Ridley Scott’s “return to the Alien universe” in Prometheus has been the subject of unimaginable speculation ever since the film was revealed to tell a related story – as opposed to serving as an outright prequel. For months cinephiles have poured over Prometheus trailers and set images hoping for a clear picture of where, exactly, the highly-anticipated film would fit into the iconic story of the xenomorphs. Fortunately, the Prometheus marketing has been (for the most part) pretty subtle – flashing a variety of mysterious and tense shots entirely out of context – leaving speculators with little information to analyze.
Now that Prometheus (read our review) has officially been released, information about the secretive production has come flooding in – and we have a much clearer picture of how Prometheus is connected to Alien (and the larger Alien universe). To help steer discussion we’ve put together a lengthy analysis of Prometheus and explained a few of the plot points that might have been confusing to some moviegoers. Does our Prometheus explanation match your theory? Find out!
‘Dexter’ Season 8 Trailer: The Hunt Begins – How Will it End? 
‘Game of Thrones’ to End in Season 7? 
‘Pacific Rim’ Featurette Explores ‘Drift Space’; First TV Spot Offers More Action 
‘Prometheus 2′ Casting Rumor – Is the Sequel Moving Forward? 
I still don’t understand one point. The captain of the Prometheus said that LV233 was a bio weapons facility. If that’s the case what would the engineers have given humans and invitation to visit. If the invitation was to their home world that would make
any thoughts?
Maybe wasn’t an invitation….. maybe It was a WARNING… like, whatevr you do, “DONT Go THERE”
Each ancient on earth culture had some version of the “invitation”. It make no sense to post the address of a bio weapons facility and then say “oh by the way don’t go there!” Also why did the engineers visit only ancient cultures?
I feel this was the only real plot hole. The script writers needed a “mystic” way of getting the location of LV233 and nothing says mystic like multiple archaeological finds (wee bit disappointed as this was already used in AVP, I know you will all say RS had nothing to do wogh that storyline but like it or not still part of the universe). That component of the storyline seemed to me to be a little lazy. Why couldn’t the address be written in a strand of our DND kinda like a “made in Korea” sticker. We could have a biologist discover every organism has this tiny address in a particular location on a genome. This way its not an invitation its just a copywrite or trademark.
I think that because thier attack plan and biochemical weapon proved to kill the Engineers they stopped visiting the cultures. In Prometheus they dated the dead Engineers at 2000 years old.
My take was that humans have the Engineers’ DNA, so the propensity to consciously or subconsciously draw the stars in a certain way is more a compulsion born of genetic memory than anything else. Therefore it doesn’t have to mean anything more profound than that was just an important location as far as that particular Engineer (the father-of-humanity fellow at the start) was concerned. It was his last point of departure before Earth.
My thought was that the goo that created humanity looked like the one used to create the monsters on the LV moons, so they might be different experiments in the same ‘school’ for these Engineers. It’s just that early attempts worked better or perhaps they grew more adventurous and reckless with their creations, resulting in the mutagen seen in Prometheus. I also thought that those Engineers involved in making horrific mutagen experiments mustn’t necessarily be the same ones that made us, they could be some terrorist cell or something that managed to get hold of the recipe for the goo and then booked it to some backwater moon to try and create weaponry.
Here is a very things that didnt latch on to me.
I understand that humans are part of the Advance beings and all…
but how did we have there language or pieces of there language? They left us there as a pool of DNA.
when the engineer saw humans, he reacted in a way of defence/destroy. How would he have known what we were going to look like?
how will the predators play a role in any of this. I doubt the predators havent meet the advance humanoids and from the AVP versions, they seem to accept us (as slaves) but they seem to partner up so does that mean Advanced Humanoids and Predators have some sort of good relationship (possibly stressed buy overall workable)?
I liked the movie and I wish it went into the timelike a bit more! Cant wait for the next one!!
Lets see if I can help here.
1st language: The robot was programed to study all known languages on earth. By studying the worlds languages all are related in some way or form witha few exceptions like Etruscan, Ainu and Basque. if they were our civilizers and creators it stands to reason that they taught us speech.
2nd Y did the engineer looked at the humans like insectss to be stomped. We are a genetic experiment thst failed. A bastardization if U will. Look at ancient earth myths for answers. The gods came to earth(THEY LOOKED AT THE DAUGHTERS OF MAN AND SAW THAT THEY WERE FAIR) Thus the giants(HYBRIDS) were created and civil war ensued between 2 opposing sides of the Engineers themselves. The losers wich were the good guys were imprisoned Atlas, Prometheus(He gave the gift of fire to man) They bestowed knowledge on man amking us a threat. The bad guys left the Giants in charge and promised to return. We were 2 B eradicated by a Biological WMD program using adn developing other weapons out of that program alien Hybrids like the one seen at the end of the movie. After reading the books from the alien series. One wich fetures the little girl survivor from the 1st Alien movia and the Marine. There is a brief encounter with one of the Engineers that saves them from an alien stoaway on their s***. The alien comunicates telepathicalyy with them laughing and only saying that the only race they despice more than humans R the Aliens and that soon there will b no more earth to go back to. The telepathic angle explains why he studied and felt around the androids head since he could not tap into im and saw hima as a major threat ubderstanding language and maybe their tech. He was destroyed the rest of the space crew was just seen as a neusance and slapped away like flies.
Predators R warriors and hunters. Very primitive all their tech is stolen from other races. They R driven by an instict to copulate with their females. Their trophies are to be presented to them when they get back. The female would then choose a mate to pair up with. Who ever got the best trophies would be the winner and worthy to have their child.Females are way larger and stronger than the males. Sort of how the female spiders are so much bigger. They either fear or have a truce with the engineers cause no trophy heads of theirs has ever been showed. Not unless they R another weapons project of theirs?? The predators consider us the most dangerous of the soft flesshed creatures the hunt and the ALIENS THE MOST DANGEROUS OF THE HARD SKINNED CREATURES THEY HUNT.
Here is a thought. The Engineers created the Predators and left them to evolve. The predators are now a threat to the Engineers so the Aliens were created to wipe them out. This did not work as the Predators were able to adapted. So the Engineers now see the human evolving into a potential threat and want to send the Alien to wipe us out before we get too advanced.
This may explain the Engineers reaction to waking up and seeing humans standing there..
