Trying to answer the questions of Prometheus

Aha! After watching the movie, and coming out feeling a little perplexed, I remember hoping that Den of Geek would post one of their 'answering the questions' articles (so brilliant for Doctor Who), and lo and behold, here it is. 

I do rather like the idea that the Engineers tried to kill humans because they've become better than them. In the same way that Fassbender's character proves to be rather disturbing for some of the crew members, the Engineers were worried about the implications of their creation, or this branch of their evolutionary tree. 

What I was perhaps most confused about, was the opening scene with one of the Engineers drinking what seemed like the poison seen later on in the movie - and the scene ended with some new sort of DNA being formed...what was all that about?

I'd say the lack of answers is still a problem though, obviously it was intended but it just leaves the film feeling unfinished and unsatisfying and was most likely done so they could go on and make a sequel to the point where this film can barely stand on its own legs.

I'm fine with certain things not being answered, in Alien it's ok we didn't find out where the ship came from, what happened or where the xeno's came from because it was a strong mystery that added to the scare factor of the Xenomorph.

With Prometheus it's just a god damn mess.

mounting a defense of this movie on the basis that we have to watch a non existent directors cut and the viral marketing campaign really illustrates just what an utter disappointing mess this movie was. 

@ChaosWalking I read that scene as taking place on a primordial Earth, he drinks the stuff and dissolves his DNA into the water to spark life here

Two things: surely the scene at the beginning was set on Earth and it's the Engineer using the "stuff" to mingle his DNA with Earth's "nature" to create man? Human DNA is created as the result. 

Thing two: the fundamental premise of the movie falls down. Why would the Engineers spend 25,000 years sending hints to mankind of the venue of their plot to destroy mankind? Not their home planet, but the very place where some plucky humans could foil their plan to destroy their creation. It's like a Bond villain explaining his entire, nefarious plot to a certain-to-die 007. If I was planning to kill everything, I wouldn't send an invitation. 

Okay, third thing: the Engineer who was awakened. He's a higher being right, so why did he do no checks, no background look, no attempt to find out what year it was, no attempt to contact his people to see if their plans had changed, just woke up 25,000 years later and carried on with his mission like he'd missed just five minutes? 

The goo is nanotech / nanosites capable of microbiological 'engineering' and modifying genetic material:

The 'seeder' scene shows the nanosites being ingested and destroying the SJs body, then reconfiguring his genetic material to spread life on the planet.

The goo in the 'vases' or ampoules alters the white worms glimpsed in Holloway's foot print in the tomb into the phallic reptiles that finish off the geologist and biologist. (Also the goo may have some purpose in creating biological 'vectors' that enter the human body via the mouth, much like the later face-huggers which implant higher level species i.e. xenos)

The goo David poisons Holloway with seems to directly alter his DNA, although what he is being turned into is unclear. The transformed geologist seems to have a homicidal motive rather than being a vector for more transformation, though perhaps he was just cross at being left in the pyramid.

Perhaps Holloway is indeed a vector for the squid which is implanted in Shaw

Are the goo ampoules / vases activated by the presence of human life or a change in the atmosphere of the tomb ?

Were the SJs exposed to the goo themselves causing their exploding heads ?
Or did it change the indiginous life on the planet into vectors for chest bursters ?

the engineer at the beginning was sacrificing himself to sow the seeds of humanity. its why humans and engineers share the same dna. thats what i took from the opening scene.....its sets up the film...they created humans, and then wanted to destroy them.

biggest question for me is how weyland knew about the bio-chemical weapons, and it is clear they wanted to breed an alien via shaw (shaw spots the med-pod early on in the film....even vickers must have been aware that there was an agenda to get an alien bred via shaw).

another mystery is what the engineers were fleeing....i suspect a contamination and those vases eventually become eggs, since in the film you see the surface becomes practically alive. the black goo was a weapon, it went wrong, and then aliens began evolving. 

you may recall david talking to weyland whilst weyland was still in stasis....he says something about something being premature. i wonder what exactly. either way, it is clear david has learnt the languages and knows what he is after. I'm sure it may get revealed if there is another film.

i personally enjoyed the film a lot. it wasn't meant to be another alien, or a prequel....it was thought provoking, and left many questions....!

Of the various questions it leaves unanswered, one that I'd actually quite like to know is this:

WTF does Shaw believe that the "Engineers" (Space Jockeys) created life on Earth?

OK, fine, all those cave paintings and glyphs etc. from all those
different civilisations suggest some sort of link between them, with
them worshipping the same "giant beings", and so on, but why go from
that (aliens visiting several thousand years ago a la Stargate) to "the
aliens also visited billions of years ago and seeded life"?

It just
doesn't make any sense at all.

One character (the ginger guy?) even
called her on it, and the answer was simply "because that is what I
choose to believe". Well sorry love, I'd like a bit more than that!

It's
utterly illogical.

One of my questions is why it was so badly edited? In the scene where Fifield shows up and goes bonkers we see a personel carrier drive off,with who and where to? They don't seem to return either.
Anyway I sometimes enjoy leaving a film viewing with questions but there were a few too many IMO from this.

"Why does David infect Holloway in the first place?"

Doesn't the film set up his character as being amoral and curious like a child?  His motivations may not make sense to "us" adult humans.  Similar to a 4-year old hurting animals just to see the reaction, he might find the black goo, wonder what it would do, and decide to "experiment" on Holloway *just because*. 

Interesting film I had to clear my mind of preconceptions of this being an Alien prequel.

I was perplexed at the ending thinking this leaves a lot of loose ends but then I realised my elementary mistake of thinking this was LV426 when I remember it clearly being marked up as LV223 only afterwards did this click into place and answer why the Space Jockey wasn't in the seat with it's chest bust open.  I like the evolution of the Alien and this thing is a xenomorph so can evolve extremely quickly so I'm not worried about the look of the hybrid alien.

All in all a great film and it spawns a new franchise of Space Jockey films then that's a bonus.

If the goo is nanotech then maybe this is the reason why the Engineers want to kill the humans because they have come to realise that there is a flaw in their technology which leads to parasitic species like the xenomorphs, caused when the worms are contaminated with the goo.  

In the opening sequence the 'Engineer' seeds Earth by swallowing this nano tech goo and falling into the waterfall.  This means all humans are contaminated by the goo and potentially dangerous as a species.

ah, that makes sense - so what we were seeing was the Engineers creating humanity; that suddenly makes me see the rest of the film in a slightly different light! Thanks. 

Ultimately, I have to agree with the captain, portrayed by Idris Elba, who succinctly answered 'NO', when Shaw tried to persuade him to come with her to see the last surviving Engineer, by asking him whether he wanted to know about human origins, and why they turned against us. 

Certain questions are best left unanswered...

Why do the engineers want us dead ?

The main evidence that they do is that the woken SJ goes on the rampage, but it's unclear what he's flying off to do.

However, we have no idea what creepy David really said to the SJ, being in alien-speak and all. He seems to have his own agenda ... I'm keen to see his further adventures in Shaw's bag :) Presumably he alerts the Company at some point - hence the Nostromo's voyage.

A very thought-provoking film. Thank you for clearing up the planet it was on (Space Jockey not being in the seat at the end had me wondering).

I did kinda like the idea of all humanity evolving from The Kurgan though :D

There can be only one!!

So how does the Alien vs Predator series work within this universe because if they are canon then the xenomorphs already exist and have done for thousands of years and wont the Predators be kinda pissed to see the Space Jockeys muscling in own there patch surely there are only so many gods an iron age civilization is free to worship 

this film has many subplots...Shaw is a christian, who 'worships' the alien 'creator' race via her obsession with them hence loses her faith...realises it is a false god...at the end it appears she regains her faith (gets her cross back from david, the trans-human scientist)...but then flies off with David to find the answer to the question why do they want to kill us = what is the ORIGINAL SIN? her femininity& humanity are totally stripped...you see her breasts and hips are bound and she is infertile...then, the med pod scene traumatises (young) women (remember this film is rated 15 only) into fearing giving birth (she then chooses cesarean to end this PREGNANCY 'created by THE BLACK DOT') but (yes there more lol) the medpod can only be perform on A MAN so she has to program it for 'ABDOMINAL INJURY' TO 'REMOVE A FOREIGN BODY'...layers upon layers..religion, symbology.I could write a book on this one...

Predator 2 and the Alien vs Predator series introduced the concept that the Predators have mastered the art of time-travel (Danny Glover being handed a 17th century pirate gun, for example). Alien vs Predator also showed us that the Predators can travel vast distances and have captured the xenomorphs before and used them for hunting and sacrificial reasons. So not only is the xenomorph a mortal enemy of the Predators, but the Predators also have a certain mastery and command over the xenomorphs as well. So, rather than being a very old race of creatures, the Predators are actually rooted deeply in Earth's history because of their ability to travel through time.

Why did the engineers want to go to earth? Try 2000 years ago, when the incident happened! Why suddenly want to destroy earth right at the time, Jesus and Christianity came about? If we were their creation, did they see us as abominations not fit for their gift of life, because we choose religion?

About David infecting Holloway, my girlfriend and I were nerding out about the franchise as a whole and I suggested that David may have figured out the qualities of the go and being an Android, he may have just wanted to create life just as the Engineers did for humans and then they him.

I'll have to re watch those. The impression I got is that they've been visiting Earth to hunt for thousands of years, not time travelling as there's nothing in the films to indicate such a thing. Also how old is an old Predator?

Once you have seen it and digested the film it will be much better upon a second viewing when you know what to expect.I wasn't expecting 'Xenos' running all over the place but even I was surprised by the lack of 'alien horror' that we are used to.Saying that it was a great film on its own merits.(8/10).Would be interested to see what somebody who has never seen Alien though of it.

