It's all pretty confusing – although atmospheric, suitably splattery and darkly stylish, with a very cool android – and it's unclear whether the film is suggesting that what we're witnessing is the definitive answer to how the Alien species came about, or just part of an older, more complicated story. Furthermore, as many fans have pointed out, it's all but impossible that the Alien we see in the film is the very first Xenomorph, as a mural depicting one of the monsters is seen in on LV-223 earlier on.

Scott himself has said that the film is only loosely connected to his 1979 Alien, which is set roughly 30 years later, and sees a crew explore an abandoned ship with the destroyed body of an Engineer (later dubbed a "Space Jockey" by fans) on it.

"For all intents and purposes [Prometheus] is very loosely a prequel, very, and then you say 'But how did that ship evolve in the first Alien?' Then I would say 'Actually he [the Engineer in Alien] is one of the group that had gone off and his cargo had gotten out of control, because he was heading somewhere else and it got out of control and actually he had died in the process and that would be the story there,''" the director revealed.