The Engineers never had a plan to kill the humans.

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Rayved

MemberOvomorphJune 09, 2012

When the engineer woke up near the end of the movie, he didn't understand the language of the humans and he seemed rather intrigued by them. I think that if they had a different approach he would have been nice to the humans. An important clue about this is when the old man's daughter tells him that every living creature must die and that it's the natural course of things. That quote wasn't there for nothing The engineer, being so much smarter, knows that immortality would only destroy everything. All living creatures must return to the soil one day to contribute for other life forms and let the natural cycle continue. As soon as the robot talked to the engineer in his language, the engineer realized how corrupted these humans were (he associated them all together) because of the intentions of the old man, so he immediately judged them dangerous for all life. These engineers were rather the bringer of life than the bringer of death. The planet you see in the first scene of the movie is Earth not inhabited by any animal life form. The engineer drank a different kind of goo that destroyed him and created various life forms into the water. Many years later when those life forms evolved and created a complete ecosystem the Ancients returned to Earth to colonize and the humans are their direct descendants. I think they acted this way to escape a war. In the holograms inside the engineer's spaceship, you see them running away and they're scared. Their home planet was probably invaded by the predators or something else and they've been colonizing other planets in hope that their species doesn't die. When they examine the head, they see that it's been dead for about 2000 years. 2000 years before would be the birth of Jesus. That ship we see in the movie didn't make it but maybe another one did. They clearly had something to do on Earth and I doubt that this was the only ship headed there. Now putting everything religious aside, Jesus was a very knowledgeable person who'd tell people not to drink water in a river that has dead animals inside and other stuff that today is obvious for us but that wasn't back then. That 2000 years number isn't there for nothing in the movie so that's why I think that the Ancients actually had a peaceful mission on Earth. Having a refuge and bringing wisdom to its own people who lost all knowledge of their origins over time. The sculptures the humans found are testimonies of where they actually come from rather than where they should go. The plan to destroy humans was only a bad interpretation of what happened by the main character. What do you guys think?

HugoGuzman
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June 09, 2012

As for the black goo episode and how it relates to life on Earth- I don't think the Engineer seeded life on Earth at all, but co-opted it. Most of the bio-weapons (xeno-morphs, zombie!Fiefield, Holloway Jr.) are not self-enclosed biological systems. They require either a host, or pre-existing genetic material. This shows that the Engineer biotech is designed to "hijack" biological processes of other creatures (which is an extremely clever and efficient way to reproduce). Now what if the black goo does this on an even smaller and grander scale? If we look at history, there was a huge technological jump about 12 000 years ago, when we suddenly figured out city-states, agriculture and metal-working. What if the black goo took DNA already here (homo erectus, probably, although the date is way off), and simply changed it to be more like Engineers? By the time of 2089 AD, human genetic make-up is almost identical to Engineer DNA.

Mohwak
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June 09, 2012

Could the Engineers created life on earth just to test the bio-weapons? The captain told the doc that this was a testing ground and the Engineers knew better than to test this stuff on their home planet. There are multiple ships there that could possibly be for different worlds that they have seeded with DNA. So I think when we show up proving that we have the technical know how it is their signal to go to the planet from who ever shows up and unleash the bio-weapon to see how well it works. We were just guinea pigs. and the reason they do not come sooner is because whoever they are in battle with (maybe predator type species) is technologically advanced and to unleash such a weapon on the primitive human would be a waste. Any thoughts?

Rayved
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June 09, 2012

HugoGuzman, it might have happened like that, the goo did seem to have a different effect in the beginning than the goo through the rest of the movie. But if there really was animal life on the planet already and micro organisms in the water, the engineer from the beginning wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself. The goo doesn't merge DNA of 2 different species, it modifies the first one it encounters, or at least that's what I think. The result afterwards seems random. After all, a tentacle monster with absolutely nothing in common with the host emerged from a human. There are things that don't make sense at all in this movie anyway. You can't create matter out of nothing. A 3 month old fetus would need nutriments to grow, so unless Shaw ate like a pig in a scene that got cut, she would've been eaten from the inside for a creature that big to be born. That's not the only problem. The tentacle monster grew enormous with absolutely nothing to eat in a confined space. Matter just created itself magically out of nowhere and I think that's just plain stupid Hollywood crap.