Why did Captain Janek ask where the two (alleged) scientists were, when the dog/mapper was stationary and detecting lifeforms. He was LOOKING at the holo map where it clearly showed their location!  Similarly, how could they be lost when they've got this map and people on the ship to contact. 

Well put.

Just a by product.

I have all the alien and predator comic books and have always got the impression that their lifespan is measured in hundreds of years if not thousands.

When us Humans can advance enough to contact them they know we have gone too far and are then a danger that can't be contained?

No, they have not mastered the art of time-travel.  The Predators have been visiting the Earth from time to time over the centuries and have kept trophies from those they have battled during these hunts.

I like that the black goo is somehow the spark of life in a sense. It IS the xenomorph. And by extention WE are the xenomorph, since the black goo was the spark of all life on Earth. 

One drop of the black stuff in Holloway's body and life starts growing inside of him, infecting him, transforming him and he impregnated Shaw with it which ended up becoming some strange squid creature....I still don't know how that adds up since the xenomorph is supposed to latch on to the DNA of its victim...it would make much more sense if it was more humanoid/alien than squid/alien.

It seems the entire medbay sequence was Scott's way of putting fear into women. Which makes sense to me since the original Alien was designed to subconsciously scare men with rape and in the end of Prometheus that thing the squid alien shoves down the Engineer's throat definitely looks like a penis to me. But that scene at the end was terrible. I mean, cool effects, and great Alien creature but it's just prequel nonsense. Doesn't make sense at all with the chronology of the series.

And David at the end says there's more than one ship, which would explain why the crew of the original Alien movie doesn't find any of the stuff left behind by this expedition: they entered a different ship...full of eggs? Maybe the Alien has made its home there? It didn't exactly evolve much then since the time of this movie. It only become more humanoid, through human DNA, but that's it. And seeing the rate at which the creatures transformed in this movie (from maggots to cobras, squids to Kraken) it just doesn't add up. Did the effects of the black goo wear off? 

Life itself is the weapon? I don't get it. It's like they didn't do the research of evolutionary biology or even tried to make sense of the properties of the black goo.

And out of all the ships that were stranded there (conveniently they had all been stricken by the xenomorph infestation?) they just happen to land on the one ship that was headed to Earth? Or were they all headed to Earth? Why? To seed more life? To end all life?

But if we were created by the black goo why doesn't life on Earth evolve through laying its eggs into other lifeforms and taking on its physical properties and transforming into monsters? Or was it a different kind of technology then?

It must've been millions of years ago. How old are the Engineers? Why didn't they change? Are they time-travellers? Was it an earlier form of the black goo technology they used to seed life on Earth? Is the black goo biological warfare?

Was the Engineer that sacrificed his life to seed life on Earth 'Prometheus' that brought the fire to mankind? Did 'Zeus' disapprove?

Did no-one aboard the 'Prometheus' ever see a horror movie? They awoke an alien and didn't expect it to immediately kill them, knowing it had a cargo bay full of biological weapons. One tried to pet a cobra knowing wild animals are prone to attack, because that's what they do. The crew realized it's a ship and then when Shaw cries out to them that it's going to take off they suddenly don't know what she's talking about. At some point in this movie someone's carrying the Idiot Ball.

The Engineers come to Earth use using the lets call it a bio-engineering goo and using this vector and there own DNA they seed life on the planet. After millions of years leads to the evolution of an intelligent species man . For some reason this is an unforeseen result by the Engineers and they are threatened. So they return to the planet and leave with the early colonies a star map as an invitation, to follow when man has developed sufficient technology to explore the stars confirming there theory of humans being a threat . This invitation is not to their home planet/system but is instead to a remote desolate planet where they produce/store the goo. When humans arrive then this will trigger the ships on the planet to leave with a modified version of the goo to return to Earth and destroy the humans by introducing a predatory life form (xenomorph) to wipe them out. But, there is an unknown incident on the planet and the engineers are are all killed, with the exception of one, when he see humans have arrived rushes to complete the task of setting off for earth to deliver the modified goo. But, there are still some points that I don't quite follow what killed the engineers on the planet, why is the no evidence remaining? Where, on what appears to be lifeless planet did the two worms on Holloway's shoe come from? 

The squid creature was a face hugger , it's movements we're the same and the effect it had on the engineer were the same also.

Its not often a film with this many obvious "issues" manages to have me still thinking about it, wanting to re-experience it and wanting to see more. Because this is easily the best science fiction movie I've seen since Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" (another one to divide the masses).

No one has seemed to mention the fact the room with the human head and mural in it that looked like an xenomorph, was also referred to it as another crypt? What was the green stone in front of xenomorph? Was this a crypt of that xenomorph they had made vefore and captured and the black goo was.something harvested from this? Why in hologram video are all the engineers running to this room? It's a dead end and dangerous after all?

They created humans and then left, they wouldn`t know religion came into that unless:

1) They had some way of checking up on the human race (spies/probes etc)

or

2) Reawakened Space Jockey got the info from Dave shortly before ripping his head off 

I suppose it is possible because nobody knows what Dave said to him, but unlikely :)

Wasn`t it a choice between staring at the map and sleeping with little miss Weyland?

I know which I`d choose :P

Which would make sense if their plan was successful. But it wasn't. It killed all the Engineers bar one, causing the panic we see in the "fairy dust" flashbacks. 

I love the idea that the cloaked Engineer is the Prometheus of the story. Perhaps he wasn't meant to use the goo on himself, just empty it into the water supply. When he disobeyed his orders and created humanity (a possible threat to his own race), this could've led to Engineers beginning to weaponise the black goo in order to deal with the potential future threat.

Everyone relax after two directors cuts and 30 years of selective amnesia Prometheus will be hailed as one of the defining moments of Sci-Fi cinema. It just seems unfair that Ridley Scott seems to be never allowed to release his version of a film first and that we have to wait for his directors cuts to see the true film.

That adds a different slant on the film, that I had not considered, if the Engineer at the start of the film was rogue and stolen the goo and then seeded earth. I did wonder why the configuration of the ship at the beginning was different to those on the planet. 

I'm starting to wonder if the fossilized 'Space Jokey' from Alien isn't Shaw herself! After all, we know know that the 'form' of the Jokey is not an exoskeleton but rather a suit - so anyone could have been inside it at the time of the crash...except the derelict seemed to be have been on LV 426 for several thousands of years (the Space Jokey seemed 'old') but who knows what environmental effects the primative world of LV426 may have had on the Jokey. So, if it is Shaw, maybe she was on a mission given to her by the engineers - perhaps she was shown by the race of engineers (can't wait to see what their home-world is like) how dangerous human beings are and they might have 'turned' her into one of their soldiers (perhaps we too are a bio-weapon of sorts - look at the damage a single human can do!); so Shaw was taking the alien pods to earth to wipe out her own kind! Just a theory.

When the gun is given to Mr Glover in Predator 2 they are making him aware how long their race has been around for suggesting "this is not the first time we have been to earth and it definatly won't be our last". They are not masters of time travel.

Does anyone else think that Vickers might not be dead? It was only implied that she was killed, we never actually saw it happen.

That's one of the biggest things that left my friends and I thinking about after the film.

Also the fact that there were no subtitles for what David said to the creator...he could have said something completely different to what he was asked.

Something I haven't seen brought up yet is that there were no subtitles for what David said to the creator at the end. He could have said anything and even provoke/lead the attack. Just a thought.

It's more than likely he said something different if we recall the synthetic in Alien called Ash (a Hyperdine System's 120-A2) was referred to later by Bishop (a later generation synthetic) talking to Ripley:

"Well, that explains it then. The A2s always were a bit twitchy. That could never happen now with our behavioral inhibitors. It is impossible for me to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being. "

David is a prototype of the synthetic so would be even more unstable than Ash.  His core directive is to find alien lifeforms that might help Wayland in his search for immortality and is highly likely to have a sub-directive for military purposes.

I think David has a big role to play in the next movie as the key to why he wanted to test the black goo on a human and why he would want the Engineers to destroy Earth.

Everyone seems to be missing the fact that the Engineers were about to launch their mission to Earth 2000 years before the Prometheus arrives. As stated when they carbon date the decapitated body at the entrance to the Goo room. Also the Engineer in the opening scene was obviously using a totally different Goo than found in the ship, because at no point did any of the crew have their DNA instantly deconstructed and melt away to nothing. Lastly if the Goo on the ship is intended to destroy life on earth, as we see in the film it has the totally opposite affect. Imagine what horrors could evolve if the diverse life on our planet was exposed to that stuff. 

What about the other door thing with the alien on it and the green stone in front of it?

DoG, I know you're impartial and here for us all to enjoy, but can you say if you are as dismayed and surprised as I am by the number of misconceptions about this film? The article says a lot of the same comments I was making. I was quite *ahem* vehement in my comments. Whilst I (slightly) regret my tone, I don't regret the content.

People have been complaining that Prometheus has ended up as all hype and unanswered questions, and before it came out there were complaints that the trailers showed too much. And yet the film was still trashed by people who were confused that the space jockey wasn't left in the correct position for 'Alien'.

Why the big head, etc? Imagine if DoG had existed in 1979, it would be 'What was that big creature in the seat? Where did it come from? Why was it never mentioned again? Why was Kane so stupid that he went off on his own and touched that egg? Why this, what that? Why why why?"

I agree that the geologist and the biologist were a let-down. I love Sean Harris, I think he was not used well. Guy Pearce wasn't good either. You can definitely see where a lot of material was cut though.

If the film really didn't do it for you purely on its creative merits then fair enough. What I object to is the nature of some of the criticism, which smacks at a complete failure to pay attention to detail. Judging by some of the comments, it's a wonder people didn't come out of 'The Phantom Menace' asking why that little kid that played Luke didn't appear to have a sister.

My biggest fear is that some of the unjustified bad word of mouth will quickly spread and cause ticket sales to slump, thereby threatening the future sequels that actually answer some of the questions people keep asking.

