Creed, Prometheus 2, MacBeth,and more!

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Prometheus interviews with Michael Empty Prometheus interviews with Michael

Post by Admin Sat Mar 17, 2012 7:04 pm

http://collider.com/charlize-theron-michael-fassbender-prometheus-live-chat/152748/

Watch a Live Chat with Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron from PROMETHEUS
by Adam Chitwood Posted:March 17th, 2012 at 10:54 am

Today is a big day for Prometheus fans. Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Damon Lindelof are set to take part in a Prometheus panel at WonderCon later today, after which they’ll host the premiere of the first full trailer for the film followed by a Q&A at AMC’s Downtown Disney. For those of us not currently in the Sunshine State, stars Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron took part in a live chat via the internets. The chat took place this morning, but we’ve got a replay of the Q&A for you to check out after the jump.

Hit the jump to watch Fassbender and Theron answer fan questions, and be sure to check back later today for our coverage from the WonderCon panel and to watch the new trailer in all its glory. Prometheus opens in IMAX 3D on June 8th.

The live chat is currently replaying at Yahoo!, but you can watch an embed of the Q&A below.

Here’s the synopsis for Prometheus:

Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to the genre he helped define, creating an original science fiction epic set in the most dangerous corners of the universe. The film takes a team of scientists and explorers on a thrilling journey that will test their physical and mental limits and strand them on a distant world, where they will discover the answers to our most profound questions and to life’s ultimate mystery.
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Prometheus interviews with Michael Empty Re: Prometheus interviews with Michael

Post by Admin Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:08 pm

http://collider.com/ridley-scott-damon-lindelof-michael-fassbender-prometheus-interview/153243/

Director Ridley Scott, Writer Damon Lindelof and Michael Fassbender Talk PROMETHEUS at WonderCon 2012
by Christina Radish Posted:March 18th, 2012 at 1:34 pm

Described as an action/horror/sci-fi tale about a team of explorers who discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe where they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race, Prometheus, from director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Damon Lindelof made an appearance at WonderCon 2012. Following their presentation, those two talented and imaginative men were joined by in-demand actor Michael Fassbender to talk with the press about the mysterious and highly-anticipated film.

During the interview, Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof, talked about how the technological advancements since Alien have effected Prometheus, how much thought was put into the technology in the film, the importance of focusing on just making a good movie, the score of the film, their approach for what the android would be capable of, and the bigger ideas that could lead to a sequel, while Michael Fassbender talked about what it’s like to play an android. Check out what they had to say after the jump:

Before starting the interview, if you missed the awesome new trailer which premiered during the panel, or the next part of the viral campaign, just click the links.

Question: It’s been awhile since the first Alien film came out, and there have been so many advances in technology. Was that a problem, in terms of writing this, or was that advancement a positive point?

PROMETHEUS-Ridley-Scott-Noomi-RapaceRIDLEY SCOTT: It’s easier to carry it out, but it’s still as difficult to write something. In fact, it’s getting more difficult because there are almost too many movies being made.

DAMON LINDELOF: Yeah, and I think that it would have been really difficult to do a straight-up Alien sequel or Alien prequel because you’re beholden to so many of the things that came before it. To be able to shed that stuff [made it easier]. This was Ridley’s idea. From the screenwriting standpoint, for me, it was really just all about getting a clear sense of what was the movie that he wanted to make. It’s Ridley Scott. The movie is his vision, so I did my best to channel it. We had almost no conversations about any other movies, other then this one, which might have been hubris or it might have been freeing, but it felt good, maybe just because we were drunk.

How much thought was put into the technology that’s in the film, especially with audience expectations being so much greater?

SCOTT: You think about everything, down to the shoe laces. We even had a big argument about the globular helmets. I was certain that I wanted the fully spherical glass helmet. In fact, in my research, I read this biography on Steve Jobs’ life and he talks about how he wanted to make his entire office of this glass, which is called Gorilla Glass, and this guy said, “We don’t make it anymore.” So, Steve Jobs actually then re-opened up the factory and started remaking Gorilla Glass. If I’m in 2083 and I’m going into space, why would I design a helmet that has blind spots. What I want is something where I have 360 [vision]. Glass, by then, will be light and you won’t be able to break it with a bullet.

charlize-theron-idris-elba-prometheus-movie-imageHow did you approach the android and what he would be capable of?

SCOTT: What was important was the story. There’s nothing new about an android. There’s nothing new about a robot. That idea is 800 years old. So then, embrace what it is. By embracing it, he becomes that much more interesting because he’s just part of the ship. In a sense, he’s not just butler, but he’s housekeeper and maintenance man, who legitimately does not need to sleep. From that, then he also becomes extremely useful during the story, as it evolves. There’s a great scene where Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) is actually a bit of a bitch, occasionally, says, “Hey, you, boy!,” to him. I thought that was real cheeky. And then, he says, “Why are you wearing one of those suits? You don’t have to breathe.” It ends up with David (Michael Fassbender) saying, “Not too close, I hope,” referring to being told, “We’re making you guys just like us.” You don’t know who’s insulting who there. That’s when those turn-abouts starts to occur.

What is the mix of genres in this film? How much horror does it offer versus science fiction?

SCOTT: The bottom line is just to make a good movie. Just make a f#%@#&! good movie. It’s got nothing to do with horror or whatever. That’s why there’s only a few really, really great ones. Thereafter, there are only evolutions of copycats. There are two great horror movies that I never got over. One was called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper. I knew I didn’t really want to go see that movie, just by seeing the f#%@#&! poster. But, eventually I had to, as research for Alien. The other great one, with a single idea, was the first Exorcist. Possession of the body by a demon was marvelous. Since then, there have been 900,000 clones of those ideas.

prometheus-noomi-rapaceMICHAEL FASSBENDER: I could never swim in the ocean after seeing Jaws.

SCOTT: We’re trying to come up with a few first notions with Prometheus, and I think we did.

LINDELOF: In this day and age, when you’re trying to market a movie and you say, “It’s a romance. It’s a comedy.” Neither of those are inherent in Prometheus, although there are funny scenes and romantic scenes. I think there’s a lot of action adventure elements to this movie, in terms of looking at it, in comparison to the original Alien. But, the fact that we can’t really put it in that box of, “It’s a this,” is refreshing. I think that there’s a quiet suspense to the movie. It really takes its time. If you have a master filmmaker who’s working with incredibly talented actors, you just have to say, “We’re going to be patient. We do not need to have things exploding, every 10 minutes.” It’s a little bit of an old school approach to filmmaking, in that it trusts the audience to have a little bit of patience. Just as someone who is a fan of these kinds of movies, I’ve been astonished by the patience of the fan base, in terms of how little we’re telling them about the movie. We’re doing this dance together, as filmmakers, where people want to know more about it, but we say to them, “Do you really want to know?,” and they go, “No, no, no, we don’t. We actually just want to go into the theater, not knowing if there’s a bomb under the table or not, or when it’s going to go off.” Ridley has always had a tremendous amount of faith in the audience’s intelligence. He directs and tells stories in a way that you come up to them, as opposed to them talking down to you. I feel like Prometheus is a proud member of that thing he does so well.

