Prometheus - Dark Signs

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Movie
German title Prometheus - Dark Signs
Original title Prometheus
PrometheusDunkleZeichen.jpg
Country of production United Kingdom , United States
original language English
Publishing year 2012
length 124 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Ridley Scott
script Jon Spaihts ,
Damon Lindelof
production Ridley Scott,
David Giler ,
Walter Hill
music Marc Streitenfeld ,
Harry Gregson-Williams
camera Dariusz Wolski
cut Pietro Scalia
occupation
synchronization
chronology

←  Predecessor
Alien - The Rebirth

Successor  →
Alien: Covenant

Prometheus - Dark Characters (Original Title: Prometheus ) is an American - British science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from 2012 . Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof wrote the script . The main roles are Noomi Rapace , Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron .

The film follows a similar theme to Scott's 1979 film Alien - The uncanny creature from an alien world : At the end of the 21st century, a research group with the spaceship “ Prometheus ” is investigating clues to extraterrestrial origins of human life. Prometheus is part of the Alien film series .

action

At the beginning a man-like giant stands in a pristine landscape at the edge of a large waterfall. After drinking a dark liquid from a small bowl, his body begins to decompose and falls into the floods. In the water, its disintegrated DNA reassembles and forms new cells that divide.

In 2089, the archaeologist couple Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway found Stone Age wall paintings in a cave on the Scottish island of Skye , which show gigantic creatures and a star formation. Shaw interprets the scene as a creation story of extraterrestrials as well as an invitation: The creators she calls "constructors" (of humans) wish, according to their assumption, to be visited by their creatures. The moon LV-223 is identified as its home in the star system Zeta 2 Reticuli , 36.5 light years away .

With a mission financed by the tycoon Peter Weyland, the spaceship Prometheus with a crew of 19 is later on its way to LV-223 and, after four years, has almost reached its destination in 2093. After the android David wakes the crew from their cold sleep , Weyland greets them with a holographic message and the note that he has probably already died when they see his video message. Meredith Vickers, who is leading the expedition on behalf of the Weyland Corporation, also introduces herself.

The Prometheus lands in a valley on the surface of which geometrical lines have been discovered that cannot be of natural origin. However, contrary to the researchers' hope, living beings cannot be found for the time being. A research team around Shaw and Holloway is exploring the interior of a mountain-like structure. The geologist Fifield begins to explore the interior of the mountain with autonomous surveying drones. The measurement results are sent to the Prometheus in real time . The android David, who learned the Indo-European original language during the flight , discovers evidence that the inhabitants of the deserted planet have fled from something unknown.

While exploring the mountain, the researchers discover a headless body in front of a gate. While Shaw and another scientist try to determine the age of the deceased using the radiocarbon method, David opens the gate against Shaw's orders. On the other side they discover the severed head of the astronaut and the huge sculpture of a human face, which is surrounded by urn-like containers. However, they overlook small worms crawling on the ground. Because of an approaching storm, Janek, the captain of the Prometheus , calls on the reconnaissance party to return. The researcher couple hides the severed head and can use it to reach the spaceship at the last moment. The researchers Milburn and Fifield, who were afraid to leave the tunnel system beforehand, get lost and have to stay there overnight because of the storm.

In the Prometheus laboratory , the supposed skull turns out to be a helmet. The inside head of a “designer” is surprisingly well preserved, but it bursts when trying to stimulate it neurologically. An analysis shows that the DNA of the being largely corresponds to the human one.

Unobserved, David opens an urn smuggled on board and discovers ampoules with a dark liquid in it. He secretly gives Holloway a drop from one of the ampoules. Meanwhile, Shaw is recording the day's results. She is of the opinion that an epidemic broke out in the base of the designers, to which they fell victim. Milburn and Fifield wander through the tunnel system and discover the remains of other dead aliens. You get back into the room with the urns, from which a grayish liquid is now emerging. This genetically modified the small worms in a very short time and allowed them to grow rapidly. One of the creatures attacks Milburn, slips through the spacesuit and penetrates his mouth. Fifield tries in vain to help Milburn by severing the worm; the body fluid that inevitably spurts out etches through his helmet visor and seriously injures him. No longer protected by the helmet, he falls face first into a pool of the dark gray liquid.

