Linguafoeda Archeronsis

Linguafoeda Archeronsis ('foul-tongue from Hell'), also known as Internecivus Raptus ('Murderous Thief') and the Xenomorph ('Strange Form'). Most commonly known simply as the Alien.

The Alien

Of the many variations on the design of the Alien, H. R. Giger's original is, to my mind, far and away the best, because it is the most alien of the lot. After the initial nightmarish creature, the design became ever more organic and insect-like (and slimy), as all subsequent films dwelt on the eusocial, hive-like qualities introduced in James Cameron's first sequel. But in doing so, they drifted away from what it was that was so unsettling about the Alien in the first place - the fact that it was NOT like anything we'd encountered before. The original was a triumph of ambiguity and perversity - here was a creature that seemed to be both animal and machine, rigid yet graceful, slow and yet capable of great speed, inhuman and yet so very, very human in such alarming ways. Its design incorporated elements suggestive of both male and female sexual organs; it was the very embodiment of rape and yet it also defied the usual categories of human sexuality, being neither male nor female.

Part of the problem is that, from the second film onward, the creature had a name of sorts. In the first film it was quite simply the Alien, an ambiguous name for an ambiguous and unknown thing. But in Aliens the creatures came to be known as Xenomorphs, meaning 'strange form' or 'alien creature', which arguably has much the same meaning but lacks the directness and uneasiness of the word 'alien' itself. Fans and spin-off media have gone even further, bestowing upon the creatures the scientific-sounding binomial classifications 'Linguafoeda Acheronsis' ('foul-tongue from Hell') or alternatively 'Internecivus Raptus' ('Murderous Thief'). It was inevitable that some of the mystery and thus the fascination of the creatures would be stripped away with greater exposure in sequels, part of the beasts's perverse allure was in its mysteriousness - it was only glimpsed briefly and to great effect in the original film.

I'm REALLY looking forward to Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which, in going back to the original conception of the creature in its purest form, will hopefully do much to restore its majesty and enigma.

The Gods

In light of the revelation that Ridley Scott's new film Prometheus is going to be about the giant Space Jockeys from the original Alien film, and given my speculations about the thematic connotations of the name Prometheus, I thought I'd post some of the excellent images I've found of the creatures who will be the 'gods' that Prometheus stole 'fire' from...

As you can see, there's some confusion over whether or not the Space Jockeys have legs.

Far and away my favourite image, however, is this one:

It's a fake movie poster, obviously, but the skull is beautifully done and unnervingly alien. Top stuff :)

Prometheus - My Speculations

Prometheus, the latest addition to the highly successful Alien franchise, is slated for release on June 8, 2012. It was originally scheduled to be released on March 9, 2012, but the date was pushed back for "a high-profile summer release". Director Ridley Scott, who brought the stunning original Alien film to life, reported that he is shooting both PG-13 and R-rated cuts of the film to be submitted to Fox for review when the film is finalized, and Wikipedia notes that it is being filmed in 3D using the same technology used for James Cameron’s Avatar. [Note: The image above is NOT the official poster, it's by Nuke Vizard over at deviantArt... but I love it].

This being an Alien film, the audience is coming to it with certain expectations. In a nutshell, the things that people expect from an Alien film are as follows: A strong woman will survive while everyone else (with possibly a couple of exceptions) dies a gruesome death at the hands of the vicious drooling monsters, which are usually released by human arrogance. There’s usually a Synthetic humanoid involved, so expect someone to have white goo for blood. And fans of the franchise, particularly, will be expecting certain things from this film: An explanation of the Aliens’ origins and some answers about the giant, elephantine ‘Space Jockey’ creature that the crew of the Nostromo discovered in the derelict crashed ship in the original film.

What can we gather by looking at the promotional images and production notes released so far? Wikipedia confirms Prometheus will be a prequel to the original film, taking place approximately 30 years prior to the starship Nostromo’s destruction, in the years before the Weyland company merged with the Yutani company to form the greedy and immoral Weyland-Yutani corporation. As such, it cannot possibly acknowledge the rest of the franchise, or the original characters. There may be a little tie-in at the very end, with the Company getting news of the events depicted in the story and their appetites being whetted (more on that below), but I expect this to be a largely stand-alone story.

