On the 24th of February, 2012, Filmsite.hu published an article in which is was claimed Ridley Scott stated that Guy Pearce would play Peter Weyland. Alien Prequel news with help managed to have the article in Hungarian translated into English.
"When the first 'Alien' movie and 'Blade Runner' were made, I thought that in the near future the world will be owned by large companies. This is why we have the Tyrell Corporation in 'Blade Runner', and Weyland-Yutani in 'Alien'. They sent the Nostromo spaceship.
Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland
The Prometheus is owned by an entrepreneur called Peter Weyland, and is played by Guy Pearce. That's the connection between the two films, and nothing more. Prometheus is a new film, a new world, and is full of new ideas. And of course new monsters as well."On top of this, the article quotes a mysterious IC Press as their source. Since no one had any communication with Filmsite.hu, there wasn't actually in the end any evidence that Ridley made any such comment and the immediate thing to do was to take this with a pinch of salt.
2. Peter Weyland at TED2023: "I will change the world"
The character begins to talk about T.E Lawrence also known as Lawrence of Arabia, being able to not mind the pain of a lit match when putting it out by pinching it with his fingers and then begins to launch into a monologue about fire being the first form of technology used by man and that the titan Prometheus stole fire from the Gods to give to mankind , he briefly talks about the myth of Prometheus and then turns the speech into a statement about his latest development in the cybernet industry
b) The idea is that "Peter Weyland has been a magnet for controversy since he announced
his intent to build the first convincingly humanoid robotic system by
the end of the decade.
Whether challenging the ethical boundaries of medicine with
nanotechnology or going toe to toe with the Vatican itself on the issue
of gene-therapy sterilization, Sir Peter prides himself on his motto,
“If we can, we must.” After a three year media blackout, Weyland has
finally emerged to reveal where he’s heading next. Wherever that may be,
we will most certainly want to follow." (http://blog.ted.com/TED2023/)His biography as given is "Sir Peter Weyland was born in Mumbai, India at the turn of the Millennium. The progeny of two brilliant parents; His mother, an Oxford Educated Professor of Comparative Mythology, his father, a self-taught software Engineer, it was clear from an early age that Sir Peter’s capabilities would only be eclipsed by his ambition to realize them. By the age of fourteen, he had already registered a dozen patents in a wide range of fields from biotech to robotics, but it would be his dynamic break-throughs in generating synthetic atmosphere above the polar ice cap that gained him worldwide recognition and spawned an empire.
In less than a decade, Weyland Corporation became a worldwide leader in emerging technologies and launched the first privatized industrial mission to leave the planet Earth. “There are other worlds than this one,” Sir Peter boldly declared, “And if there is no air to breathe, we will simply have to make it.”
3. Weyland Industries
a) This Weyland Corporation has a fragmented connection with Weyland Industries founded by Charles Weyland an American. Originally Weyland would have been a British company inspired by the name of the car company British Leyland and the name became changed slightly to avoid lawsuits.
b) It was Paul Anderson's need to find an actor who played an android in the Alien series to fill the role of Charles Weyland, Ian Holm who was English and Lance Henriksen was American, however Henriksen was the one who made himself available for the role and so Weyland soon became a company founded by an American. This created a certain amount of confusion because this meant that Bishop the android was supposed to be made in his image as a homage to him, while in Alien 3, the character listed in the credits as Bishop II who was supposedly a human being although many questioned this right from the start with no ultimate solution to what he was, Paul Anderson declared that since the credits listed him as Bishop II, he must be an android, without giving thought to the fact it was just a loose label to give to the individual, and Lance Henriksen found himself agreeing with this possibly for the sake of publicity.
i.) See the section Bishop Returns Again
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| Jon Spaihts twitter photo |
4) Fractures in the Weyland timeline
In Peter Weyland's biography there is no actual connection given with Charles Weyland from Alien vs Predator, but maybe the background story given to Peter Weyland makes no attempt to be specific. When Jon Spaihts provided a link to the video on 7:26pm of Feb 28th, 2012 :TED talks from the future. http://blog.ted.com/ted2023/
John Spaihts responded " We tried not to violate canon wherever possible; but the canon's not completely coherent and in the end story wins."
