Missing the Point/Reasons Engineers Target Earth

My read on why the Engineers target earth is the following : The first Engineer we see on Earth is "Prometheus" as he actually gives life to the planet, and more specifically : human DNA. So it seemed to me that he was some rebel to his kind (like Prometheus was when he stole the fire, giving it to mankind afterwards. Do note that a different version version of the myth exists, stating that Prometheus shaped humans out of mud and then gave them the "fire of life"). So the other Engineers are pissed at their brother (just like the gods were at Prometheus) and decide to destroy his creation using the xeno weapon when they see mankind has developped too much.

Great ideas about Weyland and I actually think that is the exact reason they want to destroy us. They know that Weyland has used some of their tech to create David and other replicants. Then Weyland goes a step further and tries to actually steal their secret for creating non-replicant, true life so he can save himself and become immortal. Or it could be something like we just didn't live up to their expectations or acomplish what we were made to acomplish. Hell, maybe a combo of both.

No, they wanted to destroy us much before Weyland was even born. Weyland just believed the Engineers were man's creators, so he thought they could be able to make him live forever.

i saw the movie and i give you my opinion 1) main goal of Weyland is to give humanity a last gift , beating death . 2) yes thats right .. even if its not clear how much is an idea of David ...david is acting all the movie erratically. a true android . 3) the idea is really that Weyland did know absolutely nothing , that is what i get from the movie ( however ive to note that my french is far from perfect ) 4) no it seems to me tha Earth was already a target and only the "bioshit" did delay that but again ive to watch the movie again...surely its not well explained :p

hmmm, food for thought indeed, frantz, food for thought

Yes, basically Weyland knew nothing of what they would find there. They had the prehistoric drawings and that's all. They wanted to destroy mankind 2000 years ago more or less (they say that exactly in the movie)

Really, how come they didn't then?

They had a tiny problem with their bioweapon.

what is their reason for intending to destroy us then, if it was in place prior to the events of the movie? did we get too big for our britches 2000 years ago?? I can see that being a reason for modern man, not 2000 years ago...

Were the Engineers pissed that we were screwing up the planet even 2000 years ago? Did they seed ALL life on earfth or just humanity's? Were they pissed that we were killing off everything else? Maybe Mammoths/Mastodons were their pets. (What with the trunks and all).

We don't know, and that's what characters ask themselves in the movie, and why there will be a sequel. I'm pretty sure that what they were going to do would have destroyed all life on earth at that moment, changed it.

so @Blood, the problem with their bio-weapon, as it turns out are humans the missing element needed to perfect the weapon (xeno)????

It sounds like this movie is really the set up to a much larger sequel in which we might get some answers. I already accepted the fact that we get no answers to the "big questions" in this one. So all that said, here's hoping Prometheus rakes in a ton of cash at the box office so we get our answers eventually.

@giger I don't know. The Engineers planned a xeno at some point (the mural/statue), still if they wanted to create it is not clear.

@Blood--thanks! really looking forward to seeing it!

@Snorkelbottom You are right. I already know something is not as simple as we thought when Weyland industries investor page showing this very unique element. http://www.weylandindustries.com/investor Eitr is the lowest resources they have which conveying telling us Android like David is very hard to make, very precious. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eitr Eitr is a mythical substance in Norse mythology. This liquid substance is the origin of all living things, the first giant Ymir was conceived from eitr. The substance is supposed to be very poisonous and is also produced by Jörmungandr (the Midgard serpent) and other serpents. You see we have David finger showing the eitr on his finger at the same time we know we have spacecobra thing lingering around those ampules. Whole movie main point already shown earlier in investor page. :)

I saw the movie, and Weyland didn't know about the engineer's technology. All he wanted was to be saved from death. Since the engineers created us, they might be able to save us (that's what he says). Ultimately, he might have wanted to give mankind a gift, but I'm not sure about it. About eitr, I think that's really interesting because there's certainly a part of the plot (big one I'd say) that involves some sort of snake thing, which develops into the so called adn of the xenos that we know so fondly. I really liked the movie, one of my top scifi movies ever. I agree with @drakeequation, there are a lot of questions left unanswered and if everything goes as planned, lets hope Sir Ridley Scott will give us the answers in a sequel.

