Before the Masquerade at WonderCon 2012 in Anaheim California last Saturday night, we were treated to a few pretty amazing trailers for upcoming films, but the new one for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus was the real standout.

Trailer park

One of the important settings of the film appears to be the wreck of the gigantic alien starship first discovered by explorers in the original Ridley Scott movie Aliens.  It’s clearly a prequel to the original trilogy, and seeks to explain how humanity came to the brink of destruction by alien predators in the first place.  It’s all there – the stark and dark alien landscape tinged with steely blue, the egg pods in the floor of the giant ship, and hints of calamity and terror.  There’s no mistaking what this film is about – but while the trailer does a very nice job of setting itself in the same universe as the Alien trilogy of films, and it’s engaging and hints at things and events unseen just beyond the edges of perception in this distinctive and terrifying alien world, it also manages to do this without giving away thing damned one about the actual storyline.

In short, it’s the perfect trailer.  The fans at WonderCon understandably went nuts, and responded to Ridley Scott and actress Charlize Theron as though they were gods of rock and roll.

So many trailers for new motion pictures these days give away so much of the film that you might as well not even pay for the tickets, but this trailer gets the point across without tipping its hand.

Not every film is worth seeing on the big screen, frankly.  It takes a truly epic story to fill that screen and have enough juice left over to give you the sense that you’re only seeing a part of what’s going on, instead of what happens with many films, where they strain to fill the screen with too small a concept for too big a job to do.  We’re happy to relate that Prometheus looks like it’s going to deliver.

Prometheus premieres nationwide in the United States on June 8, and stars Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron and Patrick Wilson.  It’s directed by Ridley Scott, of course, and was penned by  writers Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof.

Enjoy the trailer. And yes, you want to see it full screen, with the sound turned up.

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Gene Turnbow
Gene Turnbow

President of Krypton Media Group, Inc., radio personality and station manager of SCIFI.radio. Part writer, part animator, part musician, part illustrator, part programmer, part entrepreneur – all geek.