The story is about the crew of an exploratory space ship. Our new ‘Ripley’ will be Dr Elizabeth Shaw*, played by Noomi Rapace. She’s either the ship’s science or medical officer, and Wikipedia notes that she is in a relationship with Holloway (played by Logan Marshall-Green), who I expect will probably die fairly early on because he’s hardly a big name. Rapace’s not the most obvious choice to take on Sigourney Weaver’s mantle but perhaps that’s intentional because...

Charlize Theron will play Meredith Vickers, a Company ‘suit’ who ‘sheds that skin’ (according to Wikipedia). Not a lot to go on there, but she seems to be the more obvious ‘Ripley’ so I’m expecting she’ll be a bit of a red herring, a tough, stand-offish woman, who warms up a bit and looks like the one who’ll survive, only to die in the last ten minutes. Or she may survive, taking news of what’s happened back to her bosses at the end (nicely setting up the events of the original film).

Michael Fassbender will play David, the ship’s Synthetic. Interestingly, the film’s Wikipedia page quotes writer/script editor Damon Lindelof making reference to the androids of Ridley Scott’s other classic (Blade Runner) in describing him, possibly linking the two films together...? If so, he may not even realise he is synthetic, or may be a saboteur. He’s the most likely antagonist, because Fassbender is too good to waste, he does intense, broody and violent SOOOO well.

It’s quite a large cast compared to that of the original film, and interestingly the captain (played by Idris Elba) doesn’t seem to feature prominently. The only other big names in the cast are Guy Pearce and Patrick Wilson, but no real news on their roles yet. Although I suspect one of them will be a Company official even higher up than Vickers, perhaps the person she reports to (my bet is on Patrick Wilson, he has that corporate sleaze look about him).

The Wikipedia page further notes that:

'[Ridley Scott] said, "While Alien was indeed the jumping-off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place. The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative." However, speaking to MTV on February 12, 2011, Fassbender stated the film was still an Alien prequel, saying, "Prometheus is absolutely connected to Alien... There's a definite connecting vein." In a June 2011 interview, screenwriter Damon Lindelof claimed it will be a prequel to the Alien films but follow a different story, stating "a true prequel should essentially [precede] the events of the original film, but be about something entirely different, feature different characters, have an entirely different theme, although it takes place in that same world. That was my fundamental feeling about what this movie wanted to be"'.

Turning to the images released so far, I’m very pleased to see that the overall LOOK of the original film is being retained. The walls of the dark space Dr Shaw, Holloway and David are exploring look as though they were built by the Aliens, and on this point Wikipedia quotes Ridley Scott as saying “The film will be really tough, really nasty. It's the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?” Wikipedia further notes that the Alien design is being reverse-engineered to present the creature in an earlier stage of its evolution, and thankfully, H.R. Giger is being consulted. I think we’ll see that the Aliens were genetically engineered or at least modified for use as part of a terra-forming process used by the Space Jockey creatures, but Ridley Scott has stressed that Prometheus is not ABOUT the Aliens, and I’m inclined to believe him. I’ll go into that more below, because I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here. But I believe we definitely won’t see an Alien Queen, because that (admittedly brilliant elaboration on the Aliens’ original life-cycle) was a later addition by James Cameron and his writers. This film will go back to the purity of the original concept.

And finally, to the biggest surprise in the images released so far - the elephant, as it were, in the room: Dominating most of the images that have been released thus far, bizarrely and maybe even implausibly, a giant statue of a human head. This massive effigy is at the centre of the whole riddle, and now, finally, I can start to lay out my theory. What possible explanation could there be for this bizarre artefact?

The key, I believe, is in the name of the movie itself, Prometheus, and here we come to those ‘unique, large’ and provocative’ ideas Ridley Scott refers to in the quote above.

Prometheus is a legendary figure from Greek mythology, and a highly significant one at that. There are variations on the basic story, of course, but essentially it goes like this: Prometheus, a Titan (an embodiment of one of the forces of nature) stole fire from the king of the Gods, Zeus, and delivered it to mankind. There’s more to it than that, but I’ll elaborate as I go on. I firmly believe that Prometheus is the name of the exploratory ship that our heroes are travelling on. Why? Because the name Prometheus is highly symbolic, and just the sort of thing you expect a historic space flight to be named. It has connotations of defiance of the higher powers, venturing out and bringing salvation and light (literally: enlightenment) back to people who are struggling in the darkness - it’s a metaphor for the scientific endeavour itself. It’s almost the very essence of aspiration and optimism.