Michael, how did you approach playing an android with no emotion?

michael-fassbender-prometheus-imageFASSBENDER: You want to play with as many of those human traits as possible. You’re essentially trying to build a computer that has a physicality to it, that can respond and understand human behavior. It’s programmed to be able to incorporate itself within a human environment. You’re going into space, so you’ve got to get certain personalities that will get on in space. He has to be very flexible. So, what happens when you program that and the program then starts making its own connections and joins up to its own electrical linking to other areas and forming its own ego, insecurities, jealousy and envy? I don’t really think too much about things. I just try to explore what’s happening within the scene, moment to moment. What I thought was very interesting was that you have this guy who was on his own for two and a half years while everyone else was in cryostasis, so what did he do to amuse himself? The idea that there is something of a little boy there, and that he has to rely on his imagination to keep himself occupied, imagination is a very human trait. The fact that he’s curious, how far will that curiosity go? The way that Damon [Lindelof] wrote it, people treat him as a robot and there’s a bit of contempt towards him because he has all the answers. He’s hyper-intelligent. His physicality is more advanced than human beings. So, people don’t really embrace him. He’s sort of used and abused. How does that make him feel, if robots can feel? I didn’t want to make a direct, definite choice. I played with the ambiguity. Is this robot starting to develop human personality?

LINDELOF: I remember a conversation that Ridley and I had, fairly early on, about David. There was this idea that David is mass-produced. There are 20,000 other David units out there, who look exactly like Michael Fassbender. What a wonderful world that would be, wouldn’t it? It’s the idea that we all have our iPhones, yet we put different cases on them and different apps on them. This David, once you take him out of the wrapping, would begin to customize himself. He could change his hairstyle. He could change the way that he speaks. He could have different applications, based on what this unit is designed to do. That’s where I felt like, as soon as we cast Michael, that’s the killer app, right there. It’s pretty cool.

Alien had such a ground-breaking score from Jerry Goldsmith, that influenced a lot of films after it. Can you talk about the score for Prometheus?

prometheus-movie-posterSCOTT: Jerry Goldsmith has been around for awhile. I still think that was probably one of his best scores. The score is always a challenge. Every element you put into it, you always try to find something else. Before it’s done, it’s not written. Everything is abstract. It doesn’t really matter how good or bad the words in the screenplay are. Once you’ve got that hundred and some pages, you’ve got something to talk about. It’s the same with the music. You can get a lot of pretty good demos now, where you get the physical keyboard demonstration. It’s not a real choir or a real cello, but it’s digitalized. You don’t really know what you’re going to get until you’re actually in Abbey Road. That’s where I did all the music, in The Beatles’ place. You start to hear it then, and then you start putting it onto the film. Everything is trial and error. You’re always looking to find something more. That’s what’s interesting about filming, certainly for me. It’s always about, “Yes, but . . .” But, you have to always try to keep reins on it and keep yourself within the parameters that you create, early on. A three act play is a drama box. Create your ground rules and stay within that, and the chances are that you’ve got a good play. As soon as anything goes, it doesn’t work. It’s bullshit. Some writers work on the script with a board with every scene laid out, so they’re literally moving things around like chess pieces. Some people just start at the beginning and go through to the end, and then read it and go, “Christ, that does work,” or “That does work,” or “I have to do that and that.” Everything is always on the move.

Since you’re leaving this film open with these bigger ideas that could lead to another film, would you take that film closer to the Alien franchise, or would it be its own different storyline?

LINDELOF: I think that’s actually a really insightful question. This word “prequel” was on the table. It was the elephant in the room and had to be discussed. When I had first heard that Ridley was going to direct an Alien prequel, and then six months later my phone rang and the voice on the other end said, “Are you available to talk to Ridley Scott?,” and then I crashed into a telephone pole, I answered the call and Ridley was like, “Hey, man, I’m going to send you a script tonight.” And, he doesn’t know he’s Ridley Scott. So, I read this thing and we had a meeting, and he was already very clearly saying, “I want to come back to this genre. I want to do sci-fi again. I feel like this movie is just a little bit too close to Alien. I’ve done this stuff before. But, there are big ideas in it that are unique, in and of themselves. Is there a way to do that?” I said, “I think that that’s what we have to do.” If there were a sequel to this movie, it would not be Alien. Normally, that’s the definition of a prequel. It precedes the other movies. The Star Wars prequels are going to end with Darth Vader going, “Noooo!,” unfortunately. There’s an inevitability, in watching a prequel, where you’re like, “Okay, if the ending of this movie is just going to be the room that John Hurt walks into, that’s full of eggs, there’s nothing interesting in that because we know where it’s going to end. With really good stories, you don’t know where it’s going to end. So, this movie, hopefully, will contextualize the original Alien, so that when you watch it again, maybe you know a little bit more. But, you don’t f&#! around with that movie. It has to stand on its own. It’s a classic. If we’re fortunate enough to do a sequel to Prometheus, it will tangentialize even further away from the original Alien. When you go to the concert that is this movie, you want the Stones to play “Satisfaction.” There is this sense of us saying, “We want you to do something new, Ridley, but just give us a little bit of space jockey. Just play it! Even in the encore.” And, I think Ridley has given us the movie that I think we all want to see.

prometheus-movie-imageDamon, going from working on a very large canvas where you could explore your ideas, on Lost, what was it like to pare it down to something more streamlined?

LINDELOF: A huge relief. Obviously, with Lost, it was six years of my life. Between Carlton [Cuse] and I, we were at the wheel of the car. The idea of telling a story over 121 hours of time just felt so unwieldy. I went away for a month after Lost ended, and then the first project that I committed the next year of my life to, exclusively, was Prometheus. So, the idea of saying, “Yes, it’s just going to fit within the confines of 120 pages,” was a relief. That’s the story, but you keep going over that same story again. And then, there was also the huge relief of whatever story is out there about me saying, “This is what you should do, Ridley,” it’s, in fact, the opposite. It’s Ridley. I came in and he had a very clear sense of the movie he wanted to make. We had a number of conversations, he was enormously patient with me, and then I wrote that movie. It was nice to be sitting in the passenger seat and being like, “Maybe we should just make a left up here,” as opposed to having to drive the car constantly. If you’re going to let somebody drive, I highly recommend Ridley Scott. Although, Michael [Fassbender] said he’s a bad driver. I think it’s exciting, if you might go off the road, occasionally.

Click here for all our WonderCon 2012 coverage which includes panel recaps, interviews, and plenty of images.
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Post by Admin Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:08 pm

http://www.slashfilm.com/prometheus-wondercon-panel-highlights/?utm_source=Movie+Magic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashfilm+%28%2FFilm%29

‘Prometheus’ at WonderCon: Ridley Scott On Making More Sci-Fi Movies, The Complications of CGI, Fassbender On How To Play A Robot

Posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2012 by Adam Quigley

WonderCon may not command the same audience as Comic-Con, but that doesn’t mean its without its fair share of powerhouse panels. Point in case: Prometheus, the full trailer for which has now been made available online, as have some other goodies.

But wait, there’s more!

Headlining the film’s panel were co-writer Damon Lindelof, director Ridley Scott, and Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender. As is typical with Con Q&A sessions, there was a good deal of fluff, but we’ve filtered all of that out for your reading pleasure.