I loved it, I saw it twice in two days, I'm excited to see an extended cut and I can't wait for the sequels (which I hope and pray get made). My very personal and humble opinion is that DoG's 2 star review is ridiculous. I might accept a caveat that it's 2 stars relative to Alien and Aliens (though I'd give it 3.5-4), but 2 stars overall? If we're considering Alien alumni and AWFUL scripts and characterisation, I point you to Avatar, which unfortunately was so ridiculously successful that the sequels would be made even if JC was hit by a bus.

How insane is this film?

If you consider 75% of Americans believe in God!

How insane is this film now?
 

Yes, the 2000 year gap is a good point. I wonder if they were planning to end their 'human experiment' long before humans ever got to space. Earth might just be a biolab for the Engineers. I agree about the goo too. I don't understand the questions about goo, like there's supposed to be a real-world scientific explanation of exactly what it is and what it does. It's alien goo, after all. Made by aliens, with alien motives. Thank pants that there wasn't some awful stone tablet exposition a' la AVP which says 'The goo is this... the goo does that... we are aliens and our plan was this...'.

I agree. Two stars is a joke. Still they can always do an 'Empire' and quietly re-review should it become a classic.

My theory is this:

There is a war being waged by rival Engineers. The Engineer at the beginning belongs to a rival faction. He is exiled on Earth by his enemies and uses smuggled tech to seed his DNA into the gene pool thus creating a race of bio weapons. Us. Encoded in our DNA are instructions on where to go once we have evolved. The rival Engineers discover our existence and decide to use their own bio-weapons to wipe us out. That is why the dormant Engineer is so hostile when he wakes.

That last paragraph *almost* reads like an apology for your review.....

Classic Sci-Fi has always sparked great debate on the wider issues presented by the film. Unfortunately, the only debates Prometheus is sparking is what the actual story is and what the characters are actually doing. If a director's cut is required to explain these issues then the original script, editing and direction unfortunately didn't do their job. 

If the 'beast' has not yet evolved, why is there a mural thing featuring the classic Xenomorph in the giant head chamber?

A pathetic attempt to try and apologise for a SHITE film!

I loved the film because I WASN'T expecting ALIEN 5. I got something VERY different.
There were problems( script was poor, characters were VERY stupid and Rapace and Theron should have swapped roles!), but I didn't care. The opening sequence on the waterfall was beautiful and that alone was better than both A V P movies put together!!

were YOU expecting ALIEN 5! More fool you

I've only seen Alien once (don't all hate me) and that was in January and I was very ill, so I. Not a huge fanboy and also wasn't silly enough to not listen to Sir Ridley and believe this not as a direct prequel to the franchise and I lived it! It was beautiful and brilliant! For me, I love a film that leaves you thinking when you leave the cinema. Why does everyone suddenly decide they need answers from a film? I will be seeing this again and hoping for more to answer the so called questions, which normally happens in a franchise.

There are more than one ship, what's not saying that an engineer is in each ship?

I felt that the various drawings were not an invite but a warning.....

If they are going to hype up a film like this then it has to deliver. I thought the first hour was great but then it just fell off cliff tbh with all the unanswered questions and plot holes which detract from the overall story. It just failed to hit the nail on the head for me and left me with a bloody sore thumb.

Lets hope that extended version is released and the sequels do the business.

Why bother, it's a mess.

Because of the potential, it was always supposed to be a 2parter so maybe the sequel will do it justice.

I do agree with you though on it being a mess:

Janick, Ravel and Chance given up their lives with an half arsed explanation.

Why does Fairfield go apeshit? Yes you've been infected but why come back ?

Why does David seem to know more than the others and seems to be looking for a specific vase? Seems Weyland knows more than he is letting on.

Vickers' character is pointless.

Engineers all dead, like a GB go wrong.

Logan Green's character is a killed too early, should've explained what was happening to him in detail.

I thought just basic stuff could've improved the film.

I think it's what the goo is for? To try to make that particular blueprint? God knows why it *doesn't*, maybe it needs the perfect host or something? 
I don't like films where I can't work out the "rules". Sci fi can be as freaky-deaky as possible, as long as it has a set of rules that it consistently obeys.

Heres my take on it all...the engineers are the power race of the universe...on these outposys they desinged a bio weapon, as you seen when david is in the control room and the star maps appear, earth was only one planet of many. The engineers obviously seedes life on planets on purpose to test out their new weapon. They would let the race "us" evolve, then travel back with a cargo ship full of those canisters full of black goo, that would adapt to the enviroment amd infect the population causing aliens to grow and burst out of them further killing anyother life. This obviously back fired on them and were all killed after one canister leaked and infected them. The reason the alien at thr end was differend is due to the fact that the alien always shares dna with its host do takes on its features. Oh and regarding the, what did david say to the engineer, if you remember when the doctor ask him why did help weyland even tho he would die, en replied "doesnt all children want their parents dead?" This is what he asked of the engineer. And regarding why did he get her pregnant and take the goo to the ship on purpose? You have to remember in the alien films its the backbone of thr storyline that "earth government" always wanted an alien specimen brought home to try tame. I hope this helps

I had a thought and I've been looking on some places but I haven't seen anyone considering this (yet).

Why do they want to destroy us, you say:
" Or we've become, in some ways, too powerful for them "

But wait. In the movie, it seems that they were planning to destroy us around 2000 years ago. Think about it, how advanced were we 2000 years ago? It was year 12
. We didn't have any technology. Maybe then they would have wanted to destroy humans because they weren't really smart enough, but then the engineer wouldn't have killed the crew after waking up.

And the DNA. They're really tall beings, they don't really look like us, but their DNA matches perfectly with ours. They seeded earth million years ago, and our/their DNA hasn't evolved a bit, it's exactly the same? To me it was just like we took a sample from a monkey and said: "oh wow, the dna matches. monkeys are humans!"

Also, but that's a movie, it's always like that in movies: when Shawn tells Weyland that she was wrong and that he'll only find death, he doesn't listen to her. He says she's convinced to come here, and now she tells him there's a danger, he just doesn't listen. If you were in this situation, wouldn't you be even more careful ? Personally, I would have sent some "non-important" worker there, with a camera, to talk to the engineer, to see what happens.

Another point about the movie, the fact that many civilisations has paintings about their stellar system was interesting, because it looks a lot like our real world. We actually have paintings where tall beings are represented next to what seems to be our solar system. That made the movie more real to me.

Admittedly, my initial reaction was 'yes, but where was (insert unanswered question)', but there hasn't been a film that's generated so much debate amongst friends, geeks etc...on this level for such a long time and in that respect it was genius. This movie works better the second time around when there's no preconceived expectations and you're looking to interpret what you saw the first time. Its not perfect, but why would Scott want to rehash Alien? Respect for trying something different. I don't think there should be a sequel that follows Shaw. Afterall, Scott is no L.Ron Hubbard so don't expect him to give you the answers to the question that mankind has been asking since year dot. He is better going forward to tell the story of LV426. 

How can a professional writer not know the difference between "then" and "than" ?

I'm pretty surprised at DoG. And then at fans who seem to have 'signed up' to the review wholesale. It speaks volumes that DoG had to write an article answering basic questions about the film... and bear in mind we're not talking about a David Lynch film here.

Excuse me I'm new to this but here's what I get out of this and what no one seems to have picked up on I may be wrong but.... The carbon dating on the decapitated engineer put it at 2000 yrs old give or take... The current year of the film was 2093 so they were on route to destroy us AD93 because we were too advanced???

RE: Milburn and Fifield. You could argue that Milburn was a bit thick by getting so close to an alien species that might be hostile. However, when they communicate with Janek, he says the ping is one click west (and the ping is clearly picking up the faint life signs of the engineer in stasis), so they head east. The pups are nowhere near the vase room and so, don't pick up the cobra-aliens (and remember, they both left the group before David opened the door to the vase room, so they're not aware that the vases and room are changing).

My main question would be, why aren't robots/artificial humans of the Alienverse three laws safe?

Also the plan of stopping the ship by using your own ship is stupid, why not "fire" the escape pod at it instead.

Indeed, I never thought that little ship would manage to take down the massive engineer ship. I was totally surprised that it did. 

We are talking about a super high-tech alien ship that has been shutdown for 2000 years without any signs of decay. Also this was a warship so quite baffling.

I'm in the camp that thinks this is a great movie, but it isn't Alien nor is it trying to be.

I think Ridley did what he wanted to do with the original Alien and this is something altogether different but set in the same universe.  Why would someone like Scott do a remake of his own movie?

What got him excited to it again is to tell a different kind of story but one that shared similar elements which he could use as a thematic shorthand for those who had seen the original.

I like this grand Sci-Fi tale, I've long wanted someone to adapt the other classics of the genre like Clarke's Rama series and this feels like the closest to one of those movies as we're likely to get for a while.

Perhaps if it does well enough it will do for Sci-fi movies what LOTR did for fantasy.

Exactly.  This isn't Alien!

This is hardcore sci-fi which means it should just be ambiguous enough for you to read what you want into it whilst still impressing you with ideas and wonder about the universe around us.

The moral of the story is not to make robots. Robots that are more intelligent then human will lead them to destruction!

The difference is that Alien was "only" a monster-movie. The space jockey wasn't at the heart of the movie. It was a detail, creating a creepy atmosphere. But the focus of the movie was on the crew's struggle to survive.
Everybody involved with Prometheus said that it was all about finding answers. And in the end, it delivered none.
So comparing Alien and Prometheus on that aspect is pretty dull.

"My biggest fear is that some of the unjustified bad word of mouth will quickly spread"
It's not because you liked the movie that criticism against it is unjustified. Prometheus' screenplay is incredibly weak.

