Was the Deacon shown to us right from the beginning of the movie, on the Mural?

Abordoli : I think so. The engineer couldn't allow Shaw to live. She knew their vulnerability. In fact, she put it together quite quickly - she channeled Lisbeth Salander, yelled "Diiiie", hit the button and released the trilobite. The engineer died. She knows how to kill them. What she hasn't figured out is "why they want to kill us." Of course, the real answer was staring us in the face all the time. But if the main character doesn't feign ignorance we wouldn't have a sequel. Now, we wouldn't want that now would we?

Lampodi : I do think the engineers created the xeno but they did so accidentally. Look once again at the wall mural. That's what the engineers were trying to create, a perfect fusion of engineer and something else. That something else wasn't a xeno. I believe the creature portrayed in the wall mural is quite advanced and highly intelligent. It is like a dragon or naga. In ancient mythologies the naga, or snakes and dragons emerge from the primeval waters as the true creators of life. Nowadays we call them waveforms or superstrings. The ancients viewed these waveforms as gods because they conceived them to be superconscious, creative, and highly intelligent. I will suggest to you that the engineers were their servitors at some point and rebelled. These beings have powers the engineers don't have. I think the engineers were trying to recreate these beings by merging one of them with an engineer--perhaps the engineer signaled by the presence of the big head. That experiment failed but created the xeno and other lifeforms to which the engineers were susceptible. They died as a consequence of these monstrosities. Behind that wall is the body of that failed experiment in stasis.

Majestic Lizard : What an appropriate name! I think you're right the engineers didn't create humanity but were the servitors of those who did. They were the servitors of beings that resembled the being in the wall mural. I think they may be at war, or were once at war. Hence the "military" facility at LV 223. In the minds of the engineers human beings are rivals for the regard of these beings. Human beings can also midwife the Deacon without facehuggers. Perhaps the engineers believe human beings are genetically programmed to be able to to be used as weapons by the nagas in their war with the engineers. such a way (by the creators-- the nagas) Humans are natural allies of the nagas. They can be used without ever knowing about either the nagas or the engineers. This is the logic of the situation however crazy it sounds. And it sounds pretty crazy to me. A quantum physicist once said that another quantum physicists theory had to wrong because it wasn't crazy enough. That's a true story. By that reasoning this post has to be so crazy that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of truth.

Here's an amazingly clear image of the mural I found in another thread that also shows facehuggers. [img]http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg[/img]

Okay everybody, just hold your horses right here. Some of you feel (and I am NOT shuting anyone down here) that the "proto Xeno" isn't a prototype at all. This is because the dating presented in this film suggest that this ship and its contents are younger that of the "Alien" spacecraft and ITS contents. I disagree here because of one reason and I'd really love you all to let me know if this makes sense. We know from a long line of movies and stories that the "xenomorph" takes on some characteristics of its host prior to birthing. Have any of you considered that the Deacon is simply our first glance at a Xeno coming out of an engineer? Have you considered that THAT is why Deacon doesn't look like the later Xenomorphs? Ridley Scott himself said in an interview that the xeno here was to the well known xeno as apes are to us. I know that the dates in the movie are odd, but maybe we weren't meant to have all of the answers just yet. I Believe that Scott has much more in store for us and i do believe that, despite the carbon dating etc., Deacon is only Deacon because he came out of an engineer and the xenomorph we all know and love is the pinnacle. In all honesty if you all want to take the dates seriously then try this. LV 426 has the ship with the eggs and Prometheus doesn't use eggs but base ingredients for evolutionary mutation. So is it to hard to think that maybe the engineers had in fact already perfected the Xenomorph and thats what is on LV 426 and the Planet in Prometheus is jus the factory used to put ingredients together? It even suggests that Deacon might be a fluke because humans got in the way of the Xenomorph evolutionary line and "D" ended up in an engineer and not a human. I think he hardly looks like the most advanced bioweapon compared to the Xeno we know and love. Food for thought fellas, lemme kno what you think.

I'd never noticed the humanoid figure on the bottom left, with an original Giger design facehugger attached. Kewl.

