nerd radio

FTN proud sponsors of Star Wars Celebration Europe

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus explained (SPOILER WARNING)

June 4th, 2012 by Andrew 118 Comments

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus has received a mixed response. While some of this was expected because of the heritage it had to live up to, I do believe this may be due to it containing some elements that some found too subtle and unexplained. So, allow me to explain what I understood from the events we saw in Prometheus.
 
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING BUT I’M GONNA SAY IT ANYWAY, THIS WILL COVER DETAILS OF WHAT HAPPENS IN PROMETHEUS IN GREAT DETAIL, ONLY READ IF YOU HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE.
 
 
-
-
-
-
HUGE SPOILER WARNING…
-
DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
After David opened the chamber door, he atmosphericly compromised the room’s air which had been sealed for around 2000 years (we know this because they carbon dated the headless body by about 2000 years). Fresh air caused the murals on the wall to degrade and the temperature difference of the fresh air caused the canisters to sweat, like when you put ice in a glass of water. This also had an effect on the biological liquids in the canisters, causing them to start expanding (liquids can expand when the temperature radically canges).
When David first walks into the chamber, we see (although none of the crew notice) that he disturbs some form of larvae on the ground (they come up from under the ground after he steps on it). These are most likely left over from the space jockey head left in the room (these may also be what causes the head to explode later during the examination, but that’s a whole other topic). The black liquid in the canisters is a bio weapon, from what I understood in the murals we saw in the walls, the main one showed the alien xenomorph at it’s centre, suggesting that the biological black liquid is designed to grow into the alien xenomorph – each canister when activated will become one alien drone, most likely a soldier that can NOT reproduce (otherwise there would be no way to control them once the space jockeys have unleashed them on their target, the xenomorph would NOT be capable of implanting an embryo in another being). The black liquid though, because it does create a living organism from nothing, would have to contain some kind of advanced steroid that affects biological matter in order to create a life form.

When the black liquid pools on the ground, the larvae we saw on the ground began to bathe in it and feed on it. As a result, it bioformed them as it’s capable of doing, the end result being an agressive more advanced worm creature, the creatures encountered by Fifield and Millburn. When the creature sprays acid on Fifield’s helmet it begins to melt it. Fifield then falls into the black liquid, but when he stands the helmet has been melted enough that it collapses inwards. The mixture of melted helmet and the black liquid burns into his face, causing him to pass out, falling face first into the black liquid, where it begins to biologically change him as it did the larvae worms.

Meanwhile, Holloway, who has ingested a single drop of the black liquid, has been undergoing internal changes. As he ingested it, and only in a small amount, his change has taken more time, working more subtly, changing his internal organs first including his reproductive system. Because of this, and unawares to either of them, he impregnates Shaw with an embryo that is human based, but has been part changed by the black liquid. Holloway begins to suffer radical changes with the black liquid changing him into a xenomorph drone. He’s not as far along as Fifield when we last see him, and his behavour and mind has not been changed yet when he sacrifices himself.

The real surprise is that because the creature that Shaw gives birth to is a hybrid of human and xenomorph genetics, it contains all of the genetic traits of the xenomorphs, intelligence, aggression, but it now also contains in some form, a reproductive system, meaning that it is able to implant an embryo in a being (as we see at the movie’s end), which it will take traits from and evolve into the xenomorph we know.

Tags: , , , , ,

Co-host of the Monday Movie Show, Andrew is a huge movie fan who is into all sorts of things movie related, as well as a fan of all things nerd. In his spare time he likes to work at script writing, that is when he's not spending it on something movie or nerd related!

You Might Also Be Interested In:

  • Nickgee

    you mention that it is now ready for reproduction being as it has been born from shaw. but are you forgetting that the dead engineers piled up had been impregnated 2000 years before as there carcasses had the same treatment? so what is going on? what had gone wrong before?, why had the engineers not come back to find out what the hell happened to there buddys? why are the enginneers so pissed at the human race? so pissed he didnt say one word? like omg what are you guys doing here!!!!!!. alot unexplained…. film was good, it just missed out on a convincing storyline!

    • Andrew

      It’s true that whatever happened before isn’t clear, but the space jockey ship contained thousands of the biological containers, all it would have taken is for some of those to have broken loose somehow for it to infect them, they started a mass evacuation, but didn’t make it. The on thing i still wonder about is what happened to the couple of space jockeys that ran ahead of the one who lost his head, he entered the chamber, which appeared to have no other door, what i’m curious about is what happened to them, as they didn’t seem to come out? lol

      • Jenzojay

        Why would they run there knowing what was in there ???

      • Geert

        I think i saw the others go right, but the one that got decapitated went straight on, the other (wrong?) way. maybee in as a last resort he tried to get in the chamber

        • Sdfsfs

          they probably went in to add a sense of emotion and thrill for the viewer much of the movie was set-up to be questionable so people can go on blogs and question what the hell is going on here to provide strive for the second film explaining the prequel. Ridley scott wouldn’t come out to start Alien all over again anyways.

        • Andrew

          That may be possible, i will make sure to watch this scene in detail as i’m going to be seeing the movie again next week.

  • Andiamo10

    I like it Andrew. I have a pretty obvious question to follow (because you show it at the top of your article). The giant carved sculpture of the engineer’s head. Why is it there? The engineers don’t have much time for art elsewhere. My guess is either that it was supposed to act as some kind of basic hard wired programming to the biological weapons – “When you see something that looks like this – don;t attack it” in which case it didn;t work very well(!) The second explanation I have is that this room is some kind of chapel (hence the murals elsewhere)and that the engineers themselves had workers (now all dead) who worshipped them like gods. but why would there be containers within the chapel? And finally it is a joke. This is the Big Giant Head from Third Rock from the Sun. But I don’t think Ridley Scott is into that kind of joke though. So what do you think is the answer?

    • Andrew

      We don’t know that the face is ‘the engineers’ a.k.a. The space jockeys, as Shaw wonders, who created them? Man believes God to be in his image, man made David in his image, how dowe know that some other beings didn’t make the space jockeysin their image? That could be the face of god to the space jockeys, the engineer of the engineers?

      I agree that the chamber is meant to be some kind of chapel, but the one we see in detail is of the xenomorph on the walls in the centre of the murals, perhaps in the same way the devil may appearin a present day church mural. Maybe the first engineers screwed up, created the xenomorphs and it wiped them out, leaving the space jockeys as their only living legacy, with thousands of canisters that change a human into a xenomorph. Though the space jockey ship is based on the same design and technology, maybe the base doesn’t belong to them, maybe it belongs to the race that created them, they found it just as we did, and they suffered the same fate?

      • zv

        The most I agree with is the idea mentioned above, that shown in the very beginning, one of the big guys seeded the earth using the black liquid. There are some messages even in our own history, that we were created by the gods to their image and yes, the purpose was to do the dirty work – collect natural resources and such. Strange thing is that the race intelligent enough to bring on the life on an empty planet would invest thousands, if not hundrets of thousands years, into developing a biological weapon like xenomorph. Yet, as the movie suggested, the jockeys were on the way to the Earth with all the load of the strange liquid wich would appear to me as intended extermination of the mankind. This idea was clearly presented by Shaws words to the survivor jockey. They or the race that maybe created even the jockeys felt so much threatened by the mankind so that they decided to put us to an end. To be continued..

        • James19

          I want to know what happened to the Jockeys that Milburn and Harris found, the huge pile of them all up against the closed doors with holes in there heads? Whatever came out of them where did the things go? What was in the rest of the ship? What was the ship anyway? Some kind of base? cargo ship? Scott mentioned that the ship in Alien may be a bomber of some sort on its way to destroy something? Much like in Alien when we first see the jockey with a huge hole in its check but no sign of what came out of him or where it went? And what of Harris monster that came out his throat? That just shoots off and is never seen again. That’s a new breed right there.
          What if the other ships contained more engineers? The green crystal or egg thing that was infront of the alien sculpture?
          David most likely infected Holloway because he wanted to see what would happen, he is always learning and always wants to know information. Sorry for the rant but this film has totally blown my mind, i think it would have been better to not have seen any alien films beforehand and just see Prometheus first. Damn you Scott! Some of these answers will never be revealed! I am sure I am not the only member who is stuck with the same questions? I am seeing the film again Tomorrow and am going to make notes throughout the film and try and connect some dots. Obviously not all is revealed as the next installment will cover a lot. (hopefully)

          • Andrew

            Well, i don’t think there was an actual parasite that burst forth from their heads. After they reanimated the decapitated head, we saw what happened to them, for whateve reason, through some kindof infection it caused massive rapid swelling that caused their heads to burst. After seeing that happen, Shaw said she wanted to know what caused it, if there had been something that came out, they would have seen i in the glass containment box they had the head in. Perhaps they weren’t as close to us DNA wise and instead of the xenomorph biomorph liquid changing them, it caused some kind of immune response, the decapitated one was already infected, just his head got cut off before that step happened – we saw him drop to his knees before falling under the door in the hologram, so he was already in trouble, being killed stopped it from happening.