Hey, man you bring up excellent points, but RS does not consider AVP apart of the universe, as it rightfully shouldn’t be. And also, on the whole Engineer’s visiting, creating, and subsequently wanting to destroy us thing its pretty simple, guys. Obviously, at some point the engineers tried to make contact with us long ago and were essentially crucified by our ignorant way’s, millenniums ago, why else would the Engineers show such hostility towards us, plus the philosophy of creating through destroying is kind of the metaphor behind this entire tale, hence its title. To first begin rebuilding a foundation for say a house or a building, one must first tear down the original settlement, right? And as for the cave drawings, I believe it was a warning as well. We know that a ton of our consumer products are potentially toxic to our health and are either really virulent or flammable, and it even says so with a warning label, yet we still proceed to either use said product or vice versa, so yeah, its probably a warning man. I’d warn people if I had a potential bio-weapon that could exact genocide upon any given planet, rather than just letting others find it in their wanderings and basically do what that crew did. You warn people about any invention, for the nature of its creation, or the intent of creating something is never fully understood, even by the inventor(s). Example of that is the Frankenstein novel, which is also known as The Modern Prometheus. I’m not arguing, not correcting, just giving my thoughts and trying to help clarify for others.
Not sure where to start here, but I’ll give it a shot:
I don’t intend to offend any group, culture or religion, only to provoke thought and get people thinking outside the box.
1. The goo, is simply a mutagen, it has no particular course it simply causes random mutations. “They black goo doesn’t really seem to be a weapon of mass destruction as much as it seems as an engineering/scientific project that they have no idea how to control as in it can enhance properties of species or alter them, or break them down entirely.” Sye 6/17/12
2. The Engineer they found on the ship was dated @ 2000yrs, that does not mean their race is only 2000 years old, they may very well be much older. If they are much older then they may have started life on earth, all life on earth, using the mutagen. As to how ancient cultures would have know about the engineers; I’m sure the engineers would have looked in on us form time to time just to see how things were going and help point primitive cultures in the right direction. At some point they may have decided that we were culturally or socially retarded. Our technology advanced far to quickly compared to our social & cultural development, and we tended to be bent on destroying ourselves… an experiment gone poorly… a reason to start over before we managed to get ourselves into space where we might do real damage.
3. I agree with what many have indicated; that the Engineers must have been somewhat displeased with our existence. How could our genetic makeup be identical and yet still result in what is, obviously to them, a poor copy of themselves; smaller weaker and dumber. Our motivations are clearly suspect, money, eternal life etc.. and yet we were able to develop interstellar travel, and go stumbling around the galaxy looking for our maker/s like ants that managed to board a ocean liner. (not to denigrate the human race, but one must try to see things from the perspective on the engineers.)
4. Does God fit into all this? I don’t see why he would not fit in. I don’t see the engineers as being the final answer simply a mechanism that God uses. The poof and its done concept in Genesis is a simplified explanation for ancient, simple people. God had a plan that involved quantum mechanics, math, physics, biology etc.. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of this plan.
It was an interesting movie, I’ve watched it a couple of times now (long story).
First of all, I don’t think the goo which folks are labelling a mutagen is exactly that. I believe the goo has a more specific goal than to force a randon mutation. Here are my reasons for suggesting this view:
- the first appearance of organisms affected by the goo are the worms with the sucker addapted heads that killed the first two men left over night in the space craft.
- The second appearance of an organism affected by the goo was a creature created during the sex act with doctor Shaw. Consider that when it ulitimately matured it turned into an organism that had a sucker face. It when on to connect up with the surviving engineer and the product of that union was an “Alien”.
- I watched “Aliens” last night and the life cycle of he aliens appears to be:
- a queen lays eggs
- eggs hatch and produce an organism with a sucker face which is designed to deposit an embryo (or larva) into a host
- when this larva develops an immature “alien” pops of the host (killing it)
In Prometheus we saw two examples of the “goo” at work. At the engineer ship site it transformed small worms into these organisms that had a sucker head. The second instance was the “baby “doctor Shaw was carrying. The stuff David doctored the champagne with obviously changed him. In the scene where he is looking at his eye we see something wiggling around that almost falls out of his eyeball shortly after he drinks the stuff. It appears that David actually put a miniscule amount of the stuff in the bottle. That substance reprogrammed Holloways cells into making somehting that produced the face sucking larva depositor. Dr Shaw was sterile, so what transpired between these two during sex transfered a completely functional embryonic unit to her where it developed into a face sucking larva depositor. The product of that things activities was an “alien”.
I would maintain that the goo was a gene splicing agent designed to reprogram cells of organisms to produce the quintessential face sucker which would produce a queen alien, starting the alien life cycle anywhere the Engineers dumped the stuff.
What a way to get rid of all the higher order life ona a planet. And when all is said and done, you would think when the aliens ran out of “resources” they would all die and the planet would be free to use for something else.
Unlike a bomb it would not take much of this stuff to get the job done and it would not affect the planet as a whole, just the biological environment.
The goo realy can not be a mutagen as the engineers would need to control what it produced and a mutagen would not provide that. A gene splicing agent would.
Also, in the “Aliens” movie there is a shot of the Alien ship the “Aliens” came from. That ship has the appearance of the Engineers ship from Promethus. It leads me to wonder what happened to the engineers?
These folks were genetic engineers. They did not create life, they tinkered with it. this movie among other things asks the question, “Is it safe to tinker with life to then degree where you start fiddling with genetics?” The Engineers appear to be masters of genetic tinkering. At the start of the movie we seen an engineer drink something that caused his body to disintegrate in a fashion that caused the cells to mutate and begin an individual embryonic reproduction process, seeding the earth with alien dna and life.
LV233 probably wasn’t always a bio weapons facility rather than a forward staging post from where the engineers could watch and visit earth more closely. it then became a weapons facility later when they decided to eradicate humankind. It would make sense for humans to be given this as their address with the safety in not actually giving away the location of your homeworld
Might have a lot to say here, heh, Firstly very impressed with some of the thought processes I have seen and ideas and conclusions to ideas.
How did those paintings from all those civilizations get on the walls if the first space jockey that died, wasn’t actually the last to visit?
They black goo doesn’t really seem to be a weapon of mass destruction as much as it seems as an engineering/scientific project that they have no idea how to control as in it can enhance properties of species or alter them, or break them down entirely. Origins of speaking maybe rather it came from an alien species or they made it themselves a long time ago. They must have had some idea how to use it, if the theory is indeed they created us.
The biggest things we can discern is, the space jockeys found it, or made it, they can use it as a weapon or to help enhance or create. What if they knew something was wrong with it no matter where it came from?
