New explanation of plot

if weyland stole the fire (goo) and drank it and reformed dna clones thatd be nuckin futs.

Hmmm... Honestly there is no way to tell if it was earth in the beginning of the film. I also saw grass and moss on the ground so there was some form of life on the planet. I am inclined to think that maybe your right and they are clones of some sort. The black goo looks to serve a few purposes. Destroy and rebuild life AND create a Xeno(The Xeno picture on the wall) The canisters began to ooze because they screwed up the atmosphere in the room when the door opened. THAT was the only reason. There is no way the severed head could have stayed so well preserved. The room was sterile until the door opened then everything was compromised. Archeologist today have to be careful about that too. With how RS left it, there is no way to even accurately guess what the engineers relationship was too us really. For all we know the Engineers didn't build us. We both could have been built/created by someone else. They could have been on the same branch but placed on another planet and progressed faster. Maybe they screwed their planet up, found us and decided to take earth for themselves. Even if you suspend belief for a movie, the odds of one engineer repopulating a planet full of diverse life ranging from Dinosaurs to ants and then somehow ending up with identical replica(DNA and all) is so far fetched it's just plain ridiculous.

I don't know about your interpretation of the beginning, but i have a couple of things i didn't see anybody mention. the engineers' and human dna are identical. the engineers therefore did not engineer humans. the engineers physique was different from and superior to humans, which does not make sense since they are genetically human predecessors. The engineers must have modified their bodies with nano and bio tech. The goo the engineer drinks at the beginning (goo 1) could be a medium for nano things. Notice that the goo 1 does not kill -- his dna is reassembled, we see formation of human erythrocytes short while later in water. A possibile way the goo 1 act is to reverse the chirality of the DNA strand, making it impossible for the engineer & human species to mate? maybe they want to create an independent "branch" of their species? maybe this way the right-handed human DNA is not affected by the alien virus and could preserve the threatened species? could somebody who plans to re-watch the movie watch the way the DNA strands shown at the beginning and compare which direction they twist? I saw people on this forum confusing the dead bodies by the shut gate with the alien space jockeys. but these were the very engineers who didn't make it to the shelter! (or the "dna cargo" as they call it). the weird alienish appearance of the bodies is due to their armor / the bio modifications. The bio goo present in the building needs not be the nanotech goo engineers created. Indeed, it's capable of inducing the "alien infection" so it contains the alien bio material. Notice there's no goo in the actual ship. Finally, i'm REALLY confused as to why did the engineer bother to come back to the prometheus ship. why.

Ok......here is my two cents: They were in fact Engineers, seeding the galaxy with the 'primordial slime' contained in the 'vases'. Their base was where they stockpiled/created their goo, which had the unintended effect of mutating the small worms (the meal worms on the floor of the cave early on) starting the sequence which resulted in the pseudo - snake, the squid/giant face-hugger, and ultimately the early sequence xenomorph. Why they wanted to destroy the human race is of course a mystery to be solved once a single human with an android head arrives at the Alien home planet. (cough cough) :) The alien ship is nearly identical to the derelict ship in Alien, the dead pilot in that Movie also the same as the Engineer in his helmet. So, the ties to Alien are effectively the further mutation of the worm/squid/xenomorph into the badassed creatures of movies 1 and 2 (I refuse to acknowledge any other movies in that sequence :)) the crashed alien ship and similarities to the Engineer pilot. This was obviously a way to establish another story line in the same genre, since anyone making another Alien movie was probably going to be shot at dawn for creating yet another waste of space like movies 3, 4, 5, ad infinitum.

They opened the door to the ship (where countless other cannisters were too) and compromised the environment there too - but we didn't see ooze. Maybe the trigger that the virus needed was atmospheric change ( like the mist in alien).

Makes no sense whatsoever. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Dear Weyhops, thanks for thoughts - the purpose of goo 1 was to completely erase all trace of this guys existance - either to avoid future contact ( when they re-colonise) , or as a ceremonial 'cleansing' of the universe of all the flaws of the human race. Remember that this guy was obviously a far advanced version of the human race - they probably started out similarly to us. This would explain the larger and stronger physical stature (it took about 5000 years for us to stand upright!).

Hey West - I see Pixar has a new one coming out!!

@Wayne -- yes, they were more advanced, but only technologically. The DNA is described to "match", and shaw says they're a human genetic predecessor, meaning the opposite to what you assert -- that humans have evolved from the engineers. the superior phenotype is thus not caused by genes.

Weyhops, mate, I like you, keep it coming. Changes in physical appearance (or mental for that matter) are adaptations in response to combatting either the environment or predators for a species to survive. Read "Darwinism". This doesn't change actual DNA strands. For the human race to 'begin again on Earth, as I'm suggesting happened here - to start from a single DNA strand and not through sexual reproduction would take that species back to its very roots.

Weyhops, mate, I like you, keep it coming. Changes in physical appearance (or mental for that matter) are adaptations in response to combatting either the environment or predators for a species to survive. Read "Darwinism". This doesn't change actual DNA strands. For the human race to 'begin again on Earth, as I'm suggesting happened here - to start from a single DNA strand and not through sexual reproduction would take that species back to its very roots.

Oh dear... why couldn't you be a cashier. I still will debate the difference between genes and DNA, but you will have to explain 'chirality' - or is that a type o?

@Wayne -- it just so happens i work with DNA sequencing on a daily basis xD It also so happens that changes in physical appearance, aka evolution, that result from adaptation to the changing environment, are implemented through mutations in the DNA code. Charles Darwin, when writing his observation on evolution, had no clue about the hypothesis of genes put forward 30 years later by Mendel. The DNA completely and uniquely determines the physical appearance of an organism (modulo external factors such as sun tan and random mutations in the later organism development). Whether the species originated from a single strand or a whole organism does not matter -- genetic code is genetic code. We both agree that the notion of the super-human species being an "engineer" is imposed in the movie by the ever-confused humans, and is not faithful to their true relation to us. i still wonder about the chirality thing. if true, this would push a lot of the guessing forward!

i meant how the two strands of DNA twist together to form a helix. they can either do it one way, or the other -- try it with two strips of paper to quickly convince yourself of the possibilities. All (most) of our DNA ( == GENES!!!) is twisted one way, it's just how nature at some point randomly chose one of the two directions ( == chiralities). If there existed a human being with his DNA twisting the opposite direction, he would not be able to reproduce with other folks unless they were also of his type. Now in the beginning sequence, we see the DNA strand unwind into two separate pieces, and later they come back together to form a complete DNA strand again. If the chirality was reversed in the process, this would signify that the engineers had a deliberate intention to "branch out" their species into an independent one, without the possibility of cross-mating!!

Weyhops - thanks, don't atually remember that happening in film opening. May have happened. What I took from film opening was that the purpose of the poison the guy took was to completely dispose of him - to erase all evidence of himself. This is supported by the camera going deep into his body and seeing the DNA strands 'burning. Your DNA 'changing idea is just another reason I'm going to have to watch this thing again! As I've said to someone on this site already - the opening scenes of this movie is THE clincher....whatever else you read into it will always lead you back there.

If you're still there Weyhops - as the DNa doctor, can you explain 3 or 4 hour evolution of a species in the black goo going from goo to octopus ( or quatropus) to human like bodied Alien. Could there have been some DNA splicing between 'human and octopus? Accident or normal progression for this species you think.?