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

When the holograms run into the room you see them making checks upon the platform while one is seated making checks of his own. David says when they check the sarcophagi that one is still alive or it is inferred that one is still living as we hear a slow heart rate, the beat comes and goes but whether these beings have a naturaly slow heart rate or their heart rates become that slower speed as a result of long inter spacial cryo sleep remains to be seen and confirmed. So maybe they just all got into their respected sarchophagos and those that were infected effectively rotted and died and the one survived to be found by the Prometheus crew.

The xeno on the wall is in cruciform. Was it 'crucified' by earlier Engineers (who knew better than to try to enslave and control the xeno?) These Engineers are Believers, and that 'Tomb' is a resting place of the xeno's body/DNA. The 'cruciform' image signifies that the Project undertaken here was to 'resurrect' the xeno. So the place is a tomb and a regenerative place at the same time. Resurrecting the xeno became a 'religion' of sorts, but It was a False messiah. Is this a secret base, far from their homeworld? No one ever came looking for them after the Accident, and there weren't that many men working there to begin with. These Engineers are the 'Weyland' characters in the story, they're more 'Weyland' than Weyland. They represent the ones of their kind who think the xeno is 'perfect', 'superior', would be great as a weapon, etc. Were the humans targeted the way they were because they could be 'experimented' on, since they've got Engineer DNA? The Engineers so admired the xeno that they wanted to 'mate' its DNA with their own, and humans made that a real possibility for them. Of course, the xeno cannot be enslaved...

Personally I like 1 of 2 scenarios: (feel free to poke holes in either). I like the one voiced earlier where the opening scene is of the engineer absorbing the black goo which breaks his DNA down into the water stream which is the genesis to what is eventually human life (100's of thousands years prior). Sometime AFTER life was initiated (via the black goo) on earth, the engineers found out that the black goo had potentially nasty repercussions and sent a ship to destroy the life on earth... what we saw was the result of the ship never making it and ultimately spawning the creatures we love to hate. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy where the decision to end life on earth to prevent disaster ultimately leads to the chain of events that creates disaster. Additionally i like the theory of the worker ants, that the engineers create planets and "workers" that ultimately will create hives of resources. Once a planet (in this case earth) has created the desired level of resources, the ship of chemical warfare is sent to deliver death to the inhabitants. At which case the engineers can simply cultivate the resources the humans have created.

"Deacon" Main article: Prometheus (film) Ridley Scott's 2012 film Prometheus, originally conceived as a direct prequel to Alien,[46] ends with the birth of a creature noted[47] for its similarity to those in the Alien franchise. Scott christened the creature the Deacon in reference to its pointed head, which resembles a bishop's mitre.[48] Designer Neal Scanlan said that the Deacon's appearance had to reflect its complex genetic heritage: "It came from Shaw and Holloway, which then produced the Trilobite, which impregnated the Engineer, which then mixed its DNA with the Trilobite. We tried to hold on to some of Shaw, some femininity since it was born of a female before being born of a male." According to Scanlan, the Deacon "represented the beginning of Giger's Alien, although it did not directly resemble that creature."[49] The designers based the Deacon's skin on horse placenta, in an effort to give it an iridescent quality "between horrific and beautiful".[50] Its pharyngeal jaw was inspired by that of the goblin shark.[51] When discussing the film's connection to Alien, co-writer Damon Lindelof asked: "Do you need to see a xenomorph bursting out of the human body? And how do we do it in a way that you haven't seen before?"[52] Lindelof stated that whether the creature is a queen Alien, or the progenitor of the eggs found by the crew in the original Alien, is open to interpretation, but said, "I felt that the punchline of Prometheus was going to be that there is human DNA in what we have come to know as the human xenomorph."[53] You guys are welcome. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(creature_in_Alien_franchise)

Ridley Scott is on record as saying that the Space Jockey from Alien was benign. Therefore he was not on a mission of destruction. He was probably transporting the eggs somewhere for destruction. It was David who came to the vague conclusion that in order to create you first have to destroy. This lead to the idea that the Xenos are 'weapons'. David got it wrong because he is not human, he thought that all offspring want to kill their parents. He states this to Shaw, she has to correct him. David didn't see anything wrong with his conclusion because he has no soul.