So this answers why they would want us dead, If you made a species of something and then you were trying to contain a problem and were worried that said species could release this problem, you can’t entirely punish a species you can’t control, other than to destroy them.
could you imagine a child playing with a deadly weapon that you couldn’t control? I mean we show up for a day on some moon and look what happens, imagine if we tried to get our hands on it to modify and use it against ourselves or anyone else?
SO the engineers probably didn’t trust us, and didn’t want to take the time to explain or fix the problem, just to make sure it didn’t get worse.
The Theory of evolution is that things evolve for a purpose, So what purpose to the point did we evolve to even cook our food to eat it? And then everything after? Or evolve to even learn? No other species in millions of years did it? Why us? That doesn’t make much sense in the whole spectrum of ‘evolution’.
The amount of evolution people have undergone I don’t think can even be begun to be explained, and I think this movie shows the scopes of how impossible it is to figure out the truth. And the more you try to figure it out the more puzzled it becomes.
So why not? Why can’t there be a GOD. It’s more practical at this point to believe we were put here by GOD, than it is that we evolved out of a little goo..
Just because the space jocks used some goo why does that have to mean that is what made us? I think like all movies its how you interpret it and what you believe. Obviously the story tellers have a plan, or maybe they don’t. Why does it have to be ‘This must be the truth behind science?!’
Anyways, good ideas and concepts! I’ll check back later to see all the new posts -Sye
Lets get back to basis! This guys are the makers… they created mankind, with his own DNA. The destruction of mankind story is no logical to me, Shaw is making a mistake, the jokeys are not trying to destroy earth.
The jokeys are in the business of creating life, like any “idiots” humans, their new creation turn against them. NOw if this moon is an outpost, maybe earth is just another outpost ?? So what happen, why they abandon that outpost ?? why they never return to earth either ?? If a powerful alien race want to destroy earth, simple use a bomb, why use an dangerous mutagen ??? is not logical, the jokeys were advance aliens… they don’t need to kill humans with something so dangerous to themselves. And remember the mutagen was safely contain in those pods, how they get infected ?? why they were playing with the weapon???
To me it wasnt a weapon, it was something else!
Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification of how evolution works. Evolution is the result of an enormous number of tiny, incremental changes, each of which may or may not have actually served a purpose at the time. Natural selection and genetic drift both play a significant role in evolution. But evolution isn’t some thinking machine that plans for a species’ long-term development. It’s a blunt tool, going with whatever works at the time, with the immediate goal of preserving genetic information. Read Dawkin’s “The Selfish Gene”. Creating a sapient species is not the ultimate goal of evolution. It’s a matter of pure chance that we happened to be the first sapient species to evolve on Earth.
Holy blowfish you are deluded about how evolution works. Things don’t evolve for any purpose. There is no “plan.” In fact individual organisms do NOT “evolve” at all. *Species* evolve, over time, because the environmental conditions are constantly changing, and that changes what traits are most *useful* to producing the most offspring. There will always be a wide range of traits in a given population, and those who happen to possess the most “useful” traits will produce more offspring, passing on the genes for those traits. Over many, MANY generations, the individuals with genes for the “useful” traits will outnumber those without, and THAT is evolution. Apply that over millions of years of environmental changes and over the wide range of diverse environments across the planet and you get a massively diverse array of lifeforms, each filling their own niche within their own environment.
All from a few simple, basic rules inherent in the system: (1) change is inevitable, (2) some changes will make reproduction more likely, (3) those who reproduce better will outnumber those who don’t, (4) old traits stick around so long as they don’t significantly harm chances of reproduction.
It’s much more complicated than that, but anyone with a mind that can grasp the timescale involved can understand how this works without having to resort to “Sky Wizard did it.”
That’s why I had such a hard time buying the fact that humans somehow magically evolved to be genetically identical to the Engineers.
We’re not genetically identical. We have the same DNA but that doesn’t mean we have the same gene expression. Engineers could have a vast array of genetic markers that are “switched on” that are not in humans. That’s why we have the world’s smallest man who is scarcely taller than 3 feet and the world’s tallest man who is above 7 feet. If you have ultimate knowledge of how to adjust those genetics you could basically make anything you wanted. Hell, you could give yourself phosphorescence or scales instead of hair.
That’s a good point. I could have worded that differently. My problem was that we just know far too much about why life evolved the way it did for me to accept that some sort of alien interference guided evolution into creating anatomically modern humans. And the movie doesn’t even suggest anything other than that the Engineers seeded Earth with DNA.
That’s a simplistic way of looking at it. Mutation is what drives evolution and it’s not always necessarily advantageous.
Mutation is definitely one of the drivers of evolution, but I was surprised to discover that dramatic change can occur without it. Berkeley’s web site lists mutation, migration, natural selection, and genetic drift as the four basic mechanisms that drive evolution.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIBMechanismsofchange.shtml
Maybe I’m thick and didn’t understand the movie, but how can it be a prequel to Alien when the original jockey discovered by the Nostromo was FOSSILIZED? I thought it took millennia for that to happen, so I assume that the ship crashed way before the events in Prometheus… Oh, but maybe the ship travels back in time to attack Earth even before humanity exists, after all the writer is Damon Lindelof and we all know how much he likes time travel.
I’m thinking the engineers are pawns themselves. Perhaps they went too far and are concerned about what a much more possible being or beings will do to them for experimentation. Or perhaps that we now have knowledge of how to kill them — the xenomorphs — then that is too much knowledge for humans to have.
Finally, really stuck on whether earth was targeted or whether David accidentally or puposely targeted earth himself.
Interested in your thoughts on this and the possibilities therein.
First of all, it is clear that the Engineers have hostile intent from the way the engineer attacked the humans.My theory is that they were using earth to harvest mature xenomorphs for some intergalactic war.
I agree, that earth was just anothere weapons development outpost. Thus we were created to be experimented on since we shyare much of the same DNA. Like we do now with monkeys which are the closest we can find to us without having to experiment on ourselves.
I agree with what others said that the engineer in the opening scene IS Prometheus, stilling critical technology from the gods and giving it to a less evolved species. That technology is the black-goo whose power is hyper-evolution. Like fire and any other technology, black goo can be used for powerful good, malicious harm, or it can become uncontained and wreak havoc on its own.
Not to mention that Alien vs. Predator establishes that xenomorphs were around hundreds if not thousands of years before the current era.
@cybersaint- The idea of an intergalactic war would require a lot more backs story since humans haven’t run into any other alien beings in the Alien series other than the Engineers and the Xenomorphs.
