Well, I certainly didn’t see this coming.

The sequel to 2012’s Alien-sort-of-prequel-but-supposedly-not-connected Prometheus has been given a new title: Alien: Paradise Lost. And I’m just as confused as you are.

Since the release of Prometheus in 2012, director Ridley Scott has been reinforcing time and time again that despite being in the same universe, the stories of the Prometheus films and the Alien films (which he also pioneered) were not directly related, but today’s news takes that theory and blows it straight out of an escape pod in a final act plot twist (Alien reference anyone?).

Talking to heyuguys.com while promoting his newest film The Martian, Scott said that “Well actually, really [Prometheus 2] is going to be called Alien: Paradise Lost,“. He’s not gone into much further detail aside from a few throwaway references to the poem, but in a conversation with http://www.filmfutter.com, he revealed that (I’m paraphrasing since Google Translate’s interpretation isn’t great) the entire premise of the franchise is to follow the xenomorphs themselves (I’ll leave links to both articles at the end).

This revelation asks a lot more questions than it answers. Firstly, why is Alien in the film’s title when Scott has said time and time again that he had no plans to fully introduce the xenomorphs: in fact, in an interview with ScreenRant, he said that “[using xenomorphs] is done… I think we’ve found the next step”. We have to assume from this title that the aliens will appear, but to what capacity is yet to be seen: we may be given a bit more backstory, or be dropped straight in the deep end with the xenos already biting the foreheads of unsuspecting space-transporters. Whether this is a full-fledged bait-and-switch to get us hyped up for the film or because the Engineers just weren’t sinister enough, we may never know.

Also, what effect will this have on Neill Blomkamps’ Alien 5? It’s most likely begun pre-production and has the backing of Scott and Sigourney Weaver, so it’ll be interesting to see whether it is completely changed up to accommodate for Paradise Lost, or whether the latter will be a Rogue One-esque spin-off story detached from the main canon.

The next question also happens to be the most difficult: what the hell will it be about? Like most films set in this universe, not many people made it out of Prometheus, but the odds are that Noomi Rapace’s Shaw will be back and taking up a role similar to Ripley’s, but with the supposed introduction of the xenomorphs, will this just retread old territory?

As you can see, the entire situation is a bit unclear at the moment, but I’m sure that as the 2017 release dates for both of these films draws closer, we will be able to decipher how these films will be working together. It’s confusing right now, but with esteemed directors Scott and Blomkamp working in unison, I’m sure Alien: Paradise Lost and Alien 5 will be just fine.

heyuguys.com article: http://www.heyuguys.com/prometheus-2-title-ridley-scott-interview/

filmfutter.com article: http://www.filmfutter.com/news/prometheus-3/

What do you think about this news? How do you think Alien: Paradise Lost and Alien 5 will work together? Be sure to leave a comment below and to hit the follow button to be notified when more news and reviews are published!

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