I don't get why people think or thought that... #1. This film would have anything to do with the xenos. #2. A sequel to this film would have anything to do with xenos. Have they not made it clear enough that this movie is a starting off point for something completely new? I mean, I guess there's a chance that they might explain the xeno as a footnote in a sequel but to me it seems they want to get as far away from xenos as they can. I don't blame them either. Just hearing people yap about the xenos while we have been waiting for this film has got puke brimming in my throat. And maybe, depending on how the film does, they will decide it might be good to go in the xeno direction but I really don't think RS will do the film if that's the way the studio wants to go. Don't get me wrong. I love the xenos. I know they could have been done a hell of a lot better but they're cool. Personally, I kinda wondered why they couldn't have the xenos, face huggers and eggs and all that shit in the film AND go in a new direction as well. They could have done that. The fact that they didn't tells me they want to leave the damn xenos behind and move into ne territory with new aliens and new mysteries which is what I prefer at this point.

the answer might be 42.

I agree with you Deckard. I am so tired of people bringing up the Xenos in evey thread. Remember people the Xenos are a creation of the Engineers. At least to this point that is what most of us think. But that's it. What I think is more important is the Engineers themselves. Those who created the Xenos, and probably helped us evolve. So naturally the creator should be spoken about more. The engineers have a culture, diabolical it may be. But it's much more interesting to find out about them then coming back to the Xenos again. I see the Xenos as pet. While the engineers are the master.

Yessssss. And the xenos have been watered down, pulled thru the wringer and hung out to dry. Just done to death. Like you said, they are a creation of the Engineers. Plain and simple. Their homeworld everyone is so interested in seeing is where ever the Engineers created them.

[i]what is their reason for intending to destroy us then, if it was in place prior to the events of the movie? did we get too big for our britches 2000 years ago?? I can see that being a reason for modern man, not 2000 years ago...[/i] Historically speaking....YES....we did get "too big for our britches" over 2000 years ago. If not for the destruction of the knowledge contained in the Library of Alexandria, there would have been no dark ages and we might have been using touch-screen cell-phones and iPads by 500AD. They knew about electricity back then and had "batteries".

I agree with you. Man in general because of there ego has destroyed so many cultures and civilizations just because they could do it. We cant forget about the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas, and the Cartage civilization. I dont think that the engineers have been happy with mans progress. Instead of protecting life we have destroyed. That is reality movie or not. I think that we have come to a point in film making were directors like Mr. Scott have gained a larger scope about lide and will use film making to spread to enlighten the public. That is why the engimeers are so important. I think that he wants to use the engineers as examples of us. It is of my opinion that engineers are a vastly old race who have gone through everyhing the human race has gone through. But the difference is that they learned from there mistakes and turned the ship aroumd. I think that they see us as a faliure. Something they have seen before in other planets from other beings they helped create like us. So because we are an experiment gone wrong. They decided to end the experiment by killing us off. It just like lab rats which are killed after they have been used in experiments. This movie and the follow up one was made for money yes, but also for social and philosophical reasons. Ridley wants to open up our eyes. He wants to remind us that we are not that important in the umiverse. Just like the Carthignian Empire came to an abrupt and at the hands of the Romans. Which was more then 2000 years ago. Or when the Spanaish entered the Americas slaughtering men, women, and children, and in the process desmanteling vast civilizaions that had more science and culture then theres. Knowledge they could of learned from. No, they saw them as beasts. Im sorry if i have gotten off track a bit. But I really do think that Ridley has a huge positive agenda with this project. This movie and the sequal will go down in history as being part of history itself.

I think it is just a science fiction film, and the plot holes are there because it wasn't necessary to fill them to tell the story they wanted to tell. I doubt Ridley Scott has been writing psychology textbooks on the Engineers for the past five years making sure to cross his T's and dot his i's so it all fits perfectly. You don't know the Engineer's motivation because they haven't made one up yet.

I don't think they don't have an idea of the Engineers motivations. I really doubt it. They are biomechanical beings. It's possible that their experiment on Earth failed. I don't think they wanted to destroy all life, they wanted to replace it with something else. If you want to create, you sometimes have to destroy first.

This is going to be one of those movies that you have to see and pay attention to the viral videos featurettes, etc if you want to fully grasp them. This was fully explained in a couple of them. One being Shaw's video to weyland. She tells him what she found and what she believes is out there. Assuming his obsession with extending human life (his own first), and her discovery, she all but says to him if you are looking for immortality it would be here.

Interesting!

Exactly, and weyland actually talks about that indirectly. He says that she convinced her.

There was something that I wanted to add to my post, but didn't. But I will now. [b][/b]I won't name it specifically, but there was one "movement" in particular that went haywire tossing mankind into a millennia of dark times and this WAS NOT the intention of the one that started that "movement" but others that perverted it for greed and power.[b][/b] I did not name said "movement" so it could be anything....including Sesame Street.... ; )

Clearly you guys never watched Lost in its entirety...

I watched Lost deom the beginning to the end. Let me tell you something. That lasy seasom was a joke. It was a total slap in the face to the fairhful viewers who spent years glued to the tv set. In the end we got a nothing for it. No major questioms were answered. I really do think that the writers laughed in our faces when they gave us such a crap as an end.

May be. But again the ship leaves just as he begins drinking, as if they leave because his mission is over.

NO NO NO !!! It amazes me how far from the facts, as few as there ar in Prometheus, are willing to explore their own disjointed imaginings. There is no evidence in the film that establishes the plot point that the Engineers were targeting Earth, NONE !!! That is Shaw's assumption because she is predisposed to believe it. But, remember, "I was wrong, we were so wrong!!!". I have a rip of the movie, and there is a key scene that shows the ancient images of the Engineers entering the bridge. And, because these ancient images carry sound, the flute notes from the past turn on the console in real time. David not only witnesses this but he enters the holo image of the Universe(?) and selects the Earth holo to observe. The system shuts down and Earth is teed up on the console. David, on purpose or by accident, selects Earth as the Engineer's next target. If it was by accident, why doesn't David try to undo the selection. That selection triggers the Engineers sleep chamber to come to life. Notice when David puts his ear to the chamber the heartbeat he hears is a 3 beat heartbeat. (bb b, bb b, bb b) It is there on the screen. The Engineers did not select Earth as their nex target, David did !!!

".. the flute notes from the past turn on the console in real time.." This in an interesting observation. The hol;ograms that David is seeing carry sound. I had not noticed this. But it would explain why the actual console lights up, worlds are generated and David can immerse himself in a self absorbant movent among various Enginner's worlds. I couldn;t undaerstand what I was watching . How could a hologram and real time be mixed. A recorded sound track. I'll read the rest of your post now..but needed to comment on this critical orrery scene.

David actually doesn't select Earth. If you look closely, Earth is bracketed and there is some sort of flight path/indicators around Earth. Earth was in fact already "targeted" by the Engineers... but for what?

AS David is twirling around the lighted Orrery the Earth Globe just happens to fall into his hands, Africa side Up? Then Earth happens to be front and center almost like it was teed up like a golf ball when the Floating worlds collapse. I got the impression that if any alien being made it this far into the Juggernaut the hologram display area would have selected the right planet for that alien and that selected planet would be teed up. In a sense the Orrery would be a gateway to the destruction of any alien planet that their representative made the journey to LV-223 and the Juggeranut and the Orrery room. Who would have thought that LV-223 was the 'Welcome Center for all of the Engineer's worlds?