@Jose- The Alien vs. Predator movies have no bearing on the Alien series.
The space jockey on LV426 was NOT FOSSILIZED. Dallas said it LOOKED fossilized, growing out of the chair. But as we have seen in Prometheus, what they were looking at was a suit that emerges from the chair. It’s not fossilized, it’s the SUIT.
THE END.
The writer/director(s) def wanted to make it clear the engineers wanted us dead.
Also made it clear how dangerous that goo was.
Several times it was hinted the engineers were trying to escape into that room, but all died in a pile at the doors?
Did you see how many of those vials they had of that stuff, holy crap.
It was also stated there were several ships there in the same state, When shaw left she left with all that goo, wonder what the plans were from that. Cause uh oh its not contained anymore if that’s the case.
Someone said earlier that the predator species is canon? I’m curious how that was brought about. I watched it again today and I cannot see how predators are canon from this film?
Where was the space jocks food? Did it not look like they were gene hyped themselves and war ready?
If the intent was to make folks think, I believe the movie accomplished its goals. Still, a ton of holes — some by design, others . . . not so much. All in all, every movie has plot holes. Like in Shawshank — why in the world would they put Andy in the hole for a month and not take the poster down to reveal the hole (no pun).
But I digress, I’m still thinking the engineers are pretty damn bad ass but weak as soda water in the greater “stellar-sphere”. Certainly not Godlike because they were beating feet getting away from whatever they created.
LV-223 and LV-426 CAN be connected as dismissed in this article. they are obviously moons in the same system. in concept art we see the last alien crawl out of the survival shuttle.. and as mentioned earlier there is more than one ship on LV-223.. perhaps with more sleeping engineers.
the space jockey in Alien did have a chest burst after all, so it wouldn’t be too farfetched to say that another ship tried to launch from LV-223 (Prometheus) and crashed on the neighboring moon of LV-426 (Alien)
Personally I never saw the Derelict in the original as having crashed, ilya – more having landed on top of another storage facility of some kind. The egg chamber Kane’s lowered into has an “S” curve that recedes into the distance uninterrupted for what appears to be hundreds of metres. http://ioannis.virtualcomposer2000.com/writing/Derelict.html Both the shape and dimensions suggest that it isn’t part of the ship, and Kane describes it as “some kind of cave”, as if he doesn’t think it is either. Confusingly, Ridley Scott himself suggested it WAS part of the Derelict’s hold, but whatever the case, the ship needn’t necessarily have crashed.
Does anybody else think the space jockeys are somehow connected to Predator? Think about how strong he was and the helmet he wore. It looked just like the helmet Predator wears!
Sorry Sir, the jockeys and predator helmets are different. And judging from the size and strngth of the jockeys who also stand a good 2 feet taller than the predator. David stood next to the jockey and barel came up to his rib cage
Maybe it was a place to keep the aliens containted, in the movie they had a picture of a alien on the wall. You know like if we had a virus we dont destroy it we freeze it for records and future research. Them going back to earth was prob to destroy any alien contamination.
Has anyone even remotely considered that the Engineer that was found alive in Prometheus was a rogue? That he sabotaged the cargo weapons to infect the other Engineers? Notice how he was still alive and safe from all the havoc from 2000 years ago. He may have programmed the ship for Earth. Somehow, the others Engineers, before death, may have stopped the shop and left the rogue in stasis (not able to access him in that room otherwise). So, it could be likely that the other Engineers still accepted humans and didn’t intend to use experimental weapons on them.
But why would we be sent to that moon then? The architectural “invitations” for humans to visit that moon were ancient, even more ancient than just 2000 years. So, sometime between when the clues were created and 2000 years ago, the mission of that moon could have been reassigned by the dominant ruling party (they could have gone from tree-huggers to warmongers (or facehuggers
). I know we are generalizing the entire Engineer race and the one spot on the moon Prometheus landed, to simplify an already convoluted mess of a storyline, but I think it’s possible that they aren’t all one.
I guess we will only know if they explain it in a sequel. and if not then we are stuck theorizing what was half-thought out in some writer’s head!
@The Big Dentist – That website you linked says that the original derelict ship itself created the eggs, & sent the warning as a trap. If that was the originally conceived idea for Alien, that’s ludicrous, as the ship killed it’s own pilot (SJ). IMHO, that “cargo” of eggs were not originally on the ship. The (SJ) pilot was at some point infected prior to the journey, and succumbed to a chest-burster. If you follow the canon from the rest of the movies, the chest-burster, since it was alone, was likely to be a Queen, and the Queen laid all those eggs at some point (either before the SJ took off from LV-426, or after he crashed onto it. What I cannot explain is the laser mist that alerted the eggs to awaken from stasis, as I do not think it was in the other movies, and may put my theory in doubt. Then that would mean the SJ was in fact affected by his own cargo, which is also what I think Ridley Scott hints to. I like my theory better.
Yeah, I think that bit was pure speculation on the author’s part. It’s an interesting idea but, as you say, doesn’t make any sense at all as a trap killing its own pilot. The possibility of it being able to travel in time was a new one on me as well…
What did David say to the Engineer, in ‘their’ language?
Here is a thought. The Engineers created the Predators and left them to evolve. The predators are now a threat to the Engineers so the Aliens were created to wipe them out. This did not work as the Predators were able to adapted. So the Engineers now see the human evolving into a potential threat and want to send the Alien to wipe us out before we get too advanced.
This may explain the Engineers reaction to waking up and seeing humans standing there..
BTW: Message to the creators of this movie, we need a couple more, I want to see the Engineer’s home world.
When I look at the Engineers, my impression is that they r a very hostile, militaristic society. Their physiques alone point to that. I think the xenomorphs may be their ultimate weapon. The fact that they had a statue of one in the room with the containers may in fact have been in tribute to the source of the so-called mutagen. I theorize that they would go to planets and seed it with their DNA so as to create beings similar in form to themselves as it produced that particular morph of “alien”. After enough time passed for anthropomorphic forms to develop, they would then return with the mutagen to start the process of infection with the ultimate goal of creating a planet of xenomorph bioweapons (a parallel to the desires of Weyland-Utani). Maybe this was what they would use to fight their arch-enemies, the Predators……which also explains why that society sees killing the xenomorphs as a rite of passage for their youths. It would be training for the battlefront.
I posit that the hostility expressed by the Engineer which they awoke was a visceral response. When he went into hypersleep, he was preparing to visit primitive Earth to begin seeding. As he awoke, he realized how much time had passed, and that the primitives had been left too long, evolving enough to have acquired interstellar travel, making them a potential future threat.
