With the Documentary finished, we moved swiftly onto our next area of study - film trailers. We began by picking a film trailer that we were interested in and analysing it, picking out what made it interesting and therefore marketable.
The film trailer I decided to analyse was the trailer for the new Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus.
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| The title of the film is revealed at the end of the trailer. |
Essentially, Prometheus takes place in the same universe as the Alien films, but set before the events in the film occur. Created by the director of the first Alien film, the film explores some of the mysteries surrounding the original film, and this is how it generates intrigue and attracts fans of the original Alien films, whilst also defying many usual film trailer conventions in order to stimulate some kind of curiosity in others who are perhaps not fans of the Alien films, or perhaps have never seen the Alien films at all.
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| Marine Corps technology, similar to the tech in the second film. |
However, it's obvious from the many subtle references and general themes that this will be a film aimed primarily at fans of the old films. The title, first of all, gradually comes into view, with parts of the letters fading in one at a time, in the same way that the title to the original Alien film does. In fact, it does this in such a way that you could be forgiven for thinking that the word that forms at the end would turn out to be "Alien" or something similar, until you realise how many letters are actually forming.
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| The way the title forms is remarkably similar to the way the title forms in the original Alien films. |
Another subtle reference is that, after a few seconds of panicked, unintelligible dialogue, where the actress refers to something being "old, so old", and desperately gasps that she's "sorry," the rest of the trailer has no dialogue at all, and instead simply has the actors either screaming or silent. The soundtrack to the trailer also consists primarily of instruments that sound like a human screaming. It can also be linked to the insanely recogniseable music in the Alien films, in particular to an unnerving track that sounds like the echoing of something lightly tapping the surface of some kind of artificial material. Subtle, but obvious to a fan of the series. These could all be seen as references to the original tagline to the first Alien film - "In space, no one can hear you scream."
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| A bunch of innocent urns? We all know these are EXACTLY like the eggs in Alien. |
Other references to the original Alien films can be seen in the technology - very retro, very much "bright lights and big buttons", as seen in the original films. This extends to a view of cryostasis pods from the original films, and the military hardware seen being driven out of a garage-type area, which look remarkably similar to the vehicles used by the Marine Corps in the second Alien film, Aliens. Another visual connection is the image of a man screaming and clutching his face, which, although covered by a space helmet, seems to be damaged - a reference to the Facehugger of the first film, which attaches itself onto the face of a member of the crew despite the glass casing of their helmet. This is seen directly after a scene of a huge roomfilled with urn-type objects that greatly resemble Alien eggs.
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| "MY FAAAACE!" |
However, the biggest connection to the original Alien film is a sight that is perhaps the biggest mystery in the Alien films entirely - the Space Jockey ship. This iconic spacecraft is seen twice in the Alien films - first at the beginning of Alien, when the crew where the heroine Ripley pick up a strange signal and go to investigate, finding the ship and accidentally becoming exposed to a Facehugger after finding the eggs in the ship, and a second time in the second film, Aliens, where a member of the human colony on the planet from the first film is sent to investigate the coordinates sent to them after Ripley defends her decision to destroy the ship she was on in order to kill the Alien.
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| Aww yeah, retro technology for the win. |
As you can probably tell, this ship is awfully important to the entire storyline of the Alien films, but the fact of the matter is that the films have thusfar been VERY vague about the origins and history of this ship.
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| omg it's the space jockey ship |
And then the trailer for Prometheus appeared.
Showing the Space Jockey ship in the trailer was obviously a decision made on behalf of the director in order to generate the buzz needed to market his film to the correct audience. Though the editing in the trailer is very quick, a few images are easy to pick out, including the seat the original Space Jockey is seen in from the original Alien film. This Jockey was found with it's chest burst. We never saw where the Alien went after it presumably hatched out of the Jockey. Hmmm.
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| omg it's the seat the space jockey was in |
We see the ship crash.
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| Oh Jesus Christ it's crashing and there are explosions and this can't be good. |
And this isn't a small ship either.
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| "RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING" |
This trailer, when it was released, would've probably been the most exciting thing an Alien fan would have seen in many, many years. Sure, Avatar was directed by the director of Aliens, but as far as anyone could tell, it was set in a completely different fictional universe. This film is obviously set in the same one, before the events of the first film, directed by the director of the first film, and explores the mysteries of the film sagas. It even involves actors that resemble the Seargant of the Marine Corps in Aliens and Ripley, the main character of the films. Perhaps the film will unveil the origin of the Alien species? Perhaps Hadley's Hope, the planet the aliens are found on, houses more mysteries than first thought?
As well as this, towards the end of the trailer, the words
"They went looking for our beginning. What they found might be our end."
are shown. Which are fairly interesting. Fans of the Alien series will know that humans do in fact survive afterwards, but that's not the point. It's not the destination, but the journey, that counts when it comes to these films. And from the looks of the trailer, the journey is gonna be a great one.
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