In the midst of a question about the differences between working with CGI and practical effects, Ridley Scott began to delve into what he learned from his experience on Prometheus, but not before interjecting that he plans to make another science fiction film “as soon as possible.”

Will that next science fiction film be a sequel to Prometheus? He hinted as much earlier in the panel, mentioning that, “If we’re lucky, maybe there will be a second part to all of this. Because the film really does leave you with some really nice, big, open questions.”

Back to the topic at hand, Ridley explained that the freedom of digital animation actually “makes the challenge even more difficult” — not in terms of craft, but in terms of competition. The action and science fiction genres have become overstuffed, since digitally, “you can do anything you want”, compared to Scott’s early days on Alien where they just used a very tall man in a rubber suit.

Scott says that it all comes down to a baseline contest of, “How original are you going to be?”

And if Fassbender is to be believed, Prometheus might win. When asked what drew him to the project, he mentioned how “each page, there was something new and there was something unexplained. You could never put your finger on it.”

For those who don’t know, Fassbender plays David, an android who’s sort of a butler that serves the aircraft and the crew. In preparation for the role, Scott encouraged him to check out The Servant with Dirk Bogarde, among other films. Fassbender, meanwhile, saught inspiration elsewhere, weirdly looking to the humorous qualities and “economy of movement” of diver Greg Louganis.

This extends further to the “heart” of the character, so to speak, which has David confronting his understanding of humans. “Would that start to manifest itself in other forms? Would he start to develop his own personality traits and ego and insecurities? All the fun human stuff.”

When watching Prometheus, Fassbender wants you to continually ask yourself, “Is this guy taking the piss, or is he for real?”

That’s it for highlights from the Prometheus panel. Stay tuned for more coverage of our WonderCon coverage throughout the day.
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Post by Admin Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:11 pm

http://movies.about.com/od/prometheus/a/ridley-scott-michael-fassbender-damon-lindelof.htm

Director Ridley Scott, Michael Fassbender and Damon Lindelof Talk 'Prometheus'

By Rebecca Murray, About.com Guide

The details are beginning to emerge on Prometheus, Ridley Scott's return to the sci-fi genre. Scott and 20th Century Fox have done a great job of building up the level of anticipation on Prometheus without giving anything away, but at the 2012 WonderCon in Anaheim they unveiled a new trailer and addressed questions from the audience as to what we can expect from what's likely to be one of the year's biggest films. After talking to the enthusiastic crowd (and keeping things as spoiler-free as possible), Scott was joined by co-writer Damon Lindelof and actor Michael Fassbender for a small press conference to further explore the world they've created with Prometheus. And just in case you have no idea what Prometheus is, here's the official-but-brief synopsis Fox has released in support of the film:
"Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Blade Runner, returns to the genre he helped define. With Prometheus, he creates a groundbreaking mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race."

Ridley Scott, Michael Fassbender, and Damon Lindelof Prometheus Press Conference:

It’s been awhile since the first Alien film came out, and there have been so many advances in technology. Was that a problem, in terms of writing this, or was that advancement a positive point?

Ridley Scott: "It’s easier to carry it out, but it’s still as difficult to write something. In fact, it’s getting more difficult because there are almost too many movies being made."

Damon Lindelof: "Yeah, and I think that it would have been really difficult to do a straight-up Alien sequel or Alien prequel because you’re beholden to so many of the things that came before it. To be able to shed that stuff [made it easier]. This was Ridley’s idea. From the screenwriting standpoint, for me, it was really just all about getting a clear sense of what was the movie that he wanted to make. It’s Ridley Scott. The movie is his vision, so I did my best to channel it. We had almost no conversations about any other movies, other than this one, which might have been hubris or it might have been freeing, but it felt good, maybe just because we were drunk."

How much thought was put into the technology that’s in the film, especially with audience expectations being so much greater?

Ridley Scott: "You think about everything, down to the shoe laces. We even had a big argument about the globular helmets. I was certain that I wanted the fully spherical glass helmet. In fact, in my research, I read this biography on Steve Jobs’ life and he talks about how he wanted to make his entire office of this glass, which is called Gorilla Glass, and this guy said, 'We don’t make it anymore.' So, Steve Jobs actually then re-opened up the factory and started remaking Gorilla Glass. If I’m in 2083 and I’m going into space, why would I design a helmet that has blind spots. What I want is something where I have 360 [vision]. Glass, by then, will be light and you won’t be able to break it with a bullet."

How did you approach the android and what he would be capable of?

Ridley Scott: "What was important was the story. There’s nothing new about an android. There’s nothing new about a robot. That idea is 800 years old. So then, embrace what it is. By embracing it, he becomes that much more interesting because he’s just part of the ship. In a sense, he’s not just a butler, but he’s housekeeper and maintenance man who legitimately does not need to sleep. From that, then he also becomes extremely useful during the story, as it evolves. There’s a great scene where Holloway [played by Logan Marshall-Green] is actually a bit of a bitch, occasionally, says, 'Hey, you, boy!,' to him. I thought that was real cheeky. And then he says, 'Why are you wearing one of those suits? You don’t have to breathe.' It ends up with David [Michael Fassbender] saying, 'Not too close, I hope,' referring to being told, 'We’re making you guys just like us.' You don’t know who’s insulting who there. That’s when those turn-abouts starts to occur."

What is the mix of genres in this film? How much horror does it offer versus science fiction?

Ridley Scott: "The bottom line is just to make a good movie. Just make a f**king good movie. It’s got nothing to do with horror or whatever. That’s why there’s only a few really, really great ones. Thereafter, there are only evolutions of copycats. There are two great horror movies that I never got over. One was called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper. I knew I didn’t really want to go see that movie, just by seeing the f**king poster. But, eventually I had to, as research for Alien. The other great one, with a single idea, was the first Exorcist. Possession of the body by a demon was marvelous. Since then, there have been 900,000 clones of those ideas."

Michael Fassbender: "I could never swim in the ocean after seeing Jaws."

Ridley Scott: "We’re trying to come up with a few first notions with Prometheus, and I think we did."

Damon Lindelof: "In this day and age, when you’re trying to market a movie and you say, 'It’s a romance. It’s a comedy,' neither of those are inherent in Prometheus, although there are funny scenes and romantic scenes. I think there’s a lot of action adventure elements to this movie, in terms of looking at it, in comparison to the original Alien. But, the fact that we can’t really put it in that box of, 'It’s a this,' is refreshing. I think that there’s a quiet suspense to the movie. It really takes its time. If you have a master filmmaker who’s working with incredibly talented actors, you just have to say, 'We’re going to be patient. We do not need to have things exploding every 10 minutes.'"

"It’s a little bit of an old-school approach to filmmaking in that it trusts the audience to have a little bit of patience. Just as someone who is a fan of these kinds of movies, I’ve been astonished by the patience of the fan base, in terms of how little we’re telling them about the movie. We’re doing this dance together, as filmmakers, where people want to know more about it, but we say to them, 'Do you really want to know?,' and they go, 'No, no, no, we don’t! We actually just want to go into the theater, not knowing if there’s a bomb under the table or not, or when it’s going to go off.' Ridley has always had a tremendous amount of faith in the audience’s intelligence. He directs and tells stories in a way that you come up to them, as opposed to them talking down to you. I feel like Prometheus is a proud member of that thing he does so well."

