Prometheus: Unveiling the Space Jockey

2011

November 2011

22nd November 2011
Dread Central on published on their site pages from the Entertainment Weekly magazine #1183 in their thanks giving issue ahead of its release. In the photo that showed the width of the Ampule Room, part of the body of an unidentified giant lying on the floor could be seen half obscured by a photo below. On November 30th 2011,  Fox sent out most of these images in a high resolution format of between a 162kb to 340kb but the important one for public discussion with the giant body in the Ampule room was only about 82kb in size, which was rather odd since it was the most interesting and biggest photo. However enough detail was there to allow the body to be perceived by members of the public to be a headless and some even thought it was without arms.  (


December 2011

22nd December 2011
The official trailer for Prometheus a strange head that looked like a fossil or a skull was to be seen  being scanned by the crew of the Prometheus. Questions about it being the head of a space jockey could not be answered so thoroughly because quite frankly is didn't look very much like Giger's space jockey, some sort that it looked more like an oversized owl than a space jockey.  However with this came the thought amongst people that the seemingly headless biomechanic suit that may or may not have been a space jockey found in the photograph of the ampule chamber may have had a head and this was it. ( see official trailer for Prometheus at Youtube)

Initial view of the Space Jockey head in the trailer
Initial view of the figure known as engineer that would be
revealed to be a space jockey without his flight suit
 
In the video also was also glimpsed a tall bald humanoid with a biomechanic suit. The question was being asked about who he was in relation to the space jockey because he was too short to be a space jockey as in the original movie although he was seen to be very tall for a typical human. 

2012

January 2012

7th January 2012 
on the Cinemart site revealed information about a phone call in which the informant (later to be labeled as Agent X) was having beers with someone who worked on Ridley Scott's Prometheus who showed him some photographs of an alien head sculpture that we would discover to be the something similar space jockey head design and there were photos to come.

  1. Martyn Conterio:"Last night whilst watching Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (which is awesome by the way) I received an unexpected phone call from a highly trustworthy person who’d been having beers with a guy who worked on Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS and the chap had something to show him. That something was a photograph of the prosthetic mask design for “the alien” in the forthcoming science fiction film. This was described quite clearly as the ‘alien’ which appears in the flick.
    This is the description forwarded with image pending:
    “The prop (organic looking design), in mould stage (white coloured), is a human skull with large eye sockets (slightly apart than normal) and what looks like another layer of bone having grown over it. The extra layer is in the form of what we know as the facehugger (without the legs). There is a trunk-like nose where the creature’s tail would naturally be in this position (or the appendage underneath used to lay the egg into a recipient). The prop is a prosthetic mask without makeup added, but the insider also said the creature featured in PROMETHEUS has been executed with very little CGI planned. The appearance of the mask is of a human skull with facehugger frame on top.”
    "(source: http://cinemart-online.co.uk/2012/01/07/prometheus-alien-head-design-information/ )


12th January 2012 

The Cinemart site revealed the actual photos the sculpture of monster masks from the film Prometheus given to them by a man that they label as Agent, X and they heads matched up with the head that was seen in the shots of the head being scanned by the crew of the Prometheus in the trailer.
However it became a point of confusion because this doesn't actually look like the head of the space jockey in the movie Alien but instead something similar. This thing looked more like an elephant than the space jockey could ever have appeared to be to many. The Cinemart site imagined it to be an alien that had grown inside and erupted from a space jockey especially after what Agent X had informed them.
  1. "On Sunday we put out a report about the description and now we’ve got the images. Hopefully we won’t get 20th Century Fox pissed off and sent one of those ‘take that down or we’ll sue you in the ass’ notices.
    We don’t put out bullshit info. That’s not how we roll and we never run stories like this. It is info that came out of the blue and from an incredibly trustworthy person who really wouldn’t make the site look like a bunch of douches.
    The image does look a bit like a Space Jockey but with some differences… the jutted out jaw looks very Xenomorph style and the top part of the skull screams ‘facehugger’." 
    Now a similar design does feature in the trailer (at 00.35 seconds, and looks like the head of the Space Jockey seen in ALIEN) but the one here is smaller, human-sized and designed specifically for an actor to wear and described as the face design for ‘the alien’. There’s that mysterious humanoid figure in the trailer at 0.44 seconds but it’s not clear enough to tell what its face looks like. (source: http://cinemart-online.co.uk/2012/01/10/alien-influence-visible-in-prometheus-monster-mask-design/)
13th January 2012  
Herocomplex.latimes.com released a curious new image of Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw standing in a corridor with two biomechanic humanoid suits in the background mounted on blocks. Whether they were actually suits or sculptures was at the time uncertain, but one thing for sure, these entities had boots on their feet with rounded toes that didn't look like Giger's biomechanics. Their space jockey like heads had also considerably short trunks like pipes sticking out of the fronts of their faces.  The timing between Cinemart showing their photos from their Agent X and the release of this photo showing more of the space jockeys being so close together suggested to many that the film studios were doing this on purpose for viral promotion.
Biomechanic suits behind Noomi Rapace (source of photo: herocomplex.latimes.com)
brightened detail from photo above 



