Ridley Scott has been ultra-secretive regarding Prometheus, his highly anticipated return to the gruesome and frightening Alien universe he left over 30 years ago. With the help of Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland, owner of the ship Prometheus that will be featured in the upcoming film, another layer has been peeled back from the franchise’s mythology.
In a new viral clip, Pearce addresses a large crowd at a TED conference sometime in the year 2023 as Peter Weyland, CEO of Weyland Corporation that will eventually become Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Assertive, convincing, and a touch arrogant, Weyland lays the groundwork for a future in which humans will be considered “gods” after the creation of cybernetic beings indistinguishable from their creators.
Weyland’s appearance in the clip is one of several nudges and winks to the connection between Alien and Prometheus. The beings he references are the androids that will feature prominently in the first two Alien films, and will once again appear in Prometheus (played by Michael Fassbender).
His reference to humans becoming gods plays into the currently prevailing Prometheus theory that suggests humans will discover the “Space Jockeys,” as seen briefly in a mummified state in Scott’s Alien, and discover they are responsible for creating mankind in their image.
The most striking portion of Weyland’s address concerns the Greek mythology of the fire-stealing Prometheus, a story that affects the man so much that he names the ship sent out to explore the origins of mankind after it. It’s an ominous story about the sacrifices of mankind to further the species’ technological advances, something I suspect the crew of Prometheus will learn about firsthand.
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus stars Noomi Rapace, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall-Green. It touches down in theaters on June 8.
Source: TED
