Why is Prometheus 2 now called Alien: Paradise Lost?
On Thursday, director Ridley Scott revealed that Prometheus 2 will actually be called Alien: Paradise Lost, and now the filmmaker has said a bit more to HeyUGuys about what we can expect.
So why is it titled Alien: Paradise Lost? “Well, because we’re heading back to why and how and when the beast was invented,” Ridley said at The Martian premiere. “We’ll go back into the back door of the very first Alien that I did thirty years ago.”
You can check out the interview segment in the player below. Prometheus 2 was rumored to have the temporary moniker “Paradise” for a while now, and while the title “Paradise Lost” is a reference to English poet John Milton’s famous work about the fall of man, it is also in reference to a specific scene in Prometheus itself, in which Elizabeth Shaw’s father tells her where dead people go:
Shaw’s Father: Everyone has their own word; heaven, paradise. Whatever it’s called, it’s someplace beautiful.
Young Shaw: How do you know it’s beautiful?
“You know the poem?” Scott queried the interviewer earlier. “I’m sure you’ve never been through it, the poem’s a book, ‘Paradise Lost.’ It sounds intellectual but there’s a similarity to it. That’s where it stops.”
The new planet to be featured in Alien: Paradise Lost, which will be the home of the nefarious engineers of the first film, is said to have been dubbed “Paradise” by the filmmakers. Although Scott has previously confirmed the original H.R. Giger Alien designs will not be replicated for this new film, it should involve new terrifying creatures, including the engineer/alien hybrid dubbed “The Deacon” as glimpsed briefly in the finale of Prometheus.
Alien: Paradise Lost will go before cameras in February with Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace set to reprise their roles of Shaw and the android David, respectively. It is unknown what this new title means for the Alien film that Neill Blomkamp was developing.
