The crew of the International Space Station in the forthcoming sci-fi thriller Life are about to encounter a new kind of extraterrestrial danger: a single-celled alien organism from Mars. When they bring on a sample from a Mars rover, everyone is all smiles until, suddenly, the mysterious (and unseen) lifeform turns space killer, complete with very familiar noises.
In a new trailer and international trailer for Life, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, and the rest of the ISS crew make an Earth-shattering discovery when the Mars sample that they’re charged with returning to Earth turns out to be our first shred of proof of extraterrestrial life. Things aren’t all font page headlines and excitement, though. This isn’t just a harmless sample, but instead something that poses a very serious threat to the entire crew and, if this critter reaches its intended final destination, could totally destroy our entire blue planet. Sound familiar?
Life looks to be borrowing pretty heavily from its alien-terror-in-cramped-spaces cinematic predecessors, particularly the trailer for the original 1979 Alien. The Life trailer even contains a very similar “ethereal” single-tone alarm sound, used in both the classic Alien trailer and the trailer for Prometheus. Plus, like xenomorphs in the Alien franchise, what may initially appear harmless is profoundly dangerous. 1979 called and it’s pissed.
This film also looks to contain dashes of Gravity, The Martian, and Apollo 13, too. It’s a science fiction thriller that takes place in a confined area with limited resources where the vacuum of space is just an airlock away. They may be able to see Earth, but escaping (and saving the world) once things turn deadly is going to take some brain power. In the words of Mark Watney from The Martian, they’ll probably have to “science the shit out of this” to survive.
Life arrives in theaters sometime in 2017.