Szabi
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June 09, 2012

MostlyHarmless: they did, but it's impossible by logic. Plothole in other words. Rayved: I didn't say that a humanoid can't grow big - I'm saying, the current human genetic make-up can't support such a huge body. You could grow big, but you need some changes in your DNA. All of the human giants are suffering from problems related to their size. In the movies, the engineers didn't seem to suffer any hindrance in terms of mobility either on their lab-planet or proto-Earth, and similarly, the expedition team was moving on the lab-planet normally, not like on the Moon for example. So your low gravity theory is busted :)

HugoGuzman
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June 09, 2012

Rayved: >But if there really was animal life on the planet already and micro organisms in the water, the engineer from the beginning wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself. If the goal wasn't to created new life, but modify existing life to be more in-line with Engineer biology, then a sacrifice my well have been needed. I'm thinking the sacrifice was targeted directly at mankind- so the Engineers didn't create all life, just modern human life.

Rayved
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June 09, 2012

Szabi, the human giants we know are giants mostly because of physical problems that have to do with growth. I never said engineers got bigger, I said they got smaller. Another thing, we know that this planet was not their home planet, theirs might be different. If they are there only temporarily for some missions, it doesn't contradict my theory. What I meant to say was that shrinking might be some sort of adaptation. Maybe my example of physical problems is not good but it was just an example. Somewhere (I forgot where exactly) on our planet there are mice of different colors but from the same species. They have the exact same size and everything. The darker mice live in darker rocks and are hard to see by their predators (birds mostly) and in sandy areas, the mice are paler, much like the color of the sand. People wondered for a while how this coincidence could be so fitting for them, but the actual answer to this is that the darker mice got less attacked in dark rocks so it was these ones who would multiply the most in those region and same for the paler mice in sandy areas. In the end there are 2 distinct colors but everything else is the same just for the sake of natural selection for the most fitting to survive. So maybe over time for some other reason than physical problems that have to do with gravity, the smallest engineers had more chance to survive. It might be that they were harder to spot for hungry dinosaurs or something. And in all those years (we don't know how many in the movie) the engineers shrank over time and became the humans. They have the same DNA but since only the smaller ones multiplied, the species has become short. And since the species' genes has changed for the size, a giant issued from small parents is an exception and physical problem because his body wasn't meant to be that way naturally.

MostlyHarmless...Mostly
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June 09, 2012

Szabi, that doesn't wash with me, humans share roughly 94% relative to Chimps and 60% relative to fruit flies. Sharing a predominance of DNA with the Engineers is a significant factor no matter the difference in height and circulatory systems, like you said, they've their own evolutionary path that would explain the differences but the similarities [i]in the story[/i] cannot be dismissed that easily as a plot hole. What the heck do you mean by proto-Earth?

TheEgg
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June 09, 2012

@Szabi They ran a test in the movie and said our DNA was identical to theirs. The paleness of their skin, their height, their build could explain lots of things, or maybe not. Same as people growing up on different climates and parts of the world in which their DNA eventually adapts to the situation. Africans develop more melanin to compensate for extended sun and hot climates, Aleutian people develop tighter eyes and lighter skin to deal with the reflection of the sun against the harsh snows and cold climates. We don't know what the Engineer homeworld is like, why they've evolved the way that they have, or anything.

Rayved
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June 09, 2012

HugoGuzman, well in that case, the goo we saw in the beginning of the movie would really be a different kind of goo than we saw for the rest of the movie. Because from what we saw, reptile/octopus like creatures emerged from humans rather than a different kind of humanoid creature. I don't think the DNA of the octopus monster would match that of a human. There are 2 theories that would make sense to me now. 1: They used the same goo (even if it acted differently) we see during the whole movie to create all other life forms except humans so engineers could colonize later. 2: They used a special goo that creates a life form that will eventually evolve into something similar to the host many years later. Humans don't breath underwater so the result would've just died after the engineer's body fell. I don't think they wanted a river of drowned babies.

Szabi
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June 09, 2012

Rayved, you just described the evolution with those mice - they already have some differences in their genetic code, but as long as they are able to interbreed, they count as same species. If the process goes a bit further, they wont be able to interbreed, they will be count as two different species (or subspecies). However in theory it would be possible, the engineers got smaller and eventually became human, but actually the human evolution points to growth in size - our predecessors were gradually smaller as we going back in time.

MostlyHarmless...Mostly
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June 09, 2012

...or, in this case, there's only one variant in confluence with situational evolution.

MostlyHarmless...Mostly
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June 09, 2012

That last remark of mine was a general comment about the goo, fwiw. Szabi, no offence intended to anyone here but tell that to a midget or a dwarf... but seriously, longterm climate change and source evolution can have a pretty profound affect/influence on endotherms and ectotherms.

