It is indeed a prequel.
Sort of.
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"It's a prequel to myself," Scott says.
Forgive the ambiguity. He prefers things murky.
Consider his 1979 masterwork Alien, to which Prometheus is a sprawling set-up. Scott battled studio execu tives to retain his towering insect-monster, only to keep it largely hidden within shadows, ooze and strobe effects. He lost a similar clash with execs who demanded a Harrison Ford voice-over (which Scott later removed on a director's cut) to make 1982's BladeRunner more obvious.
Similarly, Prometheus arrives Friday as one of the most anticipated â€" and mysterious â€" films of summer. When its stars make the talk-show rounds, they're dodgy on plot details. Trailers show little more than humans about to meet their maker.
And Scott is gleefully stirring the pot. If in space no one can hear you scream, people can hear a pin drop in cyberspace. He made a racket last month, teasing fanboys that the "keen" Prometheus moviegoer would find bits of Alien< /i> DNA sprinkled throughout the new film, an outer-space tale of science chasing its creator.
Since then, bloggers have been pondering what's in Prometheus as if it were the next iPad. Most wonder whether it will answer questions left unanswered in the 1979 tale of a space mining ship that discovers a hostile host on a derelict ship. Alien would win an Oscar for visual effects and earn $81 million.
Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce talk 'Prometheus'
So Prometheus comes freighted with expectation, financial and thematic. Would it explain the birth of the face-huggers? The motives behind the corporation? The origins of Space Jockey, the unfortunate pilot found with a yawning chest cavity on a wrecked spacecraft?
"There's certainly a lot of huge questions we never addressed" in the original, says Scott, making his first return to science fiction in 30 years.
"But there's so much talk over whether it's a prequel, sequel, what to call it."
Scott, 74, may be reluctant to embrace categories because he has spent a career defining them:
•Blade Runner and Alien are sixth and seventh, respectively, on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest science fiction films.
•Gladiator revived Hollywood's swords-and-sandals fixation and nabbed five Academy Awards in 2001, including best picture and a best actor trophy for buddy Russell Crowe.
•1991's Thelma Louise celebrated girl power years before the ladies of Sex and the City or Bridesmaids became box-office queens (and introduced a shirtless Brad Pitt, making his big-picture splash).
Yet Scott has never won an Academy Award, a snub that seems to irk his actors more than him.
"I won't profess to understand the Oscars," says Prometheus star Guy Pearce, who has worked for two best-director winners, Kathryn Bigelow (2008's The Hurt Locker) and Tom Hooper (2010's The King's Speech).
On the blue carpet: 'Prometheus' London premiere
"But that's a mystery," he says of Scott's Oscar-free mantel. "He's incredibly bright, made these classics and such, a big-ideas man. He's like a nutty old professor, but just as enthused as when he started. He's so focused on the art he's trying to make, he really doesn't talk about things like (awards), or even seem bothered."
Don't call this knight 'Sir'
That may be an understatement. Two of Prometheus' stars learned that he hasn't won an Academy Award during interviews for this story.
"I think he won for Gladiator," says Charlize Theron. "At least producing."
He didn't. While the 2000 movie won best-picture gold for producers Douglas Wick, David Franzoni and Branko Lustig, Scott lost to Steven Soderbergh for best director for Traffic.
"I just assumed he'd won, he's done such big movies," says Michael Fassbender, who plays a scientist with questionable motives and an obsession with Peter O'Toole's performance in Lawrence of Arabia.
"Well, that shows you how subjective the (academy) board is," Fassbender says. "Martin Scorsese should have gotten his many moons ago. So should Ridley."
Don't expect Scott to suffer much public campaigning. The guy was knighted in 2003, but don't call him "Sir" because it makes him feel old.
Age usually isn't an issue on set, where Scott remains a boy among massive toys. Unlike many of his sci-fi counterparts, including James Cameron, Scott prefers huge sets, fake weapons and colossal alien dummies.
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"It's so much easier for an actor to feel this world he creates," says Noomi Rapace, who plays Elizabeth, a Ridley-esque scientist who, like predecessor Sigourney Weaver, has an undies-only scene. "These dirty, smelly worlds."
Indeed, Scott has made a reputation with his films' dark aesthetic touches, which can leave audiences as squirmy as the protagonists are scarred â€"if the hero survives. In her review of Scott's first film, 19 77's Napoleonic War drama The Duellists, the late New York Times critic Pauline Kael wrote that Scott's vision was near-hypnotic: "You almost watch unblinking, because the imagery is so lustrous."
Scott has spent his life in imagery. The son of an army colonel, he studied at the Royal College of Art with an eye toward set design and storyboard drawing. His first job out of college was as a trainee set designer for the BBC in 1963.
The detour to art meant Scott would be 40 when he made The Duellists.
But when he started directing, "I was pretty sophisticated in terms of keeping my head above water and not letting this business get too depressing," Scott says. "I had already learned to ask, 'What am I communicating? What am I trying to say?' That was the trick with Prometheus."
It's bigger than the creature
Scott says he intended to do a straightforward prequel to Alien, but quickly decided that the three Alien films that followed had taken the sting out of the creature fans lovingly branded the "xenomorph.''
"In this industry, it's natural to have copycats," says Scott. Though he declines to name offenders, he says the sequels had left him with nowhere to go.
"He's no longer frightening," Scott says of the creature, conceived by Swiss surrealist artist H.R. Giger. "The alien had its run, but you can't see that g uy again. He's no longer frightening. Iconic, but too familiar."
So Scott did a reverse-prequel. Instead of going into the minutiae of a hero's origins, Scott went macro, using Prometheus to examine mankind's origins.
What does that have to do with xenomorphs and the ill-fated Nostromo? Even actors were kept in the dark. He had stars watch the original about a week before shooting, but never brought it up to discuss, Rapace says.
"Ridley made it clear this was not going to be a clean prequel," she says. "The way he described it, he wanted the movie stained by Alien. He didn't ask us to connect the dots, but we didn't have to avoid them, either."
The result is a film tangentially related to the original, though there is a twist to the Alien mythology in the third act that should have fans bursting at the seams. Or rib cages.
Already, fan chatter and debate have driven Promtheus' box office forecast to $130 million â€" no mean feat for an R-rated movie. But Ray Subers of Boxofficemojo.com says that the film remaining "clouded in secrecy" will drive up revenues, particularly if it's "as good as it looks."
For now, glimpses are all Scott wants to show. He has been enjoying the speculation circus "since I got the bloody thing down on paper. Once I had a story, the rest was straightforward."
Well, for Scott. He plans to revisit Blade Runner and hopes to have it out in 2014. He has a title in mind, if not a genus.
"We may call it 'Mother's Bones,' " Scott says. "It may be a sequel. Or a prequel. I don't know, I'll figure it out."
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