Prometheus is like a drunk, ill informed hippy at a party, rambling on about Gaia or the Celestine Prophecy - they don't know what they're talking about and have no answers, but it's entertaining none the less.

Also will fanboys stop living in the past. We are in a different age, an emotionally stifled one, protective of profit over art. Prometheus is as scary as we're going to get from Fox; a company that really wants this to be the next Transformers, and not Alien.

The movie does raise an interesting question though: is life itself the most dangerous biological weapon? The alien's only desire is to eat or to mate. To reproduce. It's sex. We're afraid of the xenomorph because it represents rape.

Where can I see an image or buy a poster with the engineer(who drank the liquid) ?

was there any explanation why the medical pod?? that shaw used to extract the alien, only programmed for use on males when it was in Therons escape pod, presumably to be used by her if need be, or did i miss something?

Maybe we find out that the Weyland corporation is doing something that the rest of Earth is not aware of and the threat they pose to other worlds led to the Engineers decision to eliminate earth. Shaw could have been on a mission to get back to Earth and stop Weyland after having worked out an alternative with the Engineers.  But maybe they betray her thinking that it would ultimately be better to send her unawares carrying something that will kill off the intelligent inhabitants of Earth.  Somehow she finds out during the voyage home but in trying to stop her ship she ends up being impregnated by a face-hugger and crashes on LV426.  The writers could come up with a believable explaination for why the ship looks aged. The journey that takes her from the end of Prometheus 1 to becoming the "Space Jockey" in Alien would be an incredible movie or set of movies to be sure!  The ultimate ending would be for her to actually see the approach of Ripley's ship but to know sadly that when it gets there she and the Engineer ship will appear to have been rotting for thousands of years instead of mere moments.  Actually I take that back.  That would be a nice subplot to a bigger story.  Since the creators of Prometheus wanted this to only have threads of the original Alien movies then maybe something else worse could still be in play and Shaw's participation would only answer the Space Jocky origin question.  Meaning we would still be a target for the Engineers who are ready to take matters back into their own hands in a movie that takes place after "Alien Resurrection".  And guess who's clone (a little older by then) they end up having a confrontation with? After Avatar and Green Lantern we know that the tech exists to put Sigorney Weaver's face on a CGI body and have it look very real.  Heck with make-up and a trainer who knows?!!

I have a feeling David infected Holloway in order to test whether the black goo would be any help to save weyland...

I personally think there's a better cut in there somewhere - the first one seems rushed, if anything fueled by pressure from Rothman to get the thing in on time when it was looking to be delayed till Christmas. 

In fact Rothman stating that "not a single frame would be cut" could be where the problems lie - in truth more should have been cut, and some added.

Again, as others have pointed, both Alien and Bladerunner had mixed receptions on release. The latter only recognised as a classic when fanboys began to infiltrate Hollywood and use it as reference for their own pics.

We are at fault for expecting everything from Ridley, when really the finest work in his repetoire is founded on a series of re-edits and bolstered by fanboy mythology. 

He has made a great, entertaining film that has used Alien as a starting point but will probably go into another direction before it returns to the Nostromo storyline (if ever). It asks questions, but dosen't resolve them - yet, I feel the priority with a $250m project was never to be preachy, merely entertain and make enough bucks.

My one disappointment is Lindelof's contribution - a crude, clunky script from a self confessed fanboy...probably the last person that should have been involved in the writing.

Did Charlize Theron character Meredith vickers actually die, I thought her death seemed a little glossed over and not really sure if she was crushed. Kind of expected herto reappear at the end, any one else think this?
Maybe she survived and would have known about the other spaceships too? Do you think she could be in next one?

I thought the beings in there had been dead for 2000 years.  I'm sure that was what Shaw said when they tested the head.......
The original one at the start of the film was from 25,000 years ago.

Who the heck was in charge of the ship (Prometheus), the captain or Vickers? It just seemed a bit of a free for all, crew members doing what they liked.

if the chest burster infects the engineer when it attacks it why does alien come out ?

Because her father was Weyland and he was onboard.

In the Alien commentary Ridley says he believes the Space Jocjey to be the pilot if a warship that is carrying biological weapons

People keep saying there were no answers?!?

It was about the characters themselves answering the question of the origin of humanity, which they did. The space jockeys were shown to be the creators of humanity and most likely the Xenomorph species. It also posed a host of new questions, but then that's what I loved about it.

What I find perplexing is that something like Avatar (which Southpark summed up perfectly as "Dances with Smurfs') with a predictable script stuffed full of cliches, scored double what Prometheus did...?

Reposted same comment.Sorry!

"If the film really didn't do it for you purely on its creative merits then fair enough." is what I said. People have their own tastes. A lot of "it didn't make sense" is unjustified though, when it DID make sense, and especially when there are supposed to be two more films. Take Phantom Menance, which was rightly trashed on its own merits... but people weren't so stupid as to complain about why we didn't see Anakin get into the Darth Vader suit.
I thought the geologist and the biologist were a bit stupid, but then so was Kane going down a tunnel, on his own, in an alien ship, on an alien moon, and touching an organic object that was showing signs of life.

Prometheus delivered NO answers? What, like these?:
The Engineers sparked off human life.
The Engineers share DNA with humans.
The Engineers decided to end their human experiment, for reasons not yet known.
The Engineers used some form to parasitic biotechnology to cull other species, but they failed control it.
Etc etc, no big answers there then, in the first of three films.

It's your lucky day, as I saw Prometheus last night, but have never seen Alien. I must say I was expecting more of a horror movie, as I had heard it was going I be this kind of thing, but once I realised it wasn't I had a very good time. I think as I am not quite sure of how Alien is tonally I was much more prepared to see this as a different kind of movie, which I think a lot of people are struggling to do. I think though people judging it by its own merits basically see it in the same way as I do and I would have to agree with you in giving it 8/10.

Right, so this is what was going on:

David wanted to create life cos he was a bit bonkers and the notion of a godless artificial lifeform himself creating life...devoid of morals and feeling...is a very Ridley Scott idea and fits in with the musings about the engineers and science v religion.

The Alien Xenomorph as we know it represents the end product of a process started by the goo, which transforms any species it touches into an acid blooded killing machine whose only goal is to reproduce by sticking its proboscis down throats.  The creature that results from this is a new being born of choice bits of DNA from previous hosts.  In Prometheus, the first stage of this is the angry worm things in the room with the vases which is a transformed version of the earthworms we briefly see crawling out of the dirt. 

The most advanced version we see is the one at the end, born of worm, human and space jockey dna.  Nearly there but not quite.

The space jockeys seeded other planets with "vessels" (in earth's case, humans) which can be used as hosts for the goo once they are intelligent enough - a good indication of this is that they have become a space-faring species, hence the star map "invitation".

Why the space jockeys want to create Xenomorphs I'm not sure.  Maybe - as they suggest in the film - for use as a weapon.

Well, I'm more worried about the plot inconstancies, plot holes, and characters doing stupid things just for the sake of moving the plot forward (these people are scientists but don't have any protocols in place? Really?).

But biggest problem of all is that there's no real character development shown (except for the superficial symbolism surrounding the two main characters' faith and lack of faith)... no characterisation, so I found it difficult to care about the characters, which means I found it hard to invest emotionally in the story. For any piece of fiction, but especially genre fiction, this is of paramount importance! The characters need to be real people, not just a bunch of idiots running around for the sake of the plot.

The creature at the end couldn't have created the eggs from Alien, because a queen is necessary to create the eggs. Unless you don't consider Aliens cannon with this. Which brings up another point: will Scott's script for the Prometheus sequels recognise Aliens, since it was directed by Cameron.
However, the Aliens that come from intellegent beings such as humans don't seem to display any sort of intellegence, so it is reasonable to assume that the creature won't be able to pilot any of the ships. This leads me to believe that the creature was just a pointless addition to make people who aren't hardcore fans feel that they got their moneys worth out of it.
That is, unless, the creature is, in fact, or becomes, a queen. Perhaps when the Prometheus fails to report back to Earth, another vessel is sent to LV-226. In fact, another vessel must be sent out. How else would Wayland Yutani have known about the xenomorphs and placed special order 937?
I was slightly disappointed with the movie, but it was a whole lot better then Alien3 or Resurrection. I can't wait for the sequels to answer all these questions.

Well we're getting into real life behaviour vs movie behaviour here. Characters doing stupid things... well I still maintain that Kane was stupid in Alien, as were the crew who wanted to get him onbaord. They had protocols for quaranantine.

Aliens too... incompotent, inexperienced Gorman drives the mission forward without due care and attention, setting them up for a fall, despire being a military leader. Unfortunately these things are horror film staples. If it were real life they would probably just have sent probes from orbit, or from Earth.

I'd like to know what the plot inconstancies and plot holes are though, I think apart from a few sketchy character decisions, it holds together. 

 Most of the inconsistencies/plot devices seem to revolve around character stupidity so if we're talking about movie behaviour vs actual behaviour then yes that's forgivable.

I've been thinking this over and over since I watched it and I've come to the conclusion that the story makes sense, but if it is a set-up for other movies it doesn't feel like one. I can hypothesize plenty, that's half the fun, but the central tenet of the plot is the search for answers and for my liking there are too few to be found.

Maybe it's the cleverest bit of meta-film-making of the 21st century...

I think it shows how subtly the characters are developed in Alien if you think what they are doing is stupid. These characters are Miners with no experience of extra terrestrial contact, only Ash is part of the science division. Kane is hinted at being a hot head when he is the first to volunteer and he doesn't irrationally blunder into the room with the eggs. He carefully assess the laser field and mist whilst reporting his findings back but then slips and cannot get out he then sees something moving in the egg and his non scientist curiosity and over eagerness compels him to get too close. (Ridley has stated it is the breaking of the field is what wakes the alien up so it is safe to say there is a certain inevitability in him getting attacked). Ripley tries to follow protocol and prevent Kane re-entering the ship even though the other characters are panicking (as anyone would in this situation) but it is Ash with his ulterior motives that allows Kane on board.
The Prometheus script doesn't seem to allow for this subtle character understanding instead has the characters conform to the movie behavior model in order to progress the story. 

