Opening Scence

I'm pretty sure that the Engineer sacrificed himself in order to seed life on Earth... The reason that he throws himself into the water after having drunk the black goo is that this is the only way to infect other organisms since this takes place before they evovled into four-legged beings.

My theory is that the black goo doesn't only break the engineer's body down into DNA... I also think that it helps infecting other organisms with the DNA.

Another piece of evidence that he intentionally sacrificed himself in order to seed life, is how he was dressed and the ritual he went through before drinking the goo. He looked like a religious observer to me. Did y'all catch this? Also, why would he take his robe off to just drink something, unless he knew he knew he was about to die & take a dive?

@Shaw's Sweet Baby TAKE YOUR AVATAR DOWN!!! IT IS A SPOILS!!!

@Mr. Yutani - Pretty much everything on this site is a spoiler by now if you haven't noticed already... And NO, I'm not gonna take my avatar down. If you haven't seen the movie I suggest you leave this site right away.

I think that scene is the most vague scene in Prometheus movie. It could be anything. A self-sacrifice or DNA to show how closely they related to us or on another different planet; not necessarily earth. No date/place was given in that scene. Everyone things that like nobody would have thought they would have been the ones in the space jockey suits.

isn't there a part in the movie where they state engineer dna is compatible or something with human? would only humanity then start after sacrificed engineer? not other life on earth (or other planets)

[quote]In the opening scence to Prometheus (takes place on earth) i can't help thinking the engineer knows the black liquid he drinks causes evil and the only thing which can destroy it is water .However he knows his own DNA will be compatable with the human DNA in the water......which will start human life.He also could be the only engineer who knows the water will destroy the black "evil" liquid/DNA? I could be completely wrong here ![/quote] It's not necessarily that it causes evil, but it will kill him. He may or may not know that he's going to die, but he actually doesn't care much. There is no other DNA in the water or elsewhere on Earth. This is primordial Earth. There's barely any oxygen and the atmosphere is full of helium, hydrogen, ammonia and methane. The water will not 'destroy' the liquid. The Liquid will dissolve him, and then it's gone. And little bits of DNA and amino acids are seeded onto the planet. They come back a few billion years later to check how it's doing.

The opening scene was one of my favorite scene from the entire movie, which the Engineer sacrifice itself to create a new organism, although im not good at chemistry, but i think it try to break down its DNA and diffuse inside with the water to form new organism, while I think the black liquid is just to destroy it's body organism..

1 Ridley said (so i don't know) it could be earth or any other planet. 2 there is some green around on the planet so there is life, thus dna. the engineer seems to breath something, and as the domes on lv 223 were built in such way that it makes breathable air for engineers. and humans can breath it to, it seems early earth/planet has breathable air.

I'm from a completely different school of thought here. While I think that it's fairly evident that he knowlingly sacrifices himself, he does so with a different intent than 'starting human life.' I firmly believe that the Engineer disagrees with his species' decision to use the Xenomorphs to destroy the humans. As such, he ingests the 'black goo' in an attempt to kill all the Engineers on the LV-223 to ensure that they don't go through with their plan. The holo-vids clearly depict that the "infection" got out. How else would this have happened?

I posit that he created human which is widely opposed among the entire Engineer race, and that's why Engineers want to destroy us, because they never intended to create us! And the paintings were actually warnings telling people to stay away from LV-223, but misinterpreted by Dr. Shaw and her crew because of the unique "Humanity" we possess. You can check out my interpretation here and please leave some comments ;) http://mcmickey.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/is-engineerreally-our-creator-my-thoughts-on-the-opening-scene-of-the-sci-fi-epic-prometheus/

if it helps at all...LV-223 was definenly a military outpost or something of that kind...if they are like humans i know that not all "engineers" are for the lack of a better word "absolutely jacked" they are extremely muscular and toned and cleary know how to fight...they wouldnt put an engineer thats not fit on a military base unless they are a scientist

Interesting takes on it. I for one agree that some sort of life was existent but to me the mother ship seen in the sky seems to be departing and indeed it seems ritualistic as a whole. At first I myself thought that it was seeding life or indeed a disease that was supposed to do something. BUT as I recall, the dna seemed to be decomposed even destroyed in the scene after he disintegrates in the water. On the other hand, later on in the movie I understand 1 thing clearly: the Giants were on a planet inhospitable to them, as they generated Earth like conditions on their ship. Also, the black goo seems to be one designed to create the other life form, the squid cephalo..thing. Thus, they were designing to transport a disease to several places not only Earth? But why was there only 1 individual left in cryo and so eager to carry out the mission? I did a small offtopic search before arriving to this forum after I was a bit amused by the shape of the far more "advanced" Giant's technology doughnut ship but then it hit me that it was no doughnut cuz it resembled a LOT on ouroboros. It is even more catchy when you picture ouroboros carrying something to end life but gets hit by Prometheus. As a funny totally coincidental result a search I carried out returned apparently there is a band and a song dating back to 2009 called: "Ouroboros Deathride" by Prometheus Burning (the band) from "A Plague Called Humanity" ^^. Pretty funny tbh stupid search ending up in the perfect depiction of the scene in the movie :D.