My theory about the ending

I quite like your theory, seems very valid, especially the war considering the engineers. I too questioned the differentiation in ship designs and the abrupt hostility of the engineer at the end. David did seem to be more aware of the cirucumstances at hand. I also agree of how you belive the proto-xeno and giant facehugger are a messed up genetic combination of human, engineer and the bio-infectious fluid, which I still dont fully understand what it is.

I tend to agree with you about the Engineer War, but it's not the only coherent explanation. We don't know when the sacrificial Engineer died on Earth, it could have been billions of years before the events in Prometheus. Much can change during that time, including the opinions, values and technology of the Engineer race.

True there could have been development in tech, but we still have to explain why the humans on earth pointed to a weapons complex, and how they found out. To me it seems, they were warned of it, by the engineers etc etc.

I think its a very valid idea,I have a similar belief on this original facehugger and original queen,formed from a combination of black goo,infection,intercourse with human,then face hugger with engineer.

I suppose humanity would only get to the stars when it moved on technologically enough which we did. My main question still is why it was sitting there with the engineer asleep,that grates at me.Why with all the ships there for so long had one not left to destroy earth???

I think because the moon was for the other pre-huamns they were at war with, (the enginners) , thats why the weapons are so over powered, and there were so many ships. The moon was there for a while, winning the war, then they found out about earth, they planned a mission to take it out, as we saw in the film when the robot watched that recording. but shit went wrong, and they didnt take off. Only when we arrived coukd we sort out mess the failed experments left behind, and thus, wake him up.

The moon is the death star?? hehe 1)why? good question, many answers to them, a lot we wouldn't like David gives one of those answers. 2) maybe 1 is Military transport aircraft (or not even military) and the other a fighter? (or even something else) 3) as the movie is influenced by ancient aliens, so we can assume they visited earth a few times. They pointed out a rather big region where they come from (starmap, a bunch of stars, that's a huge area) not that planet and moon especially. But Weyland did found this moon s possible target in that region. (as they seem to get in trouble +- 2000 years ago, it's a valid assumption that they didn't come back ever since) 4) Lab? military outpost? temple of life? 5) .... 6) What did David say?

There is a lot of ssuming, that they wanted to kill humans destroy earth, but that's not explicitly said anywhere. All we know is what Daivd say: but he seems to have his own game.

Ah! Nice, almost my theory. Darrenhoward, thank you for your thread and contribution! A good read and nice to know someone really enjoyed the movie and started to think. To me the title 'Prometheus' is the key. Here's my theory: To me all the pre-humans are colonialists whose modus operandi is first to start with terraforming, go to hibernation sleep, then using bioweapons wipe out all inconvenient lifeforms bigger than a cat (dinosaurs, monkeys, etc.) that evolved after terraforming, go to sleep, come back to colonize so they can finally walk free without gas masks. The reason why they need to colonize is because they're nomads. Nearly extinct, most likely responsible for their fate, they depend on hibernation stasis and breather masks. One of them, we'll call him a dissident engineer, disagreed with the plan, or didn't believe his highly militarized race will not repeat the same mistakes, so he was banished to be left to die on a recently terraformed planet, let's call it Earth, with just a robe on. But as a last act against his peers he stole the technology behind the biological weapons (the seed for xenomorphs, just add water), to use it for a new purpose he believes in: create new life instead of destruction. He has no other means to replicate his species but he can through a genetic self-breakdown use his entire body with the dark liquid compound from a "genobomb", to plant the seeds of his genome on the new planet. It's his sacrifice for his species, to create a new race that has a chance at not repeating the same mistakes. But it wouldn't be enough, back on LV-223, a rearming site, other dissidents engage into a scheme to protect the new human race by sabotaging the genobomb silos, killing off almost everyone. By sabotaging I guess they unscrewed the lid on all the bombs and let the xenomorphs out. One survivor, we'll call him "Angry Andy", successfully sealed the cargo leaving his friends behind and put himself in hibernation stasis to wait for the xenomorphs to die off until he can resume his duty. Because of Angry Andy's survival the sabotage didn't complete entirely and the Prometheus crew wakes him up so Angry Andy when meeting Peter Weyland and friends realizes what the dissident engineer has done after he was left on Earth so he hurries to do what is necessary: start the extermination phase on Earth immediately. When he is rammed by the Prometheus and crashes down he knows the danger of leaving survivors so he tracks Shaw down to kill her. He fails. What happens afterwards is similar to what will happen to humans in the movie Alien Resurrection when transporting biological weapons and slacking on containment. Shaw will visit other planets to meet the engineers and ask for an explanation and by doing that spread the infection to a galactic scale to exterminate the space jockeys, or only discover that it was already done. The reason for this assumption is that Earth and the human race there are still standing centuries later. Shaw's last action would be to leave beacons broadcasting her warning message to prevent Earth from doing the same mistake. We'll later know that Weyland wants to follow the same destructive path as our predecessors and only one individual will be ready to die to stop the cycle. Ripley. Prometheus is the myth of a son of a god who stole a secret (fire) to give human mortals a shot at life, and rise closer to the level of gods. He was cast away and the humans were given weaknesses and higher mortality to compensate for their acquired power. This backs up our theories.

Nicky, that was incedible. Loved the read. However, why are there no woman in the film, woman pre-humans. I think if we add the twist that the pre-human race is unable to replicate its self, and actually, earth was an experiment that failed to achieve the standards they wanted.....you see where i am going? It just occured to me that there all men. How do they mate? so earth didnt achieve the standards they wanted, this is what created the rift in opinions, thus the split in motives nad then we get your theory.

Thanks! And that was an interesting question! I completely missed that... the first idea that popped in my head was the reason why Angry Andy chased Shaw, because she's a woman and that's hard to come by. Earth humans are indeed an underachievement, we are flawed, diversified, and leave apart our rather effective immune system, we evolved to be smaller, scared and emotional. But when you look at the perfect "lack of humanity" in Angry Andy I don't believe he has any interest in other human races. They are still XX / XY gendered and can replicate on embryonic level very easily like us, that means use any woman on Earth without using a single 0,01 percent of our genes to make tube babies. I mean if they needed us for reproduction we are still good enough as tubes. To me the lack of women on screen could be limited screen time. We only identify 3 males, it's bad movie writing to forget to include a whole gender. Another theory is that the space jockeys are averagely sexist and keep women out of the military or dangerous professions. Just like we've been doing ourselves. But imagine how awesome it would have been if they showed a woman space jockey at the very beginning of the movie :)

Could the bio-weapons not be weapons at all, but instead the pre-human's attempt to replicate they're species? This would explain why there were no female pre-humans, and why the pilot when he was woken up attacked Weyland etc. in order to protect the pots of black goo. It doesn't explain why they would go to Earth to destroy it - but then David seemed to have an alterior motive throughout the film...

I thought about that but if it was the case why would they store their failed attempts the last 2000 years while they succeeded to 99% about 35,000 years before? Biologically you cannot not have women, it's the gender by default without the differentiation development from genes on the Y chromosomes and certain genes on autosomes. It would be harder to engineer non sterile males when you lack the Y chromosome in a population than the other way around. Assuming they would destroy humans on Earth is an assumption and Ridley Scott might as well prove it wrong in releasing deleted scenes or in making another movie. The question remains if we have failed to develop the conscience level to understand the space jockeys and that the reason may not even matter, or if we followed the exact same path of creation and destruction. David makes us believe the former, Janek makes us believe the latter. Shaw struggles to choose what to believe and leaves an open end by seeking more answers instead.