Most likely don’t remember this quote from Ridley Scott from months back, but he did mention his reasoning behind not going back to the xenomorphs in Alien: Paradise Lost. He does mention an attempt at creating a new alien threat for the sequel, and it could reveal itself in the third act of the film.
“The definitive dragon and he’s a motherfucker. The alien’s real, which is why it’s probably one of the scariest monsters in film history. So with Prometheus 2, what I’m trying to do is reintroduce a fresher form of alien in the third act.”
It’s possible this was teased back in Prometheus, as something unseen killing hordes of engineers in that eerie hologram video David accesses. You might be asking yourselves, but wasn’t the black goo the reason all the engineers died? That could be case, but it wouldn’t explain their bodies being piled-up in that fashion and why would that lone survivor not be aware of the outbreak?
While a zombified engineer or giant squid could have done some damage to the population on LV-226, these dudes are still tough as nails, why would they all be running off to get killed in this high volume?
My own perspective is that the black goo and their technology was to establish that the engineers were capable of creating life and teraforming, along with dangerous world ending bio-weapons as well. The giant squid Trilobite and weird looking alien-like thing might have been nods to the many other threats in this universe via the engineers.
Who says this is the only thing the black goo can do, and it’s the only bio-weapon they have or have used before?
It’s quite possible they’ve also experimented on subspecies before, leading to alien hybrids like the xenomorphs, it’s also possible they created even worse things that may or may not have wiped out their society or other planets. Could it be that they couldn’t control a bio-weapon they created, or maybe it was unleashed upon them by another group or subset of engineers. If they’re anything like humans, as they share our DNA, they likely also have war as well, could a war between factions created the hatred towards Earth and caused the mass genocide on LV-226?
Why would they even want to create world ending bio-weapons in the first place?
The title’s intentional reference to John Milton’s Paradise Lost could be hinting to demons and a hellish plant, maybe the engineers have their own versions of god, Lucifer, angels and even hell. The poem contained in ten books concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, along with Lucifer sparking a war in heaven between the fallen and angels.
The war between angels and fallen set in heaven is also a major part of Milton’s books, this is where I think my engineer war theory might be correct.
When Ridley Scott originally set out to make Alien 5 back in the late 90’s, his intention was indeed to focus on the origins of the Space Jockeys and visit the xenomorph planet (known as Proteus aka Xenomorph Prime), who knows maybe this is what the intention actual is, finding out where other bio-weapons were developed or if they have devastated/overrun the engineers.
Of course, this all speculation on my part and I’ve revisited Prometheus many times, and the film does pose more questions than answers them. This likely why the film is regarded as a mess or even angers people, but hey, it was always conceived as a two-part movie even when it was titled Alien: Origins, so I can forgive that.
Do you think war between the engineers is coming in Alien: Paradise Lost?