Theory about Opening Scene

I agree with Wiki.

I think that the scene at the start of the film is intended to be on Earth - later in the movie the DNA scan seems to hint at this too. Although it would be a good twist if it was on the moon though and that was what caused them all to panic.

The opening scene takes place on Earth...

NEITHER THE DATE NOR THE LOCATION of the opening scene is specified (as far as I could remember). It's a beautiful scene but (stripped of time+space context) it's basically pointless, and CONTRIVED was the word I tried to avoid during my [url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/6548]review[/url] of it. I'd have preferred more of exposition of the REAL ENDING i.e. not the tacked on (executive meddling) ending.

I think the scene is just an example of how the Engineers fart around and cause trouble...

Yeah, they're probably stoned and pranking, like, ALL THE TIME, through all phases of their species and other species evolution. Those intergalactic interdimensional time-liberated pranksters. :)

Feel free to check out my review of "Prometheus" and leave a comment and rating while you're at it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsVdEFOLUgE

Nice idea, and i would love that to be the case But if the black liquid is the same black liquid inside the mound in the cannisters, then isnt the liquid a bio weapon rather than a bio creator ? Or maybe the black liquid is for creation, and when things dont go quite right the Xenomorph eggs are used as a planetary reset button when the indigenous life forms threaten to destroy the planet The engineer ship explored in Prometheus had a cargo of black liquid, although we dont know what is in the holds of the other ships....We do know that the engineer ship on LV426 had eggs, not black liquid. The planet at the start could have been LV426 as it used to be before the engineers messed with it, or could have been LV 223. I think Wiki are being premature with the analysis, and the planet looked to have plenty of green growing patches prior to the engineer drinking the black liquid. Why seed a planet that already has life starting to take hold

The black liquid used in the opening scene was meant to disassemble the Engineer into raw genetic material rather than destroying him. That way he gets to be 100% recycled, or this is what I understood.

If the planet in the beginning was earth, and the engineer drinks the liquid to start the seeds of life then why would there be cave paintings of the engineers from all the different civilizations? Obviously there would have to be humans already there to witness the engineers and to record what they saw in paintings and monuments.

Maybe the engineer disassembling himself is meant to speed up the progress of life into something the engineers want rather than the way it would have evolved otherwise Von Diniken referred to life having a helping hand, and Ridley Scott has also referred to the 'helping hand' in interviews This would suggest that the engineers accelerate life that is already there rather than creating life from scratch. The Engineers 'engineer', they dont create. So who creates life to start with ? Is it the species on the non-horseshoe ship at the start of the movie ?

The cave paintings suggest that the engineers were living on earth, telling the earthlings where they came from, which is not possible if they all killed themselves with a bioweapon. If the scene would take place on earth why not pick a recognizable location like the niagara falls? Seeding earth was not done by killing engineers with black bioweapons, that just doesn't make sense. Why would you speed up life if you already have almost exactly the same DNA as humans?

It doesn't really make much sense...I am trying my best to think about it but I am not getting it. Is there something I am missing?

doesn't the SEEDING OF OUR PLANET sound a little too much like Adam & Eve's Edenic Garden to you lot? A little too 'current' or 'contemporary'? What about the (literally millions of years of) DINOSAURS? Do I have to quote Bill Hicks at you, "Come on dad, let's bury fossil heads." :)

I Agree with Rashudo. I also found this "Spoiler".... "In the original Alien, the crew encounter the ‘Space Jockey’, now known as an ‘Engineer’… however, as this is a semi-prequel, the ‘Engineers’ have a much bigger part to play. My character is that of a fairly young ‘Engineer’ who ritualistically sacrifices himself in the opening scene. This sacrifice is very different to any others as I have to drink an ancient mix which causes my body to literally disintegrate into the water around me. This then provides the first building blocks for new life to form on the alien planet. There are two other ‘Engineers’ who are in the rest of the film and have fairly largeparts, but you will have to wait for release to find out more." He is drinking the same kind of substance as the young scientist gets from David.... I really dont believe that the opening takes place on earth, it doesnt fit.

I personally think the scene was quite clever showing the seeding of Earth by the Engineers. The Black liquid is obviously an evolutionary accelerant. In the opening scene it accelerated the Space Jockey/Engineers growth so to disintegrate him, this helped to mix his DNA with the already present primordial soup to create life on Earth. The accelerant however when given to Holloway by David seemed to make him aggressive and acted more as a metabolic stimulant.

The liquid imbibed by the humanoid in the opening scene is not the same as the worm imbibed by Holloway.

One thing is confusing about this opening sequence: we see a ship landing on Earth and we see an Engineer as if he had already been here, before the ship arrives. What if it was the decision of this single Engineer to bring life on Earth through his suicide? It could explain the fact that other Engineers come to stop him and, as they fail, force them to develop a weapon to destroy the aberration that this freshly created human life is.

If you take the opening scene by itself, you would easily say that the black liquid breaks down the engineer's organic material then reforms DNA, which creates what are clearly meant to be dividing eukaryotic animal (probably human) cells after some unspecified time. Does the DNA 'seed' the Earth with life? Unlikely because the primordial Earth didn't look like the opening scene. Does it 'speed up' evolution? This also doesn't work because all life on Earth that we know of has a common ancestor, which the engineer would then have to have created, leading back to the first theory. Ultimately I believe the writers wanted to suggest one of these theories, which one doesn't ultimately matter. But the writers didn't pay attention in biology so got their facts wrong. The black liquid later on in the film may or may not be the same stuff. If it's the same stuff then it's using the genetic material of the local worms and grubs to create some other creatures - hence the snake things. But it probably isn't the same stuff, because it had the weird effect of causing that huge tentacle beast to grow inside Shaw just because her fella ingests a drop of the stuff then has sex with her. That bit I don't quite get, unless that black liquid is a bio-weapon (different from the black stuff from the opening scene) that's designed to create monstrous creatures that would take over life on Earth.

I think the black liquid creates a different transformation, that depends upon the taker: > When a MAGGOT takes it, they become a TENTACLE BEAST > When a HUMAN takes it, they become a 'mutated' ENGINEER > When an ENGINEER takes it (or the bubbling liquid in the opening scene), they disintigrate into the BLACK LIQUID (ie: DNA fragments) So my guess is that the opening scene is EARTH (around the time of the dinosaurs) and that the ENGINEER transforms into the BLACK LIQUID which goes into the water. Perhaps when the FISH (or other animals/monkeys) drink this they transform into intelligent HUMANS. But if Holloway was mutating into an ENGINEER then why did he impregnate Shaw with a TENTACLE BEAST? That is where my theory breaks down (unless sperm also become tentacle beasts like maggots!) http://logansky.bandcamp.com