No offense but I don’t think (as many others have already stated) that Predators will ever enter into the conversation here on out as far as Ridley Scott’s Prometheus arc is taken. He has on multiple occasions demonstrated his disdain for that particular franchise. I have to say that I agree. The story related in Prometheus is not of traditional “battle fronts” from action movies or whatever you are talking about. Instead the story of Prometheus is one of the Lovecraftian sense of Cosmic Horror. Forces at work that consider human kind to rise only to the level of a common pest that needs either to be stamped out or “developed” for purposes beyond our feeble grasp.
Speaking of HP Lovecraft I urge you to read his short story “At the Mountains of Madness.” It can be found here: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm
Once you read it you will understand the parallels between both the movie “Prometheus” and “At the Mountains of Madness.” I wouldn’t consider “Prometheus” to rip off Lovecraft’s story but it is very obviously and directly inspired by it. I won’t give away the story other than to say that it follows the story of a scientific team that finds a very ancient civilization that is wiped out by its own creations. Obviously not the only story ever written that offers that narrative but the fact that the director Guillermo del Toro has put his intentions for directing a film adaptation of “At the Mountains of Madness” on ice because of the release of “Prometheus” is very telling.
I second the recommendation. It’s a great novella. I actually hoped that Prometheus would be more like “At the Mountains of Madness”, but I thought it was more like a watered-down, overly anthropocentric version of the Lovecraft story.
Totally agreed but I think the original source material for Prometheus somewhat prohibited this. We did get a many eyed, tentacled horror though at the conclusion of the tale that hewed closely with HP Lovecraft’s tales although it was no Shoggoth.
Or was it? In a way the impregnation engine of a race that perhaps has no female form serves as the Engineers’ needed “beast of burden” to perpetuate their race or at least life created at their behest even if it is not completely “in their image.” At least not as we know it. Perhaps they view any form of anthropocentricity, as you say, to be offspring and thus a part of the family tree. Who are we to argue?
I guess it just bothered me to see everything taken and put through this “human” filter. I wanted the space jockeys to actually look and behave a little more alien. And all this religious babble seemed like a step backwards from the atheism and cosmicism of Lovecraft’s works. It’s much scarier to think of humans as insignificant specks, whose irrational beliefs would seem laughably primitive to any race more advanced than us, if they even cared enough to pay attention to us.
In some ways I agree, chiefly the obvious relativity of modern mankind to the Engineers. The film missed out on an opportunity to connect our PRIVILEGED existence to the machinations of a wholly inhuman race with an entirely different cosmic viewpoint but perhaps the writer personally found more horror to be found in the idea of a “Cosmic Ubermensch” deciding our fate from afar.
I wholly believe the musings on human existence and its myriad possibilities are probably best left to either personal reflection or suggestion through the written word. However, I think the movie “Prometheus” does an admirable job of reintroducing most folk to such thoughts when most sci-fi film these days tends towards a preoccupation with a “woe-is-me” approach of civilization not producing anymore fast food joints and cars to drive through them with. Yes we get it… War is bad and humans are such complex complex creatures that will probably kill themselves off one way or another. It is a tired trope and Prometheus was a breath of fresh air in regard to species-wide horror.
Agreed. I wish it had gone further, and perhaps I should have tempered my expectations in advance, but I was at least glad to see a modern sci-fi film attempting to deal with this subject matter in an intelligent way. I think it does get part of the way there by suggesting that humans might not be all that special in the universe.
I think I probably would have enjoyed the movie more if I’d gone into it not expecting a thought-provoking, hard sci-fi thriller, but something more entrenched in symbolism and theme. Prometheus is a lot more like a modern myth than something like “Alien” or “Mountains of Madness”. I did find the whole “created seeking the creator” to be an interesting idea–perhaps not explored as well as I would have liked, but intriguing nonetheless.
I do think that Prometheus was a much more interesting film than “Alien” at least.
However I think that perhaps Prometheus was a product of its time. A bit shallow, trying too hard, and humanistic despite the ultimate implications of the story. And maybe that’s the failing of film when it comes to depicting these sorts of stories. It must appeal to a broad spectrum of humanity. Stories of the utterly inhuman dominating humanity utterly disconnect humanity from the story.
Well said. Though I may disagree about the comparison.
I think the main problem with the script was that the writer either didn’t want to get into some of the deeper themes at play, or just wasn’t totally connected to the ideas. For me the movie probably didn’t bother me as much as far as certain things being vague because I read the books by Daniken & Sitchin, so I could insert things between the lines in my head I guess.
As you stated in your posts above a broader theme of man thinking itself more important than he is, and even worth the time of a being that may be god-like could be what they were going for and missed the mark a bit. Many movies and stories have always depicted both Biblical and mythical gods and beings related to them as being somewhat disdainful of humans and at times hostile, so even in the metaphysical sense the notion that such a being would want man coming up the Heaven, Olympus, etc., just shows man’s arrogance and lack of judgement even if they managed to make a spaceship….
I agree that the Predator franchise has nothing to do with ridley’s version of his Alien stories.
However, most of the best tstories I’ve read come from darkhorse and other sci-fi writers merging the predator alien franchise. In saying that I forsee, new stories written involving this new version of what the Space Jockeys look like going against he predators
Just because david says something like ” dont all children want to see ther parents dead” What the eff does he know about life and child parent interaction’ he’s friggin robot like Shaw told him
Some observations and theories:
Let’s assume that the Engineers, since they exist, are not the only extraterrestrial life out there, and Earth, during the course of our evolution after being seeded by the Engineer in the beginning of the film, may have been visited by other alien species who had knowledge of the engineers. Then suppose those other aliens told the ancients who made the cave paintings, not necessarily the Engineers. Let’s also assume that the idiot archaeologists, all giddy about their discovery, and much as overzealous scientists tend to do, jumped to the wrong conclusion about the meaning of the cave paintings, interpreting it as an invitation rather than a warning. After all, they wanted to prove something for all their years of digging… such is often the folly of scientific optimism. Shaw’s character is established as a person of faith, hence, prone to leaps of faith, etc. This is the folly of her willingness to go on instinct… in other words, she was a lousy scientist and opened a Pandora’s box due to her lack of scientific discipline and reliance on superstitious faith. I am reminded of the line in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with weather or not they could, they didn’t stop to think whether they should.” This is one of the themes of the film: the dangers of the pursuit of knowledge and science. After all, we are told this in the very name of the film: Prometheus, a tale of the dangers of knowledge and technology, a power that can destroy those who wield it without the wisdom to respect and temper it. So there’s that.