"
The Engineers sparked off human life.

The Engineers share DNA with humans.
The Engineers decided to end their human experiment, for reasons not yet known.
The Engineers used some form to parasitic biotechnology to cull other species, but they failed control it."
Precisely, those are actually not answers but new questions.
It's exactly like what happened with Lost. The question was : "What's the deal with this island ?". Then the showrunners said that an episode explaining it was coming. The episode was "Across the Sea".
And the answer ? The power of the island comes from a glowing cavern.
Sure... ok... and then ? It's not an answer, it's a new question : "What's the deal with that cavern ?".

About Prometheus, they said we were going to get answers about the space jockey and is race. But what we got were actually new questions.
If they wanted to answer the questions about Alien's space jockey, they should have said where he comes from, what were his intentions, what he was doing on that planet, etc.

You're bothered by the fact that it got only two stars and say that it must be taken into account that it needs two potential sequels to round up the story and that it will make a great movie as a whole.
Sure. So you will agree that if Prometheus is the third of a great movie, it makes sense that it gets the third of great movie's grade.

The question here should be 'why does Lindelof feel the need to keep telling me he's cleverer than me?'. I watched 'Lost' on box set and I was pissed off with the conclusion so I can't imagine how some people must have felt investing years of their life to that series. I don't want the Alien franchise to be used in this cynical sequel making way. I don't want sequels. I didn't even want this prequel. I don't know anyone who said 'Man, do you know what I want to see? A prequel to Alien'.

Lindelof, Abrams...case of Emperors New Clothes as far as I'm concerned. They strike me as insipid. Talentless. Devoid of any artistic merit. Prometheus was a dreadful Alien movie. It wasn't even a good sci-fi movie. This is what happens when you let a T.V writer deal with a movie script.

I think this article has answered THE fundamental question of Prometheus.That being:Does Prometheus withstand greater analysis and does it warrant examination?The short answer is no.Comments here have illustrated that there is very little of substance to debate.A very lightweight screenplay gives little in the way of interesting points to discuss.The rational of the characters was just plain retarded.Whole chunks of the film didn't make any sense along with crew members actions.And that's not mentioning the Engineers and their backward WMD program.Very poor creature design and reason for being,round out a distinctly average monster movie.An average monster movie.

 "The black goo seems to do different things in different contexts. How did it cure Shaw's infertility, for instance?"  that is so clearly wrong, there is no pregnancy, the "growth" is clearly the "Alien", the fact that David says just sums up his lack of ability.

If that's a different ship on a different planet then why takes such, such pains to make it look so similar to the set up ripley and co find? I don't buy it.

But who would read a book about tinpot symbolism from a director who's past his prime?

I feel I was kinda right in my prediction about people's reaction to this film. People who had the Alien franchise ingrained into them after years of watching and loving those films (well, at least the first one or two). I've heard from a lot of people in this situation who were disappointed in it, most likely because it wasn't a straight-up Alien film. I went into it having only see the first Alien quite recently and thoroughly enjoyed the scope and the open-endedness of this film. From what I can see, it's obviously designed to have sequels to further flesh out the mythology and eventually give new resonance to the Alien universe. I think it really helps to separate it from Alien and see it as a completely fresh body of work at least until Ridley Scott goes back and bridges the gap with a sequel or two.

Agree wholeheartedly, there's too many random events which are totally unrealistic (everyone on Fassbender's side in restraining whatsherface before she has the caesarian) and too many cliched Alien things in the film (ooo a static storm... again).

Liked the visuals, but if you have to try *this* hard to hang the plot together then it's a poor film. At times it reminded me of Lost and we all know how that turned out in the end.

Seems a reach.

"
The space jockeys seeded other planets with "vessels" (in earth's case, humans) which can be used as hosts for the goo once they are intelligent enough - a good indication of this is that they have become a space-faring species, hence the star map "invitation"."

Am loving that conclusion.

Main Question: why is 
Damon Lidelof allowed near scripts?

Would maybe not have seen this at the cinema had I realised he was involved.

Suddenly all the awful religious 'symbolism' and nonsensival plot moves are explained in an instant.

I have to agree. I've just come back from watching the movie a second time, and after reading all the debate here on DoG. Its 'Lost' all over. Lidelof revels in leaving open ended questions which he provides absolutely no answers to and simply leaves it to the audience's interpretation. Do not look for lateral answers. In some ways it works with the premise of this film. What's the biggest question mankind has ever asked? Why are we here and who created us? Its the question no-one will ever be able to answer. In this context, Lidelof keeps to the existential  brief, but ultimately its frustrating and unsatisfying. 

It is absolutely not a monster movie, nor was it ever trying to be! Alien was the (brilliant) monster movie and this is the existential sci-fi in the same universe. Prometheus raises a lot of questions and tackles some weighty topics. It's not going to make complete sense on the first viewing and the fact that there's a whole article of points here makes your comment about greater analysis a little strange. 

Also, look at the discussion in the comments already and then tell me there's nothing to discuss about this film.

I can go along with the idea of the Engineers turning on humanity as they become scared at the power their creations are wielding. In some ways, it could be paralleled in humanity's reaction as the machines we are building get smarter. I think the conversations David has about humanity being the Gods are actually foreshadowing a HAL moment where the humans realise the power they've unleashed by making androids that clever.

The biggest unanswered question. Why did the engineers leave a coded message to 'invite' humans to there military base!?!? The entire movie is based on a crew translating and responding to this message. Why invite the species to your military base where you are making weapons to destroy them? 

also, if the film seems to also have things about religon in it wouldn't 2000 years have something to do with jesus seeing as that almost puts them around the time of his story (going on what the bible said) give or take 93 years

Watched it last night with the wife (a huge alien fan) and we both left the cinema with more questions than when we went in. We enjoyed it but a major let down for us both was the creature design. If you look at the design used in the 1979 movie it was incredibly terrifying. Dark and something we'd never seen before. Yet it's predecessor was a squid? Followed by a pointy headed thing with an internal beak? Weakest point of the movie for us by far.

I never said there was nothing to discuss.Just very little.This message board confirms this.But this is just my view.And I do think it is a straight up monster movie unlike Alien which was a 'haunted house' movie in space.

What we definately know is the contractors flying the alien cargo ships with black gooie stuff or facehugging eggs are thick as a brick. they have lost atleast 2 ships by not containing the cargo, 2 sets of crew are dead, the so called Engineers would have to pay compensation for crew members families the price of 2 horse shoe shaped spaceships and the cost of the cargo must run in the millions

The Engineer who hired these contractors should be shot.

A good story to follow on would be that the engineers created us only to perform more experiments on us. which is why that ship full of black goo was heading to earth too see what effects it would have. also a reason why we share same DNA a sthe engineers, we use animals as test subjects and may be they wanted a test subject as close as possible to their own geneitc structure. If they wanted to destroy mankind im sure they would have something much more devasting than a nuke to do that. just a thought.

also the ship in alien was heading to earth and use it as a harvesting ground for more alien eggs etc.... just see how David wa sbeing treated but the humans onbord the prometheus.

lol,,,,, may be they contracted Weyland enterprise to pilot those ships.....

I agree with the Talentless Mr Richey on every count. Prometheus hinged on people giving a damn about their stupid made-up mythology - with nothing bar that to generate interest/suspense/scares/excitement of any kind, and it fails miserably. I think there are many lazy seeming scenes too. 

I have no faith in Lindelof. Everything that's wrong with Lost is in Prometheus and it makes it such a pointless nothing film. He strikes me as a writer who is more interested in a few 'cool' images than a real craftsman. Such a waste of time and money. 

AND as for the space jockey seeding life on earth in the opening, maybe explaining why humans and space jockeys have the same DNA, this seems a bit stupid: wouldn't they have technically seeded all life on earth, and not just humans. It would be impossible to have the same DNA match as humans, unless every species of creature on Earth shares the same DNA? More empty Lost bullshit. 

 Is it so they could have a trailer that appeared to be a direct link to the derelict in Alien. #cynical

So true its been bugging the hell out of me since I saw Prometheus, I was expecting something new that has never seen before instead we get Grant Mitchell.

Just to confirm...

The above text is somewhat ambiguous and so to be clear the 'suicide' scene at the beginning was actually a 'creation' scene in which the Engineer's DNA is unzipped and then re-structured to provide the origins of humanity on Earth. The 'goo' that he drinks is presumably designed to do this.

Thus the 'weaponised' goo on LV223 is either just that, or something entirely different. e.g. it doesn't have the same effect as the opening sequence goo at all. 

Therefore it is reasonable to say that the Engineers create with one goo and destroy with another...

my take anyway 

Back of the net!  In two films time Lidelof will explain to all us idiots, who just didn't get it, that the "resolution" was that all the Prometheus characters were in search of forgiveness, which we can all relate to, THAT was what the films were all about and nothing to do with Aliens at all.

"Obviously designed to have sequels" - the saddest statement of the reality of the Hollywood mindset ever commited to DoG.  No thanks, I want a film that stands on its own, not the opening episode of a TV series that might not get finished

I think the whole idea of the creature at the end is that Dr. Shaw wanted to find her creators, she wondered why they created humans, and wondered why they where trying to kill them later. She gave birth to a new life form, (the squid thing), which later resulted in the first xenomorph, and soon the humans seek to destroy or preserve them, (Ripley). Whos to say the Engineers weren't doing the same and where trying to kill the humans to preserve their own existance?

Right did anyone else think that a couple of the pods in the the Engineer ship bridge look like they had chest holes in them where something had broken out of?

