The Smarts: In space, no-one can hear you talking about Prometheus

POSTERS for new movies usually include endorsements from critics who have seen it. The latest posters for Ridley Scott’s new sci-fi movie – full-page newspaper ads, a month before the film is released – include quotes from people who haven’t seen Prometheus, talking about how much people are talking about the film.

Too much talk? There are, increasingly, grumblings to this effect. The first trailer, released back in December, was a masterclass in building expectation without giving too much away. There were visual nods to Alien, but little sense of the film’s plot, or of how it connected to Scott’s 1978 classic.

The fourth and most recent trailer, by contrast, gives away so much that there doesn’t seem to be much story left for the actual film to tell. What previous trailers hinted at is now explicitly shown – small, slimy aliens that grab on to people’s faces, alien eggs, and, in Charlize Theron, a clearly signposted villain in the vein of the “company” representatives from previous Alien films. At least one fan has now made an impressive job of guessing the entire plot of the film, scene by scene, from all the footage released so far (it’s at http://i.imgur.com/os5iF.jpg if you really can’t resist).

Meanwhile, what gaps are left are gradually being filled in by www.weylandindustries.com, a website supposedly belonging to the fictional company of the Alien film series. Thanks to the site we know that David, Michael Fassbender’s android, is definitely not to be trusted, and that Peter Weyland, the man who sends Prometheus on its mission, is a megalomaniac and possibly insane. So you shouldn’t trust him either.

All this, of course, could be a gigantic red herring. Perhaps the movie is actually a comedy.