            I had actually forgotten about the green crystal until someone elses post further up the page, i am seriously looking forwards to seeing this again now so. Can pay more attention to these details and see wht else i can make out, i did see it, but ifi glossed over it, what else did i forget?!

          • Revived1more

            haha, We sci-fi fanatics are really in for it now!! If this mind freak catches on in Hollywood we’ll be seeing many more movies designed to compel us to see them repeatedly. Great money maker!!

          • Andrew

            Not only that, but great entertainment, you really want more Michael Bay influenced Transformers styled action movies, or thought provoking works like this & things like Inception from Christopher Nolan? I vote category B.

          • Flavio

            I’m not a huge sci-fi fan and I’ve seen it three times already! :)

        • Andrew

          Yes it’s possible that they Were acting out of fear of us being a threat, but if here are many ships as David indicates, if they all had as many of those vials in the cargo bays as we saw in just that one, that would easily be enough for the entire population of earth around 2000 years ago. This leads me more to believe that earth was seeded just to create us, so that we could be biomorphed into a xenomorph army, perhaps to battle another threatening race (predators?). Perhaps the xenomorph can’t be grown from scratch, and needs an original organism to change in order to exist?

          • zv

            Yes, could be true. But still. Imagine the vast time scale which was needed for mankind to develope into it’s latest form (according to darwinism). If they would really need a weapon such as the xenomorph, I think they would try to develope it much more quickly. Just have a look at us in present times.. we invented chemical and hormones to grow food and animals much more quick than it is natural. And all that just to support our own consumption. How long did that take since we had any concept of genes and it’s mutation.. In comparison to any species developement you can consider it instant. Another thing is, the engineers seemed to guide the mankind veeery long times ago and I think they had the technology at that times. Yet they put probably a lot of effort to mantain the human race for all the long time. By original organism you mean what exactly? Because the movie shows in the beginning, engineers probably seeded the life on the Earth which is not quite the natural process..

          • Andrew

            By original organism, i mean a human being, so my understanding was from what we saw when David opened and examined one ofthe vials. Inside it,it seemed to have 4 smaller glass cylinders each with the black liquid inside them. It may be that each of these has enough to change one human into a xenomorph, so each vial enough to change 4 people. That’s only what i got from it, given that a single drop ingested had the effect it did so quickly.

            Yes it would take a long time, but it’s what i took from the movie, unless it’s just them changing a small percentage of humans on earth to then wipe out the rest, but as you pointed out, they’re a technologically advanced species, and even more so given that they WERE heading to earth 2000-ish years ago, so wiping us out wouldn’t have been difficult, so why bother with the xenomorph and not just nuke the site from orbit.

            …sorry, couldn’t resist that one.

          • Kpedlow

            But andrew why did the engineers want us to find them? Why did they leave us the knowledge of their star map?

          • MC6

            I can’t remember what was exactly said, but whoever was looking at the green crystal which sits under the xenomorph mural, they say ” this is just another tomb”, or something along those line i think. Anyone able to shed some light on that?

          • Andrew

            The image of the star charts throughout history, as far as i remember, not all of them had the alien being pointing to them, and just had the star constellation. Regardless, from the 20 or so pics we’re shown, and them mentioning that the civilisations where they were found them had no contact with one another would mean that the Space Jockeys would have to have cometo earth multiple times, or at the very least, come once and had one being travel the earth to leave his message.

            To me it suggests that the star constellation may be some kind of remnant DNA genetic memory from that first jockey who sacrificed his life. He would perhaps know the location of their weapons base, remembering it as a simple star system, and he could have been passed down and randomly reme,bered as a dream by storytellers or shaman throughout different tribes, so be drawn by them without any direct influence?

          • Arcan_dohuk

            the xenomorphs and humans come from the same liquid. our desire to find our orgins is really the xenomorphs way of reporducing. they need a host. the engineers wanted to stop this which is why they wanted to destroy humans.

          • James
          • james

            There is also the fact that the images in the caves show being pointing to the star system. Tall Engineer like being. Not only that but why did they want us to know where they were? If they are coming to destroy us it doesn’t make sense? Or does it?
            Shaw said it was an invitation but why invite us to a military establishment?

          • Juno

            Could it be that LV426 was the base of the Engineers’ life seeding program? From there they they came to seed life on Earth, visited Earth on occasion and left the invitation for us to return there, rather than their home planet. When an event 2000 years turned them against us they developed a DNA based weapon to wipe out human life on Earth turning their operation to a more military purpose. Destroying life on Earth this way would leave the planet intact for future work, as opposed to nuking it.

          • Kev

            What about the scene where David speaks to the Space Jockey and briefly after gets his head torn off? Does David pursue some own agenda. Something like creator-against-creation type of thing. At least David was the only one able to understand their mural and he was the only one who communicated to them.
            BTW: Who else feels a tad frustrated that we get a film presented that leaves so many unanswered questions on ones mind? I agree that these can be a strategical move to add appeal and mystique to the plot – especially if there will be a sequel to the story. However, is this really necessary – I believe that a movie with a strong script does not need to resort to such cheap trickery. Eventually, our theories will be more interesting than the actual resolution in a potential sequel, and I am fairly sure we will be disappointed. It feels a bit like watching an episode of lost.

          • chris1234

            predators are the gods. they order the engineers to create the goo to create the xenomorph. the predator hunts the alien for sport. avp. the engineers are nothing, they are servants to predator

          • Revived1more

            NO WAY Chris! The engineers are much larger! I think that the predators are possibly a genetic variation of the engineers mixed with some other creature. That creation retained knowledge and had the ability to generate technological machinery and weapons. If you watched the holograph of the engineer firing up the spacecraft he was doing some serious multitasking and I believe that indicates a superior intellect. They predators were like some basic animal who parroted mostly not much in verbal ability.

          • http://profiles.google.com/bcairns Brian Cairns

            How’s this for a theory… the Predators are the result of another planet-seeding by the Engineers (close enough in similar humanoid form to be plausible). When the Predators became warlike and technologically advanced, the Engineers tried to wipe them out (just like humans). However the Predators were already a spacefaring race, and survived the Xeno infestation of their homeworld. Now they exist as nomadic hunters, with a deep hatred of both Engineers and Xenomorphs.

          • Anonymous

            could explain their hunting ritual. Their trying to make the planet they hunt stronger. As well as scout for Xenomorph infestation.

      • Mat

        There are a few over questions that the film does not answer. They only check one ship for signs of life, what about the other 2? plus the entire planet wasn’t checked. If it is a military establishment then wouldn’t the whole planet be? Also what if the other ships contained different biological weapons? Each ship has a different weapon for a different purpose? David does not tell the crew what the writings on the walls say, that could be a major element as to why David infected Holloway?

        • Andrew

          The scanners that searched throughout the complex was what found the ship. It only found the ship because it picked up a lifesign reading for a moment that disappeared an th returned intermittently later. Thi was taken as being a fault, but as david investigated, he found the space jockey in suspended animation, alive but suspended, therefore only giving off faint life signs. If there had been anyone else left in suspension the other scanners would have reported a similar signal.

          David was following Weylands order ‘Try Harder’ – his creator gave him an order, a very vague order, which resinded all other orders. Remember in Alien they were sent to investigate the signal from the ship, ash was the science officer,instruction given to him was that all other priorities were recinded, crew expendable, this is all from the same command structure, so i suspect David’s programming interpreted it similarly.

          • Ezekiel25-17

            I think the black liquid at the very beginning (the one that disintegrates with air) is the same as the one in the cargo bay, only that when the space jockeys drink it, they disintegrate immediately, creating life. However when a human drinks it (like Holloway with champagne, how classy…) we basically melt from the inside. David read the paintings and saw that the black liquid could create life, so he tried to do the same with Holloway, sadly it didn’t work. Again, David was very pleased with Shaw being pregnant. He seems to be looking for ways to create/preserve life, which is what Weyland probably told him to focus on as he is about to die.

  • LRh1129

    Interesting ideas, I was talking to my friends and we also think that this liquid is a genetic modifier, but I think it’s supposed to save life not end it, at the very beginning you see the engineer drinking what looks like a more active sample of the liquid and begins to create life on the planet. Obviously this is a very volatile substance and would need to be hidden far away and well protected. ( striking similarities between it and our nuclear situation at the moment) nothing can escape the compound because the air above ground is not breathable, so it would be a contained research facility. One day something happens and one of the engineers gets covered in the gloop. Initiate emergency protocol. The engineers follow their orders, scientists run for the sanctuaries, which shut automatically, and the ships are designed to escape to the nearest possible liveable planet ( in this case earth) to preserve the fluid. When the engineer wakes up he panics, he knows the ship hasn’t flown, but the humans are here, with a chance to steal their beloved technology, there key to being gods, so he continues his mission, we don’t know he is still going to earth when he takes off because he does some reprogramming with the telescope thing. What do you think?

