CLOSER LOOK: Probing Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' Trailer

Prometheus has been unbound, so to speak, but the project is still a mess of a mystery.

Sci-fi / Sigourney Weaver fans tired of endless speculation about the nature of the relationship between Ridley Scott's forthcoming Prometheus and his 1979 flick Alien ("Is it a sequel? prequel? squeakquel?") have had their prayers answered: the first trailer (below)!

But what, exactly, are we looking at here? Scott, who collaborated with Lost writer Damon Lindelof on the film's script, said Prometheus is kind of its own thing. “While Alien was indeed the jumping off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place,” Scott said in a press release. “The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative.”

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, that is, for nothing! We're left with little more to go on than 1:05 of sights, sounds and triggered memories to piece together what this movie will be like. We're far from satisfied, but we'll do what we can.

0:01-0:16 — A garbled transmission of a woman's voice. But is it Charlize Theron'? Noomi Rapace? We can only make out the words, "We're wrong. We were so wrong." Also: "I'm so sorry." Uh oh, it's barely been twenty seconds and we're alreadys scared out of our wits.

0:17 — Boum. Is that a cyborg predator's face mask? No, it's a space ship. Ah, Scott. So you're gonna play with our minds like that? Well bring it! (Actually, don't — we're still scurred.)

0:18 — OK, we've got a snowy, cloudy planet. We've got jets of fire (is that a reference to the Greek myth?) We've got lines appearing, but we'll wait to figure out what those mean. We've got prolonged techno pulses. We've got spacecrafts landing, arriving, unloading and … AAAHHHH … we've got screaming (at 0:31). Definitely someone in a lot of pain, not clear who.

0:36 — The stars come out in brief flashes. Michael Fassbender with a blonde, Robyn-esque coif, pulling what could be a slimy alien embryo out of canister. Theron running, looking worried, tugging at her shirt collar. Idris Elba (0:45) seeing something fiery and potentially life-threatening. His mouth drops. Our pulse quickens.

0:46 — As the word "Prometheus" is assembled from those floating white lines, and the sh*t is well on its way to hitting the fan, we come to a full four-second pause. Silence.

0:51 — "Pleeaaase." A screaching female's voice and her face, upside down. It doesn't appear to be Cheron. Perhaps it's Rapace? Whoever it is, we wouldn't want to be her.

0:52 — Wow. A horn-shaped, really big something. We're in awe. And yes, still scared.

0:53 — "They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end." Is that volcanic ash raining down on our poor fish-bowl-helmeted homo sapiens?

At least we do have one answer. The movie comes out on June 8, 2012. Watch the trailer here: