What Did We Really Learn About the Space Jockey?

dsjohnson84 is right. They have shown everything in the trailers and promotional videos, what was the big secret then?

Eh, I just feel as though they are stretching this as thin as they can so that movie-goers will continue to be interested in a sequel (or sequels). What I'm intrigued by is that this race, supposedly so powerful at one point, almost omnipotent, seems to have fallen into decline. With all that advanced tech, why no communication between the Engineers still on LV-426 / LV-233 and those on the homeworld? No communication in 2000 years, really?? You'd think the homeworld Engineers would send a fact-finding mission or something. AND keep monitoring life on Earth and humans' continuing advancements there. Instead, the Last Engineer on LV-233 tries to fly off to Earth to destroy it (with or without orders...? (ancient orders)), and if he communicates anything to his homeworld, the movie doesn't seem to make that clear. (Though I haven't seen it yet, so I'm just working from the leaks & reviews.) I wonder if those who are speculating that the Engineer race split are right. Except I'm thinking more along the lines of Morlocks & Eloi in H.G. Wells' Time Machine, with one race evolved to be aggressive, the other passive, but BOTH races devolved.

@ dsjohnson84 From what I've read in the discussions here and on the Wiki it sounds like we don't learn anything that wasn't in the trailers or featurettes. The engineer culture, motives, history, society, and life cycle are still a great big question mark once all is said and done.

@Alien Drone, I was wondering that, too. And I've been wondering if WIkipedia is in error when it says that the Sacrificial Engineer makes his sacrifice during the Cambrian. Life was already up and running by then (stromatolites etc.).

The Engineers didn't create all life on Earth, if you notice the the scene at the waterfall and before as the camera movie up the river towards the waterfall, you can see there is already green plant life or vegetation on the left side. If the movie says they brought life to earth, then the film makers messed up, because we can plainly see it already there.

That's exactly what I've been thinking the whole time. We get NOTHING. This movie just needs a sequel so all those answers can be solved, but I don't see how if you look at the ending...

Other than retconning the Space Jockey as the creator of life on earth, it doesn't sound like much of anything.

Exactly we learned nothing. What's even worse is that we learned ALL about the Space Jockey FROM THE TRAILERS. The actual movie didn't reveal anything of importance outside of what we could ascertain from the trailers and promo-spots. Sooooooooooo weak.

Well I don't think he wanted to explore that particular jockey but rather their race and the role they play in the Alien universe. They are the creators and they have been doing it a VERY long time. Their technology is far beyond our understanding and attempting to meddle with it has dire consequences, a la Prometheus. That's probably about it from what I've read here. LOL

So we learn nothing about the Space Jockey and learn that his race is really advanced, dangerous, and seeded life on earth? That doesn't seem like an awful lot of fleshing out for the character or his race.

just read the plot on wikipedia, it's all there...the whole SHABAM

Ridley Scott: "Hey guys, I'm going to explore and expand the minor thing from my previous movie." Everybody: "Yeah! That's great! You're a genius and a master! Whatever you have MUST be good!" Ridley Scott: *smirks* "Come on in; let me show you around." Ridley Scott opens a door labelled "Prometheus" and invites everyone in. Everyone walks in wide-eyed, but their faces slowly drop. The whole room is nothing but darkness. Everybody: "...Ridley... Thi- this is great an' all, but..." Ridley Scott: "but what?" Everybody: "...We might be mistaken, but there's not... much... here. In fact, I don't see anything..." Ridley Scott: "That'll be $17."

"And if the entire goal of the film was to explore this one character how could things have veered off course so catastrophically?" One word: L I N D E L O F In space (the one between his ears) no one can hear anything.

We also learned that when combined with a certain substance or enzyme, the entire engineer body can accelerate evolution. We learned that they react VIOLENTLY to synthetic life. We learned that earth's number had come up before the Prometheus landed. We learn that Engineers are susceptible to their own bioweapons.

Xenotron... Funny stuff.

We did learn something. First of all, in the beginning it shows that the space-jockey created live on planet Earth. Later we learn that these engineers created biological weapons to erase humans (and other live?) from planet Earth. So the whole creation of life seem to be a form of terravorming. This makes a connection with terravorming which humans mastered in the later future of Alien-universe. So there must be a relation with the knowledge of terravorming of humans with the knowledge of the Space-jockeys. What I don't understand, is why they would destroy anything on planet Earth, and making the planet unuseful (because if the black "death" would reach earth it would destroy everything, making Earth a dangerous planet, also for Space-Jockeys). And the last Space-jockey on the planet from Prometheus makes it pretty clear that it was an important mission for the Space-jockey race. So why was erasing life on Earth important for the engineers?

The movie is not about "the life and death" of our beloved Space Jockeys , its about facing and searching answers and how everyone approach them in a different way ...it sound a bit more serious than " i want to know why the spacejockeys have no penises !!" right ? Movies are not about questions and answers regarding "fantasy" space races...for that read a book ...a movie is mainly a sensorial experience and a good narrative ..there are plenty of those things in Prometheus .

@ Xenotron I do think there is a relation with the story of Jesus and the death of the SJ's. So I don't think it is far off. The whole symbol of the cross that Noomi wears makes this connection extra clear.

and then Damon Lindelof jumps up, "NOW GET OUT YOUR WALLETS!"

Would people agree with Frantz about the "a good narrative" part?

Also, in the movie, Noomi says in the end that the engineers choose to not destroy earth, and she likes to know why, so they start their journey to the engineers home-planet. But the engineers clearly didn't chose this, as the last Space-jockey on Prometheus-planet instantly continued his mission to reach Earth when he woke up. So there must have happened something, around 2000 years ago (the corpses of the engineers were dated 2000 years old), which changed the course of destroying Earth. So the biggest questions that remain are: 1. Why did the space-jockeys wanted to destroy life on Earth instead of colonizing it? 2. What happened to the plan of erasing life on Earth, 2000 years ago?

Come to think of it, the xeno wall sculpt looks as if it's arms are outstretched. (I'm probably headed straight for hell for that.)

Are you saying the black goo infects everything. Plant life for instance? Maybe the SJ's are purely interested in everything else on earth... And not us. Earth's home to a lot of cool shit. It's a shame we've screwed it up so badly. Imagine what it'll look like in another 80 years.

Hmmm, I keep wondering about the relationship between the xeno and the Space Jockeys. I don't get the impression that the Jockeys have females. So maybe we are looking at an asexual race that reproduces by using hosts for their "offspring". Maybe the xeno was intended to be some next-gen version of themselves that incorporated the best elements of bio and mecha- making the use of things like biosuits obsolete. A xeno with SJ intellect would be quite an accomplishment: super-smart yet tough in almost any kind of environment. Biological organisms are always at war with their own flesh, since it's weak and subject to decay. Maybe the xeno was their attempt at immortaility and it backfired, leaving them with something that was extremely skewed- somehow their intellect didn't quite transmit to the final product and all that was left was pure survival instinct to the Nth degree. No wonder the old man wanted access to the technology, he saw the same potential for immortality as the Jockeys did. The quest for immortality is a powerful motivational force in our society and I would imagine that it was the same in the Engineer's home world. As for why the Engineers didn't deploy their nano goo to Earth earlier, maybe it was the responsibility of that particular Engineer "platoon" on LV-226 to do so. Of course, this leaves open an important question- why didn't the home world check in on the engineers on LV-226 (assuming they were decimated too quickly to report back in time)? Taking this question into account, there are only two possibilities: they couldn't, since they possibly met the same demise somehow, or they wrote them off as casualties. The remaining Engineer, knowing he was "stuck", went into cryo in hopes that one day his people would ultimately come looking for him. Instead he got us- arrogant children raiding his self-imposed tomb.