@Gahlaktus Sorry but I have to disagree with most of what you've been saying. I think my issue is that you seem to believe that if a few people all have the same theory then it's somehow more valid or even factual. I think all of your posts should start with a disclaimer that everything in your post is theory, because you infer that a lot of what you're saying is proven in the movie. On the Engineer's intentions: We aren't given proof that the Engineers are malevolent. The only thing that the last Engineer kills is David and only because David speaks to him (we aren't 100% sure what he says to the Engineer). I personally believe the Engineer knew that he was an android, he didn't seem surprised after he removed David's head that David had milky goo instead of blood and could still speak. He did hit the old man, but didn't seem to care if he died or not. If the Engineers were evil all along, why would they vist us every few thousand years? They probably wanted to kill us 2,000 years ago, but they created us and helped us along. [i]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.[/i] We don't know that they were servitors, that information was not given to us. And none of the characters in the story had enough knowledge of the Engineers to give us that knowledge, it was only character speculation. We do not see any weapons on ship besides the black goo/urns to lead us to believe that they were at war or had need for military bases. Not to say that it might not be, but we should automatically jump to that conclusion. [i]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.[/i] What? [i]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."[/i] Their Vulnerability? Everyone on the ship knew they shared the same DNA as us, their vulnerabilities were the same as ours. She knows no more how to kill and engineer than she knows how to kill a turtle or squirl. It's very easy for us to assume that she was desperate and assumed he'd kill her if she didn't do something. She probably hoped it would attack the engineer. Lucky for her the squid monster just wanted a host, the first host it could it could get it's tentacles on. [i]Humans could breed them for the sole purpose of combating the engineers. It's a three step process, C-section the fetus, trilobite and "Deacon" the engineers.[/i] Ok, so I actually like some of the theories that the human womb is a dangerous thing for the Engineers. But we cannot state this as fact. The engineer lets Shaw escape, he's got bigger fish to fry (earth). He goes after her after his ship crashes instead of getting another ship, but I don't think we can assume that his change of heart is because her womb is an atomic weapon to him. I would think it's even more of a concern for him that she's running around all fertile with black goo just seeping all over the place. And as far as a weaponization? I believe this is really out there. The squid monster would have killed shaw when it escaped. She was only able to survive because of the technology 2,000 years after the Engineers wanted to kill us. You're really getting me off topic. None of this statement makes any sense. Humanity wouldn't have any clue how to reach the Engineers. We wouldn't have even known they existed if they hadn't visited us over and over. Why would we want to kill them? Creating those things, they would have just killed us. That is EXACTLY what the Engineer was doing anyway. Dropping those things off so they'd kill us. Massing an army of Deacons would have been stupid and suicidal. We wouldn't even get our hands on the stuff if they didn't come over and drop it off on earth. On the Engineer's Gills: Why would the Engineers have Gills? they share a DNA match with us. Now why aren't we big Dr. Manhattan looking humanoids? That I cannot explain. I'm guessing that Ridley scott wanted to tie everything together and make them our creaters so he had to improvise. If it was built into the suit, why wouldn't it just be near the mouth, where they breathe, in that big elephant trunk-looking part of the mask? I am very sorry if I have offended you, but I cam on this post to try to see what others thought about the obvious plot holes that Ridley Scott left for us to theorize about. I could not help myself but to voice my opinion of your posts. I believe you've gotten off base and may be confusing others with information that you've presented as fact. Fortunately or Unfortunately Ridley Scott made his movie ambiguous enough that we can't be sure about a lot of this. In Ridley Scott's own interviews about the "jesus-engineer", if the planet in the beginning is earth or any of the other many questions, Scott remains ambiguous so that we have our imaginations run wild. In the end it's a fiction movie, so none of it really means anything (unless ridley scott knows something we don't...)

[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t36/nepenthes369/QueensCrown.png[/IMG] For those who can't see the Queen in the mural.

It means that Deacon from movie is not the first Alien protoplast. They existed before and the proof is on the mural:)

Can someone explain to me why the Deacon had to be created in such a complicated process? Is the room they enter supposed to carry the Deacon DNA? and the Mural on the wall represents the creature that is created when using the black goo correctly? Maybe that's why when it interacts with a living organism they begin to mutate into wild predators, wow I think I just answered my own question...

