Eerie Unused Poster Art From Prometheus

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Regardless of how you feel about the film, love it or hate it, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus has a tremendous aesthetic. The look of the movie is dark and moody, and perhaps the most successful element of the entire picture are the visuals. Then again, it is set in the same universe as Alien, so if everything was all rainbows, lollipops, and fluffy pink unicorns, it wouldn’t feel right, would it?

This sense extended to the marketing and promotional imagery that accompanied Prometheus. Many of the posters and pictures prominently featured those massive stone heads, like the one looming ominously over Noomi Rapace’s character as she shined a flashlight on it. Portland-based artist Mike Weihs has posted a couple of sketches of Prometheus poster art that were never used by the PR campaign.

This image of a giant hand, presumably belonging to one of the Engineers, gripping a much smaller, presumably human, head, is definitely creepy. A cool depiction, you can form a few ideas as to why it wasn’t used. You can imagine that it was either too esoteric for a mass marketing poster, or perhaps it gave away too much.

I’m not entirely sure what the hell is going on in this, another image that didn’t make the cut, but it sure is terrifying. This picture is very reminiscent of Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, who, of course, is responsible for the design of Alien.

Wiehs has this to say about he image. “This is a section of a poster design I made for Prometheus that wasn’t used. Came close to being the IMAX 12:01 poster.”