Szabi
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June 09, 2012

MostlyHarmless, proto-Earth is the planet in the first scene, a barren rock which was seeded with life by the dying engineer. In the movie, they didn't say, our DNA is similar, they said, it's [i]identical[/i]. We all know, that we humans have been evolved here on Earth - the similarities in our genetic make-up with the fruit flies are also a proof of that, and there is nothing in the movie which would indicate otherwise. If you want to get a creature, which has the same DNA as humans, it has to evolve in the same environment as humans in the same time because of the random events, which they directing the course of the evolution! If you think about it, the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact - if that asteroid missed Earth, maybe dinosaurs would be evolved into sentient creatures. So, if we would like to share the same DNA with the engineers, we should inhabit the same place in the same time, but in the movie it's quite clearly said, they came form somewhere else. Even if we go wild, and say, OK, the engineers created as 10000 years ago, the couldn' create fossils going back to million years. This is why I think this is a pothole.

Rayved
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June 09, 2012

From what I just read, human height has been influenced a lot by diseases and transportation and many other factors throughout history. Sometimes the population got shorter and sometimes it got bigger. I think this is a lot more complex than I thought, maybe there's an ideal height in the genetic code that the human tries to reach before all those influences come into play. But since the factors that change it seem so various I don't think we can conclude anything anything accurate about it then. What struck me though is that people who travel more were smaller from what I just read. So since the engineers are so advanced, they have many ways of transportation that do not force them to walk so they might be big because of this. Their colonization which was made in a hurry in my theory suggests that they left most of their technology behind. Going back to a life in nature like this forced them to do things more manually and become shorter over time.

MostlyHarmless...Mostly
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June 09, 2012

I think you're making a mountain out of it though, it's like Star Trek where we're being asked to believe a black hole at the center of Vulcan wouldn't have put Spock in some serious jeopardy while in close proximity. Dinosaurs, purportedly, along with practically everything over the weight of 50lbs, were done in by the combination of an impact and the eruption of the Deccan Traps over a long time, from what I know ( I'm not an authority mind you ) For me, that doesn't change the fact that a corollary of DNA can be made without much harm in a sci fi story. No more so than Shaw surviving a ship falling on her or plugging an electrode into a 2,000 year old head with flying colours! I thought you were referring to the bioweapons planet when you mentioned proto-Earth, my awful...

MostlyHarmless...Mostly
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June 09, 2012

Last reply was to Szabi, having a time with the edit feature for some reason.

kvanar
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June 09, 2012

"I think that if they had a different approach he would have been nice to the humans." Yeah that's why the Engineers had Earth as a destination on the navicomputer with a ship full of nasty alien goo which can mutate to even higher forms of nasty. Sure being nice to him after being asleep for millenia could change his mind. "An important clue about this is when the old man's daughter tells him that every living creature must die and that it's the natural course of things. That quote wasn't there for nothing" Reading way too much into it. Meredith said that in a futile attempt to recalibrate Peter's attitude in pursuing immortality/revitalization. "The engineer, being so much smarter, knows that immortality would only destroy everything." There was nothing in the movie to suggest this. If anything all evidence points to them being hostile. As to why they are hostile assuming they are the creators, that's what Elizabeth wants to find out. "As soon as the robot talked to the engineer in his language, the engineer realized how corrupted these humans were (he associated them all together) because of the intentions of the old man, so he immediately judged them dangerous for all life." You concluded that from the Engineer's limited expressions?? Bravo. "These engineers were rather the bringer of life than the bringer of death." Evidence suggests they were both. "Many years later when those life forms evolved and created a complete ecosystem the Ancients returned to Earth to colonize and the humans are their direct descendants." The Engineers returned to Earth? Which movie is this? I could go on but really most of your hypothesis has little to no reference in what transpired in the plot.

kvanar
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June 09, 2012

Double post deleted

Curious
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June 09, 2012

Great discussion. I had a thought regarding why the tentacle creature looked the way it did coming out of Shaw is that it took on the form of the sperm from Halloway? From past movies and this one, the seed/ egg usually goes in the host and when it 'hatches' takes qualities and features from its host, i.e Predator or Enginner. The one seed from Halloway to Shaw passed through another reproductive system entirely and took form through the sperm before maturing in Shaw's uterus. Just a thought.

Sacrosanct
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June 09, 2012

If these engineers are so intelligent, then why would one need to give his life to spread life? It seemed to me like his DNA was dissolving or disappearing at the beginning. Maybe the title of the movie was just the name of the ship they were on and thats all.

The Engineers never had a plan to kill the humans.

Rayved

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