Prometheus Explained (yeah right)

Entropy608
MemberOvomorphJune 05, 20121449 Views7 RepliesDLed a bootleg russian language version of the film last night and I liked what I saw (obviously I skipped a good bit of the dialouge, but I got the gist of it). Of course I will be going see it when it opens here in the US (probably multiple times). Many people have pointed out legitimate flaws in the plot, and I may be trying to make sense of some bad storytelling, as much as I don't want that to be the case, but here's my take/theory on what happened:
From the ancient starmaps and such, we can surmise that there were engineers who visited man and were a benevolent guiding force in our past. This leads to the obvious question of, well then why the heck did they want to destroy us?! For this I can think of a few possibilities:
1) The sacrifice engineer at the beginning is the true "Prometheus" which the film was named after. He has stolen life (indeed their very DNA) from the engineers and given it to/created mankind. The engineers which created us and helped our evolution were not supposed to be doing that (Prometheus myth theme). Their actions were found out by the other engineers, they were punished, and we were supposed to be exterminated.
2) We were an experiment, created "because they can", and that experiment was finished so we were to be exterminated. This one seems like a longshot because, from a human perspective, it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for no reason other than you just feel like it. Then again, maybe we are not meant to understand the motives of our creators (gods)...which would make perfect sense.
3) It may be important to look at the timing of the engineers mission to exterminate humanity, which was interrupted. From what I understand, they determine the dead engineer to be approximately 2000 years old...The obvious historical event at that time would be Jesus' crucifiction. One could guess that Jesus was an agent of the engineers (God?), sent to mankind to continue their guidance of us, but we're just so hard headed and beligerant that we nail him to a cross instead (forgive them father for they know not what they do). The engineers see this, determine the mankind experiment to be a failure doomed to forever remain in ignorance and petty fighting amongst ourselves (about that I would agree with them!) and say: "OK, that's enough, time to scrap this and start over".
Personally, I believe theory 3 to be the explaination for the following reasons:
a) Theory 1 above would certainly tie in with the title of the movie and the theme of the prometheus myth, but it requires way too much assumption on the part of the viewer (different factions of engineers?). It would have been too easy to throw in a couple scenes (hologram recordings maybe) of the rogue engineers being "brought to justice" or something and being forced to show the location of earth (or something like that). Admittedly, that would be spoon feeding the mystery right out of the movie, but I still feel like if this is supposed to be the explanation, they needed to tie it into the movie better.
b) Theory 2 above could be inferred from the events of the film, if it weren't for...
c) The age of the dead engineer is the big "key" to the mystery. Giving it's age was completely arbitrary. There was no "plot" reason to do so, other than for there to be some science in this fiction. I believe it was a conscious decision to link the mission to exterminate mankind with a particular point or event in our history. IMO the age given has way too much historical significance to be dismissed as coincedental.
Of course this is all based off of a grainy bootleg in a language I understand maybe 3 or 4 words of total, plus what I glean from the spoiler boards. Perhaps my take on this will change once I see it in theaters. I would be especially interested to hear the dialogue as Shaw is pleading with Weyland/David while they wake up the engineer. I watched that scene maybe a dozen times and the engineers look of bewilderment/anger seems to evolve as the scene unfolds. It goes from initially confusion, to anger when Shaw is pleading with them, to utter bewilderment when David speaks to him, then finally he's furious and rips David's head off (and pretty much stays that way for the rest of the film). To me, it looked like he could either understand what they were saying or he could read their minds. This is especially apparent when they show his brief fascination with David.
Whew, that was a loooong post. Congrats if you read this far : )