    • Andrew

      An interesting idea, i like the idea of them possibly heading to earth because it’s the nearest habitable planet, but that would suggest that their ship would not be able to sustain them in hypersleep for a long journey, yet David found one of them in hypersleep and as the movie gives a timescale of the decapitated one at 2000 years, it suggests that he had been in hypersleep for that long, or maybe even longer!

      Another thing, i think the bioforming liquid is meant to change human beings (space jockey humans, but we’re genetically identical) into the xenonorph by way of changes to the DNA. It seems the chamber, though it has that huge face, has one main mural not on the cielings but on the wall, at the centre of it is the xenomorph, this says to me that the liquid is meant purely to create them, the effect it has on the larvae seems a side effect of he DNA altering but on the wrong species.

    • Kevin Christmas

      Why if they were going into emergency protocol would the engineers run into the room with the giant head and MORE of the goo? The goo seems like it’s very volatile and would easily infect them. On top of that, there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go from inside the room so, why would they flee to a “storage closet?”

  • Anonymous

    One point my friends and i discussed is that Shaw assumed these being were the ‘Engineers’. Humans created David in their image to do the work they could not do, such as watch over them for 2 years in hyper-sleep. If the ‘Engineers’ are intelligent enough to create the whole Human species then maybe they are intelligent enough to create another being to take care to this highly potent genetic manipulation substance (do their dirty work) and with many capabilites including seeding life on other planets when combined with the black liquid, and just like we made David in our image, the real Engineers, engineered these beings in their image, hence why there would be a giant stone head in a sort of chapel…the beings on the planet worshiped their creators, the real Engineers, who we have yet to meet…..was just a thought.
    Also we should probably ask David, after all he did read a whole wall full of their writing when they first arrived….
    and finally….in the chamber with the giant stone head and vases….what was the giant green crystal on the sort of pedestal?

    • Andrew

      Yes, that giant green crystal thing was never evplained.

      I’m wondering now if maybe what you’re suggesting is right, the engineers created the first humans as a sort of slav species to do their work for them, in which case, did the space jockey humans turn on their masters and wipe them out? It still leaves th question of why the xenomorph vials existed, and why the ship that david found was full of thousands of them in it’s cargo bay, and that ship was going to earth?

      Seems more likely theyseeded earth, waited for the population to grow to a large amount, and then 2000 years ago, as they had always planned, release the biomorphing liquid on earth to turn the human race into an army of xenomorphs for some attackon another species?

      • Anonymous

        Perhaps, but then they would have the trouble of transporting the xenomorphs to the target area – not an easy task at all. Or maybe the vials in the Engineers ships and the stuff drank at the start of the film were exactly the same stuff…and the ‘Engineer’ name comes from the fact that they engineer how it will react. Like splitting the atom, you can get nuclear power or nuclear weapons. Depends on how you engineer the science.

        Perhaps the engineers ran into the room with the giant stone head because it was like a panic room and those vials of black mutagen were designed to form xenomorphs as a sort of defense measure, the engineers hide in a secret room (something to do with the green crystal maybe) the mutagen creates xenomorphs, they then cleanse the facility or hostiles or maybe those accidentally infected and mutated, the xenomorphs then die off and after a few weeks the engineers emerge back in control of their base, and intruders or outbreak dealt with and they carry on. After all these people seem to use bio engineering as the basis for as much of their technology as possible.

        • Byrneterrie

          Jackmusker, perhaps the tiny worms, native to that moon, were what created the situation that sent the engineers into the panic room? They could have been an unexpected variable with a disproportionately large consequence.

          • Andrew

            We still don’t know exactly where those came from, suspect we missed or it’s on the cutting room floor, a scene showing David trackin them into the complex from the outside, it has an atmosphere so there could be insect life forms there, it just has too much carbon dioxide and some other trace gasses for human live to survive past a couple of minutes.

          • Andrew

            I suspect we either missed (or more likely it ended up on the cutting room floor) a close up shot showing the crew tracking insect life from outside the structure on their shoes. We saw them appear in he chamber first from under David’s foot i believe on the sole of his feet, i think he stepped on them outside and didnt notice, the atmosphere did have a trace of oxygen and other trace gasses but was mostly carbon dioxide, too much for a human to breath, but not a problem for insect life to have evolved.

  • V4vendetta

    I was thinking is the engineer at the start of the film on earth creating the human race? Also they mentioned many ships so maybe theres another story to how one lands on lv 426!

    • Andrew

      It seems that is what is happening, that the jockey human at the start seems to be seeding human (or maybe all) life using his DNA. While the liquid he drinks looks the same, think it’s the same liquid,only that it’s been programmed to have a different effect.

  • buckyrah

    But why did David deliberately infect Holloway?

    • Andrew

      He was trying to please his ‘father’. Wayland was dissapointed with the lack of progress in their investigation ofhe site. He is a much earlier design than the Bishop model we saw in Aliens, or Ash in Alien. It’s hinted through his scenes with Vickers that he has to follow the orders of Weyland, he was given the order ‘Try Harder’ which is very vague and became his top priority – even higher than the lives of Holloway. Sacrificing one member of a 20 man crew to find out what the liquid does is simple math,atics to David, who has no emotions and no remorse.

  • Goodjob

    very interesting ideas. it seems clear that some of these loop holes were put just for a further film to explain them.

    i have some more doubts:
    1) at the beginning, an engineer starts, what it seems to me, life on Earth. why in the hell does he need to die to do that? they are so advanced. it seems to be left out alone in the planet and after taking a deep breadth kills himself with the black liquid. why? were they dying as a specie and creating life from themselves through out the universe?
    2) if he created life on Earth then the engineers have been here for ages. why would them want to come back 2000 years ago?
    3) where did it come the octopus alien removed from shawn’s body? why did he grown so much and so fast? why did it look like an octopus? I mean, it came from a pure human female (Shaw) and a contaminated human male. it seems far fetched to produce such a creature.
    4) the movie’s end seems to point that the first Alien queen was born from the Octopus thing and the Engineer. if this was not an alien queen and a mere xenomorph was it different from the xenomorph shown in the chamber? why did the engineers seem to know about the xenomorph queen (a xenomorph with a big and spine like head)? these “paintings” and the command chamber with the telescope like thing seems to me what appeared on the first Alien movie.

    • Andrew

      Ok, some suggestions:
      1) possibly some ritualistic reasoning, about sacrificing to create life?
      2) the being at the start may not be the same kind as the one David finds in cryosleep. Our two species of human could have both been seeded the same way we saw at the start of the movie by a master humanoid species. The difference in size would just require some slightly different environmental conditions, gravity for one.
      3) Yes, bit of an odd one, you’de really have to ask the design team behind the movie, though genetically if the genes in his sperm are in some form of biomorphing flux, human DNA shares some of the cells that other creatures do (since we are evolved from sea mamals), they are just inactive. Perhaps they were activated as part of he change? I would suggest that the growth isn’t all that extraordinary given what we know about the xenomorph growth rate from Alien. In that, it was only a few hours from facehugger to chestburster and then a short time to fully grown xenomorph. It had not been long since Shaw and Holloway had sex aboard the Prometheus to David telling her that she appeared 3 months pregnant, suggesting that the timescale of a normal human pregnancy was advanced from 9 months to roughly 9 hours, as i said, with the xenomorph info from Alien, this I don’t think is asking us to believe too much in a science-fiction movie.
      4) There’s been people saying that the xenomorph emerging from the space jockey’s chest is not a queen. To dispute this, i would point out that the expansion of the jaw and mouthline as it stretches, looks more like the mouth of a queen than a drone as we’ve seen it.it’s head also looked odd in relation to both types of xenomorph we,ve seen so far, it may be that as it’s a young xenomorph queen, it’s head has yet to fully develop.

  • Jonny

    Anybody think the fact that they wanted to travel back to earth 2000 years ago could be significant?? Think about which important person was around then…the big JC. They seemed to make a big deal in the film of letting us know what year it was etc. Just a idea to throw out there…

    • Andrew

      I wouldn’t touch that one with a 20 light year barge pole. Besides, carbon dating isn’t that accurate, so roughly 2000 years, lol

    • Sam W Yates

      I think God as a theme ran consistently throughout the film, whether it will prove to be a key part of the plot, who knows. But i definitely think that they wouldnt have chosen 2000 years at random.

    • Ellen

      it’s a huge theory that Scott intended for Jesus to actually be an alien sent by the engineers to “check up” on us or something like that, and what did we do? we crucified him. this would explain why the engineers wanted to kill the humans.

  • Drako

    I believed the liquid to be a almost like nano bots, breaking down living materia on a nano level I.e. DNA and then a sub programme being used where it then stimulates the DNA to grow and reform in a particular way, like a catalyst.
    I am basing this mainly on the first scene with the space jockey, engineer, where we see his body degrade and then we see his DNA reform and his cells dividing.
    I believe this liquid to be the same as the liquid found later in the movie but this liquid was sub programmed to catalyse the growth of life on earth, not too specificly, while the later liquid was designed to catalyse xenomorph growth.