David allowed Vickers to slam him against the wall not because she is a robot, but because he serves the Waylands and she is Wayland’s daughter. I’m sure he was programed not to harm her. The question about her is, why would she even go on the trip? She has no real interest in the expedition and could have easily just waited at home for them to return with whatever goodies the company could use. And her prime motive seems to be control of the company, with her speech to her father saying it’s time for the passing of the torch. All I can figure is perhaps she was worried that Wayland would find some secret to eternal life and she would never inherit the company, so she tagged along to see if that happened so she could kill daddy, take the immortality secrets for herself and take control of the company. But if I were her I would have just stayed on earth, hedging my bet that none would return alive. Had she done that she would be in control of the company. So why did she go at all?
The Engineer probably killed everybody because they are a telepathic race. At first he had no real adverse reaction to the humans being there but as he stood there, probably reading their thoughts, he got the gist of the situation, that they were there for selfish reasons, wanted immortality, etc… but he certainly would have gleaned that Wayland had planned to take specimens of the xenomorph back to earth for the Wayland Weapons Division, and what do you do when you are entrusted with a deadly weapon and a bunch of yahoos show up wanting it for themselves? Well you squash em doncha? Also, he was feeling the head of David because he was wondering why he could not read his thoughts, realized it was a construct, or perhaps was just freaked it was a being that could not be telepathically read, and decapitated the abomination.
Why were the Engineers trying to destroy the Earth?
My guess is that the Engineers are the Elohim or the Anunnaki of our ancient legends, who mixed with primitive life on Earth, causing a big ado and civil war that may have devastated the Engineers society… therefore they blame us and want us destroyed. When the Elohim lay with the daughters of men, yada, yada… it made God mad, in this case “God” may simply be the beings who created the Engineers… perhaps they themselves are slaves or subordinates to some other race as yet to be revealed… sequel, sequel. So the Engineer on the ship was then maybe a member of the “kill all humans” faction of the Engineer civil war, and the goo is their weapon to destroy all the life that the “seed life all over the dang place” faction of Engineers created. But also he just read the minds of Wayland and the others and didn’t like what saw and knew they had evil intent.
The derelict ship in the first Alien movie is obviously a separate incident… these guys got lots of ships all over the place I’m sure. The Space Jockey may have only been there for 30 years and the Nostromo crew misinterpreted his exoskeleton suit for a fossilized skeleton, so maybe it is Shaw in the suit but I would expect they would have stumbled upon the remains of Android David, or maybe not… or it is just another ship, an incident unrelated to the happenings on the planet in Prometheus.
As to why Wayland stayed hidden and the crew were not told the mission, that was obviously to keep it from the press back home. If you go off looking for the origins of mankind, or immortality as Wayland was hoping, you certainly don’t want competition from other agencies/companies/Governments, and you don’t want a lot of controversy getting out, possibly creating opposition to your mission. Also, if they were wrong, it would be an embarrassment to the company to come back empty handed after all that hype about “We found God!… Ooops… my bad. It was just a lifeless moon.” Know what I mean? So you hire a bunch of amoral people who are motivated by money, and who don’t all know each other. This keeps people from talking too much, hence the surly geologist… I would pick antisocial guys like that to prevent the grew banding together over the moral issues of such a mission and maybe having a potential mutiny on my hands, you follow me? And you wait till you get there to tell them the mission so your far from Earth and they can’t leak to the press what your doing. Unfortunately the type of people that can still be bought off afterwords may not be the most dedicated or skilled in their field, hence the unprofessional attitude of some of the crew. These people are more greedy than skilled so they kind of suck at what they do and made bad decisions.
One idea that I had was what if the Engineers are actually a slave race…. get this… to the XENOMORPHS? Yeah, that’s right, what if they work for the Xenos, going around seeding planets with life to gestate the xenos, since they need a host to do their egg thingy? Now, if that were the case, the disaster may have been one rebellious Engineer who tried to prevent the delivery of the goo to earth, maybe he had a soft spot for humans, and thus, the xenos ended up infecting the Engineers. Sort of like Silver Surfer serves Galactus and feeds him worlds in order to keep his own world safe. So if the Engineers somehow broke their contract with the Xenos, then the Xenos say, “If you won’t provide us hosts, then we use YOU as hosts!” So what if the Xenomorphs are actually the dominant species after all? What if the Xenos are actually the genetic engineers and they created the Star Jockeys to facilitate their procreation needs and what we really have here is a slave revolt? That would explain the seeding of worlds in order to later use as hosts. And since there are many ships and thousands of cans of goo, and one spoonful is all it takes to seed one world, then they literally could have a massive galaxy-wide operation of seeding millions of worlds for later harvest. This could have been a thing going on for millions and millions of years.
Anyways, thems some crazy ideas for yer noggins. ;-D
Why didnt we see a space jockey mutated with the black goo, that would have beenintersting
For more than 30 years they were called space jockeys and now after one lame excuse of a movie, we are calling them engineers, tobey Mcguire will always be spiderman, and hugh jackman will always be wolverine
There is a feeling of vacuum for an Alien “expert” like me after seeing prometheus i guess is not the movie Scott was looking after probably because of politics of the studio. Nevertheless is a great movie which questions the human existence and in such i manage to conceive an hypothesis: what if the engineers also have the same questions? and in their persuit of answers they have manage to discover a link to god (or the “creator”) somehow through Aliens? i mean probably those creatures (as i, my self always concive ‘em) are from some unnatural source? probably from “the beyond”(as in lovecraft’s) so the engineers were trying desperately to develop such creatures in a complex relation between adoration and science and in such experimenting, mostly tweaking DNA in order to obtain such creatures (the Aliens) and by them find their answers. It is very likely that the derelic crashed on Alien movie had has managed to create the Aliens thousand of years before even Prometheus, so the engineers had lost contact with the crew and the knowledge has long been lost so they must manage to recreate the process only this time humans got in the middle as a subproduct of their efforts and experimentation. This “new” human creatures, are capable of abstraction and intelligence so they actually represents a threat for them because we (humans) can stop them from their success somehow. i know is such a complicated arc but who knows? i don’t think even Scott is certain about it…
What if the ‘goo’ has nothing to do with The Engineers, and it is actually indigenous to the planet and has infected their ‘work’, maybe they are just spreading the ‘seeds of life’ throughout the galaxies , it just happens the life that spawns (accidentally) from the planet Prometheus is set on give us the worm type creatures that eventually give us a xenomorph when it infects an Engineer.