But the name Prometheus has dark and sinister connotations as well, and this, I believe, is the brilliance of the choice of title. For the story of the Greek Prometheus goes on; Zeus, infuriated at the betrayal, had Prometheus chained to a rock in the mountains to punish him, and every day an eagle would come and tear out his innards and feed on him, only for him to regenerate every night for the same punishment to happen again, and again, ad infinitum. Does it sound familiar? It should, because what do the Aliens do, but disembowel a victim, and then find other victims to repeat their awful reproductive cycle through? Some variations of the Prometheus myth say that Zeus unleashed his fury on the humans as well as on the traitor, and thus Prometheus brought endless toil and suffering on humanity. Prometheus is further implicated in creating the first woman, Pandora, who of course went on to unleash all the worst things in the world when she opened the box she was forbidden from opening...

And what do we see all around the giant face? Rows and rows of object that look suspiciously like urns, laid out in a pattern reminiscent of the Alien eggs. You can bet that the proto-Aliens or proto-Facehuggers will be in those things, and that it will be a woman’s (probably Dr Shaw’s) fault that one gets out. But the other part of the Pandora story, of course, is that there is still hope in the box after all the evil has escaped into the world, and thus our female scientist/doctor will hold the key to survival by eventually understanding what she’s unleashed.

This still doesn’t explain the giant head, but I’m getting to it. You see, although the exploration team are aboard a ship called Prometheus, they are NOT the Prometheus of the story. Someone ELSE has already ‘stolen fire from the Gods’ (in this narrative, the giant Space Jockeys), and THAT is who the giant head represents. Our heroes are discovering what’s left of a previous attempt to use the ‘stolen fire’, a terra-forming experiment that ended in disaster. I expect we’ll see that a ‘mad’ scientist (probably either Guy Pearce or Patrick Wilson - my bet’s on Pearce) took the relatively benign biotechnology of the Space Jockeys (the Aliens), and did not take the precautions necessary to contain them, not knowing what he was doing. I further expect he attempted to modify the Aliens’ genetic structure to make them behave as he wanted them to (he ‘played god’) and unwittingly turned them into the unstoppable killing machines we recognize from the Alien films. And he probably sacrificed his crew in the process, hence all the hundreds of urns. Either that, or they revered him and came to worship him as a cult-figure**.

I expect the majority of this back-story to emerge as the team explores the (seemingly?) deserted, terra-formed planet. But a back-story is just that, it’s not exciting in its own right. Events have to unfold in the present, and those will come largely from the dynamics between the crew members of the Prometheus. The Space Jockeys may be on the planet as well, trying to ‘clean up the mess’, and perhaps they will come into conflict with the heroes. The proto-Alien will, of course, finally be unleashed and start slaughtering the crew, probably only at the very end. One thing’s for sure though, the Prometheus’ mission will not end well. The Company does not get hold of the Alien life form, though they desperately want it to exploit it for commercial gain. They will end up knowing about it (they have to, to tie this film in with the original Alien film), but the Prometheus and her crew are doomed.

And THAT will be the big theme - Technology, Science, Innovation, they may bring light and salvation, but if mismanaged, they can bring only destruction and desolation. Once greed starts to direct our actions (as it does throughout the Alien films), the spirit of investigation that could otherwise liberate us will inevitably destroy us. Which Prometheus will we be - the hero who saves or the meddler who damns? In a 21st century world, where designer babies, stem cell research, gene therapies and the genetic modification of our food crops are pressing ethical issues, this message could not be more timely. That inescapable, giant stone head dominating those promotional images symbolises the centrality of this moral dilemma, an ever-present reminder of the moral ambiguity at the heart of this tale.


* Something I find highly amusing - Dr Elizabeth Shaw is also the name of a companion character from the Doctor Who television series, played by Caroline John in the Third Doctor era.

** The cult-worship connection would not be completely out of place - Alan Dean Foster's novelisation of Alien 3 had one character begin to worship the titular beast, and indeed that entire story takes place within the walls of a religious commune.

THE Alien

The Alien or Xenomorph, the original nightmare creature from Ridley Scott's masterpiece Alien, the most claustrophobic and frightening Sci-Fi movie ever made. The creature itself, of course, was designed by H.R. Giger :)