    • Andrew

      Agreed, i don’t think it’s nano bots in the liquid, at a high enough magnification we would see that, and they certainly would have shown that. I do remember David saying something to himself when he first starts pressing his fingers into the language on the wall and it begins to glow, along the lines of ‘they used…’ something like nano bots but i don’t think it was that.

      I do definately think it’s some kind of programmable liquid, as if they have been able to create a programmable retrovirus which can be programmed to introduce a catalyst at the cellular lever.

  • Jdawg

    I was wondering if the space jockeys were merely playing a sadistic game with the humans similar to a child that is beat up at home will go out into the world and beat up other kids.

    As in if their species was plagued with their own xenomorph (the squid looking one) and it terrorized them then they made humans for the hell of it to introduce their own version and go from there. This would explain also the last scene with the xenomorph coming out looking different than the original one from the Alien franchise. It didn’t have a typically inside the mouth thingy poking out.

    In an act to just create humans because they can, which is an element in the story that they say, “why did you humans create androids? Because they can”. So this led me to think that the space jockeys created humans just because they can.

    However, I’ll refer to this as the bully complex, they decided to terrorize the human race the same way they were, by releasing the xenomorph population amongst them and seeing what would happen. This would explain why the space jockey was so pissed, because humans weren’t meant to live. Their race is the only one that should survive because they are superior to us.

    Behind the head, when they walk back to the green thing, theres an xenomorph that looka like jesus did on the cross, on the wall.

    One of the things I still don’t understand is why when they first enter and David finds the goo, WHY IS THAT GOO THERE? If everything happened 2000 years ago, there is no way that fresh goo would remain.

    Soo many questions =(

    • Andrew

      The ‘goo’ isn’t there when theyfirst enter the room, the first thing David notices is the vials beginning to ‘sweat’ (just as Shaw notices the murals have begun to degrade on the walls) because of the sudden change to the atmosphere in what appears to have been a hermatically sealed chamber. The goo then starts to bubble out of the vials as it warms and then pools on the ground later

  • Outsoul82

    My theory: Just like us humans w..e seek answers to our existance. Being that the engineers DNA match to us humans they are like us and seek answers to their existence. So they find this planet and go exploring which leads them to discover this black liquid. And like us they go poke around and find that this is more harmful than good and leave the planet. Except for one. Engineer in the start of the film is just too curious and decides to risk his own life to find out what happens when altered with his genetics. He dies but soon after is being reborn into……xenomorph. He is the first. The queen. And first inhabitant of this planet. Queen reproduces. What I find interesting is how the eggs found in ‘Alien’ are set up very similar to the ones in the Chamber. So this leads me to believe that the engineers came back in military form and kill off all reproduced aliens and contain the queen. Which is actaully being held captive in the chamber. But actually disguised as a mural. That is possibly why that green crystal is placed infront of it. To prevent it from sweating. And remember this crystal was found in the capsule David takes back to investigate. It’s the engineers technology in order to contain the black liquid. Now that this new lifeform is contained, the engineers run test and find that thier DNA is tied in with the DNA of the queen. Thus the chamber with the big head mural. It symbolizes them as the creator to the Alien. So in essence you have the Mother which sits behind the big head. And the father sitting infront of thier children. From here I get lost. Why go to earth? My only guess is since the engineers figured this black liquid mixed with their DNA creates this Alien, with the help of the space jockey they find another planet with another lifeform and are not out to destroy earth but to further experiment with the black liquid and try it on the humans who have the same DNA as themselves. Fortunately we saw what happens when mixed with a human with Shaw. A deformed creature. Octopus like creature I like to call mother face hugger. To which she finds a more sutible host, the engineer, and creates none other than ‘Alien’. The perfect species….as Ash would later call it. So that’s my theory….as much I would like to believe this is straight out of Ridley’s head….I’m most likely way off.

  • Andrew James

    The Engineers created this molecular goo that takes any life form it touches, and modifies it. Somehow, this resulted in mutant creatures killing of the Engineers on that planet. So what you have here is a failed science experiment at the hands of the Engineers. That much is clear. What is unclear to me, is how the Xenomorph first came into existence. The Xenomorph that emerges at the end of the film can’t be the first one since there is a replica of one in the chamber with the giant head. Do any of you have theories on this?

    My guess is that the black primordial goo, mixed with Engineer or human DNA would result in a Xenomorph of some kind. Thus, the first Xenomorph was created in this way, via an Engineer body. And when David slipped a small amount of said goo into Shaw’s partner’s drink, he began turning into one. And when he impregnated Shaw, his Xenomorph DNA mixed with her human embryo created that tentacled creature which in turn, impregnated that Engineer, which of course, resulted in a modified Xenomorph – part Engineer, part human. Perhaps the first Queen? With the ability to lay eggs? A byproduct of human DNA?

    In Sum, the Aliens are in now charge. Not the Engineers. Their creation has turned on them. Remember, these Aliens need human bodies to reproduce. And my hunch is that they basically set a trap in that main chamber. Having used up all of the Engineer bodies to reproduce, they somehow controlled the last of the surviving Engineers to Earth, so as to continue the survival of their species. My theory is that during the opening scene, the Engineer was actually being controlled by some kind of Xenomorph ship to create more life, ie bodies to impregnate….

    Rebuttals and additions welcome. But let me say this: that movie kicked ass.

    • Jess

      Woahhhh. I like this theory.

    • Aftershock_studios

      I agree. I think the big ship at the beginning was an Xenomoprh ship waiting for the engineer to sacrifice himself to create new life or to show subservience. Once he drinks it, the ship leaves because he has created a new world that someday they can use to create more aliens or to show his world still obeys. I think they SERVE the Aliens. The moon seemed to be temple-like, shrine-like. The alien on the wall in the canister room seemed Idol like. I think the reason life was created and all the messages pointed back toward that moon was so that when we finally made it there, they would know we were “Ripe” and send a ship full of Xenomorph canisters in servitude to the aliens to further the aliens’ cause. I DO think the Xenomorph at the end was the first QUEEN though perhaps?

      • Flávio

        It’s an interesting theory but I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Xenomorphs are extremely intelligent and clearly a superior species but without any kind of interest in technology. Moreover they’re intrinsically destructive and aggressive: they’re hunters, not farmers or politicians.

    • Anonymous

      then why did the first Engineer start disintegrating as he fell in the water. wouldn’t he have turned to xenomorph? So black goop+engie = life.
      but black goop+ human = xenomorph? I doubt that.

    • Matthew Jackson

      well what you just said was pretty much what was said in the original post right ? and youre right this probably isnt the first xeno, but who said it was and that him being the first was important? mural was probably some kinda depiction of what they were doing. i dont think that they worshiped them like some ppl suggest. but u never know i guess. the point is engineers did mess it up so black goo probably got loose. and the fact that it was the first human/alien hybrid probably led to it being able to reproduce itself later on as queen. thats how engineers made sure it doesnt multiple itself after they fulfilled their purpose. however the main question here is why the heck did david infect dr holloway in the frist place? was it so he can get some bitter sweet revenge on humans for not accepting him as a machine?? there are other questions to be asked here, but i guess we`ll have to wait for some sequel now.

      • Andrew

        david infected Holloway in responce to Wayland telling him ‘try harder’ when they had gotten to the planet and it seemed all the engineers were dead. At that point they didn’t know what the black goo did, so in following this order, David asked Holloway ‘what would you be willing to do, to find out?’ very broadly, and Holloway answered ‘anything’ – David essentially was saying ‘what if this goo allowed us to know more? What would you do to find out?. Holloway saying ‘anything’ allowed him to feed him it, bypassing any safety protocols that should have existed and stopped him.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

    OK, there are 2 aspects – the Alien and the Engineers. So the Alien story is simple and very well explained in the movie (bio weapon, intercourse, birth, xeno).

    But about the engineers:
    1) they created humans on earth (first seen with the Engineer drinking the liquid – different liquid)
    2) they leave us star map to find them when we are advanced enough
    3) but at the place they have a bio weapon targeting earth.

    My Theory:
    They never wanted to create humans, but humans were a stage to get to the Xenos. Unfortunately, their bio weapon turned on them and they never achieved this. And the Engineer who wake up was so scared from Xenos, that he had to kill all humans on the planet to protect other ships.

    This does not answer 1 question. Why did they leave the start map to find them?

    • Andrew

      I’m beginning to think it wasn’t them visiting us and leaving it intentionally, i believe it was a memory fragment that perhaps people in certain tribes at times throughout history have become aware of, through a dream or something, and they drawn it or interpreted it.

      • Flavio

        No, it was definitely a warning. All the drawings were exactly the same, that’s no coincidence.

  • Christopher Lux

    OK, so I haven’t read ALL the comments but here are a few thoughts.