We would possible get a slightly different Xenomorph when it infects a human,as in Alien , even though we have the same DNA.
So what I understood of the film was:
In the 1st scene, it’s the earth and an engineer left deliberately who sacrificed himself by taking that black stuff. That black stuff breaks
the DNA of the engineer dissolves into water so that a new species could be developed.
Purpose was to probably develop a range of new species- just like cross breeding that we humans do to develop different breeds of
dogs, cats, a good example would be liger (breeding of tiger and lion), engineers strive to do that on a much larger scale- platform was
the earth and its environment.
Now what happened was, species like crocodile, dinosaurs, etc etc got developed…that was OK…experiment going in the right
direction….,until evolution kicked in with species like homo sapiens which ultimately evolved into us..the humans.
Engineers didn’t intended to produce a cheap copy of themselves..getting intelligent day by day…doing stuff like going into space, visiting
moon, making weapons of mass destructions and so on… (Consider more technology developments till year 2090).
Probably they got insecure (?) and decided to end the experiment and prepare/use earth for a second round. They prepared
black stuff again which is a biological weapon to end human race and probably develop another species (the so called ‘aliens’) at a
much faster rate (so that’s what happened to Prometheus guys).
Regarding paintings- probably whenever they visited they left drawings of their planets as evident from planet X (which they’re using
to develop that bio weapon as they don’t want to risk their own home planet). The evidence I am talking about is drawings which we
see in the chamber which Prometheus guys enter with vessels and a huge sculpture of human head.
So one purpose of the paintings could be to deliberately invite humans to that experimental lab planet so that if engineers failed to execute the weapon, humans themselves will come to search answers and will find the black stuff and get infected- ultimately carrying it back on their own to earth.
Mr Weyland is dying and he want to achieve immortality. Only way is probably with Engineers who developed us…, so it’s totally
worth it…., to go to that planet and search for any solution.
Now experiment went wrong, bio weapon got unleashed and killed the engineers themselves, except one who was in the sleeping in
another chamber.
But as explained earlier, engineers want to end the experiment forgot immortality. So the moment David wakes the last engineer alive,
he simply killed everyone and headed towards earth to unleash the weapon. But ultimately failed by us and Prometheus.
That’s what I think of, but no doubt movie leaves other thoughts open. Would really appreciate if any of you point out any flaws in my
theory..thanks.
So I haven’t read the article, because I don’t want to spoils anything before I see it. But I need to know if you can watch it even if you didn’t see the Aliens movies ?
I don’t think so. The movie stands on its own. You may be benefitted from watching Alien if only to set in your mind the mystery of the Space Jockey but its not entirely necessary. Go see it in the theater before its gone. I do recommend the Alien series however regardless.
I have seen the whole Aliens series, don’t worries. But I have some friend who didn’t. And I am just wondering if we can all go together.
Just want to point out the scene the space jockey came upon when he was awoken from hibernation. The corporate monster was there arrogantly waiting to be blessed by his creator.. but what did the creator see? A woman being beat down by other members of her species (males) and a corruptible android ‘playing chess’ with genetics… clearly a DNA development failure; the jockey could have made up his mind right then and there ( and I say he did)
Can anyone explain why David poisons Dr Holloway? If you remember he puts a finger into the bio canister and pours him champagne having dipped the finger in the glass. Also how does he know all the codes to get in to the ship and how does he know how to pilot it? At the end he is depicted as a nice person so I don’t get why he does these things. Cheers.
David is an android. He’s not a “nice person.” He is an uncaring and soulless automaton who is merely programmed to seem “nice” for the comfort of his human crewmates. He says this himself when Dr. Holloway asks why he bothers wearing a helmet when he doesn’t even breathe.
The aliens development included an intermediary life form to act as an incubator. Somehow their initial incubator died off (?disease or accidentally killed by the aliens?), so they developed the engineers through genetic engineering of their own DNA. The engineers developed enough self awareness to purposely plant their DNA on earth so life could grow free from the aliens. When the aliens discovered this, they “ordered” the engineers to return to Earth to destroy humans as they wanted no competition. A calamity caused the base the engineers were launching from to go dormant, hence discovery by Prometheus, but the surviving engineer was still programed to kill humans. So who was the human ultimate creator? The aliens.
What I am failing to understand is the opening scene. Whereby the Engineer is surrounded in an earth like setting by an unmarked craft of undetermined origin. The engineer then deliberately uses the mutagen to terminate his life in a form of sacrifice for a greater purpose? Unwinding his own dna and sealing his fate as he plummets into the waterfall.
Could it be that it was a friendly and founding race that was simply looking after it’s children by trying to terminate the connection back to earth. That if your children had done something that was critical to their survival how far would you go to protect them? Also, maybe there were good and bad engineers and their was conflict amongst the engineers. It appears as though the final engineer was deliberately going to earth with the stockpile where again there was some event where there was a dramatic willful termination of the events in progress.
Clearly if we take the drawings throughout past societies they indicate the engineers presence, their involvement and providing a clear guide to locating them for a good or bad purpose.
So that is the fascinating part of the movie to me.
Here is an idea. Engees spread thier DNA by using mutagen on earth waterfall. Death of one to expand thier race in the greater universe. Goal. Return to teach and guide over the years to later re uptake years of knolage and evolution that may give there own DNA the ability to become immune to the pathogen black goo that wiped out there home planet. Kind of like anti bioethics here on earth. The moon 223 is a research facility all that is left for the engee scientists to find a cure for the ongoing xenomorph infestation of thier home world. They know that if the black goo gets off 223 that the universe is doomed. When they wake the sleeping engee. David actually says they are here to wipe out there race. Not save my dying dad please. The dude says no dice beats the turd out of everyone and takes off to escape not go destroy earth. The kicker is David it’s all about David and his agenda. He knows xenos won’t infect him. He wants to use the biomechanics to start his own race of cyborg xenos he needs to be free. Like smith in matrix. He wants to have xenos kill all organic creatures so cyborgs are all that is left in the universe. He would then be the only god and creator.
The very begining is confusing because he drinks the black ooze and disintegrates, then his remains fall into a river on an unknown world… meanwhile a huge flying saucer shaped ship is flying away so it seems. Then they show the engineers DNA rebuild itself in the water. That suggests that the black ooze has regenerative properties at a DNA level. But why go there? It has nothing to do with the creation of humanity. We don’t know for sure what planet that was although many say it was Earth’s begining of life. This scene is SO unexplained still.