The Deacon that we saw in the movie arrived courtesy of a round-about route involving intermediate organisms (Holloway, Shaw, Trilobite, Engineer). However, the start point was the black liquid and the end point (immediately after the Engineer) was the Deacon. The decoration in the Big Head Room shows a Deacon. If we work on the premise that the Engineers created the artwork, they were showing what happens if one of their own gets impregnated (whatever you want to call it). In the mural, they show what looks like a Deacon co-existing with an overseeing Engineer, and the Engineer appears to have large healed scars on his body. Do they birth these things on purpose? Check out the bottom of the Deacon artwork. Remind you of this? [img]http://i47.tinypic.com/qzf6hj.png[/img]

@Ingwar unless the mural is a 'vision' of the future made by an elder etc.? It could be a painting of the comming of the deacon and its future of making face huggers etc. after all there is swirly gas all around it like a dream...

well, after lurking around and reading some of the theories on this site, I felt compelled to register and throw out a few of my own theories and opinions. My view of the deacon is he's a subordinate, a "worker". The aliens have a hierarchy similar to ants or bees. Perhaps their world is more complex than we know, because all we know is what we saw in the first and second movie. The Engineer at the beginning of the movie was creating life, but not on earth. If you were a super advanced race of people, why would you create life at its basic element and wait 20,000,000 years or so to see your results, with little evolutionary change to your own race? My speculation is there are 2 groups of engineers, good vs. evil kinda thing going on. One set on creating life, one set on destroying life, I feel the whole thing is very biblical in a way, but yet tied into ancient history and stories, such as Easter island, giants walking amongst men and taking human brides, angels, etc... my 2 cents

[quote][i]This leads me to the possible of multiple guiding forces. Competing forces that create life in different ways to use it in a universal game of chess. Humans could play the part of some newer pieces.[/i][/quote] Interesting. This sounds just like "the first ones" storyline from Babylon 5.....the Shadow/Vorlon war.

[quote[i]]My question is: how did that Deacon fit inside the Engineer host? I mean that thing is almost -- if not as big -- as the host!! What did it do? Come up through the floor?! LOL!!![/i] [/quote]Deacon grew within its host, eating the host innards like good noms. I don't see why this is so far fetched. Look at a chicks relative size to its egg when it hatches. The host's torso was essentially just a shell when Deacon decided it was time to find a restroom.

i have seen it twice and the second time my dad noticed that the painting or what it is changed when the team enterd the room with all the urns and maby the alien painting did as well and heres the important part the room maby was a creation room and the paintings displayed the outcome of the DNA that enterd the room so if a human or enginer were to be mixed with the bio substance it would change to something

was a creation room and the paintings displayed the outcome of the DNA that enterd the room .. THis is an intersting point ,, Sort of projects what your kid would look like based on the parents.. The Engineers' race must be far advanced beyond human evolvement...what chance do the human and android have in the sequel?

THE DECON DESIGN IS GREAT CANT WAIT FOR THE BLU-RAY TO COME OUT

Ok, so here is my take to throw into the ring! The black Goo is the giver (and taker) of life. If Holloway wasn't burned alive by Vickers, he would have broken down and his DNA would have reorganized just like the opening Engineer. With that said, having only a small dose, it's effect was prolonged and the goo was passed into Shaw creating an abomination. The Order has been tampered with: and tampered with again as the creature impregnates the Engineer. The Abomination has overthrown the Master. Out of that, a vile creature is made: The Deacon. I think that the Deacon is very close to the Black Goo's true goal: The Alien. It just isn't quite there yet. The Black Goo, in it's manifested in-the-flesh form is the Xenomorph: The perfect organism. And when you think about it: The Xenomorph is the giver and taker of life. My reasoning is this: The Black Goo is the recipe for the Alien because in small doses (unlike the Engineer in the beginning) It doesn't break down the host, it changes it. And no matter what it is attached to, it is bringing characteristics of the Alien with it. Acid Blood, Facehugger proproties, which lead to the Deacon being born with Engineer traits. The Goo IS the alien: Just not yet in it's physical final form. In my opinion, I think that the Engineers know about the Deacon, and know that when they are impregnated by a goo-altered creature, the Deacon will be born. I think that's what they were running from when things went wrong. The goo is there, and I've seen stills of familiar shedded skin (Alien). http://www.horror-asylum.com/news/pics/thumbs/-prometheus-deleted-scene-still.jpg In essence, The Deacon is a step in a line of abominations that ultimately become the Alien. As for the Queen? I'm sticking with Ridley's mythos to see where he takes us. The Queen was all Cameron's Idea!

But here is the thing with that theory... If the substance is the same, then how come the Sacrificial Engineers seed/broken down DNA never evolved life on Earth to have Xeno traits and only for us to have Engineer DNA? Thats why i stick to my theory, because i think you could have placed the Sacrificial Engineer in a Bath and then where the plug hole is have it connected to a tube that then leads to a large container. Then the Sacrificial Engineer would break down and his stuff would break into a substance that goes down the plug hole? If you could do that then would it not be possible to then use that collected broken down Engineer DNA into say a Lake and then see similar process to what we saw at the Water Fall? Therefore if thats possible then i think thats how the Black Goo Came about only not from Engineer but broken down from a Xeno.. Off course they may have to add another substance to preserve the broken down material but i think thats also what the Urns contain.

