Alien: Paradise Lost – What Does The Title Mean?

Seriously… where was the “paradise” to begin with?

In the light of hearing we may get three sequels to tie Prometheus into the greater Alien universe, we’ve now received word that the sequel to the first Prometheus film is actually called Alien: Paradise Lost. Anyone with a passing knowledge of classic literature should immediately be thinking of John Milton’s epic poem from 1667. We’re pretty darn certain that the connection isn’t a coincidence… so let’s see what it could mean for the film.

What happened in Milton’s Paradise Lost?

In a nutshell, Satan (the angel formally known as Lucifer) leads a rebellion in Heaven against God, whom he believes is a tyrant that mistreats his creations. The forces of heaven are split down the middle in an epic conflict that lasts three days until Satan’s forces are defeated and cast out to live in Hell. You may remember Satan’s famous quote after being banished: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

After the exile, God created the world, including Adam and Eve in their Garden of Eden. Satan, however, finds his revenge against God by corrupting Adam and Eve through the apple. They too are banished from Eden like the rebel angels, though know that one day humanity may find redemption in God’s eyes.

What does this tell us about Alien: Paradise Lost?

Well, first and foremost we know from a quote by Sir Ridley Scott that the derelict ship in Alien was most likely a battleship that was going to use the Xenomorph as biological warfare against a target. It’s also been rumored that the Engineers were created by a higher power.

Therefore, we can assume right off the bat that there is probably a sect of Engineers that have rebelled against their creators like Lucifer and his rogue angels. The means of which they fight this conflict is biological warfare, including the Black Goo and the Xenomorphs.

We also know from the first film that we were created by another alien race, which Shaw believes are the Engineers. However, like Paradise Lost humans may have actually been created by the very people they rebelled against… which means that when we were waking the (possibly rebel) Engineers up in the first Prometheus they were probably very horrified and resentful toward us. Hence, that’s why they attacked us and wanted to destroy Earth.

We’re willing to bet that the facility on LV-223 was probably a military installation the rogue Engineers were going to use to launch an attack on their creators until something went wrong. We imagine that Alien: Paradise Lost will shed some light on the roots of that conflict and how it progressed up until now.

Whether our conjecture is true or not… it seems that Sir Ridley is looking to make the Alien films more and more into a side story in the universe.