In Ridley Scott’s 2012 sci-fi film “Prometheus,” a group of astronauts travel to a distant planet, guided there by a series of ancient cave paintings discovered on Earth. It seems that tall, godlike aliens visited Earth many thousands of years ago and left a map that humanity would eventually be able to follow back to their homeworld. It might have taken us several millennia to develop long-range space travel, but we eventually have the wherewithal to follow the map.
Of course, when the astronauts arrive, they find strange, brutal things they can’t understand. The tall godlike aliens, which they nickname Engineers, are all dead, having been killed by a menagerie of genetically engineered critters of their own making. Some unusual evidence leads the astronauts to believe the Engineers were preparing to travel to Earth with a cargo of killer monsters, hoping to seed our planet with them and kill us all. Why would the Engineers guide us to a distant planet while also planning on exterminating us? Surprisingly, it has something to do with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The Engineers look like statues, complete with curiously statuesque facial features and alabaster-white skin. They are majestic and inscrutable and threatening, largely because of their enormous size. Engineers stand about 10 feet tall.
The actor who played the on-screen Engineer in “Prometheus,” Ian Whyte, wasn’t 10 feet tall, but a mere 7’1″. Whyte is a Welsh performer who has specialized in playing aliens, monsters, and other brutes throughout his career. He played the central Predator in 2004’s “AVP: Alien vs. Predator” and served as the Chewbacca stunt double in “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.” He played various wights and creatures in “Game of Thrones” and Frances de la Tour’s face was digitally implanted onto his body for “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
Whyte was interviewed by GQ in 2021, and he gave a brief comment on each one of his famed monster roles.
Meet the man behind the Engineer
To play the Engineer, Whyte was given full-face makeup, although the character was clearly digitally enhanced, and not just to make him three feet taller. (One can find behind-the-scenes photos of Whyte in his Engineer makeup on any number of websites.) Whyte’s roles often require him to wear masks and makeup, so it’s hard to find a screenshot of his handsome face. He played the rock-skinned Slieman in the remake of “Clash of the Titans” and the ape monster Oozaru in “Dragonball: Evolution.” The above picture is Whyte as Gregor Clegane, a.k.a. The Mountain, on “Game of Thrones.” He took over the role in season 2 from Conan Stevens, who played The Mountain in the show’s first season. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson would later replace Whyte as the character in season 4.
Whyte has nothing but pleasant memories of working on “Prometheus,” although he was quick to acknowledge that the film is somewhat controversial to fans of “Alien.” The film is a prequel of sorts, and many audiences rejected its heady ideas and baffling plot developments. As Whyte noted:
“I really enjoyed working with Ridley Scott. I think ‘Prometheus’ achieved the impossible in dividing ‘Alien’ fans from Ridley Scott fans. The assumption was that it was going to be a bit more of an ‘Alien’ film rather than a Ridley Scott film, [but] it was definitely a Ridley Scott film rather than an ‘Alien’ film. It was more cerebral.”
And he is correct. “Prometheus” doesn’t function well as a traditional sci-fi thriller, but many (including this author) found themselves taken by the film’s weird visuals, baffling monster lore, and provocative religious underpinnings.
The Engineer language
In “Prometheus,” the Engineers speak their own unusual alien language, and Whyte actually had to learn a few phrases for the film. It seems that the language, while not a fully written conlang, still required an historical linguist. Whyte recalled what he had to do in this throat to speak in an other-worldly tongue:
“We had a linguistics expert from a university in London. She spent months devising a language for the aliens that was based on a root language about 10,000 years old, just before European languages and Asian languages began to branch off of their own accord. So there were a lot of clicks and guttural sounds from the back of my throat, which I had to find way deep down.”
The Engineers, recall, were on Earth thousands of years ago, and they were said to have influenced human development. Indeed, a prologue even indicates that human being are the result of Engineer DNA being seeded on Earth millions of years prior. As such, the Engineer language wasn’t an alien tongue consructed from whole cloth, but a backward extrapolation of know ancient Earth languages. Whyte’s voice, like his face, was digitally distorted a little, but the line readings were his. There was more reality to the Engineers than might be immediately apparent.
Whyte has continued to play warriors and creatures ever since. He most recently served as a puppeteer for the central monster in “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” and has frequently returned to “Star Wars,” playing various characters across “Andor,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” Whyte, now 52, has a legitimate legacy of monster performances. May he continue until his retirement.