But what the Hell Deacon's mural meaning? I do not understand what it means.

The deacon is just another version of the xenomorph, like in the mural, been around forever. Mystery solved. Don't expect to see the deacon again, Shaw left that planet, that part of the story is done. Anyone waiting to see the deacon grow up may be disappointed.

Late reply but DUH

I'd like to add that anything to do with the Queen and the Xenos being like bugs or ants is something I think Mr Scott will never address. Why? Because he had nothing to do with that. That was all James Cameron. When asked why Mr Cameron didn't address the space jockey he said that if it were to be addressed he felt the answers should come from the original director ( Mr Scott). And I doubt Mr Scott gives a damn about anything that happened after Alien.

The goo the Engineer drinks is not the same as the goo the Engineers made in the urns. My theory: one is to create life and the other is to destroy. What else is a xeno's purpose other than to propagate? Destruction, and that is pure Xeno essence that Holloway drank. The original Fifield Zombie looked like a deformed Alien in the deleted scenes. I think Scott didn't want to make the connections too obvious so he got rid of it, or he didn't like the CG. The mural wasn't Deacon it was the original Xenomorph before it had been tampered with by the Engineers. IMHO, at least. Also, the Engineers who created us may have been rogue agents. Hence, the title Prometheus. We were to be destroyed because we were never to have been made in the first place.

ULTRAMORPH I hope he's intelligent.

Hey anybody know why the deacon and the trilobite are so huge?? I mean the trilobite is just to big, and the deacon can't feat inside the Engineer's body...

Don't be fooled. The Xenos designed that ship.

Does anyone see any mileage in interpreting the Deacon in the wall mural as a crucifixion image. I originally thought this might be a red herring, but I’m starting to think it may not be so far fetched. The motif may turn out to be key if sacrifice/reconciliation/salvation is to be the ultimate theme of the franchise. Compare/contrast with Masaccio’s Holy Trinity fresco.

"..Compare/contrast with Masaccio’s Holy Trinity fresco.." I took your suggestion and compared the two images. To my eyes there is quite a visual resemblence..some connection to each other. To infer there is a some sort of sacrificial connection I csannot say. There has been a note about the Xeno perhaps being a Queen..so unless that image is cleared up , well, I doin't think there can be a religious connection.

I agree with the rogue "creation" (gift of fire) to the humans - hence the title Prometheus (and their consequent target for destruction).

Maybe the Engineers were tryin to extrapolate the DNA of the human LUCA (last universal common ancestor); searchin for their own origin. To me the xenomorph seems to be shapeless, malleable and viral: it can become anythin, dependin on the hosts DNA.

Holloways say "This is just another tomb" brings me back to my thesis: The Engineers were lookin for their own origin. Maybe they were archaeologists and just found that cave as it was shown.

[quote]the Engineers who created us may have been rogue agents. Hence, the title Prometheus. We were to be destroyed because we were never to have been made in the first place.[/quote] This would give the film yet another layer of created beings defying their creators. Amazing.

Guys I think I got.. it.. it's kind of a prohecy the Mural AKA CYCLE... all fits... If you look good at the full mural The Deacon is on the middle(It's indeed a kind of Xeno not necessarly the deacon we see on Prometheus).. AND It is revealed that it comes from an Engineer host.. You can clearly see it on bot Left and right(From Trilobites aka another kind of facehuggers)... NOW THIS IS WHAT IS SHOCKING... Something is holding that Deacon/Xeno on the middle of the mural..as it where its ULTIMATE WEAPON(Creation).. .. That's an advanced ALIEN RACE(Engineers's GODS) He is holding the Deacon as it where It's ultimate weapon(They Created Engineers as a Slave specie like ganados)...Also, That GOD is wearing a weird f**** badass armor if you see it clearly(You can see his face too and his arms)....Somehow These engineers ended up killing their gods? or started a war with them(They knew their Gods could create Deacons from them...then Why don't they could create their own Monkey species that could host new Deacons or at least another Bio weapon)... Well They tried to replicate that BIO WEAPON.. and ended up with the xenomorphes(By Creating Humans and testing on them)... NOW why the Engineers(Creations of those Protoss look alike) want to kill Humans?...simply Because Humans were their creation.. and WE CAN KILL THEM JUST As they DID OR TRIED to KILL THEIR GODS? maybe...Who knows .. It's a Cycle.. Don't All children really want their parents dead?..... The craziest theory? makes sense...