Ridley Scott returns to sci-fi with 'Prometheus'

Because he's so synonymous with the genre, it may be hard to believe that it's been nearly 30 years since director Ridley Scott last visited science fiction with 1982'sBlade Runner.

Well, he's baaaaaack.

In the 20th Century Fox Comic-Con panel moderated Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, Scott checked in by live video feed from Iceland, where he's filming next year's Prometheus. The studio also debuted a sizzle reel of footage, with space shots, creepy situations and what seemed to be Charlize Theron doing "naked pushups."


Theron took the Hall H stage -- where Lindelof (also aPrometheus co-writer) joked that her naked pushups were pandering to the mostly male audience - and she talked about her shadowy character, which she described as a "suit." "She's the machine that runs the machine that takes this mission into space," Theron said.


Also starring Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace (of the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo films),Prometheus was a mystery to many before the panel - and still is, to a degree. Scott said that there is DNA of his 1979 sci-fi classic Alien in Prometheus, "but everything else is original." He cryptically said there was one question posed in Alien that was never answered, and that audiences "will understand in the last few minutes of the film."


One thing that is for sure: The man loves his 3D. Scott's filmingPrometheus in digital 3D and built real sets instead of using computer effects. "I'll never work without 3D again, even the small dialogue scenes."


Also at the Fox panel, director Andrew Niccol debuted footage from his sci-fi- thriller In Time, and his stars Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried joked about wielding guns in the movie. "We sometimes went shooting after hours," Seyfried said.


And to finish the presentation, director Rupert Wyatt showed new footage from Rise of the Planet of the Apes featuring Andy Serkis in his motion-capture suit and facial-capture head contraption that allows him to become the simian Caesar on screen.


He'd just flown in from New Zealand from filming Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. He said he's finished 60 days and still has 200 days, mostly the second-unit director. Serkis also has completed all his performance-capture work reprising his Lord of the Rings role, Gollum.


"Performance capture is only anothr way of capturing an actor's performance," he said. "It's just another tool."