March 2012

18th March  2012  

Damon Lindelof: Well, you've seen shots now in some of the materials that are going out there, and I think that hopefully the question changes from what it's been - which is "What is this movie's relationship to ALIEN?" - into "How much of the movie is going to be focused on the guy in that chair? Who is the guy in that chair? Is it a guy in that chair?" All of those questions sort of power us up until the movie, which will speak for itself hopefully.  (Source :Aintitcool.com, Mar 18, 2012)

April 2012

17th April 2012 
Prometheus - Official Full HD Trailer which shows amongst it clips of a dark rubber suited humanoid walking up to Noomi Rapace sitting on the floor.


g) 28 April 2012 
The Prometheus edition of L'écran Fantastique Hors-Série N° 17 is released showed a photo of the space jockey costumes that revealed the Giger's Alien inspired ribcages of the outfits worn.




Conor Sullivan talked to L'Ecran Fantastique and revealed that the Prometheus crew find a severed head inside the helmet of one of the elephantine helmets.  A body was beheaded by an airrlock door and the head and helmet were preserved by the sealed in environment. They soon bring the  head upon the ship and find inside the perfectly preserved head.

  1. L'Ecran Fantastique.:Dans un scène, l'equipage de Prometheus passe en casque de Space Jockey au scanner....(L'ecran fantastique Hors Serie no16, p40)
     

    Googletranslator
    In one scene, the crew of Prometheus goes helmet to Space Jockey scanner ....

    Conor Sullivan replied: Oui, car ils trouvent une tête décapitée à l'intérieur de casque de l'une des combinaisons à l'aspect éléphantesque. La porte d'un sas s'est refermée sur l'un des corps, et la tête et le casque se sont retrouvés dans un environment qui les a empêchés de sa décomposer. Ils ramènent ce casque et cette tête à l'interieur du vaisseau, et entreprennent de l'ouvrir. Ils y trouvent une tête d'ingénieur parfaitement préservée, et tentent l'analyser.  (L'ecran fantastique Hors Serie no16, p40)

    Googletranslate: Yes, because they find a severed head inside the helmet of one of the suits to look elephantine. The airlock door slammed shut on one of the body, and head and helmet came together in an environment that prevented its decay. They bring back the helmet and the head inside the ship, and set out to open it. They found a perfectly preserved head of engineering, and attempt to analyze it.

  2. L'Ecran Fantastique.: Donc, ce que l'on prenait pour un crâne dans le film original est en fait un casque?Googletranslator: So, what we took for a skull in the original film is actually a helmet?
     

    Conor Sullivan :Oui. Et le rest est une combinaison spatiale qui s'ouvre pour révéler le corps parfait de cet humanoïde géant. Les ingénieurs sont censés mesurer un peu plus 3 mètres de haut, et ressembler à des sculptures de Michel Ange

    Googletranslator:Yes. And the rest is a space suit that opens to reveal the perfect body of this giant humanoid. Engineers are supposed to measure just over 3 meters high, and resemble sculptures by Michelangelo

    L'Ecran Fantastique.: Ils sont donc très proches des humains?
    Googletranslator:They are very close to humans?