Michael, how did you approach playing an android with no emotion?

Michael Fassbender: "You want to play with as many of those human traits as possible. You’re essentially trying to build a computer that has a physicality to it, that can respond and understand human behavior. It’s programmed to be able to incorporate itself within a human environment. You’re going into space, so you’ve got to get certain personalities that will get on in space. He has to be very flexible. So, what happens when you program that and the program then starts making its own connections and joins up to its own electrical linking to other areas and forming its own ego, insecurities, jealousy and envy? I don’t really think too much about things. I just try to explore what’s happening within the scene, moment to moment."

"What I thought was very interesting was that you have this guy who was on his own for two and a half years while everyone else was in cryostasis, so what did he do to amuse himself? The idea that there is something of a little boy there and that he has to rely on his imagination to keep himself occupied, imagination is a very human trait. The fact that he’s curious, how far will that curiosity go? The way that Damon [Lindelof] wrote it, people treat him as a robot and there’s a bit of contempt towards him because he has all the answers. He’s hyper-intelligent. His physicality is more advanced than human beings. So, people don’t really embrace him. He’s sort of used and abused. How does that make him feel, if robots can feel? I didn’t want to make a direct, definite choice. I played with the ambiguity. Is this robot starting to develop a human personality?"

Damon Lindelof: "I remember a conversation that Ridley and I had fairly early on about David. There was this idea that David is mass-produced. There are 20,000 other David units out there, who look exactly like Michael Fassbender. [Laughing] What a wonderful world that would be, wouldn’t it? It’s the idea that we all have our iPhones, yet we put different cases on them and different apps on them. This David, once you take him out of the wrapping, would begin to customize himself. He could change his hairstyle. He could change the way that he speaks. He could have different applications, based on what this unit is designed to do. That’s where I felt like, as soon as we cast Michael, that’s the killer app, right there. It’s pretty cool."

Alien had such a ground-breaking score from Jerry Goldsmith that it influenced a lot of films after it. Can you talk about the score for Prometheus?

Ridley Scott: "Jerry Goldsmith has been around for a while. I still think that was probably one of his best scores. The score is always a challenge. Every element you put into it, you always try to find something else. Before it’s done, it’s not written. Everything is abstract. It doesn’t really matter how good or bad the words in the screenplay are. Once you’ve got that hundred and some pages, you’ve got something to talk about. It’s the same with the music. You can get a lot of pretty good demos now, where you get the physical keyboard demonstration. It’s not a real choir or a real cello, but it’s digitalized. You don’t really know what you’re going to get until you’re actually in Abbey Road. That’s where I did all the music, in The Beatles’ place. You start to hear it then, and then you start putting it onto the film."

"Everything is trial and error. You’re always looking to find something more. That’s what’s interesting about filming, certainly for me. It’s always about, 'Yes, but...' But, you have to always try to keep reins on it and keep yourself within the parameters that you create early on. A three act play is a drama box. Create your ground rules and stay within that, and the chances are that you’ve got a good play. As soon as anything goes, it doesn’t work. It’s bullsh*t. Some writers work on the script with a board with every scene laid out, so they’re literally moving things around like chess pieces. Some people just start at the beginning and go through to the end, and then read it and go, 'Christ, that does work,' or 'That does work,' or 'I have to do that and that.' Everything is always on the move."

Since you’re leaving this film open with these bigger ideas that could lead to another film, would you take that film closer to the Alien franchise, or would it be its own different storyline?

Damon Lindelof: "I think that’s actually a really insightful question. This word 'prequel' was on the table. It was the elephant in the room and had to be discussed. When I had first heard that Ridley was going to direct an Alien prequel, and then six months later my phone rang and the voice on the other end said, 'Are you available to talk to Ridley Scott?,' and then I crashed into a telephone pole... I answered the call and Ridley was like, 'Hey, man, I’m going to send you a script tonight.' And, he doesn’t know he’s Ridley Scott. So, I read this thing and we had a meeting, and he was already very clearly saying, 'I want to come back to this genre. I want to do sci-fi again. I feel like this movie is just a little bit too close to Alien. I’ve done this stuff before. But, there are big ideas in it that are unique, in and of themselves. Is there a way to do that?' I said, 'I think that that’s what we have to do.'"

"If there were a sequel to this movie, it would not be Alien. Normally, that’s the definition of a prequel. It precedes the other movies. The Star Wars prequels are going to end with Darth Vader going, 'Noooo!,' unfortunately. There’s an inevitability in watching a prequel where you’re like, 'Okay, if the ending of this movie is just going to be the room that John Hurt walks into a room that’s full of eggs, there’s nothing interesting in that because we know where it’s going to end.' With really good stories, you don’t know where it’s going to end. So, this movie, hopefully, will contextualize the original Alien, so that when you watch it again, maybe you know a little bit more. But, you don’t f**k around with that movie. It has to stand on its own. It’s a classic. If we’re fortunate enough to do a sequel to Prometheus, it will tangentialize even further away from the original Alien. When you go to the concert that is this movie, you want the Stones to play 'Satisfaction.' There is this sense of us saying, 'We want you to do something new, Ridley, but just give us a little bit of space jockey. Just play it! Even in the encore.' And, I think Ridley has given us the movie that I think we all want to see."

Damon, going from working on a very large canvas where you could explore your ideas on Lost, what was it like to pare it down to something more streamlined?

Damon Lindelof: "A huge relief. Obviously, with Lost, it was six years of my life. Between Carlton [Cuse] and I, we were at the wheel of the car. The idea of telling a story over 121 hours of time just felt so unwieldy. I went away for a month after Lost ended, and then the first project that I committed the next year of my life to, exclusively, was Prometheus. So, the idea of saying, 'Yes, it’s just going to fit within the confines of 120 pages,' was a relief. That’s the story, but you keep going over that same story again."

"And then, there was also the huge relief of whatever story is out there about me saying, 'This is what you should do, Ridley,' it’s, in fact, the opposite. It’s Ridley. I came in and he had a very clear sense of the movie he wanted to make. We had a number of conversations, he was enormously patient with me, and then I wrote that movie. It was nice to be sitting in the passenger seat and being like, 'Maybe we should just make a left up here,' as opposed to having to drive the car constantly. If you’re going to let somebody drive, I highly recommend Ridley Scott. Although, Michael [Fassbender] said he’s a bad driver. I think it’s exciting, if you might go off the road, occasionally."

* * * * *

Prometheus opens in theaters on June 8, 2012.
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Prometheus interviews with Michael Empty Re: Prometheus interviews with Michael

Post by Admin Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:12 pm

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/charlize-theron-and-michael-fassbender-reveal-key-details-about-prometheus

Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender reveal key details about 'Prometheus'
Or do they?

By Chris Eggersten and HitFix Staff Monday, Mar 19, 2012 2:40 AM

ANAHEIM - Saturday was something of a coming out day for Ridley Scott's "Prometheus." The Sci-Fi epic appeared before the masses of Comic-Con's Hall H last July, but WonderCon's smaller environs provided the opportunity to reveal more details about what may or may not be an "Alien" prequel (depending on your definition of prequel). Arguably the two most recognizable stars in the ensemble, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, took some time out to talk to HitFix about one of this summer's most anticipated films in an interview you can find embedded at the top of this article.

