As we near the reported start date for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus 2, there’s been a lot of speculation about what it will entail and how, or even if, it will eventually connect to the Alien films. Well, Scott just addressed that briefly, and the connection is no longer going to be muddy and vague, as Prometheus 2 is no longer Prometheus 2, it is now titled Alien: Paradise Lost.
Hyping up his new sci-fi film, The Martian, Hey You Guys asked the 77-year-old director about reports that have made the rounds that more than one Prometheus sequel is in the works, and when, if ever, fans can expect it to meet up with the Alien films. Scott said:
Really it’s going to be called Alien: Paradise Lost. So, Prometheus 2 is not what it’s really going to be, it’s going to be Alien: Paradise Lost.
This is an obvious a reference to John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which Scott rightly points out is not just a poem, but a book-length poem. Given the film’s predecessor, such an overt connection makes a great deal of thematic sense.
Despite your feelings on the film, you can’t fault Prometheus for having big ideas. The Greek god Prometheus was the creator and benefactor of mankind—he’s the one who gave us fire—and the film that bears his name is essentially a search for God, for those beings that created the human race. Paradise Lost deals with the fall of man, Satan being cast out from heaven, the loss of innocence, and Adam and Eve being evicted from Eden for one act that can’t be atoned for, among other things, and it sounds like Scott plans for the Prometheus sequel to have similarly weighty concerns.
Check out his full comments on the matter in this video below.
So now that we know Prometheus 2 is now called Alien: Paradise Lost, we have to ask what that means for the film. Thematically, with such literary references, it’s easy to presume that he movie—which will reportedly follow Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the android David (Michael Fassbender) as they continue to search for the Engineers, the creators of the human race—will contend with a number of huge philosophical questions. Within this plot, there will be ample room for Ridley Scott to play around with the weighty ideas inherent in such a story.
As far as how it connects to the larger Alien universe, that remains to be seen. In the first film there are obvious links, like the Weyland Corporation (not yet Weyland-Yutani), the aesthetic similarities of the alien world, and at the end, we see a creature that very much looks like a predecessor to the H.R. Giger-designed Xenomorphs we know and are terrified of. It certainly felt like we were going to get there eventually, however, up to this point, we got the impression that it was going to take a while. But maybe Scott changed his mind, perhaps Alien: Paradise Lost jumps ahead in time, or maybe what Shaw and David find will be a more overt bridge between the two. He has said that the film will answer the question about the true nature of the Engineers, which could lead to something big.
Instead of clarifying things, now we have way more questions about Prometheus 2/Alien: Paradise Lost than we did before. We’ll have to wait and see what this looks like, and it will be a while. The film will reportedly begin shooting in January of next year with an eye on a 2017 release date.