    The Engineer Monk at the beginning was the one who “chose not to destroy us (Earth)’. He knew Earth was a target and rather then let them take us out, he consumed the bio-weapon himself and deliberately contaminated the water in the waterfall. It was either his way of killing the other Engineers working on distributing the bioweapons or he was taking his own life after unleashing the weapon on the Engineers in the ship killing them all.

    I agree with the comments that say the black liquid re-engineers the DNA of the host. If taken in a large quantity, it rips you down to basic elements and rebuilds what it want. Regardless, it uses the template of the infected host and builds something more aggressive both physically and reproductively. The worms grown in size, aggression and ability to invade hosts. The Engineers give rise to a new kind of Xenomorph we haven’t seen before (remember we only saw the larval form). What the main character gave birth to was essentially a giant ‘face-hugger’. Is there a chance that because the bio-weapon had recently been exposed to Engineer DNA that it was geared towards making a face-hugger specifically designed to infect Engineers (big enough, strong enough, and with an ‘injector’ that fit in his giant mouth)? Now that it’s been exposed to Humans, some of the life generated will be geared towards making new biologic based ‘vases’ that contain pre-formed face-huggers aimed at humans.

    • Christopher Lux

      Ok, one more thing. To continue with the idea that the Engineer-Monk at the beginning was stopping the bio-weapons team, I was thinking that the lone surviving Engineer was likely on the side that wanted to carry out the mission to wipe out life on earth. He fled and survived the release of the weapon and put himself in stasis. The next thing he knows, little versions of him are waking him up and when David talks to him, it’s likely he mentioned that they are from earth. As an exterminator, his target has flown across the galaxy and is face to face with him. He kills everyone and rushes to deploy the weapon to complete his mission.

      Also, the ‘Invitation’ on the cave walls was probably was not an invitation. Why would the Engineers want them to come to their bio-weapon facility? The civilizations that were visited by the Engineers who were using them for their own purposes (notice that everyone is cowering before them) either inspired the human subjects to try to leave a message of where the Engineers came from OR the Engineer-Monk or those who wanted to protect humans left the images to give future humans a target so we could try to protect ourselves. I’m not sure on this one yet..

      • Flávio

        Yes, definitely not an invitation. If they wanted to get in touch with us, they would just drop us a visit. They had the means and the technology to do it. Moreover, if this really is a militares facility, they would want to keep it secret.

  • Shimmshamm

    Okay, here’s my threepence worth. sorry if any of it is a repeated i have read EVERY POST. but i am super intellengent so no doubt this will be spot on ;)

    1. The line that went something like “sometimes you have to destroy something to create something” is the key to the story. Just from the emphasis they put on it.

    2. The original alien in the opening scene was unhappy, almost regretting what he was about to do. (maybe just gutted he was about to die).

    3. He looked like he was creating life on earth (this wasnt obvious to me at the time but then you guys seem to have it nailed).

    4. I think from these quite tenuous observations that we as a human race were merely vessels to create the army of Aliens (Xenomorphs was it?) to fight for a necessary cause of some kind. We were just growing ready to be used.

    5. here im losing it. Something went wrong on the plant and the Engineers were killed. One saved somehow, some reason. The Engineer killed the humans to ensure they werent infected and overrun with Xenomorphs and isnt best pleased to see the humans.

    6. Why leave the wall paintings?? Dunno. one thought. This wasnt the engineers, but original humans that knew about the reason for their being and wanted to warn future humans of their reason for existing? Or a rouge engineer? Early humans still had some remnants of engineers recent memory (ok ive gone too far)…

    Sorry for lack of technical terminology if im getting that wrong. Please rip apart as you see fit.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

      Yes, this is the same thing I am thinking. But about 6. no idea why? For sure, early humans could not have the knowledge to know where they came form, so it had to be the Engineers who told them where they are from. Maybe there was no purpose and humans did the paintings just because they liked to draw pictures on the wall.

      http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1R-qTqQHBj4/T2Ur46Ybw1I/AAAAAAAAAkc/OfIDW9Ykjpk/s1600/prometheus_full_trailer_00017.jpg

      Although, this guy in a painting looks like it’s a warning to beware of them, right?

      • Andrew

        The painting could be some remnant of a genetic memory left over from the first engineer who sacrifices his life to create life on earth. We’re assuming that engineers visited all these tribes over time but for all we know, each of thesepaintings are people who are remembering the star constellation from his memory, this would make more sense firstly than the engineers making multiple visits to earth AND more importantly, why they would leave a map, an ‘invitation’ to a pllanet that houses a biological weapons facility.
        As the engineer sacrificing himself at the start would be aware of this, he would certainly know this information to be able in some very basic form to pass this off to his progeny.

      • Beboop

        maybe they didnt want us to get into religion which they knew from prior experiments would lead to wars and destruction.

  • egarcia

    A few comments which is a mixture of other people’s comments.

    I think the big sculpture could be part of an experiment, related or not to what went wrong in the past and caused the emergency protocol. I think that was a research vessel but in that case it’s hard to explain a big statue inside of it.

    I think we share the same DNA with the Aliens and not with the engineers (the head was infected and Shaw’s team picked up the xeno’s DNA in the head). Green goo from the explosion is vaguely similar to the one David found by the door in the beginning. I bet the engineers were studying the xenos (either due to a threat back home by aliens, because they found the species at some point and started to do research on it, try to understand it, find out how it evolved, etc). They captured the queen and started working on it in that base until emergency situation happened. Whether they created or found the xenos, they were studying it, or dealing with material that can become aliens.

    Following this line of thought they created life on the nearest inhabitable planet (earth) with the goo that was genetically modified to end up like the DNA from the Aliens (and not able to reproduce may be), so that 1. they could observe our evolution into aliens, or 2. we could one day be used as bait in research experiments once our DNAs match (may be that’s why they were gonna come to earth 2000 years ago with all those containers).

    Or they would just exterminate us (with aliens) once we found them. Was it really clear they were planning to go to earth 2000 years ago? I think David showed “them” the team came from earth by “picking-up” the planet earth on the hologram. May be the drawings on earth are meant for us to go find them or may be they were doing experiments to us often and because of the emergency protocol that base was shut-down (and they were not planning on going to earth).

    I agree with others that the major crystral in front of the sculpture is what is keeping the creature contained.

    The engineer once awake could have freaked out that we were there and jeopardized all the work (plus causing a disaster with the interaction with the goo) and just wanted to take off the planet (not necessarily to earth).

    On a different line of thought: If that statue and the whole thing is a trap for humans to find that vessel (after we are evolved enough), get in there and get in touch with the containers and become aliens -due to the similarity in DNA, if you will- it could mean that 1. at that stage the engineers planned to transform humans in some kind of aliens (whether in that vessel, or on earth, for research or war -fight their aliens that are threatening them back at their home?), 2. our visit could be signaling that our world is ready to be experimented on (and the containers were not meant to infect humans upon arrival, they were just research) or 3. our planet is ready to be destroyed for life to be created again, and aliens are used to destroy it. But then the emergency situation means it saved us from being eradicated 2000 years ago.

    One thing is clear to me, the movie explores the creation of mankind not the creation of the aliens. May be the interaction of aliens and humans was never meant to happen, or it was exactly what the engineers were trying to do but in a controlled experiment.

    • Andrew

      If i remember correctly, the hologram recording of the space kockey crew on the ship’s ‘bridge’ showed A mass of star systems and the space jockey selected one of these stars which then zoomed in to reveal our solar system, at which point David picked the Earth up as the ship’s flight data hologram was interactive , whereas the jockey recording was not. This indicated that the space jockeys had selected earth as their destination… For a ship with thousands and thousands of the vials.

      • Flavio

        Absolutely. We know for sure that: a) the ship was headed for earth; b) the ship was full of containers; c) the containers were filled with an extremely dangerous substance with the potential to destroy and erradicate all human life; d) the surviving engineer didn’t just kill all the humans he encountered, he clearly despised them as well. We don’t know what the engineers’ true intentions are but it doesn’t look good.

  • egarcia

    There is little evidence that the engineers were working with all those containers (and the goo the one drinks in the beginning could very well be completely unrelated or genetically modified based on previous research being done on those containers), and what I mean in, it could be that the engineer vessel was attacked by aliens, hence the emergency protocol. At that point, the aliens themselves killed the engineers that were around (whereas one or more got to a safe area) and then planted all those containers (since there were none by the sleeping chamber), but if it was it clear that the other ships in the area were active this would be unlikely.

    A cool theory would be if the aliens thus far couldnt procriate easily but once the experiment done by David is completed, we have a species of Alien that for the first time has traits from the engineers and humans (and may be can even self procriate!). This would not be the same Alien that showed up in the Alien movies, but a much better version, what would potentially be able to wipe out the engineers

  • egarcia

    What do you guys make of the fact that the spaceship shown in the beginning is different than the one the engineer has? Just difference between colonization or military vessel vs research vessel?