The film was co-written by Damon Lindelof ("Lost") so it's no surprise keeping the script under wraps for as long as possible was a key concern. In fact, Theron reveals she had to undergo something of a "mission: impossible" scenario to read a draft before accepting the role.

"I was actually in Malaysia during monsoon so I couldn't get reception," Theron says. "He said, 'I am emailing you the script now and you have to read it in two hours or it will just implode on itself.' I had two hours to find a hill top in monsoon rain to get reception to read it. So, that was my experience."

Fassebender, on the other hand, was actually able to finish the entire script, but says it felt like someone "had a gun to my head" saying "read faster." The acclaimed star of "Shame," "A Dangerous Method" and "X-Men: First Class" admits he's a slow reader, but he was impressed by the story Lindelof and Scott had collaborated on.

"I was like, 'This is really great. When is it going to fall apart?' And then it just got better and better," Fassbender says. "It's rare to get intelligent scripts and scripts where you can't really put your finger on what's going to happen 10 pages in and you're not aware of the arcs of the characters or what their journeys are going to be. So, it's a page turner and hopefully it will be like that visually and I'm sure it will be because Ridley's a genius."

One of the major revelations during the days panel and press is that Fassbender is playing an android in the tradition of Ash in "Alien" (played by Ian Holm) and Bishop in "Aliens" (played by Lance Henricksen). The question is whether David is as evil as the former or goodhearted as the latter. When asked Fassbender looks at Theron and says, No, he's just a good guy. Wouldn't you say [about] David?"

Theron pauses and then responds, "Am I twitching?"

Insinuate from that what you will.

More intriguing is Theron's revelation that her character, Meredith Vickers, isn't a military officer or scientist on this star trek to an alien planet to investigate an ancient "invitation." No, Vickers is a "corporate suit" and she may have more than her share of secrets. Could she be as dangerous as Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) in "Aliens" or as corrupt as Giovanni Ribisi's suit in "Avatar"? Well, perhaps Theron own words will provide some insight.

"She is this quiet storm," Theron says. "Initially I thought there was a lot of potential with that character to hide secrets and in that world I can be very scary, because it's not at that level where you can be, 'I'm outta here.' You're stuck on that spaceship. I thought there was something there where we could take your character who is the quintessential suit, the business aspect of how this thing is getting up there, and turn it into something that is a little different. Turn it on its head."

You can watch the entire interview embedded at the top of this post.

For screenwriter and executive producer Damon Lindelof's take on "Prometheus" and more from Fassbender on playing David, click here.

"Prometheus" opens nationwide in IMAX and 3D on June 8.
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Post by Admin Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:39 am

http://www.thescifishow.com/2012/04/blog/the-themes-of-prometheus/

The Themes of ‘Prometheus’

“What if you could meet God but God turned out to be the Devil?” So asks Prometheus Executive Producer Michael Ellenberg of the themes at the heart of Ridley Scott’s first return to science fiction since his seminal work on Alien and Blade Runner.

At the core of Scott’s story are the eternal questions of human existence: who are we and where do we come from?

As Michael Fassbender summarises: “It’s basically about trying to find out if there was intervention in the birth of civilisation on planet Earth by other beings, which we come to know as Engineers, and whether they had a master plan in mind for us.”

Like all good science fiction, the germ of the idea began in examining the real world. Explains Ellenberg: “Ridley was inspired by everything from the Nazca Lines in Peru, which are these vast Earth sculptures can only be seen from the air, to cave paintings in France, to ancient Egypt and ancient Mayan civilisations. We’re pushing beyond what’s been found thus far and speculating about what maybe found in the future.”

For director Ridley Scott, the themes of Prometheus are a reaction to an abundance of post-apocalyptic cinema. Prometheus isn’t necessarily about looking forward, at what we might become, but it’s about looking back, at where we might have come from.

“It’s about the beginning of life and the eternal ‘what if’,” explains Scott. “Has this ball we’ve been sitting on right now been around for three billion years or one billion? And if we haven’t been pre-visited (by alien civilisations), then what was this planet doing for all that time before life came along? It’s only our arrogance that says, ‘No, it’s impossible, we’re the first ones.’ Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it. In recent memory or legend we keep talking about wonderful, weird things such as Atlantis – what is that? Where does that come from? Is that real, was it real, is it a memory, did it exist? And if that did exist, did it exist three quarters of a billion years ago? There’d be nothing left now. How was that created and who was it?”

After working on a draft with screenwriter Jon Spaihts, Scott called writer Damon Lindelof, best known as a co-creator of Lost, and asked him to collaborate on the script. “Ridley first called me in mid-July of (2010),” he remembers. “I’d never met him before, but obviously I was a massive fan of his work. I was driving in my car when the phone rang and a voice on the other end said, ‘Ridley Scott is going to call you in five minutes, are you available?’ After crashing my car and dealing with the immediate aftermath of that, I started talking to Ridley Scott. I was sort of trembling when he called me on the phone and he said he was going to send me a script.”

Spaihts’s draft was a direct prequel to Alien, and Scott explained to Lindelof that he was aiming to branch off into slightly more original territory. “He was also driven by these bigger thematic ideas about what this movie could be about,” says Lindelof. “We started having conversations, and as a result of those conversations we worked very closely together for a couple of months, rewriting the script until he was satisfied that it felt like it was its own movie.”

Adds Lindelof: “The amazing thing that Ridley does, as a director, is ground big ideas in some sort of fundamental reality. What’s cool about this movie is that it doesn’t take place on Earth, in any real significant way, so the way that we’re experiencing the future is really away from Earth. It’s more about what people are like now. What have they gone through? What are the things that they’re thinking about? The idea that we’re basically all going to be the same a hundred years from now, but we might be driven by different ideas, is what’s driving the movie.”

Production designer Arthur Max says the themes have been key to the way he’s envisioned the look of the film. “Very loosely, these creatures are some kind of genetic Engineers on an interplanetary level,” he teases. “They go around creating life. In certain ways, they’re kind of God-like.”

Logan Marshall-Green plays Holloway. He sums up the importance of Prometheus‘s thematic tapestry as being, “a movie based on a philosophy and not an alien. The movie’s intelligence holds you through most its runtime before you get in to all the action. You’re turning the page not just because of what happens but what is said.“

Laughs Marshall-Green: “Certainly, it makes an argument that will move away Darwinism, let’s just say!”

“Prometheus, in literature, was a Titan who stole fire from the Gods because they were keeping it to themselves and they were worried what mankind would do if we got our little paws on it,” teases Lindelof. “That theme is a resonating idea in Prometheus, the movie; what humans are doing that we probably shouldn’t be doing, in terms of technological innovation and, perhaps, exploration. Is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed? Part of the fun of the movie is understanding why we call it Prometheus.”

For Fassbender, the film’s themes reflect in the way the characters on board Prometheus interact with one another. “There’s always politics within, and that’s why, I think, this cast got together. The tempo, the pace, the intelligence of the script; each person has got their own agenda on that ship and it’s each a very individual agenda. Some people are there for the pay. Other people are there to get answers. Other people are there to hopefully attain some sort of secret. Others are there in somewhat of a spite journey. You’ve got all these collective relationships, individuals and motivations and that’s what makes quite intriguing even before the s$#! hits the fan.”