I also wonder a lot what David actually said to the Engineer. I suspect that if/when they make another Prometheus movie that could well become a key plot point.

It's a movie about the very creation of humanity and the motives of our creators. It then ventures to compare humanity to our initial creators by virtue of Michael Fassbender's android character. If that's "very little of substance to debate" then I really want to hear what you think substance is.

Via that theme, a whole host of hugely intriguing questions are raised and whilst it isn't as purely entertaining as Alien, it is a great movie in its own way.

Sorry if it read as if I believed you approved of the situation re it being a set up for sequels, I never thought that for a moment.  You have however just saved me £10.50, I was planning on seeing it today but your observation, which has crystallised my suspicions, has caused me to wait and borrow the DVD instead .

I liked it!

Absolutely agreed. Lost was pretentious rubbish. Ambitious maybe, but pretentious and self indulgent none the less. Just like this movie. We shouldn't be expected to wait until the second and third films to get answers, and only Thrn appreciate this film. A missed opportunity.

Shaw is the only chatacter we have left to care about. By all mean add a new crew, but Shaw has all our questions to answer. Take away her and there's no reason to find out what happened. She is the audiences link to the narrative.

And possibly a Ripley replacement?

That Alien at the end cant be the first alien of its kind - the year was set in the future. but before the original alien film.
However on aliens vs preditor the aliens where buried in a pyramid for thousands of years on earth.
the time line doesnt add up.
Or are we supposed to just ignore aliens vs preditor?????

If you were expecting a monster movie I could understand why you're all upset and stuff.

How come the Space Jockey in Alien is so much bigger than the engineers in Prometheus?

It could also be a way of quickly analysing what they were dealing with? A way of confirming suspicions? 

Also on the healing baby front...? I wouldn't say the second hand goo healed her womb.. I figured it was the cross human/alien sperm that managed to plant itself inside her. She didn't specify that she wasn't producing eggs any more, it could have been that she had a damaged womb that is unfit to bare a child. And it wasn't exactly a standard pregnancy, she was ready to pop in 2 days. 

Why would the engineers want us dead?

My Theory....

At the beginning of the movie, an engineer was left behind. My theory is - that engineer was left behind because of some altercation with the other engineers.  And since he, the engineer, was the only one left on the planet - he decided to kill himself - without realizing that his DNA will react with the environment and eventually create the human beings. So in theory, we were created accidentally by the death of the lone engineer left on earth.

With that said, the other engineers later realized what happened and so decided to destroy us.

As per movie, we are a threat to the engineer's entire race and probably the humans are the only race that can destroy them also.

Thanks!

£10.50!? Which cinema are you going to!? I think it's worth seeing at the cinema, purely for the visuals. There's plenty of stuff to enjoy and it's certainly better than most of the trash storming cinemas right now. Don't waste money on a 3D or IMAX ticket, but just see it in good-old standard. It's enjoyable and it's a spectacle, it's just unfortunate that Scott's a bit overconfident in his work, just assuming success and sequels are a dead cert. If there isn't a sequel, I think it'd make the open-endedness that bit more interesting, but Scott seems set on clarifying his ideas, rather than leaving them up to the audience right now. Just don't be put off. It's worth seeing, trust me!

I had no idea LOTR was an atrociously scripted B Movie.

Interesting to watch with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in mind - the subtitle of which was 'The Modern Prometheus'. The key theme in the novel is what it means to be a creator, and what happens when a creator does not love or take responsibility for his/her creation. Frankenstein's monster, like a child, is shaped by his maker's abandonment of him, and by the fear his appearance engenders in others. The scientist changes his mind and tries to destroy his creation (just as 'the architects' have done with humanity), which ends up destroying them both. In Prometheus we have two parallel layers of creators and creations, 'architects', humans and androids. Having created David the humans are reluctant to take responsibility for the moral development of their creation, even flippant. They mimic their creators (the architects) in being fallible and failing to nurture their creation, and hence he is left to make his own way morally, just as humans have been. Left to themselves, humans have become something the 'architects' never intended, and perhaps fear. Left to himself, what will David become? He is the character most interested in this relationship between makers and made, and I think his adding of goo to the drink is his own experiment, playing at creating something new himself, wondering what it feels like and trying to understand his own creators.

It's also interesting to parallel the Prometheus legend with the film, in terms of the nature of the technology that is stolen. One is fire, the other is the mysterious black substance. Both can be used as a tool for creation, both as a tool for destruction, both can turn upon the person wielding them.

Apologies, for 'architects' read 'engineers'...

So here comes the explanation, its quite simple actually.

Engineer sees the spaceship fly away in Earth and drinks the black alien thingy. As we all know, alien is all about rapid evolution into something perfect, and we see the god-like characteristics it provides to someone who is fused with it (alien resurrection). 

Maybe it is a weapon of mass destruction as the pilot said. Or maybe, it is a way to create life as well. 

He drinks and dives in the water, while the matter evolves so fast it kills him. We see DNA wither, break, and in the end new DNA chain remains. In earth's water. Where some time later, the first fish walked out, evolved until we got homo erectus, sapien, human. Our DNA is the engineers dna, but also it is fused with this black alien matter.

That is a pretty serious reason why they would want us dead, don't you think?

Why want us dead? Well, maybe they don't like what they've created? Or we've become, in some ways, too powerful for them. After all, Peter Weyland, in the first viral clip released earlier online, declared "we are the Gods now", after all. In fact, it's worth taking a look at that clip now in the context of the film. Makes it even more interesting...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they date the bodies of the dead Engineers as over 2000 years old? Which would have meant they were coming to destroy us in something like the year 0059, right?

What had we done in such a relatively short space of time to warrant total extermination?

Too many excuses are being made for an absolute hatchet job of a script.

please done write a book on this one.

Alien was the B movie, Prometheus is more like a classic SF novel

I may be coming into the conversation late but blame that on the delay between North American and British release dates. I've read through a lot of the comments and one thing I see coming up over and over is why the Engineers want to destroy us/why they led us to their military base/how they got overrun/etc etc. 

My personal opinion on the matter (one which I haven't seen anyone suggest so far) is that perhaps the original ship we see at the beginning of the movie which creates life on Earth is not of the same faction as the Engineers we see on LV 223. Maybe these Engineers had different opinions as to what the goo should be used for, possibly one group wanted to use to to mutate creatures into weapons (like on LV 223) and another group wanted to use it to create life. Now, given this premise it's safe to assume that these two groups would have been opposed to one another and may have fought over their beliefs (like humans often do). 

It is obviously hinted in the film that we got aspects of our early language from the "Peaceful Engineers" so maybe they were trying to educate and train us for what would ultimately be a conflict. Maybe they pointed us towards the military base that the "Evil Engineers" built in hopes that we one day may be able to stop them. Upon learning what the "Peaceful Engineers" did (creating new life on other planets) it is understandable that the "Evil Engineers" would want to eradicate us since we're a potential threat or, better yet, send a spaceship full of their mutating goo to destroy us and turn us into the weapons they wanted. The "Peaceful Engineers" may have potentially learned of this plan and left Earth while we were still quite young (which is why we only have records of them from our earliest civilizations) to put a stop to their planned destruction of us. Long story short, "Peaceful Engineers" arrive at LV 223, they fight, mutating goo gets released, alien monsters are created, overrun the ships on LV 223 and kill the majority of the Engineers, mutants slowly die off leaving only corpses and the few higher ups who went into hyper sleep, and then roughly 2000 years later we show up and Prometheus takes place.

TL;DR Version: My opinion is that people aren't considering that the Engineers may not have always unanimously agreed as a race. It is said they had the power to both create and destroy so opposing groups may have used the goo for different purposes, had different opinions on what should be created, and been at war with one another. 

The "Goo" is our primordial soup… At the beginning is an engineer or space jockey using the goo to turn himself into the primordial soup that made our world…At least thats how I see it, the goo at the beginning is also different from those in the capsules.  So I think they where testing different goo at different installations and the goo on LV 223 some how created the new creatures...

If the engineers really wanted earth flattened I'm sure they could have gotten round to it in 2000 years since this facility had the out break or unless they have a long to do list. This film isnt a classic 3 out 5 at best

To be honest, I was bored through a lot of the film.  I didn't care about the characters I was supposed to care about, and would happily have seen all of them but David squished.  I also don't think that Ridley Scott actually knows the answers to a lot of the questions he was asking - I don't think he has the first clue why the Engineers would want to kill us.  

All in all, it looked beautiful, but most of the characters were too stupid to cross the street alone, never mind travel in space, and there was almost none of the mythology that the trailer seemed to promise.  It was generic, and I expected a lot more.

Here is my takes and questions. Disclaimer being that there is many a spoiler afoot (however, if you have got this far on the page it is probably far too late for that).

It appears to me that the beginning scene is not so much a suicide, but a distribution of engineer DNA throughout the earth. Which makes me wonder about the hostility of the engineers towards us later. However, I am pretty grumpy after 7 hour sleep, so I can only imagine how many thousands of years would make one feel. Possibly like ripping some heads off??? Should point out that humans share varying degrees of DNA with other species like 90% Cat, 60% Fruit fly and 50% with the Banana (I got nothing but hearsay and google to back that up).

So Prometheus turns up at LV223, a little moon that orbits a planet that orbits Zeta 2 which is one of 2 binary stars of the Reticulum System. Apparently a star system that was reported as hosting aliens of the probing type back in 1961 by the Hills'. And also was allegedly host to a top secret alien, U.S. military exchange program run by the US Government between the late 1940's until the 1060's. (But, I don't buy it. The Aliens in the x-files didn't look anything like he engineers. They can't both be from the same star system. So someone must be wrong.;) 

Then we set wheels to the ground and off we go into the ground and at the first sign of breathable air. The "Scientists" all take off their helmets and start breathing the air. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!! Rule Number 1, when in a foreign country, don't eat from the little stalls on the side of the road and boil your water. WHY? Because that way you aren't exposed to bacteria that you body doesn't have resistance too. But on another plant? What the hell! The bugs won't hurt us here??? DOH!!!