The only thing I understand from it, is the ooze if consumed will kill the engineers. The ooze has the same effects on humans if consumed also. But if a human consumes just a little bit of the ooze… it still changes the DNA structure, at least in reproductive fluid. The sperm becomes an asexual lifeform and gets transmited to Shaw via intercourse… Then the lifeform grows as what appears to be a fetus but is actually an egg sack with a baby squid like creature inside. At this point the Squid is a hybrid of human and ooze genetics. The squid grows on it’s own at an accellerated rate to the huge squid big enough to ensnare a human or an engineer. When the squid attacked the engineer and inseminated him via throat, it created a hybrid of Human, Engineer, and Ooze genetics, creating the first Xenomorph Alien.
As far as the mural in the engineer cave, It looked like a xenomorph but it really wasn’t one. I think it was thrown into the story to throw us off.
The c-section birth on Christmas would suggest to me this is meant to be seen as a special birth. Typically the use of Christian Christmas births in stories mean the birth is of a savior or the first of something new or important. In this case, it could be the birth of a new species.
I wholeheartedly disagree. There is enough evidence that it is likely the xenomorphs predate even the Engineers and that alot of their experimentation has to do with xenomorph biology. Not the other way around.
Hello !
… love the ” End ” of the movie .
… it looks like a new ” eningma ” !
What if Charlize’s character survived being crushed by the falling ship?
If it didn’t crush her (I don’t know do to a rock or something), it could have rolled off of her freeing her when it fell on it’s side.
She could then survive in one of the engineer’s cryo pods until Prometheus 2. That would be a cool scene, a recovery group finding her in one of the pods.
At first I assumed the ship that takes off at the end with David and Shaw would be the one discovered in Alien , however that is well gone by the time the Xenomorph appears, and the Engineer pilot in Alien had it’s chest exploded from within, so it had to be implanted.
Maybe another Engineer is still alive on another ship on the planet, which the xenomorph (Queen?) seeks shelter in and begins laying eggs, the Engineer is woken somehow and is impregnated , when he comes around he decides to take off , then crash lands on the original ‘Alien’ planet when the alien bursts out of his chest.
Or, as David is piloting the other ship, maybe he has infected himself somehow , or implanted himself via the medical unit? and it is him that was the Space Jockey , although there is the size issue of the engineers suit??
I don’t think the Engineer on LV-426 is directly related to the events of Prometheus. He is likely much, much older given his level of fossilization.
Personally I feel that the xenomorphs served as prototypes or at least an inspiration for what see in Prometheus as the canisters containing the “Black Goo.” What we see on LV-426 was maybe the result of the Engineers’ experimentation with the xenomorphs and probably occurred at least thousands if not millions of years before humans ever existed.
He’s NOT FOSSILIZED. They mistook the suit that is part of the chair as fossilization.
SUIT. NOT FOSSILS.
He definitely looks fossilized in comparison to what we saw in Prometheus. His somewhat larger size could also be explained by being an ancestor of “modern” Engineers. I don’t think we will really know until (and if) the next movie comes out.
Well some very interesting points.
I beleive the opening scene is the ‘engineer’ sacrificing himself to create new life, and that new life is us human beings.
When I first watched it I thought it was all about how the alien came to be alien. Obviously there’s many other issues to discuss but I thought that was one of the main points.
So it started off with the black goo and worms, turned into the big worm creature which killed the 2 guys.
Then it can develop/mutate another way, as seen when inside Shaw, then that eventually gets the engineer, which then gives us the Alien.
And wella the Alien creature is born.
But then that doesn’t answer the question of why the carving of the Alien was seen earlier in the movie, surely that shows that Aliens were created before this??
So I now have another few guesses;
It’s clear the engineers want us dead, i think its because they created us, realised we are just poor copies of them, but we are advancing quickly but dont appreciate the value of life, so they decide we are failures and want to wipe us out.
So i think either;
a) They come to this planet to this planet to do experiments (not sure why they would point humans to a planet which is only used for experiements though, maybe they didnt want the humans directly coming to their homeland) one of the experiments is that goo, and lots of it. They use that big cannon to shoot it at earth, it will infect people etc and wipe out humanity.
But the goo got out of control and eventually killed the engineers.This would of created an Alien, the alien then may well of found the other ships (since therew as more than one ship), and could of killed an engineer as he was flying the ship, hence the dead engineer seen in ALIEN?
OR maybe they had seen the effects of the goo infecting a engineer – an engineer could of sacrificed himself to find this out – meaning they seen an Alien been born.
Maybe these Aliens are their ultimate weapon, and they are proud of this hence the carving of an Alien?
OR
b) The engineers are torn whether to kill humanity, some want to some don’t and they have a battle (hence the bodies being stacked up) but this doesnt really explain why they were all dead, you would of thought one side would of won.
OR
c) Engineers were created by Aliens? I only really have this theory because of the carving of the Alien in the movie. Maybe the engineers worhship the Aliens as they are their creators, hence the carving, and the aliens want the engineers to create more Aliens by sending the goo to earth, maybe thats why the engineers first made humans to begin with, maybe humans were only existing to get infected and create more aliens.
Some of these theories i doubt myself, but just as i start to beleive in one story I think of something (like the carving) which makes me think otherwise.
Views?
I think it’s premature to necessarily say that Engineers wanted to kill off human civilization. The “Black Goo” has already been shown to have a variety of memetic properties.
-When used by the Engineer at the beginning of the movie the goo dissolves his body and turns it into essentially a seed bearing fruit that possibly creates a vast variety of life.
-When it is used on the Engineer seen in the holorecording and they recover him his head explodes. Maybe a somewhat similar outcome from the first Engineer but not the same.
-When Dr. Holloway is infected not only does he create a new lifeform with Dr. Shaw but it is shown to be a slow and possibly agonizing death for him. However we do not know what the end result would be as he sacrificed himself in fire.
-When Dr. Fifield is infected he turns into a mutated, raging monster. Quite different from the rest of the examples.
So in conclusion I think that it’s possible the Engineers wanted to use the “Black Goo” not to kill off humanity but to further mold it and alter it for some unknown purpose. According to Ridley Scott the Engineers are “gardners in space” and if so then without their guidance the “Black Goo” leads only to destructive or at the very least unpredictable ends. With their help a myriad of more productive outcomes are possible.