Rob Girvan's response was :I approve of anything that wipes that movie from canon. Was curious if you factored it in. Many thanks for your answer! "
Originally, Ridley Scott had envisioned that Alien took place around 2070s, a hundred years or so into the future from when Alien was made, and Nostromo a Weyland-Yutani craft had been tramping around the cosmos for about a decade, and here were seem to have it presented to us that Weyland and Yutani perhaps have not joined together in 2073. although a lot of fans will have dated the time of Alien being in the 2100s.
5). The Weyland Industries Timeline concieved
On Saturday 17th March a Timeline was put up on the Weyland Industries website . We know that Peter Weyland was born at the turn of the century which causes some confusion because people have made an assumption because of that he was born close to 2000 but it turns out there that he was born in 1990 which is at the turn of the century in the broadest sense. By 2015 Weyland Industries is talked about up and running its first industrialised space mission, but no actual mention of when Weyland Industries was actually started.
I'm just going to pretend those terrible AvP entries into the series don't count and not let that confuse the timeline
ReplyDeleteIf they had just got rid of the Weyland Industries name that came over from AVP, it would certainly be a lot easier to let it go
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, though, nothing from AvP contradicted anything. As a matter of fact, it fleshed out the mythology of the series in ways no one previously attempted. That is to say, at all. It gave the first four context and built a history around them.
ReplyDeletePeter Weyland was only 14 when Charles died, and on top of that he was a child prodigy, so there is absolutely nothing contradictory about those two people both being head of the company at some point. In fact, all signs point to Peter being Charles' son, if you know what you're looking for.
If Prometheus didn't add up to the rest of the alien movies, it's not the fault of a movie that's 12 years old. It's the fault of the people in the present with their heads up their asses. You can't make a movie that breaks canon and then say it's the fault of a movie made 12 years ago. That's not how causality works. Time moves forward, not backwards.
And also, what is up with calling AvP "terrible?" I've seen this kind of nonsense a couple of times now and it's really weirding me out. Is this just part of the whole "we hate everything for no reason" culture that's so popular now? Or is there actually some sort of incredibly nit-picky complaint that's been exaggerated by people who were never going to like the movie in the first place? If you don't like alien movies, what are you doing here, you know?
Derp, I meant 8 years old, obviously. :/
DeleteI can't speak for Doug Cole, but personally I enjoyed AVP as a movie (which I can't say about AVP:R), the way it seemed to borrow a big concept from Vincenzo Natali's Cube and I liked Henriksen's performance as Weyland, but didn't appreciate what it was trying to do to play around with the confusions and mysteries of the first three movies, (it certainly messed up the whole thing about who Bishop 2 was even more than the mess it already was) or Predator 2 and there were a number of shots in it that I found too cheesy for me and it was all starting to turn into a computer game. I actually preferred the original idea that Weyland was a British company inspired by British Leyland rather than seeing it become an American Company. But well it seems that the Weyland Industries from the Prometheus publicity website has nothing to do with the one from AVP apart from the name and well this whole thing about canon doesn't really interest me anymore other than whether people involved in the production were actually involved in thinking about what is "canon", because they lost the value of that after Alien 3.
ReplyDeleteI like something about all the Alien movies apart from AVP:R, but I like the idea of Predalien but not what they had in AVP:R, I liked the idea of the trophy room in AVP:R but not their space jockey head trophy, I liked the chainsaw tooth like jagged top of their alien heads, I liked the idea that they wanted to pay homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well, but if the movie had never been made APR:R would not be missed by me. I could actually call AVP:R terrible and not be bothered if the Brothers Strause never made another film. However I do respect Paul Anderson as quite a visionary talent.