The next morning Janek leads a search party into the tunnel system. David discovers a kind of command room and finds a survivor of the crew in cold sleep. The search party has since found Milburn's body. Fifield is gone. At Holloway the first symptoms of illness appear due to the liquid administered by David. The search party hurries back to Prometheus . There, Vickers, armed with a flamethrower, denied entry to Holloway, who was already marked by severe physical changes. Holloway realizes that there is no hope for him and that he is a danger to the rest of the crew, and provokes Vickers to kill him.

Shaw learns after a body scan from David that she is said to be four months pregnant. In fact, she is growing a fetus less than a day after sleeping with the infected Holloway. David denied her the requested abortion. With pain, she therefore independently performs a caesarean section with the help of a surgical robot, removes the unknown, octopus-like form of life from her body and numbs it. Meanwhile, Fifield, mutated by exposure to the foreign liquid, appears at the Prometheus hatch and kills several crew members. Only Janek and his copilot can overwhelm Fifield and burn him.

Shaw meets David and Peter Weyland. Unnoticed by the majority of the crew, the latter had started the journey with them; it is he who gives orders to the android David. Vickers turns out to be his daughter. Weyland is close to death and is hoping for rescue from the designers. He orders another excursion to the building, which he leads himself.

On the basis of the scan analysis of the drones launched by Fifield, the crew determines that it hides a spaceship inside, the shape of which is similar to that of a horseshoe . Once in the control room of this spaceship, Shaw believes that the designers were about to take off to destroy all life on earth, but their launch was thwarted by a catastrophe. On Weyland's orders, David wakes the last designer from his cold sleep and speaks to him. But the latter tears off the android's head and kills Weyland and other crew members; only Shaw manages to escape. The designer initiates the start of his spaceship in order to complete his mission: to set a course for earth and destroy humanity.

Shaw summons the rest of the crew on board the Prometheus over the radio to prevent the designer from reaching Earth by all means. Janek and his two co-pilots start and ram - sacrificing themselves - the constructor's spaceship, which has already taken off. Vickers settles down beforehand with an escape capsule and returns to the surface of the moon. The constructor's crashed spaceship overturns on her and Shaw. Vickers is crushed, but Shaw survives on a ridge. She reaches the Prometheus rescue ship, which has previously been separated from the main ship, just in time before her oxygen supply is exhausted. Through the door window of the operating room, Shaw sees that her octopus-like fetus is still alive and has grown to a considerable size. She receives a warning from David's still functional head that the designer also survived the crash and is following her. In the next moment he has already penetrated the rescue ship and lunges at Shaw, who then opens the door to the operating room. The octopus-like behemoth overwhelms the designer and introduces its reproductive extremity into his mouth.

David reports to Shaw that there are other designer spaceships under the other domes and that he has the ability to pilot them. Shaw then retrieves David's body parts, but on the condition not to fly back to Earth, but to the home planet of the designers. She wants to know why they first created people and then wanted to destroy them. She sends one last radio message and warns against going to the moon LV-223. A little later, a horseshoe-shaped spaceship leaves the moon in front of the scenery of its ring planet. It is New Years Day of the year 2094.

On the moon, the body of the overwhelmed constructor breaks open and a creature emerges from it that resembles the classic aliens in this film series - as an alien prototype from the combination of the genes of the octopus-like creature with those of the constructor.

background

production

Originally Prometheus - Dark Characters was intended as a prequel to the 1979 film Alien - The uncanny creature from an alien world . However, the script developed into an independent story and is thus a new beginning for the series.

Prometheus was produced by Brandywine Productions ( Walter Hill and David Giler ), Dune Entertainment, and Scott Free Productions (Ridley and Tony Scott ).

The artist HR Giger , who had designed the "Alien" and the wrecked extraterrestrial spaceship for Ridley Scott's first Alien film in the 1970s, was also involved in the film. At a press conference in July 2011, Scott announced that the film would hardly contain digital, but rather traditional special effects and that it would be remotely reminiscent of Blade Runner .

Was filmed in the Pinewood Studios , in Spanish Alicante (Ciudad de la Luz film studios), in Fort William , Iceland (the opening scene was right on the edge of the Dettifoss turned -Wasserfalls and its surroundings as well as in the area of the volcano Hekla ) in Inverness , Rannoch Moor and The Storr . The only camera used was the Red Epic . Work started in March 2011 and ended on December 10, 2011.

Film starts

Prometheus - launched on 30 May 2012 in France , Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland , the United Kingdom had Prometheus the day after its official premiere party. In the United States , the film opened on June 8 of the same year, in Austria on August 8, in Germany and German-speaking Switzerland on August 9. Prometheus - Dark Characters was shown in 3D , IMAX and regular (non- stereoscopic ) film formats. 20th Century Fox acted as the distributor .

