Ridley Scott is wrong - First Engineer Not On Earth

@exenonguard ...look my friend firstly sorry about these multiple posts don't know how that happened....second of all I'm not picking apart anything...you presented something then said you didn't say this or that...when you clearly did...thats why i pulled your quotes from your post...id read it right the first time...i completely understand your post....and like i said theres some good stuff there for the sci-fi-verse...its just not relevant to this movie...you've completely disregarded the story relating to earth and human beings and the search for answers that is the foundation and evidence for this movie and indeed why they go to find the 'creators' in the first place in favour of a made up of your own thing theory just to get a point across about a different planet other than earth that theres no evidence in the movie of and gives no other thought to how we ended up on earth as beings with the same dna as an alien who sacrificed himself on another planet somewhere...that we somehow know all about...to go and visit......simple as that....i wish you well....but i really think you need a 2nd viewing....to disassociate some things.

I imagine that the engineers are like that of Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. They created the planet and need to put it in motion..but no mice to front the bill for the space design

@ZeroGuard25 First of all...Are you a teenager who needs to be on the AVP, transformers or Dragonball-Z forums. How can you demand Ridley is wrong about a script he aided in writing with an opening scene he $&%# directed. He's so F____! wrong about his own vision. I got it....this movie is real and Ridley is telling the story and directing a movie about something that really happened. That's how he's wrong. Go play video games!

XenoGuard25 at first I disagreed with your take. Then I thought about it and agreed with it but then I realized some other things… Before you continue, I am actually unaware of what Ridley’s take is on any of this stuff if he’s spoken about it already so I'm not trying to say I'm right and everyone's wrong. Its just a loose interpretation... The black oil is something that mutates specific DNA types in a host carrier relationship. Its not something that creates all life. Its got to be something that creates life on certain terms. I think it has a method but I think it is incompatible where the oil is mixed directly with Human DNA. Perhaps the real purpose of the engineer was to come back to earth and run experiments to create new species that could be used elsewhere? A new slave race for instance? Its no different than Weyland having David created. After thinking about this, I believe the first engineer was on LV-223 which originally could have been a large installation. As Xenoguard25 proposes, the engineer decides that he can not go along with his race’s plans just as I’m sure there would be some human opposed to the creation of David the android. In fact you can see the attitude by many of the crew towards David. I think David resented them…. So anyway, we see 1st engineer in a robe near a waterfall that goes into a river. The amount of oil he ingests destroys him and we are shown on a molecular level how it destroys his DNA and it continues to destroy. Would it stop destroying if it came into contact with other organisms in the water? What would it do to the water? What would that oil do to plant life or trees? Were the earthworms natural to that planet or were they only on the engineers ship because they had a specific plan or experiment? And how would the destructiveness of the oil affect the atmosphere? Remember when our crew arrived there was very little oxygen and primarily carbon. Remember the decapitated space jokey? They carbon dated his body at what was it? 2000 years? Is it possible that what the 1st engineer set in motion could have taken 2000 years for LV-223 to have the atmosphere that it does when our crew arrives? I say this because if these Engineers have the same DNA as us its not a far stretch to assume that they need oxygen to breath. Notice when they entered the engineers space ship, there was oxygen. That was a stupid thing to do to remove their helmets but I think it was more Ridley stressing this. Apparently the engineers need oxygen. If not, why generate oxygen for thousands of years? My only thing, is that if they need Oxygen then at the end when the Engineer goes after shaw, we see him without his elephant mask. Do you think he used it on the way to the pod and took it off in the other room? If so, he’s a dummy he could have used that against squid baby. Also he must share the same DNA as this crew because he was so arrogant to not bring a weapon. He didn’t even bring a blade. Now I was disappointed to see him go out like that….He went out like a punk…He could have sliced that squid and grilled his ass for lunch…jeez And then the result of the squid having come from host Shaw who was impregnated by Holloway who I think is unable to be used directly by the oil as a “host” but can be used as a carrier, remember the piles of spacejokeys on the alien ship? Remember how Mohawk dude just freaked out? I think he would have blown up like the decap head if left alone and would have been like the pile of space jockeys. So the squid the result of a mutation or two and stupid with rage engineer now equals Giger’s elongated alien head standing upright…. For me, I laughed in the theater cuzz that was like Ridley throwing up a middle finger!

