Movies
New Cast for ‘Prometheus,’ DNA Connection to Original ‘Alien’
Idris Elba (28 Weeks Later, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance), Sean Harris (Isolation, Creep) and Kate Dickie (Outcast) have joined Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, reports the Daily Mail Online. While Scott tells the site that he’s attempting to keep the film’s plot top secret, more information continues to leak out about the quasi-Alien prequel arriving in theaters June 8, 2012.
Speaking of Alien, Bleeding Cool talked to unnamed sources close to production who tease the connection to Scott’s 1979 film.
“[Prometheus] has the Alien aliens in it. The catch, though, is that you might not recognize them – at least, not at first. Remember how the alien took on canine qualities after gestating in a dog? You may even suppose that the first film’s alien was so recognizably humanoid because it had grown in a human. The same applies here: generation by generation, the creature mutates.
“As Prometheus begins, the xenomorph is not too recognizable. Sure, it has that alien DNA that Scott and Fassbender teasingly referred to, but it’s missing … well, it’s missing human DNA. Or dog DNA. All you have to do is imagine how it might look if it were to mix DNA with another alien species … and I think we’re starting to work it all out.”
It has also been rumored that we’ll also see the alien space jockeys from Scott’s breakthrough horror film.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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