why didn't THE ENGINEERS return to Earth?

I thought it's obvious something went wrong, killing them, thus unable to go anywhere. for 2 and 3, i guess anything is possible.

Hi i watched the film....and i saw quite differently to everyone here. A large military instilation of wmd...this is true it's also very prob what america/russia did in their dissarmament programme... All drums of of bio former accounted for apart from the one on earth? Maybe they had tested the former..like the 1st atomic tests in the nevada desert.. And maybe they were going back to earth to see their findings.......

But there was no evidence that there were any 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. What we saw was that the 'black goo' made the worms and the humans incredibly large and/or strong & violent, and it seriously messed with the reproductive cycle. But no actual 'destruction'!

Depends how you interpret the scene in the bridge where David is looking at the 3D hologram showing various systems, and then they disappear one by one. It could be that Earth was the last remaining one, or was just the one assigned to be targeted by that particular ship, but the crew got wiped out by their own creations. Still, if it was anything like how humans wage wars, they'd simply have sent another ship in the meantime from some central command that didn't get a confirmed strike on target. I suppose we'll have to wait until the next installment to find out. There's also the possibility that most of them didn't know about Earth until a long time after it had been seeded (note that it's a different type of ship in the first scene) and it may have not been part of their plan to seed earth, much like the Greek Gods did not wish for Prometheus to give fire to the humans, and were quite pi$$ed off about it when he did.

You don't see these installations as producing weapons of mass destruction? They are stored, and transported in a ship that seems custom built for it. The ship is designed for the space jockeys, and their cargo. It's not like they were a crew of normal size humans who got mutated by some odd liquid, they fit their suits and seats perfectly, and before David opens that first door, all the little worms inside seem to be contained as does the goo, kept dormant by a controlled climate which alters when they open the door. (of course something had leaked out somewhere a few thousand years previously that wiped out most of the crew. Perhaps the reason they were all running towards the room with the green crystal is that it can put these things into dormant state when activated.) (I think that also harks back to the unexplained blue light just above the eggs in the ship in Alien - which I assume was probably meant as some sort of control or warning system. ) I don't think there's much reasonable doubt about the deliberate nature of the ship. Their little creautres start off as little worms in the gravelly floor (isn't that the only chamber with such a floor?) and the "black goo" is contained in a controlled environment and the worms become active when the temperature rises, as does the "black goo". Seems designed towards that end to me. Perhaps they [u]also[/u] worship these things, or they are important to some death cult beliefs (look at the mural on the ceiling, and the image of a Xenomorph on the wall) they surely knew they had huge numbers of these things that they could unleash at will ([i]or by accident[/i]). By definition, a weapon of mass destruction.

...as I understood it, the goo reacted to carbon. Similar to when Hurt discovers the first Eggs in Alien. What if we(humans) are being used for [b]breeding[/b] purposes rather than to be wiped out? Hence the image pointing towards the stars; For us to make contact when we have evolved enough(homo sapien) to journey to the stars. We are at the right time to be impregnated. We already know that when an Engineer is impregnated its a different Xenomorph....but we clearly see an image of the Original Xenomorph/Small Facehugger on the wall of the temple (so it can’t be evolution if the original exists already). Maybe the Engineers are not the only beings in the universe....why do I say that? For the fact that they hid the ships under mounds. That would explain why the pictures pointed towards the [b]moon[/b] rather than the Engineers home planet....why direct us there? There must be another Engineer species or at least another race of Alien (as opposed to Xenomorph).....

so, can anyone answer my question? "Why didn't the ENGINEERS return to Earth?" it was on their 'starmap' ... did they CRYO their entire race, in those bomber croissants, awaiting Earthers to come release them? Is that the punishment?

As stated previously, perhaps they were not supposed to.... They waited for us to be evolved enough to travel the stars. We require a certain intelligence to get to their moon. We already know that Xenomorphs mimic the hosts like the dog Alien, Hybrid Alien etc. Perhaps [b]HOMO SAPIENS[/b] are the best breeding vessels.....

I think they did. At the start of the film i thought that could of been Earth. My thought was originally that all those cave paintings of the star pattern was created by that ancient human being. He drank the "goo" and its destroyed his DNA structure and the ship that dropped him off left but waited until he killed himself. Theres a lot of mysteries that makes the movie really cool i just hope we dont have to wait another 33 years for a follow up!

Well, I disagree, as Holloway puts it, there's been a MESSAGE (either repeat visited or handed down through the generations) given to man of where our 'space ancestors' came from. It's been recorded for as long as there's been Human Empire, which is like at least 35,000 years... this film makes it sound like The Engineers could (and maybe did) pop back during those Empire Times to keep his eye on man. Maybe he was due, but then you'd imagine the FIRST ATOMIC TEST back in 1939 might have signified that Earth was 'due a visit'. I dunno. Maybe the OTHER TWO PROMETHEUS FILMS will explain all. I just want a unified story, not some tattered newspaper like the dog's had it.

I think it's for mass CREATION - to quote David - to create, first you must destroy.

I don't want it 'ALL' explaining - films are FAR better leaving a little to the imagination.

look, they have the STARMAP and they can plot a trajectory back to Earth, and "multiple references through history" suggests that they've 'been here more than once' and BEEN WORSHIPPED EVEN. I mean, that's what the whole preamble of the film's all about, I'm not wrong on this? Right? :)

Wow, I'm just looking at my old posts here and how much I disagree with them. A lot of thinking under the bridge since then (oh, wait trolls think under bridges... I mean water under the bridge.) I think that they go every few thousand years anyway, and wait in stasis until Dr. Frankenstein sends Igor for more specimens for the lab. The dates on the cave drawings are very far apart, some less than 2000 years ago. whatever screwed up these guys the ships in other domes kept on going doing their thing.

Hadley's Hope, yeah, a LOT of discussional water under the bridge, and that's a good thing - it gets 'da leetle gray sellz' working, non? Anyway, I really don't GET why there are FIVE of these 'bomber command' shelters in the middle of nowhere. Why not five thousand? And you really think the other four would have worked? You really don't think LV-223 is a HAUNTED PLANET i.e. something about the tech that means, "Whoever turns up, puts their twist on the morphology/mutability of the place, its atmosphere and its trophies?" :)