ABSTRACT
Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel to Blade Runner, for which Ridley Scott was executive producer, could hardly avoid taking this into account; so his task both resembles and differs from Cameron’s in directing the first Alien sequel. Like Cameron, Villeneuve is the first inheritor of this particular Scott-created universe, and therefore has the privilege and burden of effecting a distinction between the Blade Runner universe and Scott’s realisation of it. Ingeniously exploiting Alien’s narrative hinterland, Prometheus concerns a species it names “Engineers” — beings who have seeded life across the universe, including that on Earth. Once alerted to their existence and possible location, the ageing Weyland underwrites an interstellar expedition to satisfy his all-consuming desire to meet his makers and extract the secret of more life — essentially the motivation of the replicants in Blade Runner.