Somehow, the toughest guy on the crew, turn out to be the bloke with the smallest testicles. He is a geologist in charge of mapping the terrain and can't find his way back to the ship???

So, the "goo" oozes out of it's (fleeting comment of the movie) "biological weapon" container and mutates the little worms. Making them a little bigger and way more dangerous. I would assume, these later evolve into the spider, face sucking impregnation creatures picked up by the Nostromo on LV426. I am not really sure how the infected Dr. Charlie Holloway's insemination of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw turns the offspring into a squid. Must have been something in his Champaign :P. That being said, some sort of DNA mutating disease or nano technology could be at work. More extensive research is required.

So I am left with the question. Why does the grumpy engineer want to go to earth. And how do we know it is out to destroy us?

WHat do you think?

ha...  i had most of these questions...  particularly why david did it and why the old man makeup...  but i loved it...  a little clunky...  but a longer version might fix that 

Michael Fassbender's David is the most interesting character in the entire movie. If I had to rewrite the script I would make it simple.

"David is an android who learns to be human. His motive for infecting Holloway is to see what the goo can do and mainly to see if it can kill people since he is immune. He double crosses Weyland and lies that there's a living engineer so he kills him and his body guard. Since David can navigate the ship, he tries to fly it to Earth and destroy it with the goo. Shaw tries to stop him while alien squid things are forming. David gets decapitated by an alien squid or by something else. While his head is off his body, he explains that he knows why they wanted humans to die after Shaw defeats him. She tries not to believe what he says, because David at this point is being a robot jerk like Ash from Alien. David's motives for destroying humans is that he learned to be human. For example, he felt emotions like getting pissed off when the crew made fun of him for being a robot. This is a metaphor that humans are good/bad, because it's human nature. Thus, be becomes a villain. It also parallels the creator killing it's creation and the creation killing its creator. In conclusion, she tries to go home or see the engineers.... The End"

Simple and far more interesting. Comment below and let me know what you think or would add. 

"What does David say to the engineer?", "What was the point of Benedict Wong & his mate?" etc...

No, David is completely in thrall to Weyland.  David says that, and there's no reason to believe that Weyland wouldn't make sure his creation was totally subservient.

David said exactly what Weyland asked him to. 

The Engineer was just totally pissed off that these little monkeys were asking him for immortality, and their little toy monkey was especially irksome.  

you've done a wonderful thing, expressing how you feel while answering knee-jerk reactions to the film. you seemed to guide me though every question or problem i had with this movie, as i was addressing it with the author....in my opinion, it's just not a good movie. very pretty, but no real substance. it has no point. everything it starts to focus in on, becomes irrelevant as something new is presented. honestly, a zombie fifield (sp)? thanks for your time...

great post, rhodes!!! nutshell!!!

yea thats how i saw it too. i just posted my opnion very similiar to this. its weird for a supreme human like that guy at the end to be all about killing everyone so fast without communication. seemed like he believed we all were evil and his mission was to kill us. the guy in the begining to agree with that ship so he killed himself.

think about this. all the creators were male? maybe women giving birth to species like "alien" is what they feared. becuase that octopus thing was strong enough as it was then it was made to adapt and grow using the creators body. i think thats what they were afraid of. there creation of life and there bio weapon maybe not intended for us winds up creating something to kill them "alien"

I think that David has essentially become self-aware and tired of the bullying of the humans.  I believe that he himself was attempting to kill the humans that created him.  I believe that he told the engineers that the humans were going to attempt to destroy them.

If there are more ships why didn't the Creator not just get in that? Why feel the need to go after the woman?

Also I don't think they are the creators. I think they are another created race like us and have also been guided into going to that planet.

"They went from not wanting to be there, to going off by themselves to
get back to the ship without telling anyone (without anyone noticing),
to getting left behind when everyone else got back to Prometheus."

In fact, they did tell the rest of the team that they were leaving.  Fifield even expressly mentioned to all that he was going back to the ship (after the giant dead architect creeped him out) and asked Milburn if he was going back, too, in front of everybody -  and Milburn readily agreed.

Now, why botanist Milburn suddenly felt so confident that he could play coochie-coo with faceless snake-lizard alien critters, that one is beyond me.  Unless I misheard, and they said "biologist" and not "botanist".  Or maybe he thought it was a plant.

So why would they keep coming back and visiting Earth's civilisations???

Think of the hooded engineer from the beginning of the movie as Prometheus. The Engineers as our gods, they created our planet but never intended to give us their DNA. You could then look at their desire to destroy us about them discovering what "Prometheus" had done, giving us something we weren't intended to receive. Maybe they want to drop the black stuff onto Earth so that our DNA could be passed onto the race they originally intended us to be. I think this movie creates a discussion as all great movies should. Being a huge Alien fan, rather than an aliens fan I appreciate a more cerebral approach to Sci-fi than a military one. I expected something more like Alien, but came away with a great modern sci-fi which isn't Alien, but still a terrific film. Plus as far as sequels for this movie go, we could see one with a more Alien theme or feel. 

Because Holloway asks him to. David is told by Weyland to 'try harder'. David asks Holloway what he would do to find what he's looking for, Holloway answers 'anything'. David is merely following orders, and it a completely neutral actor in this, he's taking people's wishes literally.

They only thing I want to share is my desappointment and frustration regarding this movie: It is a good story, great picture but it is obvious that so much has been cut that I am not sure the movie makes (as much) sense. It is a shame that Ridley Scott "releases" this... But I guess money comes first...

There is a lot to this movie to discuss and I very much enjoyed it because I did not view in light of Alien. I just want to comment on a few things I found interesting:

1) the beginning of the movie, where the Engineer drinks the black goo. The thing about that scene is that it comes from a much smaller, but similar looking container that we see later in the film that also holds black goo. Just like in religion, often time death means life. So as the Engineer sacrifices himself, we see the beginning of "life" in what appears to be a very sterile, early earth void of life. The DNA of the engineer enters the water, breaks down, and begins to allow life to grow. This life evolves into humans;

2) the different types of goo: When they enter the valley on the planet the first time they arive we see multiple walled mounds which we know ends up being the ships. When they enter the first ship they find vaults of black goo and unusual things. We later learn this is not their planet by a military installation. Then David happens upon the Engineers where only one is in a state of "sleep" and still alive. They were all obviously intending on going to earth to destroy their creations. But something had happened, something had killed them all except one. It is plausible to think that each ship contains the black goo as a biological weapon against enemies and that there are different types of black goo, and that somethin happened where they lost control of the goo and the aliens ended up killing everyone that were outside of the ships. What we know is that it turns its host into vicious killers, such as the worms and the red headed geologist. It turns them into "aliens" or monsters;

3) here is where things get interesting and correct me if I am wrong. BUT...when David infected Holloway, Holloway then had intimate relations with Shaw. Shaw soon after becomes pregnant. The goo did not "fix" her being sterile, it provided a host for the alien to grow. This may further support the idea that there are different kinds of goo which the Engineers are aware of be we are not. Shaw became pregnant, but all Holloway did was become infected with the black goo....a small amount at that. So then, how did the black goo turn into the "Mother of all Facehuggers"? because each goo is different and serves a different purpose. What we may find is that all of the ships contain different biological weapons. No ray guns here, the Engineers will just drop some black goo on your planet and watch the worms infect you causing you to kill each other;

4) remember, all of the androids (until Bishop) were a bit sinister. David was fantastic and made the movie superb. He was absolutely creepy which brought to mind Ash from Alien, similarly only in creepiness. David is a highly intelligent and analytical android who comes to conclusions far faster than any of the humans, but is dangerous because he keeps it to himself and only feeds the information to Weyland. Whether David infected Holloway on purpose or by following a command is kind of insignificant, David, I feel, knew everything going on;

and 5) the monster at the end was great. Again, I am a bit confused on the sequence of events leading up to the monsters creation (David infecting Holloway, Holloway inadvertently affecting Shaw, Shaw carrying the alien which is the mother of all face huggers, and then what appears to be the creation of the beginning of the "Alien" as we know it) unless like I said above that there are various types of black goo or that the black goo is an alien form that chooses its course of evolution as it sees fit. Maybe it's the engineers invention, they found out a way to create life, but they have no control over the final product or evolutionary direction. However, we know early on that the "Alien" we love to fear is an evolutionary masterpeice. It takes over a host and soon begins to replicate the host in features, as we see in Alien: Resurrection when the alien took on a more human-like form. Every host it acquires it immediately knows its weaknesses and strengths. I may be jumping ahead too quickly, but what we see in Prometheus may be the beginning of the evolution of the "Alien" we know from the original movies.

This movie was a hot mess of question marks and "seen it before" moments from the first three Alien movies. I was disappointed.

It's more likely that Bishop, as a military model, was made three-laws safe because it's going to be working with humans towards general human interests (although I suspect he may have been lying - he's a military synthetic in a military mostly used for law enforcement) while Ash wasn't because it was built solely to work to the company's benefit (and the company doesn't care about human life). Bishop's line sounds more like a preprogrammed response to reassure people as to the safety of synthetics (especially since in the comics we see hundreds of Ash-types and very few Bishops, morally speaking) to retain business for the companies that make them.

Alien is set in a cyberpunk universe where The Company rules everything, cannot be trusted, and throws away human life as if humans were 10p screws. Prometheus is a shiny exploration vessel... but the Nostromo is a run-down piece of junk that has more in common with 'Serenity' than 'Enterprise'.