    Conor Sullivan :Ils ont complèment l'apparence d'êtres humains, à l'exception de leur traille. Ils n'ont pas de cheveux ni de poils, et ressemblent à des statues de marbre. Ridley voulait que l'apparence de leur peau

     Googletranslator:They complement the appearance of human beings, except for their size. They have no hair and no hair, and look like marble statues. Ridley wanted the appearance of their skin.
David by Michelangelo
 
 
 
April 2012


29th April 2012
A new Prometheus trailer was revealed, first at 9:10pm on Channel 4 showing what appeared to be very bitty holograms of men dressed as space jockeys seen running through a tunnel, they appeared to look like large humans with bulky biomechanic looking upper bodies and bulky heads with long pipes coming out of the front perhaps connecting into the front of the rib cage. 


shot of engineer body, April 28th 2013 trailer

The trailer also featured the headless giant body

What looks as if it could be the somehow the space jockey's head self destructing with pale green liquid erupting in all directions and since now we know it is a helmet, do they find something within that explodes, or is it nothing to do with the helmet and just seems to make sense that it might be something to do with the helmet because of the closeness of the shot in proximity to the shot of the space jockey helmet in the trailer? However despite what it might look as if it supposed to be in the trailer, it might be something different.





March 2012
 
17th March 2012
It was only when a full length official trailer was released that people would be able to see this type of head connected to a chair and upon the shoulders of a humanoid body that it became clear that this must indeed the space jockey and someone was being sealed up within the suit. Ridley had been saying it was a suit all along since he talked about the prequel and finally many people had to let go of their imagined space race of jockeys that they had over the years and begin to accept that the tall bald man with a face similar to the giant statue and with a biomechanic outfit that could be seen in trailers was most likely to be the space jockey who would inhabit the suit.
 
helmet of the Engineer's space suit
However with this for the public came another problem. It soon dawned on numerous people that the way the head was placed made him look incredibly short in comparison to the original space jockey and the humanoid body that now seemed to be something within the space jockey suit was now rather short in comparison and the trunk sticking out of the front of the nasal cavity was seen to be a short stump, almost like that of a tapir, instead of it being a long breathing pipe that end at the bottom of the ribcage in a filter box. 
 
a tapir
For all the public knew, this may not have been the way the entity was to look beyond this shot in the movie but here being repeated over and over again was an image of a that space jockey that many fans of the original Space Jockey really looked rather ridiculous. At a time when people were asking how much did Giger have direct involvement with, it seemed from this shot that he most obviously had even less than people feared. 
 


Empire magazine published a set report in their May 2012 issue and on p65 talk about the Space Jockey as it has been revealed to them: "And then lying  on the floor of a set that seems to be some sort of operating room we find the elephantine in the room. This is the space jockey. Or to be more precise, the disembodied head of the space jockey, ready for its close up, Mr Scott. Or to be more precise still, it's not a head at all but a helmet: a breathing apparatus designed to help our friend cope with hostile atmospheres. For - and this is the first surprise, the first sign that Prometheus has more up it's sleeve than toothy terrors picking  off people one by one - that Merrick like mask merely conceals the true face of the Space Jockey. Helpfully that face is also on set, awaiting a spot of prosthetics jiggery pokery, and it takes Empire's breath away. Whatever we were expecting the Space Jockey to be, it's fair to say we weren't expecting it to be a grey/blue skinned creature, about nine feet tall, its sneering face marked with scars. Its humanoid face. It's face that looks just like one of us. Its face that perhaps prompts as many questions as it does answers and chief amongst them is the biggest one of all. The one with which Prometheus is really preoccupied

profile of original Space Jockey sculpture without final decoration
However by then the image of the tall bald man in a biomechanic outfit had already been seen and caused mixed views about the whole thing after many hoped that what we had seen of the space jockey creature in the first Alien movie was actually once a living alien entity rather than a tall bald entity that seemed recognisably human soon to be introduced to us as one of The Engineers. 

11th May 2012 The official Prometheus Facebook Page posted more stills and this featured the space jockey suits/statues standing in a corridor. (Prometheus Facebook page)

15th May, 2012 A new clip of the entity in the suit an engineer, wandering around the corridors of the Prometheus and later this same entity looking burnt pushing one of the Prometheus crewmembers across a room. This evidence of the presence of the engineer aboard the ship now takes us back to the images from 17th April 2012
 

June 2012

1st June  2012  All is revealed in the film when it is released 
 
5th June 2012  
The book "Prometheus: The art of the film" released at the beginning of June, and pages from a French copy were scanned and released onto the internet by showing Messing's storyboards for the scene involving the Engineer boarding Vicker's life support module, as well as photos of the space jockey biomechanoid suits on show in the tunnel

15th June 2012  Around this time photos of the Engineers concept art and costume are made available on the internet through Creatures Inc Ltd's  facebook page. The album is to be found here and other photos found here amongst the albums of Conor O'Sullivan found on Facebook.

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