Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, at one point among the most highly anticipated films of 2012, has come to rest somewhere in the middle – with its fair share of adoring fans and annoyed detractors. Contentious to say the least, Prometheus‘ story (scripted by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts) presented a few inconsistencies that it left audiences questioning the little details.
But what if Ridley Scott and co. had been as thoughtful about the production and its lofty themes as we’d hope for? What if Scott had planned out several of the film’s key scenes so many times that he had back-up scenarios upon back-up scenarios? While we can’t say that was true about the entire film, we can confirm that one scene from Prometheus – occurring about midway through the film – could have played out a few different ways.
From here on out a few specifics from the film’s second act are going to need to be spoiled, so those who have yet to see Prometheus should turn back now.
About a third of the way through the film, Prometheus‘ geologist Fifield and biologist Milburn encounter a worm that has been genetically mutated by the film’s mysterious black goop. Milburn, being of a curious and scientific mind, puts his head close enough to the worm that it is able to attack and kill him. Fifield on the other hand, is not so lucky, and is horribly scarred by some sort of corrosive fluid.
A few scenes pass by before the surviving members of the research vessel come to discover Fifield’s new visage, a mutated collection of skin, muscle, and hair; but when they do he’s hell-bent to kill them all. In the actual film, through the use of practical make-up, Fifield looks like this:
But in case the practical make-up didn’t “work” on the day or look believable in editing, Ridley Scott had several CGI versions of the character to use as back-ups. As we already know, the practical version of Fifield won out, but CineFX has obtained some concept art that shows how the character would have looked in CGI form.
It’s not necessarily a far stretch from the practical version, but the CGI Fifield looks much more alien (not Alien) than the production might have intended. The melted face idea is there, but these CGI creations would have given some audience members the impression Fifield had become an entirely new creature, or worse, made them wonder who this random alien attacking the crew was. And since they were already struggling to understand the Engineers that would have compounded the problem even further.
We’re glad to see that Scott, a pioneer in sci-fi filmmaking, stuck to his guns and kept the practical effects in, but it’s also interesting to see how other versions of the mutation could have played out.
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Source: CineFX (via Bloody Disgusting)
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I like the cgi one, well the face of it at least.
The CGI one does somehow look more interesting, but I’ll take practical effects any day.
Agreed. While the CG effect does look cool in concept, there’s no telling how crap it could look in motion.
It does bring up the question as to why the one guy was outright killed, whereas the other guy was scarred and disfigured but still very alive and able to do damage. It makes you wonder if the worms were consciously able to attack the humans and achieve a different result. Maybe they were able to change the lethality of the corrosive fluid so it kills one person but leaves the other alive? Perhaps they intentionally meant to do that.
No Fifield mutated coz he came into contact with the black goo after his helmet melted.
Milburn was simply killed by the worm, and didn’t come into contact with the black goo.
Not to mention, the worms were a RESULT of the mutation affects of the black goo, NOT the delivery vector. As state above, the mutant worms killed Milburn. Fitfield mutated from the black goo just as Holloway did.
The practical prostetic imo looks much better than the CGI, the CGI though looks good but had no visual recognition of the actors character like the practical effect did. The CGI leaves nothing close that resembles the actors facial features like the finalized practical effect had. I’m glad Scott chose the practical effect over the CGI.
agreed !
The CGI version actually looks like a mutation. The practical version looks like a zombie. Regardless Fifield suddenly being able to breathe and running all the way back to the ship ( when he got lost wandering around a few corridors earlier ) makes me wonder if the audience would have been confused regardless.
agreed
omg. i think the 1st one looks like a zombie and the other one is just not scary enough, maybe in prometheus 2 it could be part of the transformation between jockey and human
You know, no matter how many times i see those suits i still think of mass effect. They were definitely inspired by it.
I like the CGI one better than the zombie/troll one.
I am still in aw at how polarizing this movie was.