Charlize Theron found her connection to the film’s themes in the dark motivations of her character. “I thought there was tremendous potential to explore themes that the script was already exploring, through the eyes of a character that was so different from everybody else who’s on this mission,” she says. “You have these scientists going out there – one is a believer, one really isn’t – and you play on all these themes, but to really experience all of that stuff from the point of view of somebody who comes from a much more cold, economic, business suit sense of it was interesting.”

“I think that one of the really interesting ideas that the movie is dealing with,” describes Lindelof, “is this sense that space exploration, particularly in the future, is going to start to be not just about going out there and finding planets, so that we can build colonies, or anything else, but also this inherent idea that, the further we go out, perhaps the more we learn about ourselves. And, I think the characters in this movie – some of them at least – are very preoccupied with the idea of, ‘Where did we come from? What are our origins? What is our place in the universe? Are we the only sentient beings, or are there others?’”

It’s this point that Lindelof thinks really separates it from Alien. “In Alien it was just, ‘Hey, we’re miners. Oh, we ended up stepping in this huge pile of very frightening s$#!!’ So, although there are elements like that in this movie – and there certainly are scares – the idea of fundamentally and thematically exploring this idea of creation was always a big deal for Ridley.”

- Joe Utichi
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Prometheus interviews with Michael Empty Re: Prometheus interviews with Michael

Post by Admin Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:41 am

http://screenrant.com/prometheus-cast-crew-themes-interviews-sandy-163243/

‘Prometheus’ Cast & Crew Break Down the Film’s Lofty Themes
Apr 5, 2012 by Sandy Schaefer

In a newly-released set report, the cast and filmmaking crew of ‘Prometheus’ (including, director Ridley Scott) dive into the sci-fi/horror project’s ambitious ideas and themes.

As splendid as everything in Prometheus looks – from the other-worldly artifact design overseen by art director John King (Troy, John Carter), to the glimpses of creatures and extraterrestrial architecture influenced by H.R. Giger’s original conceptual art for Alien – it’s the lofty themes and provocative subject matter that director Ridley Scott keeps teasing which has fans especially eager to see the filmmaker try his hand at the sci-fi genre once again.

Today we have excerpts from a Prometheus set report that sheds light on said ideas through interviews with some of the people who collaborated on this project.

That list includes Ridley Scott, screenwriter Damon Lindelof and costar Michael Fassbender (among others).

While the quotes do not contain outright SPOILERS for Prometheus, anyone who is especially sensitive to plot information or wants to go in as blank as possible should probably turn away. Everyone else, click to the next page for all the enticing insights from the cast and filmmakers.

As splendid as everything in Prometheus looks – from the other-worldly artifact design overseen by art director John King (Troy, John Carter), to the glimpses of creatures and extraterrestrial architecture influenced by H.R. Giger’s original conceptual art for Alien – it’s the lofty themes and provocative subject matter that director Ridley Scott keeps teasing which has fans especially eager to see the filmmaker try his hand at the sci-fi genre once again.

Today we have excerpts from a Prometheus set report that sheds light on said ideas through interviews with some of the people who collaborated on this project.

That list includes Ridley Scott, screenwriter Damon Lindelof and costar Michael Fassbender (among others).

While the quotes do not contain outright SPOILERS for Prometheus, anyone who is especially sensitive to plot information or wants to go in as blank as possible should probably turn away. Everyone else, click to the next page for all the enticing insights from the cast and filmmakers.
–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Here’s Scott talking about the central premise behind Prometheus, courtesy of The Sci Fi Show:

“It’s about the beginning of life and the eternal ‘what if’.’ Has this ball we’ve been sitting on right now been around for three billion years or one billion? And if we haven’t been pre-visited (by alien civilisations), then what was this planet doing for all that time before life came along? It’s only our arrogance that says, ‘No, it’s impossible, we’re the first ones.’ Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it. In recent memory or legend we keep talking about wonderful, weird things such as Atlantis – what is that? Where does that come from? Is that real, was it real, is it a memory, did it exist? And if that did exist, did it exist three quarters of a billion years ago? There’d be nothing left now. How was that created and who was it?”

Prometheus executive producer Michael Ellenberg also offered the following comment about Scott’s mindset (for context):

“Ridley was inspired by everything from the Nazca Lines in Peru, which are these vast Earth sculptures can only be seen from the air, to cave paintings in France, to ancient Egypt and ancient Mayan civilisations. We’re pushing beyond what’s been found thus far and speculating about what maybe found in the future.”

As both Scott and Ellenberg’s comments here make all too clear, Prometheus is more about exploring tough questions concerning humanity’s past (through the lens of a future-set parable) rather than questions about our eventual destination as a species, which Scott touched upon more directly some thirty years ago in Blade Runner.

The filmmaker won’t be repeating himself by treading on familiar territory with Prometheus – so much as he’s really producing a movie that compliments his previous foray(s) into the sci-fi genre – which is encouraging to hear.

prometheus international trailer ridley scott michael fassbender

Michael Fassbender in 'Prometheus'

Fassbender had this to say, with respect to just what Prometheus is about (and how the film’s character ensemble illustrates its deeper meaning):

“['Prometheus' is] basically about trying to find out if there was intervention in the birth of civilisation on planet Earth by other beings, which we come to know as Engineers, and whether they had a master plan in mind for us… [Each] person has got their own agenda on that ship and it’s each a very individual agenda. Some people are there for the pay. Other people are there to get answers. Other people are there to hopefully attain some sort of secret. Others are there in somewhat of a spite journey. You’ve got all these collective relationships, individuals and motivations and that’s what makes quite intriguing even before the s**t hits the fan.”

Lindelof also touched (again) on how the cautionary tale of the mythological character Prometheus very much ties into the overarching ideas of Scott’s film:

“Prometheus, in literature, was a Titan who stole fire from the Gods because they were keeping it to themselves and they were worried what mankind would do if we got our little paws on it. That theme is a resonating idea in ‘Prometheus’, the movie; what humans are doing that we probably shouldn’t be doing, in terms of technological innovation and, perhaps, exploration. Is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed? Part of the fun of the movie is understanding why we call it ‘Prometheus’.”

The idea that somehow these “Engineers” (the extraterrestrials who wear the Space Jockey suits, presumably) aren’t so impressed with humankind’s activities has been made abundantly clear by the Prometheus footage released so far. Exactly what it is that people have done to piss these things off – and what our alien overlords plan to do about it – thankfully remains a mystery (for now).

Suffice it to say, we’re more than content to just see Prometheus when it hits U.S. theaters on June 8th, 2012, and find out the answers for ourselves. How about you?

-

For more from the cast and crew of Prometheus, check out the full report over at The Sci Fi Show (via Prometheus News).
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Prometheus interviews with Michael Empty Re: Prometheus interviews with Michael

Post by Admin Sun Jun 03, 2012 8:36 pm

http://www.slashgear.com/prometheus-slashgear-meets-michael-fassbender-noomi-rapace-guy-pearce-and-logan-marshall-green-03231365/#entrycontent

Prometheus: SlashGear meets Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall-Green
Chris Davies & Vincent Nguyen, Jun 3 2012[0]

The alien creatures in Prometheus might arguably steal the show, but whether they’re antagonist, host or just plain meat, the human cast is equally important. SlashGear sat down with stars Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall-Green after the Prometheus world premiere to talk post-curtain rumors, working in the shadow of Ripley, and how the whole film might actually be a robot love story.

