The Engineers are not very smart

Perhaps they created these biological constructs to be weapons to destroy life and create new and more powerful forms of it. It could have been a big experiment of "hmmm let's see what happens if..." and we are the rats within the experiment. I mean, they created us... they could have been testing that out and now are moving on to a new experiment. Totally plausible.

bump

Ever wonder maybe the suicide at the beginning of the movie is just that. It is a noble act committed by a sinner or wrongdoer of their kind. The disintegrated DNA recombining is just an accident. That's why the Engineer wakes up not in rage but in fear and confusion. He probably thinks: "Holy shit, these monkeys actually learn to speak! I am outtahere!!"

Perhaps they are as the greek myths portray them... always fighting. Perhaps the ship load of nasties is for a war unrelated to us, but upon discovering that one (or a small few) of their number, had spread their seed to a distant world, they made plans to wipe out that world using a Trojan Horse-Shoe shaped ship full of nasty little creatures that jump out when your not expecting them. I'm totally guessing, based on the way they lay on the mythology fairly thick, but Socrates criticised greek society for its might is right attitude. He drank hemlock, after being convicted of 'impiety' but his ideas spread nonetheless (or perhaps because he dared to stand for them rather than recant). I see an echo of that in the opening scene, and the ship there is a round saucer, not a horse shoe. I think that's not a trivial point, and suggests a different part of Space Jockey society has taken their own action, separate from the bomber command of LV 223. I would guess that it is space jockeys from this discus ship that visit our ancestors, and point out their origins in the sky. (LV 223 might have been a nice spot, prior to some major war in the millenia between our prehistory, and the Prometheus mission. ) They work on perfecting their own bioweapons on LV 223 which proves to be a pandora's box, and kill all but their pilot in the process. He, when confronted by the humans (created by a Space Jokckey) and then an android (created by humans themselves) might feel it's a bit of an abonimation. Hence he paints the floor and walls with their brain matter. Typical offended god stuff.

It's probably important to ask why theyre killing us in the first place. I didn't interpret that they were killing us because we're dangerous... which seems to be what you suggest in the post body [quote]why would they kill us in a form that would create other life (life more violent and volatile than humans)[/quote] The overall idea was that we were made just for fun, as David suggests when he tells shaw's boyfriend that humans made him and all robots 'because they can'. So I think its more likely theyre bored of us and want to make aliens to kill two birds with one stone... bird 1: destroy boring humans, bird 2: create new life form thats awesome.

And why has there been a multi-thousand year enculturation of human societies that produces star maps guiding us, not to a home world, but to the weapons dump being used to destroy us? Apart from bad scripting of course.

We could be generous and say that it's a 'tribute' to the original film, where they mistake the nature of the call, and go someplace they should never set foot, But I think bad scripting is the real cause. They could come up with a plausible excuse, but I doubt they'll bother. (e.g. 35,000 years ago LV 223 may not have been full of these bio weapons. For all we know that might be just the last 2,000 years (i.e. the accident that wiped out most of the Space Jockey crew happened early on in their research.)

[i]"Why would a super Engineer race make the most incredibly difficult way to kill us possible? Food for thought:)" "And why has there been a multi-thousand year enculturation of human societies that produces star maps guiding us, not to a home world, but to the weapons dump being used to destroy us? Apart from bad scripting of course." [/i] Lindork wrote it.

Maybe they were at war with the predator race. They developed bio weapons, and one got loose and the sj ship crashed. Maybe earth was, a base or a planet where the predators occupied and the cosmic explosion 500 million years ago was a WMD from the engineers. The predator race still had an ancient base on earth, buried under the ice in Antarctica, so maybe they were all destroyed here, or left. Maybe earth is just collateral damage in the war.

Maybe the engineers we meet on LV223 are just space truckers, transporting goo from planet to planet resupplying a bio-war raging on in some galaxy far far away when engineer Homer Simpson drops a canister and kills all his mates. He wakes up to see some puny dogs barking at his chest and kicks them around the jockey room because they opened his beer fridge and spoiled his best brew!

... the Engineers are the tool of creation...

[quote] If they are this master humanoid race, and they want to kill the life they had created; why would they kill us in a form that would create other life (life more violent and volatile than humans). [/quote] my suggestion/theory is, [1]alien is a natural predator/parasite of the engineers [2] .. but is the basis of their biotech (e.g. imagine if we build society around bioengineered spider-silk) [3] they may even have evolved a sacrificial culture to breed useful xenon (see mural) [4] they created humans as dumbed down versions of themselves as xeno incubators. :)

Despite their awesome intellect and ability cross the stars, terraform planets and create life based on a DNA template, why couldnt they design a simple door lock that an android couldn't open in 10 seconds

But the black goo doesn't seem to kill humans, it just made Holloway and Fifield a bit mental..