lol...let's talk about perspective and namely why would we think an alien would think like us or hold our values? Wouldn't it make more sense that they actually have their own values and culture (which is different than ours). So based on what we observe, at the start of the film, the first (seen) engineer drinks a brew specifically designed to seed a barren planet with his (one would infer carefully) parsed DNA. In this sense, he's the progenitor of all life on earth. This means that the engineers see a kind of honor in death that begets life (because surely they could design a surrogate for such a donation otherwise)...hence it is desired. Interestingly congruent with the perspective the initial post XenoGuard25 made on this thread, at the end of the film, Weyland risks all of humanity (for whom he presumably worked all his life) waking the Engineer for his own personal gain at the end of his life (extension of his personal life, rejuvenation of his personal body, or perhaps ending his personal curiosity). This is the desperation of a made-thing who views his own personal spark as the most precious. It is not the perspective of a maker, an engineer, who has near total mastery over the making or unmaking of their life (per the beginning). I mention this because that means the director understands there are two different cultures and only one of them descends from our current value system. However, when the captain, who doesn't care about anything in particular, is willing to kamikaze his ship containing his one and only personal body into the Engineer's craft, that is transcendent of personal, aka desperation of a made thing who views his own personal spark as the most precious. And it might explain why the Engineer didn't shoot the Prometheus down immediately or perceive it as a threat until it was too late; Engineers don't expect such actions of us just as you, XenoGuard25, didn't expect such behavior as peaceful and voluntary of the alien at the start of the movie.

absolutely done with this thread..... firstly @greg.... i didn't present a theory here....just the facts of the story of the film that i watched unfolding in front of my eyes....we are told by the story tellers...its on earth...read every official review...if you have to...and they ALL begin with alien sacrifices himself and begins life on earth....nothing anywhere apart from made up theories says this happens on a different planet.....and if it did....how would our ancestors know about it. @Kratos....are you and xeongaurd25 the same person?....id like you to give me evidence from the film that backs up yours and his evaluation....where in the film...does it say any of this?your completely speculating....and holding the flaws with the film up as if they have some kind of meaning....they don'tt the fact that the engineer isn't wearing a spacesuit at the end is a flaw....and an unexplained one at that..final thing...the aliens/engineers DNA at the start is clearly shown to spark life into volution...His DNA recombines with other elements and forms cells which are GROWING and MULTIPLYING....its right there on the screen....with all the disregard for narrative and ambiguous ardour of this film you'd think we'd get what WAS actually presented to you.....big things have small beginnings....Goodbye

While I'm not sure which theory is correct , I think it's unwise to say " how would humans have known they created and seeded their DNA if that scene was on lv 223?!?!?" The humans were not watching themselves being created so they never would have seen that happen, which implies there must have been other encounters. The cave paintings and opening scene do not match.

@XenoGuard25 i was going to make my first post but i came across yours and now im not sure lol but heres a comment your theory is right up my alley but i have a lil more of a wild twist. i to don't believe he was on earth while drinking the venom like black goo i think he was on lv223 here is the twist i don't think the flat saucer ufo ship was the "mother ship" u say it is i think that is either a different type of alien that live on the "engineers planet or just different aliens all together!!!! how i cam up with this is because when the first alien movie came out years later on line the main question was who's the guy in the chair i did a lot of reading up on that question and he was always referd to as THE SPACE JOCKEY flying to different planets and Galaxy's i think that is there mission and only mission to follow orders maybe from the being that were flying that ship in the opening scene to take cargo to different places in the universe and that cargo would be those pods that would explain why they were not prepared for an out break because i would like to think being that there very smart and if they made something like that they would had have plenty of precaution's to override any possible out break now if my theory is right riddley can make so many movies off of this and take his time doing so because every one will want to know who are the beings that flew the ship in the opening scene where did they come from are they the real engineers it would be even more questions well let me know what you think

Great theories everyone! Whether you agree or disagree there have been so many well thought out posts. I'm really happy to share my idea with you all, and for you all to share yours with me. Thanks again for the posts! Again, great ideas :)

@XenoGuard25, hats off to you, way to think out of the box. i am totally with you on this. I thought it was obvious that directors, writers, etc., are open to the fact that their interpretations of their own work is not the only valid interpretation (david lynch is a great example of a director who doesnt even make an attempt to offer interpretations of his own meaning-heavy work), so to propose an alternative to ridley's theory is 100% valid imo. On top of that, the Greek legend of Prometheus is one of a trickster-god, and there are tons of correlations between his mythology and the movie, which leads me to want to question everything proposed as "obvious" in the film.

@Ufokid, I think you're on the right track. Personally, I'm not 100% on board with another alien race, but I'm not going to be stubborn and say it doesn't make sense. Another alien race totally makes sense in fact. I really think you should check this thread out: http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/7436 @Goo, Thanks so much for the kind words! I do believe the Engineers created life, but I feel that first scene was just too inconsistent to be Earth. I mean, if Ridley really wanted that scene to be Earth, why not start the scene zoomed out showing Earth? Why not show something that's recognizable to the audience that it's Earth? Why not show some darn text at the bottom of the screen "Earth: Year 500 Billion years ago." Anyhow, thanks so much for reading my theory. I hope you the best! :D

When the crew arrived on LV-223 didn't they say that there was no standing water on the moon? The sacrificial engineer fell into water. I assume he fell into water on Earth.