    Does it show for sure that it is earth? It could be that same planet the team discovered just many years back, and the engineers started doing research on the creation of their species or the alien’s until they basically wiped off the whole thing – I think it’s significant the fact that in that first scene it shows the cells dividing right away, so it is kind of like a fast-forward evolution of life forms and is what lea

    • Andrew

      Yes it’s interesting that he opening hipis different in design, possibly to show their technology had advanced more by he time we find them on the planet, possibly because it has a differen purpose, maybe as a seeder ship instead of just a cargo ship. Personally ithink it was a conscious decision by Ridley Scott so people wouldn’t have a nerdgasm just seeing that familiar ship straight away at the start of th movie, from back when they denied that Prometheus had anything to do with the Alien universe until some genius used the shot of the final ship in the trailer.

  • Quickdraw1

    Just my two cents, it seemed to me that the theory of the planet for weapons testing fits the most. There are multiple ships in this desolate, harsh place, clearly no where to live for anyone and those beings are way too advanced to have no other technology on the planet.
    The fact that they show an engineer creating life on Earth in the beginning, the “to create you must destroy” line, the anger the engineer shows towards seeing humans on his ship and his urgency to leave the planet, the space maps with earth and probable other habitable planets.. leads one to assume they created life on Earth just to test this biological weapon. Rather than test it on themselves, they “created because they could”, similar to how we use androids in their universe as a means to an end.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

      ok humans were lab rats to test the weapon, and we need to get advanced enough to try and fight them for the test to be valid.. this fits!

      But what to do then with the Xenos left on earth after all humans are dead? or maybe they didn’t expect Xenos to come from humans..

      • Quickdraw1

        Not sure if they expected the results or were simply going to allow any scenario to happen, since they didn’t really care about humans. I’m thinking this more and more for a few more reasons. The beginning engineer looked a lot like he had this duty he was charged with but wasn’t quite sure what would happen, or he maybe had a bit of remorse for what his sacrifice would bring about.

        Also the engineer that meets David seemed confused until David spoke a language it understood, then he was pleasantly surprised until he ripped his head off. I’m thinking this meant that all along those ships, those hypersleep pods, were put there long ago with the intent for species to come answer the “clues” the engineers left behind, aka awaken the crew for the ships to then begin the experiment on whatever planet the species came from. So when a species is evolved enough to figure out how to get to this testing ground, that means the weapon can be fully tested.

        If you think about it, these beings are so advanced they most likely do not think in terms of years, hundreds of years or even maybe thousands. So setting up “seed planets” with explicit intent to lure the eventual evolutionary species back to this planet is a long term project to us, but to them it could just be a fraction of their larger sense of time.

        • guest1337

          But what about all the dead Engineers who died trying o get INTO th alien chamber filled with black goo? that is what confuses me and the whole waiting to be awakened, clearly there were others on the planet not just the cryostasis ones.

          • http://twitter.com/ahdvd Andrew Hazell

            Those weren’t in the same tunnel that went to the chamber, those were somewhere else, we don’t know what happened to then, but i don’t think they were heading to the chamber, more than likely either trying to get to ships to escape or the bodies were all piled up there after they died by someone/thing?

  • Mo Taubes

    Just some thoughts… (I’m considering all the Alien movies canon)
    I think that the engineer at the beginning of the movie was in fact planting the seeds of life on earth, but the stuff he drank was not the same as the black goo. It’s possible that the engineers designed this goo in an attempt to create life. However, the goo by itself does nothing, it needs a host before it can become anything (this would fit into with the whole god stuff going on in the movie) showing that the engineers could not actually create life which is why the first engineer needed to drink it before life could be created.
    It’s also possible, that they are creating life simply because they could (like the robot says). The process however, is extremely slow (taking millions of years) so the engineers continue modifying and perfecting the goo, speeding up its process significantly, but with terrible side effects. The painting on the wall was a possible visit by the engineers, who, not wanting humans to come after them, warned them not to go looking for where they were created. Meanwhile the engineers perfect the goo and end up creating the xenomorphs (so called perfect species) These creatures, unlike the goo, which needs to be consumed in order to work were able to force themselves into creatures mouths themselves. The engineers never intended earth to belong to humans, it was simply their testing planet and they planned on dropping off their next test subjects (the xenos) there before everything went to hell and most of them were killed by their creators (doesnt every son want to see their father dead?)
    A small break here, but in Predator 2, it is clear the predators have had interactions with the engineers, as one of their helmets (as well as a xenomorph skull) can be seen on their ship. The predators themselves visited earth, were worshiped as gods and they taught the humans to build pyramids and such (heres a crazy theory, but pretty unlikely, Maybe the painting in the cave was actually not of a engineer but rather a predator warning humans not to visit that planet as only bad would happen.) Anyway, the aliens clearly existed before the movie as the Predators breeded aliens on earth to hunt in prehistory times. Also at the end of Alien vs Predator 2 its implied that Weyland Yutani corporations technology is based on the predators technology and without it, the deep space travel would have never been possible.
    The engineers intended to drop off their package on earth 2000 years before the movie but something goes wrong and most the engineers die. When the surviving engineer awakens and sees how far their creation has advanced, he panics and attempts to destroy the humans and replace them with the xenos.
    As for the xeno at the end, I don’t think there was anything special about it (people have said it’s the first xeno/queen ect.) That could just be how a xeno looks when it comes from a engineer. We know xenos look different depending on who they come out of (dog legs in Alien 3, dreadlocks and mandibles in AVPR) Also, maybe the statue of the head and the statue of the alien in the room were just statues of the species they were successful in creating. Theres still other stuff I’m trying to figure out but this is what I think so far.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

      Good idea about the perfect species! Not thing the Predator part is true though..

  • Rman122

    Lets do some critical thinking here. I’d like to point out that I’m trying to examine the overall plot in no particular order. Also I think it’s better to think of the aliens as more of an insect species, as implied by the “queen and drone” titles previously established in the Alien franchise. Basically I think in a sense the space jockey is the male of the xenomorph species.
    I’d also like to draw attention to the shape of the space ship piloted by the space jockey. It’s unmistakably similar to the face hugger-esque type alien that initially attacks the members of the expedition. Keep that in mind as it was their mode of transport. Next I’d like to examine the initial chamber containing the murals of what is undoubtedly a reference to the xenomorph or drone of the alien series. With the typical elongated head. Also in the chamber was a larger rendering of the already large head of the space jockey. In most insect hive species, the hive is almost entirely female. Except for periods of reproduction aimed at expanding a colony. During which, in ants for example, males are reproduced for the sole purpose of flying away and reproducing with future queens, who are also only produced by the original queen during this time.
    Now lets suppose the vials with the mysterious liquid is basically an egg sac, not a pupa. The space jockey seems to be in charge of transporting these items to various worlds for whatever reason. Now I’d like to point out that the opening scene where the space jockey alien, ingests some kind of goo, not necessarily the same goo as is found in the containers, basically implies they seeded habitable planets with organic compounds through some sort of ritual sacrifice. They also have a much larger ship in the scene maybe it’s like the space jockey city ship. The face hugger precursor is potentially used as a mode of transfer for impregnating whatever other species it may incounter on the many seed planets. Each of which will have potentially developed varying species of animals based on similar basic evolutionary patterns.
    The mural is in fact left by none other than the predator alien race, on worlds where they deem the inhabiting life form is capable of taking on their creator. Similar to the klingon creation story, hinted to in the similar hair style.
    Alright now I’m getting off on a tangent, but lastly I’d like to reference the scene with the expedition member that was plopped outside the airlock that had something going on. He had feral strength, like the space jockey did. Also he looked like he was possibly being genetically altered into a space jockey. So maybe the liquid effects males and females differently causing males to become space jockeys, and females produce the tentacle like alien we see burst from Shaw. The alien male space jockeys then become the incubator for the final scene of the movie in a, evidently unwanted sexual union. Leaving us with the alien female drone.
    So in conclusion the space jockey drops his egg sac on a compatible planet after a significant amount of time, producing a bunch of other space jockeys and their octopus violator wives. They get it on in a fatal attraction kind of way. Then the planet is left with a bunch of mindless killing xenomorph females and queens, along with plenty of stuff to eat. Till the males with the fancy space suits come to pick up some eggs, I’ll bet they probably wait till all the full grown females die off first though.
    Lastly 5 bucks on the fact that David, instead of translating to the sole surviving space jockey made the alien equivalent of a praying mantis joke.

    • Andrew

      The space jockeys were provento be humans, Shaw’s DNA readings taken from the prserved head showed tat the alien look of the space jockeys were just a helmet, not the jockey’s face, and that the DNA was a match to human DNA. While it didn’t say what percentage, and it couldn’t be exatly 100% it was VERY close on th graph shown. The jockeys are human, we are made from their DNA, we’re an offshoot, just that for whatever reason, we’re slightly smaller(as. Said in another post, most likely due to environment and a difference in gravitational force of our planet).

      What you are suggesting would mean hat the alien queen is the female of the species and hman are the males of the species, but since humans already have both male and female genders that makes no sense.

