Damn, they really are suits

What has caused this definitive sway?

"We are Giants"... not so much.

I agree, if the SJ helmet was actually his head, then it would be far more alien and cool, but since they are creating us in their own image, I guess we have to resemble each other. Plus, all the SJ's look like clones of each other, so I think that this is what they are, or androids like David.

[img]http://www.prometheus-movie.com/uploads/prometheusmovie_11512_5.jpg[/img]

Some kind of jazzed up Fremen stillsuit. Don't get me wrong - I've still got an open mind - the suit thing could be awesome. The suits could be alive and be incredibly painful for the blue guys to put on. I would approve of that.

I dont know if that was the idea all along... i doubt years ago that Ridley had the idea that the Space Jockey was a Human looking big guy in a suit.... Yes he said it was a suit back ages ago... But i think when they was doing the script and wanted to do more about the Engineers/Jockeys than the Xeno, they needed to explore a story about them add some depth to their character. And so a Alien being, (who may not be human looking) in a Space Suit that created the Xeno, was maybe not a indepth story or plot. I think after they decided to go for the Chariots of the Gods kind of story thats when they changed the idea that the guy in the suit was Human Looking to tie in with the whole Chariots of the Gods, creators theory.

Totally agreed. I also think he reimagined the SJ into a humannoid to fit his ideas of space gods. I bet Ridley didn't want to repeat Alien all over again, so he opted to go with the humanoid super being instead of the elephant like creature... Fun thing is, I always thought the Jockey was a suit... or some sort of biomechanical suit that bonded with the user permanently.

what if the suit is a lifeform itself? With it's own life cycle and thought process.

Has everyone forgotten what fossilization does to organic material. In the original movie, the SJ/Engineer looked like it was one with the chair, and depending on the true nature of the base materials used, they could be very close to a carbon-based polymer material. Polycron ( a synthetic rubber material, it exhibits all the characteristics of human skin, but is used as a rubber substitute).

Not fossilized - mummified is more accurate.

I think Ridley Scott has probably had to tweak, if not rewrite, history and what he may have said, just a [i]little[/i] bit in some of the details - in order to make the movie, it turns out he's making practically a lifetime after Alien, function - and go somewhere else he wouldn't have necessarily have envisioned as a complete idea, back 1979... If so, personally, based only on what I've seen so far, I'm going to let it all go.

@Kronnang Dunn I think Ridley always hinted the Jockey was a suit... Just say 3-5 years ago maybe he had a different idea or no idea at all about what they looked like under the suit.... And yes i think they went for the Human look to tie in with the Space Gods Story line so as that he can make a interesting plot for this movie.

@BigDave When you say, "always", I'm fairly certain he has been saying,"Suit", for a lot less time than the entire 33 years since Alien. I have feeling, "Suit", is a little revisionist.

Back when he did Alien I seriously doubt he gave it much more thought than "It looks really cool and creepy".

It was suit from the start because in Alien they showed breaking of suit from stomach, so if we go by that theory then surely skin would not last more than a year in such environment where there are organisms.

Horse-hockey!

@allinamberclad I agree. I think the suit is revisionist history. I don't recall a suit being mentioned along with the SJ in the making of original Alien movie, nor the subsequent 33 year period since then. Only now is the elephant-SJ being mentioned as a suit. I still believe the suit is organic, alive and there is some sort of symbiotic relationship with the engineer.

Chthon: Funny, that picture you linked was what helped me decide that they WERENT suits. Look at the details...they don't look "movable" or mobile, if that's the right description. To me, they definitely have a look of being carved. They don't look pieced together, like a suit would be.

I think its better to watch the movie first and then compare the ´78 SJ and the new Prometheus SJ/ blue guys in suits..

Hold on a sec everyone... it's not Ridley who originally came up with the suit concept, but Giger.

@ Snorky I would suggest that [url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ossify]OSSIFIED[/url] is [u]even more accurate[/u]. [b]Fossiliaztion[/b] requires that the bone be surrounded by some other material that delivers minerals to it so that they can gradually replace the bone as it disintegrates. [b]Mummification[/b] requires that a living separate entity medically prepare the dead organic matter in a way that intentionally preserves it. [b]Ossification[/b] only requires that the existing (previously live) organic material firm to the consistency of bone after it has expired (as living material). I feel like the suits are "alive" (though not intelligent) in [i]Prometheus[/i] and the SJ's is dead and ossified in [i]Alien[/i] along with the chair. @VaderTime I agree. The suits in Prometheus are [u]totally revisionist history[/u], but the need for the iconic head forced their hand. Overall—I have to say, though—it's a rather creative and elegant solution.