The film played at a budget of 130 million US dollars worldwide more than 400 million dollars.

synchronization

The German-language dubbing was done at Interopa Film based on a dialogue book by Klaus Bickert and directed by Björn Schalla .

role actor Voice actor
Elizabeth Shaw Noomi Rapace Vera Teltz
David Michael Fassbender Norman Matt
Meredith Vickers Charlize Theron Katrin Fröhlich
Captain Janek Idris Elba Marco Kroeger
Sir Peter Weyland Guy Pearce Christian Rode
Charlie Holloway Logan Marshall-Green Björn Schalla
Fifield Sean Harris Martin Kautz
Milburn Rafe Spall Robin Kahnmeyer
chance Emun Elliott Nicola Devico Mamone
Ravel Benedict Wong Jesco Wirthgen
ford Kate Dickie Silke Matthias

reception

Reviews

The Lexicon of International Films wrote that director Ridley Scott was building on motifs from his 1979 film Alien , and praised the "amazing ideas and visionary set designs". The plot of the film is "increasingly falling into the clichés of the horror film that is common in the genre ". The lack of characterization of most of the characters and the "pseudo- metaphysics reduced to mere empty words " of the dialogues stand in the way of the "desired depth" as well as "the enjoyment of the great visual values".

In the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Films , Stefan Jung describes the film as a “fully thought-out film concept, which […] can be read as an intact narrative universe within the entire alien saga, but also as an independent redefinition of the original story co-developed by Scott is. ”In this context, Jung goes into individual stylistic features of the film, including the visual design, the increased urge to psychologize the plot and characters, the“ Prometheus ”legends as literary models and, finally, the genre-typical“ dream “Motif, which ultimately makes the film appear to the author to be more influenced by the director's handwriting and less by the already established film series and its norms.

Spiegel Online viewed Prometheus as a “stroke of luck” and “the best alien film that isn't one”, with “terribly beautiful” images, convincing stars and surprising humor, which succeeded in transforming the series into “an independent narrative”.

Die Zitty criticized that the film shone with “excellent viewing values”, but suddenly “fell from the ambiguous SF vision into popcorn mode. [...] Unusual dialogues and grotesque script ideas [...] let the vision degenerate into flat action fodder . ”One can expect more from a Ridley Scott.

Thomas Assheuer analyzed the film at the time as an attempt to explain where the evil came from. What matters though "a technically brilliant sci-fi horror movie out, but all in all but a great myths -Rührquark with many absurd images from the Western images bakery".

Patrick Seyboth wrote in epd Film that there are many aspects of Prometheus that could be criticized, such as "his logic holes, the dialogues that are too explanatory, the characters and constellations given away, the music that is often much too intrusive". Nevertheless, Prometheus is a "powerful and rousing film, fascinating in many ways, terrifying in some".

The journalist Markus Ströhlein praised the acting performance of Michael Fassbender and "the sovereign use of 3D technology", but criticized the film for its "crude story", the "hectic, bumpy cut" and an "intrusive soundtrack". In general, "Scott apparently forgot the small, but important questions of filmmaking through the supposedly big questions".

Awards

year price category Award winners result
2012 Golden Trailer Awards Blockbuster trailer summer 2012 Prometheus / "Not Alone", 20th Century Fox, Wild Card Nominated
Best sound editing Prometheus , 20th Century Fox, Skip Film Nominated
Key Art Awards Digital "Weyland Industries" website Won
Innovative media Prometheus Won
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Best artistic direction Alex Cameron Won
Phoenix Film Critics Society Best visual effects Richard Stammers , Charley Henley and Martin Hill Nominated
Satellite Awards Best visual effects Richard Stammers, Charley Henley and Martin Hill Nominated
Best sound Victor Ray Ennis, Ann Scibelli, John Cucci, and Mark P. Stoeckinger Nominated
Teen Choice Awards Choice Movie Breakout Noomi Rapace Nominated
Choice Summer Movie - Action Prometheus Nominated
Choice Summer Movie Star - Female Charlize Theron (also for Snow White & the Huntsman ) Nominated
2013 Academy Awards Best visual effects Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill Nominated
ADG Excellence in Production Design Award Fantasy movie Arthur Max Nominated
BAFTA Award Best visual effects Richard Stammers, Charley Henley, Trevor Wood, Paul Butterworth Nominated
Broadcast Film Critics Association Award Best sci-fi / horror film Prometheus Nominated
Golden Reel Award Best sound Prometheus Nominated
Visual Effects Society Excellent composition Xavier Bourque, Sam Cole, Simone Riginelli, Denis Scolan for "Engineers & the Orrery" Nominated
Excellent designed environment Julien Bolbach, Marco Genovesi, Martin Riedel, Marco Rolandi for "LV-233" Nominated
Best visual effects in a film that relies on visual effects Paul Butterworth, Charley Henley, Allen Maris, Richard Stammers for Prometheus Nominated
London Film Critics' Circle Award Best supporting actor Michael Fassbender Nominated
Saturn Awards Best science fiction film Prometheus Nominated
Best supporting actor Michael Fassbender Nominated