Imagery of the Deacon from the film (and moreso from the Artwork book) bring to mind the videogame MDK from a few years ago: http://www.myfreewallpapers.net/games/wallpapers/mdk-2.jpg

@artyoh : I noticed that and honestly i think that makes perfect sense if you jus read my description about how im pretty sure that the Xenomorph we all know was already created by the engineers and there was a batch of em already on the ship on LV 426. the face hugger in the mural is the small one we're all used to seeing which would mean that they had already been prerfected. I'm tellin you guys, Humans reactivated this desolate factory and their Android messed with the order of how the goo gets used to creat xenos and the resulting sequence of events made Deacon. Though i will say that i bet Deacon-like accidents (or maybe not accidents) have happened on this planets facility before because that mural DOES look jus like that bugger.

NICnac: I think that's right. The LV 426 xeno precedes the Deacon. In one interview RS said that the LV 426 space jockey was a member of an alternate group of engineers that left LV 223 about one hundred years before the events that befell the engineers on LV 223. His cargo got out of control. He landed on LV 426. The rest is history.

Someone else also pointed out that if you look at the entire mural from a distance the thing looks like a xeno egg. That to me is further indication that the Engineers were well aware of the xenos we know. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Ib9zs.jpg[/img]

@Shambhala: Not an egg...the bag is the placenta...after-birth.

NICnac I think your onto something there XD

[i]I'd never noticed the humanoid figure on the bottom left, with an original Giger design facehugger attached. Kewl.[/i] Not only that, I see flying face-huggers too. Any thoughts as to what that is above the xeno's head. Looks a bit "queenish" to me. Thoughts? [url=http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg][img]http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/2910/georgeft.jpg[/img][/url]

Antony is right it does iv been trying to see wot else is in it and kept looking at that lol thanks :)

I think it's pretty clear that the "Deacon" Alien we see at the end of the movie is a primative form of the xenomorph and that the carving in the ampule room is meant to be a generic representation. 1. The ampule room is the temple that Ridley Scott originally wanted in the 1979 Alien movie before Fox cut the budget. He discusses this at length in the Making of Alien documentary on the bonus features DVD. 2. The Deacon carving is a re-worked version of the birthing cycle art by HR Giger that was slated to appear in the temple in Alien 1979. The carving simply conveys the ideas (a) this is a violent & predatory organism, (b) this is how the organism works, e.g. egg to facehugger to chestburster, which grows up to be the Alien, and (c) this is the birthing chamber where that process starts. 3. The black goo is the seed that begins the process. The process is iterative and relies on evolution to produce the end result. This is clear from the progression in the movie. The first generation of the "Alien" is the host mutated by the black goo. The best example of this is Fifield. If you watch carefully, after being sprayed with acid, he lands face first in the black goo before his helmet melts to his face. After a period of time, he becomes a monster with superhuman strength and perfect hostility, but without the structural perfection that Ash describes in Alien 1979. The "cobralien" or mutated worms are the same first generation version, which we see writing in the black goo as the team leaves after the first visit. 4. The second generation of the Alien was created by Charlie, a first generation Alien-in-progress, impregnating Shaw. Here the technology has its first chance to evolve and does so, changing its shape and abilities. It no longer uses the host for anything but gestation, similar to how the cycle is intended to work as described by the ampule room carving. 5. The "deacon" is the third generation, implanted into the engineer at the end of the movie. Here we finally see the cycle we would expect to see; that is, host gets impregnated by a facehugger followed by a chestburster, which eventually grows up into a primative xenomorph. Given enough cycles of this, we would expect a queen to emerge, which will begin to produce eggs, and the entire cycle repeats and enhances itself. This is the intended outcome of the technology, going all the way back to the carving. 6. The "Deacon" carving doesn't have to be the Deacon we see at the end. It was common for HR Giger to have multiple versions of the Alien that each looked sightly different in his art. It also doesn't really look like the Deacon at the end of the movie (in my opinion).

Yes @ Shambhala good eye, I wonder the same thing after watching the movie yesterday, but if it is as others have suggested then the Xenos from Alien and not the Proto-Xeno from Prometheus pre-date humanity or perhaps humanity is much older than what we think. 2000 years into the past according to what we see in the movie our creators for some unknown reason decided to wipe the slate clean and as David sated some times to create you must destroy.