Ont topic, this article highlights perfectly why i love concept art. I love seeing how the rough ideas compare to the finished product. Sometimes they look worse, sometimes they look better. How would the film have worked if they went with a different design. As to what is presented above, i do like the practical head better. But what if they took the head used in the film, put it on the concept body, and did the whole thing in practical effects, what would that have been like?
I can’t be the only one who looks at the close up of the cgi mockup and thinks of Mars Attacks, can I? A wierd alien head in a glass bowl? Anyone?
yeah I thought about it, like a mix of Martian with Human
ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK
#MarsAttacks
Exactly my first impression as well.
“ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK
#MarsAttacks”
You know that’s probably the very reason they didn’t use it even though it seems like a logical progression, melding the material of the suit and helmet to the living human tissue. Could a combination of the two been tailored so that you got that, conveyed that idea but looked unique enough?
The concept art shows it best. It’s not a melding of the suit and him, but his head is elongating and his eyes gelling over and becoming useless. He was being transformed into a tailless Xeno of sorts. The “practical” version did not portray this. They also should have had him come on board differently. The contortions act was just silly. It reminded my of a scene deleted from the Original Alien where the alien crab-walks over to one of the women . . . awkward looking (not in a good way) and then rises up to spear her in the butt with his stinger tail. We only see the later half of that in the final edit. Similarly here, all they had to do was say “Hey Jerkwad. Let’s go do some repairs outside after that last sandstorm” They open the door and get Fifield in the guts.
thanks
I don’t think it matters one way or another. The film had so many problems, this one little thing wouldn’t matter. Here’s an idea; how about writing characters that actually make sense and aren’t just cardboard dummies.
It looks like the zombie-type monsters from Too Human on the Xbox 360! Really neat looking. Like it said in the article though, it doesn’t have enough resemblance to the original character, further the moaning and groaning everyone already has about this great movie.
Damon Lindelof stated that the cgi Fifield creature was dropped because it would have been “too obvious” to the audience that he was transforming into the same type of creature seen at the end of the film. (*you can still catch a really quick glimpse of cgi Fifield in the earlier trailers if you look carefully, the elongated limbs and white face are there)
I don’t think audiences would have been confused by the cgi version; the scene is set-up by Captain Janek noticing that Fifield’s camera has turned back on and is outside the ship.
I think they didn’t use the more “obvious” version of him because it would have taken away a lot of the ambiguity surrounding the black liquid and its purpose.
I’m hoping the deleted scenes for this on the blu-ray will show the cgi version. Curious as to what the commentary may explain also.
Hi. I enjoyed Prometheus because it made me think about the what who, why, and where of the series. I still have a boatload of questions and hope that Ridley will answer them in the next film and finish tying everything together. Or not. Let’s face it, as bad as most horror/sci fi is these days, so formulaic and uninspired, we should be happy when Ridley decides to fiddle in the genre. He seldom makes a bad film. Of course, now that Tony is gone, Ridley may use the pain to make his penultimate film. Pain generally leads to great inspiration as a means of dealing with the loss.
I didn’t know who it was in the movie anyway. I first thought it was the female scientist’s guy who they had burned … but his mutation let him survive the burning and change somehow anyway. But it did not look like him. I never did recognize it as Fifel. I mean, it looked like acid-for-blood melted the space helmet to his face, not mutating goo. But then I wondered why they didn’t find him when they found the other guy.
They could have easily had someone face-to-face with the creature, look down and see Fifel’s name tag, freak out that it was once Fifel but also have conflicting emotions about someone they knew. That would have been all they needed to do. Sometimes “insert shot” is the easiest fix.
I like this alternate design better. The mutation design that made it into the movie looks like some idiotic troll. Still love the movie, though, despite it’s problems. It’s a rare breed in today’s cinema landscape and for that fact alone must be cherished.
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Yeh the cgi is way better – has more of a clean-transformative horror to it, which is what Alien was all about. The deformed guy put the film closer to the thing for me.
This movie destroyed the last hop i had for the Alien franchise.
Its like losing a child.
The endless —endless, ever unborn rut
at the service of the capstone EUGENICS agenda.
BLUH!
Scott should have known better.