I suspect that Ridley Scott had decided that the SJ/Engineers were a humanoid race long before he decided he needed a whopping big carving of a humanoid head in the temple.

Molecular - I wonder if this design was something Giger had for years before Alien and Ridley just saw it in his artwork portfolio and said "this is cool, let's use this" or did he tell Giger what kind of creature he was looking for and Giger designed it with Ridley's guidance?

@Rickk Look here, at this link. The Giger painting about 1/2 way down (Necronom V) is where the Space Jockey inspiration came from (the thing riding the xeno-looking creature's back). http://io9.com/5879560/everything-we-know-about-ridley-scotts-space-jockeys

@John D., Of course, but I'm pretty sure that once everyone (FOX included) saw the iconic head idea, there was NO going back. The head has to not only look human[u]oid[/u], but rather fully HUMAN to work with the shock value that it has in the storyline. “What if the ‘ancient aliens’ stories [u]were[/u] (‹‹‹ subjunctive) TRUE!...” The head is the punch line. So much so, that the French marketers have even pulled it out of the temple. The "suit" is the reverse-Engineered (‹‹‹ Sorry. I couldn't help that.) fix. The “missing link,” if you will.

I might be alone in this, but the original Jockey "skeleton" actually being the creature itself always bothered me. I simply could never imagine flesh covering those bones, especially when the arms don't look very skeletal but the head and chest do. Not to mention that the creature itself would look like a rather impractical and ungainly beast when not in that chair, and for some odd reason decided it would be better to fuse with his space-chair than just strap into it. The suit explanation is rather logical in my mind, and could still be pretty frightening. I'm sort of hoping for a scene in which a human crew member gets into a suit, and just starts screaming in pain and horror as the suit integrates/penetrates his body. Nightmare level stuff if you try to think about it long enough.

RickK, you make a great point- maybe Ridley did have the original concept and Giger just brought it to life. Interestingly, in the pic John D. linked the creature that inspired the SJ has more of a super long goatee than a breathing tube. =) In the original ALIEN mural depicting the xeno life cycle: http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/3499 They are clearly wearing suits and have more of the xeno-type banana cranium (though certainly not as pronounced). It's been speculated on the forum that the tube connects to the chair when the engineer merges with it; otherwise, it connects to the back or just hangs loose which would be extremely dorky. In ALIEN the engineer seems grown out of the chair, but we see them walking and running about in the Prometheus trailers so maybe we can discount the original (but incredibly cool) concept that they are born from the chair itself. I always thought that was impractical, if the engineer dies then the chair becomes useless! In Babylon 5, the Shadow ships explore a similar concept. The ship's systems fuse with a humanoid pilot's nervous system to attain maximum speed and allow the pilot to process numerous inputs simultaneously. So maybe the gun apparatus thing operates on a similar level. I thought that the suit could potentially protect the engineers from the face huggers and all those other little biomech horrors they were working on, but the Giger mural shows the sacrifice engineer laying down on the table with the helmet still on- so I threw that idea out. The suit... the gun/navigation turret... the weird biomechanical merging of these elements... they allowed the first film to really live up to it's name and it's one of the reasons I love it. Why should an alien species, especially in movies, always be defined through the lens of the human experience? You look at that stuff and go "What is it!?", but also there is an uneasy, almost evil sense to it and that's what made it brilliant.

I maybe in a 30 year denial here...but I still think the SJ in ALIEN and the SJ's in the Prometheus holograms are actual creatures. It's possible that the big blue guys have suits and helmets (or adaptations within the chair) that allow them to fly the juggernaut at FTL speeds I suggest that the suits in the hallway are statues (they seem to like statues, or at least huge heads in that complex). Please RS....don't let me down...... M

I'm holding on to the hope that the SJ's and Engineers are two different species, and the Engineers designed their suits and architecture as a homage to their gods (which would explain the original, much larger SJ and the slightly different more bone-like architecture of the derelict as they were seen in Alien) and Ridley is just giving us the "man in the suit" routine to save that revelation for a surprise. Of course I'm probably expecting too much & I'll just be slightly disappointed if I'm wrong but not too embarrased to admit it.

Ridley did say that he has always considered the Space Jockey to had been a Space suit and was suprised after all those years no body asked the question of who was in that suit and why.