@ Ancienthuman - isn't it obvious? They're going to say that Jesus was an alien in the sequel! I'm joking, but it doesn't seem like anything is off the table at this point...

@ Molecunar it is very unlikely that they wanted to create a better version of themselves. the alien in the end show no improvement of the SJ, except in terms of being a very effective parasite.

Considering that the SJ in the beginning of the movie created life in water by the black substance, we can conclude it would destroy plant-life as well. But why destroy the planet and making it dangerous for themselves as well?

But we already knew this was going to be about our makers, we saw that in the featurettes and everything, and the fact that they make or have bioweapons is something we have already seen in ALIEN. We know little to nothing more about them...

Perhaps Earth was seeded as a "backup" once the Engineers started getting heavily involved in thier genetic work...just in case things went wrong.

An explanation could be that an Alien provided humans with technology, and that human race is seen as a threat. Maybe there was an Alien that tried to help humans 2000 years ago, by providing them with alien knowledge. Which would express the meanning of Prometheus (the mortal that brought fire from the gods to the humans).

Not mortal, but Titan

I can see it now: Prometheus 2 - The opening scene is a small village in Israel - 30A.D. There's a lot of commotion and people are gathering around in a small house. A young boy is convulsing and behaving like he's in pain. A man is standing over him with his hand out and an advanced, technological gizmo in it. The gizmo extracts an alien from the boy and he stops convulsing. The man takes the alien and destroys it. He's revealed to be Jesus of Nazareth and declares to the crowd, "The demon has left him! Go, and sin no more!" Cut to - Movie Title P R O M E T H E U S : Judgement of Sin

It could be that the terravorming of planets backfired somehow (maybe making competitors in creating evolutions?), which caused them to immediately kill all life they created in the first place.

Isn't it amazing how much theorizing happens AFTER people have seen the movie?

Prometheus 2: Noomi reaches the home-planet of SJ's, and finds it empty and erased by the "black death". She finds out that there are two groups of SJ's. One group wants to destroy life, while the other wants to create and preserve it. The ones that wants to destroy it, were evolved to new creatures, hungry for killing and war. these creatures are known as "Predators"!!!!

@dsjohnson84 We learn that SJ's are hostile and not friendly. We know now that something happened to SJ's 2000 years ago in which the annihilation of Earth was prevented. We know that humans are a result of terravorming by the Aliens. We know that the "black death" is the cause of annihilation of the SJ's. We know that humans have received knowledge from these SJ's in some time in the Alien-universe.

Wait i'm confused. Based on the original "Alien" shouldn't the space jockeys have been friendly aliens? Weren't they sending out a signal to others to stay away from the planet (a warning) so no one one else would come in contact with the Alien eggs? Thats the impression i always got from watching "Alien".

Oh, wow! And I thought I was joking!

@Ancienthuman We learn that the SJ's are hostile? How was that NOT clear from the trailer? The ship is LEAVING. Shaw begs Janek to STOP IT or else "there will be no home to go back to." We see the SJ headed for the chair. We see the ship leaving. We understand that, that ship and it's driver are a threat to Earth. For a looooong time now, it has been theorized that the hologram from the trailers is a black box recording of events... hence all the dead bodies we see in the ship. It's already clear, from the trailers, something happened... We know that human kind is a result of the experiments of the Engineer because that's the whole premise of the information in the trailers. That was probably the clearest point made! This movie is about meeting our makers, and we know they do! The black death killing the SJ's. In significant. Minor detail. Easy to assume they died from something they created... Humans received knowledge from these SJ's? That's also clearly in the trailers. I'm still waiting for something that was not there, outside of minor things.

But seriously, what I find interesting, is that the SJ's show no survival motives. The SJ that wakes up start killing instead of making a dialogue with the humans. And the SJ in the beginning of the movie sacrifices himself. Or was the spreading of the "black death" a mean of survival, just as the forming of life on Earth?