Michael Fassbender plays David, the robotic member of the Prometheus crew, while Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green play Shaw and Holloway, the scientist couple dead-set on exploring LV-223. Guy Pearce plays Peter Weyland, founder of Weyland-Yutani Corporation and the billionaire bankrolling the whole mission.

SPOILER WARNING: some of the cast’s comments concern specific plot points in Prometheus. If you want to save every surprise and theme until you’ve seen the movie, bookmark this and come back after you’ve been to the theater!

[Question] My question is about hypersleep. You played people waking up from this hypersleep state – which we don’t actually have. At that point in your performance, what were you doing; what was happening to you, how were you feeling, and what had you woken up from?

[Noomi Rapace] I actually did a detox, I put myself on some kind of detox thing for a week before. I was only drinking…

[Michael Fassbender] Logan’s like, “you didn’t tell me that, we were supposed to share everything!”

[Logan Marshall-Green] I ate, like, a pizza the night before.

[NR] We were just drinking different things for a week. I wanted to kind of drain my body and clean it, because I know before we went in [Fassbender's character David] has been taking care of us, and changing our diapers and washing us probably, y’know, for two years.

[MF] [Shakes head, grinning]

[NR] No? What did you do?

[MF] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, “looked after you.”

[Guy Pearce] In a very special kind of way…

[MF] Very special!

[NR] I wanted to kind of drain my body a kind of bit, I dunno, I had this idea I was gonna look very… everything was going to sink in [gestures to face], but it didn’t really happen. But it’s hard to imagine, what it is to be sleeping for two years, but we talked about trying to… how groggy are we, how aware are we about what’s around us? And when you try different things, yelling “we’re here!”, “am I awake?” It’s kind of difficult, we tried it in different versions with Ridley [Scott].

[LMG] Yeah, Ridley said it was that… we were intaking proteins and such instantly, you’re cold, I ended up drinking a quart of milk over the course of a few minutes. And you were throwing it up, lemonade wasn’t it?

[NR] I was.

[LMG] Milk doesn’t bother you.

[NR] No, that was something really disgusting they gave me, remember – the kind of fluid?

[GP] Not milk of magnesia?

[Q] Over the course of the production there was so much secrecy around this. All the speculation happens, there are all these rumors which start getting thrown around online. I would imagine you were probably aware of some of them, probably laughing at some of them. Are there any favorites that stick out in your mind?

[MF] We were trying to create them. The ones we invented were really…

[NR] He was working really hard, to make this…

[MF] A love story! There is a love story.

[NR] Between a robot, and…
"There’s a love story, between the robot David and Doctor Shaw"

[MF] There is a love story, between the robot David and Doctor Shaw, which will be through the next installment.

[NR] The very misleading rumors! Never gonna happen!

[MF] The child’s gonna be half-child, half-robot.

[GP] Has your head been reattached? Or is it just…?

[MF] We’re not sure.

[NR] It’s based on a true story. And actually, I heard a while, “so are you Ripley’s mother?” That was one thing people were asking me, and I was like “I’m not sure.” And this thing that nobody dies in the movie! [Logan] started that.

[LMG] Yeah, I had this reporter going for a while, that nobody dies. They weren’t sure of it after that, they called back and said “I want to make sure, nobody dies?”

[NR] Really disappointed: a Ridley Scott movie and nobody dies?!

[LMG] A big first!

[Q] Michael, did you relate to Data from Star Trek, playing David?

[MF] I guess… he wasn’t one of the ones that I was thinking of when I was putting it together, but you’re the second person that asked so obviously there’s something of him in there. He was probably in and around the ether somewhere: all robots came out to play!

[GP] Some plagiarism in there.

[MF] Absolutely! Stealing left, right and center. But no, it was kind of David Bowie – The Man Who Fell To Earth – Sean Young – Blade Runner – Lawrence of Arabia of course, Peter O’Toole, and Dirk Bogarde, and Greg Louganis. That kind of combo, put all those things together and David came out of that.

[Q] Guy, obviously there was a lot of secrecy around your role. How did you find it in the build-up, the fact you had to almost detach yourself from the promotional bit, that [TED talk] viral that was out. How did you find that all, the process, rather than a normal film?
"They threw a hood over me every time I walked off the stage"

[GP] Well, it wasn’t difficult: I don’t have any problems not talking about a film. Y’know, “we need you to not say this” – great! They did throw a hood over me every time I walked from one stage to another.

[NR] You looked like something weird from Star Wars!

[GP] In case any of you guys were hanging off a fence trying to take photos or something. So I kept getting lost or going to the wrong place. But no, it was fine, really it was a quick process for me, because these guys shot for about three or four months or something altogether, and I really just came in for a couple of weeks in the middle and went “wow, what a fun ride this feels like” and then I left. And then, y’know, there were some questions back and forth between myself and the Fox marketing team going, well, what exactly are we saying, what do you not want to say? So it was just about clarifying that, I suppose. But no, no real difficulty in keeping secrets.

[MF] I love the fact that [Guy's character] Weyland’s wandering aimlessly around Pinewood lot, appearing in various films. Various films with Weyland in the back!

[GP] Exactly, I’m in Snow White, I’m in the Johnny Depp movie.

[NR] Dark Shadows, yeah, I actually saw you in that!

[GP] I am the dark shadow!

[Q] Michael, the whole lead-up where they’re showing David whiling away his time: how much of that was written into it, how much did you add to it – the bicycle, shooting baskets, certain movies…?

[MF] Yeah, that was a lot of fun. The basketball stuff was all in there, and I think that’s a nice little recognition of Alien. And the hair-dying was my idea, so that was pretty cool, I was happy to see that that got stuck in, working on my highlights and watching Lawrence of Arabia.

[GP] Lawrence of Arabia was always in, wasn’t it.

[MF] Yeah, that was always in, that was in the script, he had this thing about Lawrence. So that was it, most of it was there: the idea of him wandering around the ship, and then of course we got to see him learning the language because that’s gonna be revealed later. So pretty much all of what was there, and then it was just a matter of just fleshing out bits and pieces.

[GP] What about picking up the little speck of something?

[MF] Well that was actually… Ridley said, “I thought, y’know, it would be like a button or something, like he checks the surface of the ship for dust.” I was like, that’s interesting… of course I didn’t want to do exactly what he said, so I picked up something from the floor. [laughs] So those little things, it’s great like that. Because y’know, Ridley’s really good at just giving you a flavor of something, rather than a direction. It’s like, “I thought your character might possess this object” and you’re, like, oh wow, okay, cool, that’s interesting.

[GP] How do I incorporate that in?

[MF] Yeah, totally.

[NR] How do I do a version of what Ridley said, not what he said…

[MF] Exactly.

[Q] Noomi, you’re playing a female role in a series that has had some really memorable female roles. How do you feel about playing that kind of role?

