Return of the Space Jockey.

The further story as it evolves

1.L'Ecran fantastique Hors Serie no.13, Decembre 2010 in their article about the Alien prequels translated into French a quote from Ridley Scott on his intentions with the two prequels. They wrote that he said :" La premiere se concentrera sur l'histoire du space jockey, Quel est son but? Comment des oeufs d'aliens se sont retrouvés sur son vaisseau? La seconde préquelle nous permettra de décrouvrir d'où vient cette  mystérieuse créature." which on Google translates as "The first will focus on the history of space jockey, what is its purpose? How alien eggs were found on his ship? The second prequel will we must see whence comes this mysterious creature"  (Where are they quoting him from? Are they paraphrasing?)

Variations on the year it's set.

1. Ridley did not want to put an exact year on when the original Alien movie was set when he made it back in the 1970s, but imagined it generally taking place a hundred years in the future. In October29, 2009, he talked to Empire magazine about the upcoming alien movie "The prequel will be a while ago. It's very difficult to put a year on 'Alien,' but [for example] if 'Alien' was towards the end of this century, then the prequel story will take place thirty years prior."

2. The Mike Goodridge article in Screendaily.com without quoting, says that the movie will be set in 2085. He heard Ridley Scott say:“If the first Alien took place in 2090, it will take place in the years before that when they first come across this thing on a planet called Zeta Reticuli and it will ask who was that guy in the first film lying in a chair with his chest blown outwards when they first go into the giant spacecraft.”(Mike Goodridge of Screendaily.com) (Read about the issues regarding saying that the planetoid is Zeta Reticuli or was in that star system )

3. However the problem with this is that in MTV interview, Ridley confirms that the sequel will be set in 2085, however states that the events of Alien prequel will take place thirty year before Sigourney, whether that is to say before Sigourney's character Ripley was born or before Ripley encountered the alien creature is another matter, but Ridley says that the prequel be set in a period before she was born

The Space Jockeys

Ridley Scott “The film will be really tough, really nasty. It’s the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would actually go in and clean up a planet?” (Ridley tells Mike Goodridge of Screendaily.com)

L'ecran fantastique Hors Serie no.13, reveal a comment from Ridley Scott that may well be an approximate translatio of an amalgamate of various quotes since they haven't given a source: 

La realisateur va donc répondre a une question que les fans se posent depuis 1979. "Cette forme de vie extra-terrestre, à la fois divinité et ingénieur/ biologiste, semble avoir créé les aliens. Nous parlons ici des ingénieurs de l'espace! Les aliens ont-ils été conçus pour une forme de guerre biologique, nettoyant une planete de fond en comble, á l'instar d'ármes de destruction massive? Ou est-ce impitoyable forme de vie, qui s'est developpée au sein d'un écosystème incroyablement dangereux? On révèlera une face encore plus sombre des ces créatures."

English Translation: The film director will then answer a question that fans have arisen since 1979. "This form of extraterrestrial life, both divinity and engineer / biologist, seems to have created the aliens. We are talking about the engineers of space! The aliens were they designed for a form of biological warfare, a cleaner planet inside out, like weapons of mass destruction? Or is this ruthless form of life that has developed an ecosystem incredibly dangerous? We reveal an even darker side of these creatures ".


The reference to gods harkens back to the Don Shay interview back in the Alien laserdisc DVD, where he compared the space jockey's race to Mars the god of war and said about the aliens "they've been to Earth before". However the term "engineers of space" is a new one from Ridley and in this case it seems to refer to the theme of terraforming, which is a main topic in the prequel .

The discussion on Terraforming

MTV asked Scott if Weyland-Yutani (the name of the Company in the movie series) was in existence and his reply was : "It's Weyland. Weyland hasn't joined Yutani yet, so they go and see Weyland. [The film] is about the discussion of terraforming — taking planets and planetoids and balls of earth and trying to terraform, seed them with the possibilities of future life."

Space Jockeys as Terraformers

So now in questions Ridley is asking, the Space Jockey's race are possibly terraformers rather than just or as well creatures involved in a war, using biological weaponry, but a war with exactly whom has not yet been revealed.

The idea of space jockeys being terraformers was touched upon in the Aliens comic books, the Aliens Earth War series, the one off story "The Alien" published in Aliens Platinum Edition 1992, and the Aliens Apocalypse - The Destroying Angels series, but in the comic book series, the alien has been something that the space jockeys have been in fear and hatred of, rather than something they had either genetically altered or created for their own uses.

A New Alien Design

1. Ridley told MTV that because the Facehugger design has been so overused in the movie sequels, he "will have to design - or redesign - earlier versions of what these elements are that led to the thing you finally see in "Alien" which is the thing that catapult out of the egg, the face-hugger"

He added "They've squeezed the franchise dry. The first one will always be the most frightening, because the beast we put together with Giger and all its parts — the face-hugger, the chest-burster, the egg — they were all totally original, and that's hard to follow."

However it was most likely that he would consult Giger for the upcoming beast , and he said to MTV, "Once I get more serious and get going, and the big wheels start turning, we’ll certainly talk. And maybe we’ll come up with something completely different"

2. Back in July in 2008, at a Warner Brothers Studio Backlot tour, he was asked by Jay from the Alienexperience.com site about the possibility of returning to the Franchise, Ridley talked about the need for a new beast, "I'd have to redesign the beast" he said, "and it's not like lets go back to Giger and give us another beast , you're not going to get it, you're going to get a variation on a theme, and people have seen it, so you'd come up with something more original even."

Pyramid in the Prequel

1. It was revealed in the Alien Legacy Forums on October 29th, 2010, by a user named Necronom (which shows the person to be a Giger fan): “I’m not sure if any of this is known, but my Brother works in TV and one of the crews he works with came back from Morocco about 10 days ago (I waited until I knew it would be okay to mention). He was told that the area of desert they were shooting (where Scott shot Kingdom of Heaven) on had just been recced by Scott and he’s given the go ahead for them to start work on a pyramid!

The person who told my Brother thought it was going to be a part of Earth, but the pyramid sounds suspiciously like the original pyramid idea for Alien, so might actually be Acheron, or another planet.”

2.  The user named Necronom's report may have come across as very unreliable, but later in the Financial Times on December 10th, 2010,  it is supported though by an interview with Nourreddine Sail, head of the Moroccan Cinema Centre, confirmed that there would be filming in Morrocco’s southern Ouarzazate film studios in February and March of 2011