Four things I would like to point out: 1. In the Mural, if you look at the shape around the Deacon, you will see the Queens "Crown" or crest. 2. When you see the Deacon stand up you will notice lines on the top of its head, IN the shape of the crest which foreshadows an evolution and the crest unfolding from the head. 3. Ridley states in an interview that the Juggernaught on LV-426 did not crash but it was a forced landing. He also states that something had entered the cargo hold at some point and evolved and began laying the eggs and caused the pilot to set down and become infected as well as set the warning beacon. 4. If you look at a close up of the ORIGINAL Queen Alien's head, she has 3 pieces of carapace covering her face. the top two are fused but there is a definite line showing the original piece. Also the Queen's lower jaw is longer than the top jaw at times, just like the Deacon, and last but not least, the hands. The Deacons hands are almost identical to the Queens and of course as it evolves there will come the second pair of arms. Obviously, considering it's birthing state and the second head piece, Deacon's evolution is HIGHLY accelerated and may explain the quick transformation to reproduce, hence the eggs on the Juggernaught and our dead pilot on LV-426. The mural OBVIOUSLY depicts the Deacon as well as the egg/Facehugger cycle and the Xenomorph, which means it has happened before and plays into the theme from Thus Spoke Zarathustra of Eternal Recurrence. Everything that HAS happened WILL happen again and may explain why we have dead engineers with chests burst in the stasis chamber and the trigger of the evacuation from the facility. Basically an experiment gone horribly wrong. Another thing stated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is what the plot came from, says that eventually every entity will create something beyond itself and will ultimately be destroyed by it.

Four things I would like to point out: 1. In the Mural, if you look at the shape around the Deacon, you will see the Queens "Crown" or crest. 2. When you see the Deacon stand up you will notice lines on the top of its head, IN the shape of the crest which foreshadows an evolution and the crest unfolding from the head. 3. Ridley states in an interview that the Juggernaught on LV-426 did not crash but it was a forced landing. He also states that something had entered the cargo hold at some point and evolved and began laying the eggs and caused the pilot to set down and become infected as well as set the warning beacon. 4. If you look at a close up of the ORIGINAL Queen Alien's head, she has 3 pieces of carapace covering her face. the top two are fused but there is a definite line showing the original piece. Also the Queen's lower jaw is longer than the top jaw at times, just like the Deacon, and last but not least, the hands. The Deacons hands are almost identical to the Queens and of course as it evolves there will come the second pair of arms. Obviously, considering it's birthing state and the second head piece, Deacon's evolution is HIGHLY accelerated and may explain the quick transformation to reproduce, hence the eggs on the Juggernaught and our dead pilot on LV-426. The mural OBVIOUSLY depicts the Deacon as well as the egg/Facehugger cycle and the Xenomorph, which means it has happened before and plays into the theme from Thus Spoke Zarathustra of Eternal Recurrence. Everything that HAS happened WILL happen again and may explain why we have dead engineers with chests burst in the stasis chamber and the trigger of the evacuation from the facility. Basically an experiment gone horribly wrong. Another thing stated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is what the plot came from, says that eventually every entity will create something beyond itself and will ultimately be destroyed by it.

Another thing to point out that I just thought of, and someone else brought this up, is the fact that David seems to know EXACTLY how to create the Deacon meaning it MUST have happened before for him to gain the knowledge either from the walls or the ooze.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that the design of the Proto-Xeno/Deacon was largely due to the fact that It is still a baby (think of it like its a chestburster) and its still going to grow. Therefore it can have a very basic, sleek design, so that if it reappears in adult form, Ridley Scott can make it look basically however he wants. It makes me wonder why people are hating on its design, when I was easily able to come to this conclusion as I was walking out of the theater. Its not like I'm a genius. Yea it looks simple and basic and there's not much to it. Of course it doesn't look as sexy as the classic Xenomorph. Its not supposed to. Its not a fully fleshed out creature. Its basically a concept design that will probably be elaborated on in the sequel(s). And when a sequel is made, he can have the Deacon be in adult form and alter its appearance as he sees fit.