  • JohnW

    All this is spot on but is leaving out the fact that it’s oxygen, the gas needed for life, that triggers the pots to release the black liquid.

    But why would the Space Jockeys be planning an attack on Earth? Well, they determine the carcass of the headless Jockey to be 2000 years old, approx. the time that Christ died. Maybe Christ was a Space Jockey and after the humans killed him, they were planning an attack.

    I know it’s far-fetched but all the religious overtones, not to mention the apparent Annunaki connection, explains all this. (Atra Hasis)

    Not to mention the ship that the original Alien crew find on LV-426 had to have been Shaw’s stolen ship. Remember, she had stomach pains even after removing the larvae. Throughout the Alien franchise, queens can only come from female humans. Showing the sex DNA comes from the host.

    Say, for instance, Shaw takes control of the ship, gets in the pilots chair, attempts to crash the ship because she knows that she is pregnant with an alien… Ship crashes on LV426, the queen arises from Shaw and lays eggs then dies.

    Ripley’s crew in Alien come across the ship after mistaking the distress beacon as a communication thread and viola, the franchise begins.

    • Aw3balla

      Bu that doesnt explain where the space jockey from that ship in Alien came from. Or where he was going with a cargo bay full of xenomorph eggs. Or who sent out the distress signal.

      • Andrew

        Ridley Scott has said that this is 2 movies away from Alien, so somewhere along the line, something further happens with Shaw in the other movies resulting in the cargo ship of another vessel being filled with eggs, or perhaps Spac Jockeys recieve an automated distress signal (we don’t know what caised the ship in Alien to send one, but if it’s automated then why wouldn’t the one at the end of Prometheus send one aswell?), return to investigate and find the newly born queen? Unfortunately, when i saw the movie i didn’t stay right till the en of the credits although people have said there is something extra at the end.

        JohnW – it’s no the oxygen that causes the vials to start leaking, it seems like it’s the change in temperature in the room from the new air entering the room when david opened the door. It’s not that it’s oxygen, if anything it’s the combination of a warmer temperature and moisture. For those 2000 or so years that the room was sealed since the head was decapitated, that room was sealed and being an internal room, probably had little to no air circulation and was most likely colder than the corridor. The liquid in the vials could have cooled considerably, causing it to expand, put a cup of water in the freezer filled to the top, when it’s frozen you’ll see it’s expanded out of the cup. When you take it out of the freezer, the cup will firstly start sweating (as David notices with one of the vials), the liquid would then start to melt, and then as a result, start to leak from the vials and pool on the floor.

    • Adsfd

      there was an engineer piloting the ship in alien we see him so it can’t be

  • mustardseed

    Lets not get ahead of ourselves and over think this GREAT simple movie. After all they still have to sell tickets to the masses. At the beginning sequence the engineers seeded the earth in their own imagine. Which explains why we are humanoid like them with matching DNA. They visited throughout our history which was explained in the cave drawing and warned us that if we didn’t change death of the specie was the only future. The cave drawings and other hieroglyphics are a warning to us, not where the Gods are from. Fast forward to 2000 years before 2089. Confidentially after Jesus’s crucifixion, the makers decided that human as a species have not progress and is probably in a state of retrogression based on the state of our world today, bio-engineered (metal canisters that disintegrate with oxygen), a black liquid DNA mutating, WMA, and set a course for earth to wipe us out. Also they created this weapon on the home planet of the Xenos, hence the queen alien mural on the wall. The face statue I believe is a vanity thing just to show the Xenos who’s boss. I guess even Gods, like the look of themselves. But as Karma would have it, it seems that even gods have to deal with Karma, they wiped themselves out in the process. The lone surviving engineered was amused as David was able to talk to him, and might have thought for a nanosecond that we advanced as a species but instead ripped off his head without a conscious thought. This scene is telling of what they really feel about us. Then David and Shaw get into the engineers spaceship and head to the engineers home planet as proof of the line, “even children wants their father dead,” or something like that. So there you go. Why all the fuss?

    Oh and that cute little Xeno at the end will probably go and start a whole new OLD Alien franchise which can all be seen on DVD.

    • http://twitter.com/ahdvd Andrew Hazell

      I’ve already said, it can’t be that the canisters degrade in oxygen, otherwide the thousands upon thousands in the ship’s cargo bay would have all leaked and when David first opened the door to the ship, he would have been washed away by the tidal wave.

      • Emma

        But wasn’t that area sealed off too? Wasn’t that where one of the little mechanisms that detect life was hanging out because it was a dead end before David came and opened it?

        • http://twitter.com/ahdvd Andrew Hazell

          Yes, but then he explored the ship, found the bridge and the space jockey in stasis, operated the bridge controls to bring up the hologram, then went back to the Prometheus, woke up Weyland, waited for him to get prepped to go to the structure, and then went back to the ship with them. A heck of a lot longer than it took for those vials to sweat and start leaking when they found the chamber. If the same thing happened, when David went back with Weyland’s group the second time, they would have been swimming in it. The canisters in the ship must not have been in a sealed environment, possibly because it’s in a ship, the ship’s life support system would likely still be circulating air.

  • Chemjim1

    It’s a movie that is typically vague on the science but also heavy on the stereotypical. Didn’t any of the crew ever see “Alien”. We know immediately who will die first. As for science investigators, give me a break. No scientist would behave like they did. Ohhh, I am pissed off *that things did not go the way I thought they would”, let me get drunk, especially after 2 years of hyper-sleep. Blah, blah, blah! Then there’s the space ship (trillion dollar exercise) which has more than enough room to include several 5-start suites on this Titanic in space. Hello – it’s a scientific and exploratory expedition which would necessarily be top-heavy in equipment (first of all), science labs (2nd), medical stuff for both crew and discoveries, and so on – guest quarters for prima donnas would have been the size of a postage stamp. Then of course there’s the old man looking for the fountain of youth (once again). Couldn’t they have just cryoed him and then let the ship return with the answers? But that would have prevented us from seeing the father-daughter thing, for all it was worth (absolutely nothing). Her character explored all the emotions from A to B – a one note pony – who contributed little to the development of the plot.

    Yes it’s just a movie and Ridley sets it up pretty well. Overall I enjoyed it, but it raised more questions than it answered (thereby insuring more sequels). And why is David so devious here. Who programed him? The old man? Why would he sacrifice one of his scientists before the facts were in, thereby showing himself to be an idiot – but advancing the plot with speed of light stupidity. Overall the movie was quite interesting, visuals good, and was entertaining. But science it ain’t.

    • Password

      Agreed. Some unrealistic parts which really bothered me being the expertise movie critic that I am -___ especially when they took off their helmets, even then no matter how safe the air may be, uhmm diseases anyone? Keep it on! Lack of sample taking,?mindless individual exploration, lots of secrets… I mean if you’re ill with an alien crawling inside your eyeball, in a real situation you’d alert your crew -__- lack of responsibliliy because it proved to be infectious.. so many secrets man! You need to work together… for science and mankind! Anyways..effects were really good. But okay. This urked me. The automated surgery device and the chick persistantly injected herself? It specified as a sedative right?Should she have knocked out? Cuz the woman injected constantly and was superman resisting it, running to and fro.. stapled stomach.. craziness.

    • Flavio

      Yes, I agree. This was supposed to be a science fiction film and in this genre, the science is just as important as the fiction. In Prometheus, we get a lot of great fiction but the science was totally neglected – which is strange, considering Scott’s well known obsession with detail and accuracy.

  • Olsontj

    How do the predators fit in to all this?

    • http://twitter.com/ahdvd Andrew Hazell

      Ask Ridley Scott. He probably never considered them at all, unless the ‘humans being turned into a xenomorph army’ idea has merit, in which case, they could be an enemy of the Space Jockeys.

  • Anonymous

    Biblical Reference: God and Angels

    Ridley Scott is a very smart dude, he knows what he is doing. In the book of Genesis we read …In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

    Scott won’t openly say it but his opening sequence lines up with this verse almost to a tee. We don’t know how God went about this amazing process but He certainly didn’t die in order to make us. God did cast Lucifer out of Heaven though and he did suffer a fate perhaps similar to the being we see.

    Ridley also is an avid reader and has mentioned Paradise Lost in recent interviews. This sheds light on the Engineers mentioned in the film. He considered them to be “dark angels”. What if we expand on that to mean “fallen angels”.

    Deep, I know but Ridley has had 30 years to bring this kind a depth.

