July 5, 2014

Will Australia Be The Setting For Weyland's Mars Facility Or Engineer Planet In PROMETHEUS 2?


TheDailyMail back in May, picked-up on a possible location scout by Ridley Scott for Prometheus 2 in Australia. The country is known for it's stunning landscapes, and most notably it's vibrant badlands, which has been best used in the Mad Max franchise. We have no idea when the production is expected to begin, but with it's release date rumored for March 6th, 2016 it could be sometime very soon. Once Ridley has finished his promotional tour for Exodus.

Ridley and Fox have recently hired Michael Green (Blade Runner 2) to do rewrites to the sequel's script from Jack Paglen (Transcendence). Besides the knowledge that David (Michael Fassbender) and Shaw (Noomi Rapce) are heading to the engineer world, we don't know too much about the direction the sequel will go. However, we should expect a large presence from Weyland Industries.


I have to assume Ridley is there because of his desire to shoot Australia's deserts and farmlands. The director previously mentioning wanting to shoot plains/farmlands for the sequel. What those locations could be used for is a little less known, but farmlands could mean terraforming or off-world colonies. It was established that Peter Weyland was well underway colonizing/militarizing Mars, and this could be the location where a rescue/military operation is launched to investigate the missing crew of the Prometheus. TheWrap mentioned a bunch of androids and multiple Davids in the film, it would make sense that the company would send loyal androids along for the ride. I'm sure we'll also see another expendable human crew as well.


Aussie actor Guy Pearce has mentioned a desire to return for the sequel. This could be in the form of an heir, hologram, droid or even the ship's computer (an early version of Father?). Having a company interest sounds about right for the universe, and bringing back a non-elderly Weyland would be worthwhile. Since his best scenes were from the Ted Talk viral clip. There are plenty of science-fiction ways to bring him back, and he's obviously game for it.


The viral campaign also introduced us to an early model of the Bishop line of androids with Andrea Bishop, I'm hoping that is new character is included in the next film. Since we didn't have any female bots in the last installment. Plus, having Andrea involved would be a nice call-back to both Bishop (Aliens, Alien 3) and Call (Alien Resurrection). I'd love to see Andrea Risebourgh (Oblivion, Welcome To The Punch, Shadow Dancer) in the role.



I'd also love to see return or at least the origins of the relationship between the United States Colonial Marines and the Weyland Corporation, along with how they interact with the regular population and colonies outside of Aliens. There is still plenty to explore with the marines, and they tend to have richer character development moments than company employees or scientists. It would also allow Ridley to branch-out and give us other characters to route for, besides Shaw.



Another possibility is that it could double for the engineer home-world planet. We've already seen a bunch of H.R. Giger's production art from Jodorowsky's Dune used in the first film on LV-223. Not to mention the design of the engineer taking major cues from David Lynch's film as well. Placing the aliens in a violent desert planet wouldn't be too much of a stretch. Maybe the remaining few are living in the ruins of their once great society, after whatever sparked the massacre at their military base on LV-223.


Speaking of Giger's unused Dune artwork, I'm sure some of the other Harkonnen pieces could find their way into the sequel as well.

No comments:

Post a Comment