Given that the setting around the movies is the kind of place where conspiracies abound and The Company suppresses any truths that are inconvenient, and given the similarities between  LV426 and LV223 (literally the only difference is that 223 has numbers assigned to its' otherwise identical atmospheric readings and the numerical designation), does it not seem more likely to anyone else that Weyland-Yutani just changed the designation of the planet to sweep the Prometheus incident under the rug? Scott's hardly above lying in interviews to maintain the dramatic tension of the story, and I don't think he'd be wrong to do so in a situation like this.

It makes even more sense when you realise that Prometheus features Weyland corporation, but Alien has always been about Weyland-Yutani. Perhaps Weyland's stock crashed because of all the money spent on the Prometheus expedition that couldn't be properly explained (the objective of the mission was kept secret to the point that even the crew didn't know what it was), allowing Yutani to buy them out. Yutani then change the designation of the LV223 because money can do that. 30 or 150 years or however much later, the Nostromo takes a short-cut to save on costs and ends up picking up the scrambled signal from the Prometheus' life pod (remembering that LV426/223 has mica storms that can shred radio signals) and thinks it's an alien transmission (or rather, their W-Y computer TELLS them that it's alien) and investigate the 'unknown' LV426.

Yes you moron. You are meant to ignore those embarrassing Alien vs (and its spelt) Predator 

 i didn't get that weyland knew about the weapons (if indeed that's what they were and not some other experiment botched or something different altogether), we see David updating weyland, and getting new instructions.  we can assume he does this regularly, and so anything david knows, weyland knows. 

we also never know if david has his own agenda.  his character moments suggest he does feel and desire and resent.  its the best part of the movie.

 it didn't feel like a mess to me.  the humans learned that there is an alien species who did create us.  and unlike the other alien movies, instead of defeated humanity running scared, we now have a heroine who pushes on with her mission.  i thought the ending was uplifting and it was an ending.  what happens next?  who knows, but that is a different story.  a movie is a contained unit, it is not going to unravel the whole universe and every question and idea anyone in the audience wants.  this story was not the secrets of the engineers.  it was more a meditation on being, evolution, creation, religion, the thirst for knowledge.  it was a story about the humans and the android.

 i didn't read it as seeding "all" life, but seeding human life 35 000 years ago.  One of the questions anthropological aerchaologists ponder, is a seemingly sudden leap forward 35 000-40 000 years ago.  there are many theories, but no concrete answers, just the observation that suddenly after 2 million years, we started evolving/growing very rapidly.

the speculation in this sci-fi, among others, is that some alien life interfered and affected evolution in some way.  While unlikely, it is not utterly illogical or impossible.  it's certainly an interesting enough idea to build a story around, and an idea that many people find intriguing to think about.

 I find one of the more fascinating aspects of the film is wondering at David's perspective and agenda.  he does have the curiosity and wonder of a child, and the easily wounded feelings of a child.

David asks Holloway why his people created androids, Holloway answers, laughing as though it were self evident, "because we could".  David answers Holloway, "how disappointing would it be for you to hear that as an answer if you questioned your makers?  David smirks and delivers the DNA/nano goo into Holloway via the drink.

it was a great scene.

 I hadn't thought of it that way.  I choose to invest David with  more agency and autonomy, but that is a neat take on events.

 i had the impression they were sending back reports periodically up to and including Shaw saying what she was doing at the end and saying not to come to this planet.  maybe they both keep sending messages back

 Doesn't Ridley not follow the alien versus predator storylines in his mythology?  I don't like the notion of "canon"  it's churlish, insecure and controlling.  so, just that his stories are not inclusive of the predator stories/history

 so many layers and readings in the movie!

The sabotage on the 'military installation' happened 2,000 years ago, the warning/invitation began tens of thousands of years ago and the plans to wipe out humans on earth were also from 2,000 years ago.

My idea, is that the original scene is on the military base 2,000 years ago as the main ship left one conscientious objector (to the destruction of human) sacrificed himself to loose the bioweapon on the base to stop his own people from carrying out their genocidal plan.

The engineers, knowing the danger to ALL their planets should the weapon escape, never returned to the base - and/or being a military base most of the population probably didn't even know about it.

The main problem with this is: how did the aliens on earth know, tens of thousands of years ago, about that base, well before it was built.

Also, how does a trillion credit expedition not have scanners and probes that would accurately map the entire surface of the planet before the ship descends?

Maybe the space jockey is Weyland himself. After all, it was a pretty weird ending in the film for a man who searched for immortality to then be simply swatted away in the blink of an eye. My thesis is he gets infected (he's seen bleeding) and realises his dream but in a hybrid form (and marooned on an alien planet for eternity - or until he finds a way to escape). It would lend a little more credence to the name of the film too.

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree. I never understood why people thought "Avatar" was so good. Sure it was cool to look at, but it was basically "Fern Gully" and "Pocahontas" with large blue people. "Prometheus" was pure science-fiction; "Alien" didn't answer all of its questions either. I think people didn't listen to Ridley Scott when he said it wasn't a direct prequel. I liked the fact that they went in other directions and didn't just give us another movie filled with chestbursters and mandibles but no story (i.e. Alien vs. Predator). I thought the movie was entertaining and pretty scary in some parts (being a woman, the scene with Shaw in the med-pod REALLY freaked me out). I just hope a sequel doesn't ruin the series.

Yeah, or that they all died in hypersleep and three movies later we find they are just in purgatory. After spending too many years of my life puzzling over Lost to have the lamest end to anything ever dropped into my lap I am convinced Lidelof is a hack, Anyone (and I mean anyone) can string together a series of loosely related questions together. A writer crafts a story, not just throws out wild, unsupported speculations designed to shock the audience. A writer doesn't just throw the dots on the ground and claim themselves a genius, they bother to connect those dots for us poor, cash fisted fools.
Now, Lidelof's ideas are thought provoking, and I like the direction the film started out taking. But it ended up falling into his usual laziness. Not to mention the jarring awkwardness of the script. I don't care if Mr. Scott has an entire four extra hours on the cutting room floor, there is no way to excuse the actions any of the characters take. For a team of scientists, they fumble over themselves to make every mistake a breach of conduct possible. The crew would have had better chances if they were wasted frat boys with heads full of LSD. And an android that speaks alien with perfect diction? I cant understand the gas station attendant three state away. Lidelof just needs someone standing over his shoulder, like a teacher checking a students arithmetic. Show your work! I don't mind questions or open endings, but a film that is all unanswered questions with an open ending and clunky character development and plot is just a beautiful waste of time.
I keep wanting to like this film, and half of me does. I think with someone keeping Lidelof in check instead of letting him masturbate his ego we could have had something spectacular.

Prometheus is set in the year 2095ish and we still have no totally evolved Aliens.
However in Aliens v Predators the year is 2004 and we have fully evolved Aliens???

This may of been said before but what if the goo forces evolution? at the start of the movie an engineer drinks it and dies but then his DNA starts rebuilding itself, when they first encounter the goo there are worm like creatures that decide to go for a little swim in the glue and then when we see the room again there is a snake like creature, taking these points into account as well as the fact that it created a zombie thing and the mother of all facehuggers, note that the last two had a direct link to humans. the zombie was face first in the goo when they found him, MOAF could very well be a mutated sperm cell that grows on its own, hence death after it has completed the impregnation. from my point of view all this strengthens my theory, at least, that's what i believe.
This is just a theory but i think the best words to describe the goo is that the engineers are "playing god" simply because they have the power to create life, they are and when they get bored the simply hit reset, which by my theory the goo covers all of.

i have a few doubts..
1)what are all those dead bodies that were dead years ago? what was the reason for their death..?
2)what are those holographic creatures that were travelling?
3)The creature that grew in shaw's stomach was an octopus like creature. what is it? and why did it kill the engineer at the end?
4)the entry of alien at the end was shocking... but i didnt understand how did it come from the engineer?
5)are the alien and the enginner of different origin?
6)what were those pots and why are the engineers carrying them which contain creatures that could kill them like the one that did to the enginnner at the end of the movie?
7)what was that big green diamond that was held before the giant head?
plz do answer my questions..willing be waiting for them.. THANKS !!

All these comments about the decision to destroy the human race coinciding with the advent of Christianity might well be right as a theory about Scott's intended message (given the heavy symbolism; David washing Weyland's feet etc) but doesn't that kind of miss the point that the human race had (and has) thousands of different religions/belief structures, many of which pre-date Christianity by millennia....?

I want to know what and were the predators are at this stage

It looked to me like David put the goo in the glass the moment he picked it up. Asking Holloway what he'd do to achieve his goals was something else. Seemed like a sardonic question to me, almost as though David was having a laugh at Holloway's expense.

Alright - does anyone know why the stars at the beginning of the film point to this planet (according to the theory of prometheus, not meaningful) instead of their real original planet?...

What happened to the other Engineers ?

Personally, I got the impression that David has his own agenda, however subtle. I think he represents a microcosm of the fundamental goal of all life, to surpass it's creators; this reflects the overall idea of the film rather neatly, don't you think?. It is hinted at in the film that David harbours a certain amount of resentment toward the human race for blindly creating him, as Holloway succinctly puts it, "because we could". Granted resentment is an emotion and thus beyond him, but i think the knowledge that he has no purpose, that Holloway is right and he is just the product of childish curiosity, would lead even a purely logical mind to doubt it's creators authority. I reckon that whilst he was indeed carrying out the orders of Weyland, many of his actions in the film were motivated more by his own angst than anything else.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this lol. Either way, David is in my opinion one of the most thought-provoking sci-fi characters in a long time.

What's most confusing is I thought the whole premise of the so called 'Alien Prequel' was to visit the space jockey home world in the first place. Now if that home world is the sequel Paradise perhaps some of this confusion with Prometheus will be wrapped up. But REALLY!? we still don't know anything about our derelict pilot on LV 426 and how those eggs ended up on that ship? I am keeping my fingers crossed the Sir Ridley Scott still intends to give us a film depicting mass TERRORFORMING not disinforming