[NR] When they told me that he wanted to work with me, just that, it took a while for me to really believe it and to realize that it’s happening. And then, when I got to read the script, and when he told me about this character, it felt like a great honor and I was terrified at the same time. But I think, as soon as you start to work, get into it, you have to kind of push away everything around you and not think about people’s expectations and what’s gone before, and that it’s Ridley Scott.

I think you just have to find your focus and find your own way of doing it, because if you’re trying to satisfy people and trying to do something that will fit in in the line of his fantastic heroines, it’s gonna be impossible to work. So I kinda had to ignore all that, and force myself into some kind of protecting bubble of work. [To Michael] And you helped me! You took care of me in the bubble!

[MF] I was the bubble!

[Q] You all have some great scenes with David in there, and I’m curious in the acting side, how do you approach this character as a robot – not as Michael, fellow-actor.

[NR] He is a robot!

[Q] The scene with Logan was really great…

[MF] That was fun, we filmed that pretty early, that was like the first week or so.

[LMG] Yeah.

[GP] The drinking speech?

[MF] Yeah.

[Q] Does it change anything, the way you interact with someone, knowing you have to interact with them as a robot?

[NR] I think the first impulse is to try to read or analyze things from an emotional level; think “what does he mean, what is really going on inside him?” And then you have to remind yourself, he’s a computer, he’s hollow – he’s not emotional, there’s not a heart in there.

[MF] Love story, love story… [Laughs]

[NR] So I think that, even for Shaw, I think there’s a point where she really hates him, and is really upset about what she thinks… I think she thinks that he has something to do with this. But then, I think she corrects herself, by reminding herself that it’s just a waste of energy because he’s a computer, it’s a hard-disk. And then in the end it’s almost like she feels sorry for him, for not having any emotions, and no soul; you’re just a robot, you’ll never understand us.
"We talked about bigotry and racism, the inevitable disdain for synthetic life"

[LMG] I think also, the opposite – which I had never seen – I mean, you have trauma with robots in some of the other movies in the franchise. But we kind of talked about bigotry and racism, y’know, the inevitable synthetic life there’ll be the inevitable disdain for it. I liked that approach, I mean, I didn’t approach Holloway as a bigot or racist, but I liked this sense of “he’s beneath me”; constantly, no matter how much smarter he probably was than Holloway, or maybe even available emotionally on a synthetic level, he was still beneath him. That was fun, I don’t think we’ve seen that before.

[MF] See what happens when you think like that…

[LMG] That’s right, it affected me awfully. I’m a horrible human being! [Laughs]

[MF] That was one of the bits that freaked me most in the film, when you look in the mirror and there’s like [the tendril]

[LMG] Dammit, David!

[MF] That little worm is in your eye, it’s really well done, I love that. We were talking afterwards, you were like “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I’m sure it will be fine.”

[LMG] I’ve had worse!

[MF] A little worm in my eye… it’s gonna be okay.

[LMG] A nasty STD, what the hell did she…?! [Laughter] Dammit David!

[Q] You’re thinking yourself into a different world, and it’s a world that’s been in a few films before – big, important films that we all know – were you approaching this film through them, or mostly through talking to Ridley, or something you’re bringing yourself?

[GP] Oh, I think talking to Ridley. I mean, we’re all obviously aware of what it is we’ve come onboard, but I think funnily enough it’s a very different perspective from the outside than from, y’know, the inner world. As soon as you start talking to Ridley – and I personally felt a little intimidated by the thought of this, not so much because of the history of the other films but because we know of Ridley’s prowess – but as soon as I started talking to him on the phone, that immediately goes out the window. You just immediately get into creative discussions about what it is you’re creating, you’re just on another job and you’re going through the steps you normally go through – I’d drive home from work occasionally and go “wow, this is really cool”, or when you first turn up on set and see those amazing sets.

But I think, also because the script and this particular film is so individual in a way. I mean, there’s obviously the connection with other films, but it really is so much more than just prequel. It delves into ideas that go far beyond what that first Alien film did, so I think it’s very easy to go “well, this now is the world of Prometheus and this is very, very particular,” And I think I can probably speak for everybody that, once you start working with Ridley, you’re reminded of what it is that you’re doing in the present. So I personally didn’t feel at all like… even though, really, Weyland is really the guy that we’ve heard about in the other films, I didn’t feel at all that I was living through those past cinematic experiences.

[NR] But also I think that the sets and, what [production designer] Arthur Max and the crew created, is just for us to step into, to have real things to work with and react from. That was incredible, because it gave so much. I remember once when Ridley came to me and was like “come on, I’m gonna show you something” and he opened the door to the room to the big head.

[GP] And it was Michael! [Laughter]

[NR] And the love story started there… the head! No, but I remember I got tears in my eyes, because it was there for real, and there’s some sort of cruel, savage beauty that they’ve created in this weird kind of, I dunno, world.

[MF] And he’s so enthusiastic, I mean Ridley’s so enthusiastic.

[NR] Oh yeah, he’s like a child.

[MF] He is like a kid. I love watching him on-set, because it’s infectious and he’s inspiring.

[NR] The small worms, he was like [gasps] “look at this, look at this, beautiful huh!” And it was, like, “yeah!”

[LMG] He also put cameras on us, so we became kinda the cameramen as well. And they built these sets – six walls – and all the fear and awe is real, of course, but I love kinda exploring the sets and using the flashlight. They’d turn the lights off on these damned things. It’s all real, they’re massive.

[GP] They’re really incredible, aren’t they. They’re so solid, they didn’t feel like sets. As I said, I came in late, so they’d all been going and I didn’t get to walk around with everyone else and experience the newness of it with everyone else. And I was going “is it dumb to ask if this is real… [feigns confidence] oh yeah, no, it’s amazing.” So it was incredible, the three-dimensional nature of those sets. It’s certainly not like when we were on Neighbours and they used to wobble when you closed the door.

[NR] And they were so big, you could really get lost.

[GP] Yeah. I mean, didn’t he extend one of those stages? Whatever the biggest stage is on Pinewood, he got them to rebuild another, y’know, end of it to make it however much bigger. So it really was quite enormous, a whole world in there.

[Q] In the Alien franchises, a lot of the actors talk about their first time seeing some of the creatures, and how the use of practical effects and costuming makes them terrifying of those things. Did you guys feel that way, about the monsters you each dealt with during the film?
"It gets into you, I was having such disturbed dreams, nightmares"

[NR] Well, when I saw my baby for the first time. I was really… it was there, it was really happening. And, again, Ridley was, like, “it’s pretty, huh?” And I was, like, “yeah, it’s kinda cute.” It’s weird. Because in close-ups, you’re standing there looking at the thing, and it’s very real – it’s something quite spooky – it gets into you, I was dreaming such disturbed dreams, y’know, nightmares.

[LMG] You were very close with it.

[NR] Yeah, I was really close with that.

[GP] And it was animatronic, that thing, wasn’t it?

[NR] Yeah, it was moving!

[MF] Remember those guys, “I’ve got it’s left leg, you’ve got the right” and there’s the head as well; it was like three guys going [mimes frantically operating puppet]. Eyes blinking, and the head was going, and you’re screaming!

Don’t forget to check out our interview with Prometheus director Ridley Scott, as well as our interview with Damon Lindelof and co-writer Jon Spaihts for more on Prometheus’ challenging conception. We’ve also got a full review of Prometheus here!
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