    • Barrie Clark

      Interesting idea. Having watched the film last night, I am still thinking many of the ideas through. But having read yours and some other posts, how about this:
      The engineers are a benevolent, peaceful race of creators. They create humanity in their imagine,etc. However, a splinter group of the engineers decides that humanity is a potential threat to their existence and an affront to them (sibling jealousy theme again) and decide to take it upon themselves to destroy humanity. Essentially, the engineers seen on this planet are terrorists, rebels, the “evil engineers”, whatever you want to call them. This would fit in with the WMD terminology. Also, the ancient cave markings might then be warnings from the passive, peace loving “good” engineers. Either way, looking forward to seeing what the sequel brings :-)

  • Venkman

    I fully expected there to be several unanswered questions with this film, but the one that I was most displeased with was that the ending of Prometheus does not tie in with the beginning of Alien. In the beginning of Alien, they find the Engineer’s ship, and discover the dead Engineer- still in the control center- with a whole in his chest, presumably caused by a xenomorph. This of course is not how the Engineer in Prometheus meets his demise… So how do the two tie together?

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

      Remember there are many ships there with other engineers waiting to be awaken.

    • faded

      They don’t. The planet/moon in Prometheus is different to the one the Nostromo investigates in Alien.

  • http://www.facebook.com/binuuday Binu Ud

    Guys, the bowling pings like holder, that contains the black goo is actually an urn, that contains the ashes (here, liquidated DNA ) of the dead engineers. Thats why there are so many urns in the room with the head, and at the entrance of the engineers space craft.
    Just like, we take the ashes of our dead ones and scatter it across rivers, these guys liquidate the dead ones, or the engineers who want to die, in to black goo, store it in the bowling pin like sealed containers), and distribute across space to create life.
    The liquidation process is done by nano robots, thats break down their bodies, without water, into a super concentrated liquid called the black goo.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

      No, it’s a weapon! this is clearly stated in the movie. You cannot ignore something that is said by 2 characters.

  • aak

    i have a question in the first alien they find the engineer in the chair but in prometheus he died in the life boat. Also was the gaint octopus thing is a bigger version of the thing that lays eggs in in side of u in the alien movies please answer

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523551987 Armands Šlihte

      I think the thing is giant because it’s the first one, which really didn’t come from an egg! Also the Xenos is a bit different since it grows from an Engineer not Human.

  • Ruidude7

    Ok, after reading all posts, i’m still looking for answers, and i guess they’ll only be answered when Ridley Scott makes a sequel, wich was always his intention to begin with…
    but some questions haven’t been commented here i think, such as, what happened to the bodies of the other two engineers who did make it into the Vault Room (or Tomb)? Inside there’s only the head of the decapitated one, but we could clearly see that two others had made it inside before the door closed! What happened to them? did they desintegrate by drinking the goo because of being contaminated? Did their heads explode like it happended to the others pilled up and like it was going to happen to the decapitaded one? if so, there had to be leftovers of the bodies inside… but theres was nothing left of them! If it was like a panic room or failsafe room, where they get decontaminated, or in this case desintegrated in order to prevent contagion, then why would they leave the decapitade head intact? And the Xenomorphin the wall, was it real or just a drawing? was the crystal in front of it imobilizing it? could it be that the xenomorph was somehow used to cleanse (wipe out) anything contaminated that was thrown into that room? and the crystal could be activated or deactivated from another area? but if so, how would the xeno retreat back into the wall? Also, the xeno is in a crucified position and Ridley Scott has said that it its possible Jesus Christ was an emissary sent to check how the species was evolving… and got crucified! is this intended to link humans to the xeno already? As for the Engineers, just because they have the ability to create life, that doesn’t make them necessarily good… there could even be good engineers and bad ones, there could be some superior to others, some scientists, some military, who knows… but i think those ones had no sympathy whatsoever for us… i guess that for them we were just a failed experiment wich they wanted to get rid off to try and create something new, but for what purpose will remain uncertain…

  • Sdfsdf

    Watch David explain the plot gaps of Prometheus: (funny parody!)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrRGRSLI-0w

  • XPLSV X

    First of all, I loved this movie. It’s my kind of sci-fi, very cerebral. No other movie has left me scratching my head like this since Total Recall…

    • Engineers came to Earth many years ago, one of which sacrifices himself to create new life on this planet. And though many think they act strictly for scientific purposes, the opening sequence looks a lot like a religious ritual. Anyway, he DELIBERATELY drinks the goo hoping for some kind of result. Must be their way of colonizing worlds.
    • People assume they left clues for us humans. They may very well be leaving clues to THEMSELVES as trophies or signals to keep track of how many times they have visited, etc. So it’s foolish on the scientists’ part to automatically think of this as an invitation.
    • One thing that bothered me once the crew arrives is the use of flashlights. They have all this advanced technology yet they use freaking flashlights? But then I reminded myself that this takes place before Alien and in Alien they have flashlights; so that made sense afterwards.
    • As evidenced in the opening sequence, the black substance KILLS the engineers to the point that they disintegrate. All the dead bodies in the ship are either exploded or decapitated, so there must have been some other type of superior life form that caused all this destruction. So black goo+Engineer produces nothing, DEATH. Black goo+Human produces LIFE. This tells me either a human or similar lifeform must have been on that ship at some point. Engineer and Human DNA are very similar but not IDENTICAL.
    • I don’t believe the Engineers want to kill us just for sport. I believe they want to kill humans to prevent the expansion of the Xenomorph species. Now, if Xenomorphs or any other species wiped out the Enginners in the ships, how come there are no Xenomorph carcasses laying around the ships?
    • No need to explain the murderous tentacles, those are obviously mutated worm-like beings that live in the ground.
    • I do believe the Xenomorph in the end is the first queen. I don’t think the Engineers work for them as a theory here implies. Xenomorphs are an unexpected byproduct of an experiment gone wrong. Remember: goo+Engineer=death, goo+Human=tentacled embryo and finally tentacled embryo+Engineer=Xenomorph. This Xenomorph is very primitive and has no ships of technology. He/she gets all this from humans and Engineers that crossed their path.

  • Anonymous

    there’s a lot of assumptions here. that mural could be depicting something religious or be a warning. Could actually be warning against the worms of this planet.

    We should only list certainties.
    the Engineers were made themselves, hence the cloned homogenous look. The fact that they were all male is interesting too. Does that mean they know that females shouldn’t mix with the goop?
    The Engineers left directions for humans to go the new planet.
    The black goop terraforms life.

    There are two theories to make from this. Either the Engies are bad, or they are good.

    If they are bad, that means they serve the Xenomorphs. They use the goop to create life (or incubators) come back and launch the sauce at them. Instant Xenomorph warriors(no eggs).

    If they are good that means there was a gigantic accident because I’m pretty sure they came from earth. They were going to do to this worm planet the same thing they did to earth. Something happened. Something bad. The goop, instead of creating worlds, turned the worms deadly. It turned the water into zombie makers.

    I really think the murals are warnings against the worms of the planet.

  • Flavio

    A few ideas for a potential Prometheus sequel:

    Leave Jesus out of it, it’s too far fetched, it makes no sense whatsoever and could easily end up looking ridiculous. I know Scott has mentioned it several times but I’m sure he meant it as a joke.

    Improve the science! There are lots of great philosophical questions and fascinating plot possibilities but the science part was neglected.

    Come up with something original! There are two obvious explanations for the engineers’ behaviour (humans are destroying the earth, humans have evolved too rapidly and became a menace) and both should be abandoned. I like the idea of two factions (pro & against humans) at war.

  • Flavio

    More monsters! A couple of new aliens would be more than welcome.

    Don’t speak! I believe the engineers should not speak, it may sound silly. Their communication should be far more sophisticated than ours, telepathy would be a great option.

    Don’t show too much. A lot of questions should be left unanswered.

  • BMaz

    Humans share DNA with plants. So, if the engineer at the beginning was planting the seeds of life with his DNA mixed with the “black tea” he drank, how do we explain the existence of plants already on the planet in that opening scene? Perhaps that planet isn’t earth? Perhaps they and humans have matching DNA (and it can’t be a 100% match – the engineers are huge) because the engineers and humans were both created by another (God?).

  • Susan J

    I just saw the movie last night and have been googling for explanations and have come up with a theory of my own….I think its obvious from the beginning that David wants badly to be a “real boy” ala Pinochio (weyland is his Gepetto) . (He IS shown practicing for two years to be human.)
    It is by apparent that he has feelings about the comments or taunts that he is soulless. Obviously, he knows they are on a quest for human makers, and maybe he thinks he may have found a way to get that soul he desires.
    His childlike joy we see as he is surrounded by the holographic planets shows that he feels he has found his connection to the makers and maybe they can bestow “humanity” on him. Maybe he thinks that by experimenting with the goo, he may find a way to get it and uses Halloway as a guinea pig?
    To me it seems as if he wants whatever impregnated Shaw to be brought to term- but why? So he is a maker, a father?
    Of course , all goes amuck, and many donkey boys are created along the way (stupid scientists morph into thing creatures, whatever) . His dream is shattered when the “god” he thought could rebirth him somehow, turns on him and instead smites him down. But at the end he is still desperate to be “saved” , to keep pursuing his desire to be made human.
    I’m willing to bet that the Pinocchio/Father/God/I -want- to -be -your -good -son theme could be found in many biblical and mythological stories, I just have no time to research them:).

Proudly Powered By WordPress

Designed & Developed By Gareth Watson