Prometheus Rising

It’s not out until 8 June but fan excitement levels are already feverish. Ridley Scott, who directed the original, groundbreaking science-fiction-horror-classic Alien back in 1979, has said that his new film Prometheus – only his third ever sci-fi outing (the other was Bladerunner) - is not part of the Alien series and won’t feature the snap-jawed xenomorph, last seen battling fellow monster franchise Predator in a series of dismal B-movies. Prometheus, however, does clearly inhabit the same universe, as the latest trailer clearly shows, with Alien designer H R Giger advising and aspects from the original film revisited.

Most notably, Prometheus will reveal the background of "the space jockey", the giant otherworldly astronaut seen in Alien as the doomed team from the Nostromo search its infested spaceship. Other than that, all we know is what the trailer tells us: “They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end.”

As to whether it will be any good, that’s a whole other ball game. Writer Damon Lindelof won an Emmy for his work on the TV series Lost but his film outings – The Last Airbender and Cowboys & Aliens – are far from promising; meanwhile his writing partner Jon Spaihts’s only credit is the stinky new Moscow-set alien invasion picture, The Darkest Hour. If this doesn’t bode well, at least the cast is solid. Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron are both on a roll right now, Swedish-Spanish actress Noomi Rapace was the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Guy Pearce is always reliable, and Idris Elba makes all the women I know go weak at the knees. Oh, and Rafe Spall is in there somewhere too.

Director Scott needs to come up with the goods on this one and, while he’s always a steady pair of hands at the tiller, his track record lately – Robin Hood and Body of Lies – has not been white-hot. We need to look back five years to American Gangster to see him sparking well, and for the kind of visceral kicks that this project will require he'll need to match his juicy post-millennial run of Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. Prometheus is coming out in 3D and may well have 12 and 18 versions. Check the trailer and let that anticipation continue bubbling…

Watch the trailer for Prometheus