New 'Prometheus' Viral Teaser: Michael Fassbender Is Creepy

Yeah, Michael Fassbender. You seem nice and everything, but we're still just going to go over to this side of the room, now.

Half the fun of summer blockbusters is had in watching the marketing. With the exception of the straight-forward manipulation of the hype and speculation surrounding "The Dark Knight Rises", few campaigns have been as intriguing as the one heralding Ridley Scott's sci-fi thriller "Prometheus".

'Twas enough that the early chatter surrounding it alleged that Scott had in fact prequelized his landmark 1979 terror-in-space classic "Alien". Then the more Scott told, the less anybody really understood: it wasn't, by definition, so much a "prequel" as a stand-alone story of archaeologists and explorers exploring humankind's origins, set within the "Alien" universe many years before the events on board the Nostromo. Scott has since only continued downplaying its link with his 33-year-old blockbuster.

And yet, for all the teasers and teasers for the teasers, its look and feel has all the "Alien" earmarks of dimly lit tension and seeming man-versus-beast terrors. It even prominently features the Weyland Corporation - one presumes, not too far from being rebranded the Weyland Utani Corporation of the main four "Alien" movies.

But now, we've been introduced via this viral teaser to an early "synthetic," the androids with whom Sigourney Weaver spent four movies cultivating an uneasy relationship. And in the tradition of Ian Holm and Lance Henriksen, Michael Fassbender is appropriately....unsettling.

It's not even so much that he reeks of evil or anything. It's just in that way you know nothing should ever sound so calm or so measured that you have no earthly way of telling what's really going on behind the eyes. The whole tone of the trailer just makes the character seem like an X factor in the story.

And with so much that's been seen but so little that's been clear, that just feels oh so appropriate. "Prometheus" hits theaters June 8.