continuation

Director Ridley Scott is planning a total of three sequels of Prometheus , with the third being intended to follow up on the content of his first alien film from 1979.

The first sequel is titled Alien: Covenant . Filming began in March 2016 at Fox Studios in Sydney . Michael Fassbender took over the role of android David again . The film opened worldwide in May 2017.

Ridley Scott explained in an interview that the plot will focus on the "constructors" and that he will introduce a new form of the Xenomorphs -Aliens, which should differ from those in the Prometheus finale .

Trivia

The android David learns Ur-Indo-European, among other things, by reciting Schleicher's fable . His interactive language teacher for Ur-Indo-European is in this scene by Dr. Anil Biltoo, who also acted as the language expert for the film. Later David can use his language skills to communicate with one of the designers. In the scene in which the research team led by the aged entrepreneur Peter Weyland enters the dark cargo hold of the alien spaceship, archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw asks the blonde android David why the human-like designers had the plan to fly to Earth, to which David replies: " If you want to create something, you have to destroy something beforehand. “In economics there is the theory of the creative destruction of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter .

Web links

Commons : Prometheus - Dark Characters  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for Prometheus - Dark Signs . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2012 (PDF; test number: 133 353 K).
  2. Age rating for Prometheus - Dark Signs . Youth Media Commission .
  3. YouTube: Prometheus - Featurette Origins (German) at 1:50 min.
  4. Prequel: Ridley Scott cancels planned "Alien" film . In: Spiegel-Online , January 15, 2011, accessed on July 20, 2014
  5. a b Prometheus - Dark Characters in the Internet Movie Database .
  6. Comic-Con 2011: Damon Lindelof & Charlize Theron Talk 'Prometheus' in 3D . In: screenrant.com, February 10, 2012, accessed July 20, 2014
  7. Comic Con 2011 Report: PROMETHEUS . ( Memento of July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: badassdigest.com, accessed on July 21, 2014 (English)
  8. Filming Locations . In: IMDb , accessed on July 20, 2014 (English)
  9. Technical Specifications . In: IMDb , accessed on July 20, 2014 (English)
  10. 'Prometheus': Michael Fassbender on Ridley Scott's 'breathtaking' project . In: latimes.com, April 8, 2011, accessed July 20, 2014
  11. Ridley Scott rodará de Alicante 'Prometheus' el origen de 'Alien' . In: diarioinformacion.com, August 20, 2011, accessed July 20, 2014 (Spanish)
  12. Release Info . In: IMDb , accessed on July 21, 2014 (English)
  13. a b Prometheus - Dark Characters in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  14. Prometheus - Dark Characters on Boxofficemojo.com, accessed October 15, 2012.
  15. German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | Prometheus - Dark Signs. Retrieved May 28, 2018 .
  16. ^ Stefan Jung: Prometheus , in: Enzyklopädie des Fantastischen Films, December 2012.
  17. "Alien" -Prequel "Prometheus" - The gods must be monsters. In: Spiegel-Online , August 6, 2012, accessed December 6, 2014
  18. Zitty 17/2012, p. 59.
  19. Thomas Assheuer: Where does evil come from? , in: Die Zeit from August 9, 2012, p. 44.
  20. Patrick Seyboth, in: epd Film, No. 8/2012.
  21. Markus Ströhlein: The tentacles of God . Jungle World # 32, August 9, 2012
  22. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ridley-scotts-prometheus-sequel-gets-840584
  23. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ridley-scott-alien-covenant-is-844051
  24. Prometheus 2 brings new aliens . In: MovieMaze . November 20, 2014. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
  25. ^ Stu Holmes: The Linguistics of Prometheus - what David says to the Engineer In: The Bioscopist, June 20, 2012. Retrieved July 12, 2017.