Well, in the Mural we can see the classic facehuggers, then Xenomorphs are very old. But recently abordoli found an article that gives us a couple of new possibilities: 1) The Xenomorphs are of natural origin, but are difficult to handle and contain. And the engineers decided to create their own versions that resulted in a failed experiment. 2) Zeta Reticuli is a binary star system, and LV-223 and LV-426 are moons of different planets (possibly one on each system)

Maybe the deacon will turn into a queen mother beacuse in some of the alien comics and novels queen mother is the supreme ruler of all the aliens even the other queens also i think the queen mother's head looks kind of like the head of the deacon i'm not sure if you want to look at the picture type queen mother xenopedia also maybe there's alot of different generations of aliens so they could be evolving to become the aliens we have already seen beacause in alien it had a dome head and in aliens the aliens all had ridged heads and one final thing that weird looking yellow egg thing could possibly be holding a queen if the deacon's not a queen like an actual live one or it could be an early version of the egg holding a facehugger with the genetics for a queen

Haha, the Deacon of the movie looks like a cross between a Parasaurolophus, a Utahraptor and a goblin shark :p [img]http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u498/protoxeno86/Parasaurolophus_walkeri.jpg[/img] [img]http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u498/protoxeno86/Utahraptor.jpg[/img] [img]http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u498/protoxeno86/shark.jpg[/img]

I thought this was pretty obvious myself

One question Without Shaw/Holloway getting it on there would be no cuddles With no cuddles, would there have ever been a deacon? If so, how would it have been created without a human female to give birth to one of the protagonist elements?

YES, it is a good question, what happens if there are no women in the crew, or does no sex?. So bye bye Cuddles and Deacon :p Unless it is clear as Dr. Malcolm says: "Life finds its way" and the mutants will become in xeno-species. But the engineers created life on Earth, then they know that there are women and men. Hence this biological weapon is designed for an apocalypse on Earth, where it may expand so fast like a plague.

But it's probably a failed experiment...why? by the fact that nearly all the engineers in the pyramid are dead. I think the classic facehuggers were difficult to control and transport. Engineers then created this new variant, the Urns. But it certainly is a less efficient variant if you think about that a facehugger does not need a woman to be born.

I think: the xeno is a natural creature. Alien could be the basis for all their biotech (e.g. think of the potential of spider-slik to us). hence significant in their culture. The snakes are an attempt to create a weaponized derivative- a facehugger-chestburster hybrid (grew out of the worms, not mutated worms) - like a larvae stuck in adulthood. the giant-squid-hugger and 'deacon' are unintended reversions. humans may even be seeded as xeno-hosts, engineers have a sacrificial culture to breed useful aliens and figured they could save themselves hassle by breeding dumbed down versions of themselves as hosts.

@MVMNT; I wrote this 3 pages ago, gonna repeat because it got lost in the fray of new posts) "IF it does turn into a Queen, maybe the initial "impregnation" of a male and female host would explain why only "she/it" is fertile and can lay eggs (may not even be female, but a combo). But then to have that theory work, you would need a pairing, either forced or sacrificial, who knows."

OK, so this is what i have observed from the movie and everyone's explanations. Pardon my spelling. 1. David gets dna source code and puts it in Charlie's drink 2. Charlie impregnates Shaw with alien dna and his sperm 3. Shaw has squid-like baby 4. Squid-like baby then impregnates the engineer which bares a Xeno OK, so Charlie turns into something different than squid baby. Shaw would probably have been killed by birth of squid baby ( i cant see her surviving that, which imo flattens the theory of women surviving the births). Engineer then is the final catalyst in creating a xeno. All other possible creation pathway's we have seen, created something totally different. BUT, i agree with some of the explanations where the women is the key to creating a killing machine that can kill the engineer's race, that is why the engineer went after her. Shaw i don't think by releasing the squid-like creature knew it could kill the engineer. I think she in desperation opened the door hoping it would attach itself to an bigger pray which was the engineer. But in doing so she probably did what the engineer tried to avoid, and that is a squid creature infects one of his kind and xeno's are born. He walked into his own trap if you will. In all of this whatever you introduce the source DNA to, it evolves from there into something. The most striking thing about it all is that how the engineers look the same (even their sex) and how humans have the same shape yet differ in race/sex/ethinticity, one can almost take from it that humans are a different evolutionary step from the White pasty like dude's (engineers). Maybe a better creation. Hence the jealousy. SO yes the engineers fabricated their own experiments which turned out to be a handful (alien looking creatures). I keep asking myself why create so many source codes and using their creation as a weapon rather than creating weapons themselves. Not once did i see an alien gun or weapon of mass destruction only the biological weapon if you will. It's kinda stupid seeing as you can't point a biological weapon in any direction but a gun you can. You can't control a biological weapon. Surely these engineers are more clever than that? I am using this also as a reference: http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/7436 Just my thoughts!