What not to say: Guy Pierce’s role in Prometheus wasn’t just a cameo – Peter Weyland comes back later on in proceedings, just when the plot has started melting into a disturbing dark goo. Oh, and Charlize Theron’s company wonk Meredith Vickers is his daughter.

Weyland wants to harness the Engineers’ technology to help him live forever – so much so that he’s willing to be kept in stasis for years on a scientific voyage into the unknown, even though the only basis for doing so are some ancient scribbles on a few cave walls.

As the god-complex-suffering billionaire egomaniac who founded Weyland Corp – which the world can safely presume will evolve into Weyland-Yutani two centuries later – Guy Pierce played a man at least double his age, all thanks to five hours of make up every morning. You might be wondering why Ridley Scott didn’t cast someone older, and that’s because in an original draft of the script there was a scene with the younger Weyland, but it was eventually cut. Since then, Pearce has said, “We got close to shooting it, and as we got closer, Ridley just started to see it as something that would just be a little distracting, almost. So, yeah, I guess in the end, they could have cast an older actor.” Rumour has it that, had it been an older actor, Scott wanted Ming The Merciless Max Von Sydow for the role.

Did we see it coming? We guessed there’d be something substantial to Pearce’s role – but then again, by the time he turns up for a second time, cane in hand, everything’s gone so doughnut-shaped that nothing could really surprise anybody. The undeniably excellent TED talk viral encouraged educated guessers to wonder what else Scott had planned for the award-winning Australian actor, but no-one outside of the film’s production could have predicted just how Prometheus and Pearce’s character would facehug the shark.

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