Engineer commit suicide, why?

They are like Kamakazi drones? Perhaps That's what it takes to put the suit on in a ritualistic self sacrificing kind of way. As soon as it drank the goo the space ship took off...as if it was waiting for the metamorphis to begin. I don't think it was suicide [img]http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/337/7/d/timesleep_by_smooothe-d345z7k.gif[/img]

I think that this engineer has been chosen to sacrifice himself to start new life on a planet. His death marks the beginning of life on a planet like Earth, jump-starting the evolution on that planet. The biological weapons are for when they do not like what they have created.

To create us from the Primordial Soup.

Ohyeah big thumbs up u guys!!!! But one more thing, (really, not trying to be a pain but really just another question) They could'v chosen another humanoid/creature/life form from their creation to kick start another line of humanoids, why sacrafice one of their own since they are high n mighty like god? Surely when i have the power to create another line of humanoids i wouldnt use my own dna cos i wouldnt want a new species of humanoid to replace me?? And also, why create another new species when they can just colonise their new found planet?

So much good common sense here to consider.... @bigbone..perhaps if you are a rogue or renegade enigneer and have to be punished for that behavior...this is the punishment...

Haha i would'v just shove it down their throat before i'd ever get my ars ontop of tht waterfall!

Because God created man in his image....

I'm starting to think that the stuff the engineer took was a type of accelerant. Since the announcement that the sequel may be called Paradise, it got me thinking about the biblical Adam. Adam was the last the live to a ridiculously old age. After that man-kinds lifespan dropped dramatically. What if the stuff the engineer took was expected to accelerate something in his DNA but accidentally brought about a rapid necrosis.

Because "sometimes in order to create, you have to destroy".

OK...being an Alien fan I have to say simply: Dont forget by the time we get to Ripley and the Alien triolgy, she is pissed *because* they are trying to bring the species back...for bio warfare...SO, every species in the UNIVERSE is after this new biological warfare element (the aliens/facehuggers, etc). Whether its the Engineers, or humans, or whatever - they all know that its the best, most efficient bio-warfare weapon out there. __But, just like in Alien (trilogy) there is always someone who opposes and sees the real danger. For Alien trilogy, that was Ripley. For the Engineers, I believe that at least one of them was the opening scene Engineer who *committed suicide* --- and it COULD BE and probably is, LV-223 because...by the end of the movie, the Engineer who is after Dr. Shaw made it all the way from his crashed ship to her pod WITHOUT A HELMET in order to kill her.... I submit that the Engineers have always been able to breathe on LV-223 - its the ALIENS who needed a different atmousphere - just like humans- to propagate and survive. That's why the Aliens in the Ripley trilogy were surviving quite well *because* of the teraforming camp... the atmousphere the ALIENS needed. __Now, Id just like to know why suicide? I mean, its obvious it was a suicide - not an attempt to propagate life - - all they would have had to do to propagate life was mix a drop or two of their blood with the goo and drop it in the river....not ingest it! We're shown the change in DNA so we will understand the effect of the goo later in the movie, not to assume that its life beginning on earth.... There is some reason for his suicide...not sure what. The Engineer kills himself and plunges to his death while falling apart.

..just like ripley threw herself in suicide attempt into a river of fire to prevent the alien bursting out of her chest from coming to life... kind of parallel?

@batchpool: Adam was not the last to live a long life. That was Methuselah... but very close guess nonetheless.

@silvascript Xenomorphs don't even need atmosphere at all -- in the original Alien, the xenomorph is still alive in the vacuum of space outside the Nostromo escape pod, and Ripley has to blast it to death with the thruster. In Aliens, the queen xenomorph hitches a ride inside the shuttlecraft's landing gear back to the orbiting Sulaco; we can assume there's no life support inside the landing gear carriage since there wouldn't be any need for such. While Ripley technically "gets rid of" the queen xenomorph in Aliens by blowing it out the airlock, the movie never actually gives us any indication that the queen died. For all we know, she's still angrily floating out there in space, orbiting LV-223. Or maybe her orbit eventually decayed and she fell back to the planet, burning up on reentry.

All these questions make my head spin! I don't even want to try and answer this one yet lol.............but it's so much fun trying to figure out this puzzle isn't it!!! Don't give up everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm surprised no one has gone here with this.. The bible says "In the beginning.... Elohim hovered over the waters..." In the movie, we see the Engineer craft hovering above the waters, thus this appears to be a throw back to the Bible, cluing us in that this scene roughly coincides with the Biblical account of Man's origins. (Day 6 of Creation. You know... 7 Days/Eras starting with the Big-Bang [Let there Be Light], to a bunch of evolution, then finally Man, then some more evolution, then Messiah and then Utopian Society.)... moving along... Ok, so the Engineer in the beginning... Yeah... I don't think that's an Engineer. This guy is pretty stupid...He consumed a substance that caused him to fall-apart and disintegrate in a very painful manner!!! Primitive clothes compared to any other Engineers, almost primate-like grunts and groans. This guy isn't a scientist, that's for sure. I think this guy is a creation of the Engineers... this is Adam. (Elohim said: Let us create Man in our image, in our likeness.) According to the bible, Adam was perfect and sinless and every bit like his Creator. Why wouldn't Adam in the movie be Just like the Engineers? We had it good then. Since man was an expression of love and not self-serving, connected/one and not separate, the world was in perfect symbiosis. We lived almost indefinitely. There was no such thing as war, crime, famine, disease, or sickness, or death. Roses did not have thorns and snakes did not have venom - but rather the opposite. Man's sinless nature and creative spirit was enough to create an environment of evolution. As long as this environment remained, the world would just keep getting better and better. Today we experience the exact opposite. We can hardly communicate with one another, we're lucky if we live a full-term. We come up with creative ways of killing ourselves or giving ourselves cancer every day and if that's not enough, the earth is coming up with new ways to kill us each day with new diseases, war is so commonplace we make games of it and our planet is dying, and as if living some self-fulfilling prophecy we are so pre-occupied with the fear our world is ending that i'd be surprised if it didn't just from the amount of energy we've fed into the idea alone. yikes... WTF happened to us? Well, there's no short answers... but as far as the movie is concerned, it's the Black Goo aka The very suspect and creepy JELLO pudding cup of DOOM! That's what! Prometheus' Adam is JUST like the Engineers. That is, he is a perfect replica... completely "untainted". That is until he consumed the "Fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". Basically, in the Bible, whatever this really bad thing to eat is, Adam is tricked into thinking that by eating this he will become Just like God in every way, possessing the same knowledge that God does - who's squandering the smarts for himself... riiiight. (Apparently, Bible Adam wasn't very smart either) Ok, in the movie, we know that this big evil Black stuff, isn't good. Perhaps this "Adam" in the movie thought that this stuff would give him the power to create, and thus he too would be like his "makers". Or perhaps he thought it would do something else? Maybe he thought it would let him fly, who knows. I'm sure he was surprised of the outcome. The proof is in the eating of the pudding... of doom. In the bible God says: "If you eat of this Tree you shall surely Die". Thus Adam was cursed to die, and forced to work and toil by the sweat of his brow to make a living, and now for the first time is fearful of where his food or shelter will come from. But that's not all. Apparently, the curses of Adam are genetic and his children inherit the faults as well. Only they get a much-much shorter life-span to boot. In the Movie, "Adam" died on the spot, but the black stuff combined with his DNA creating Man who is a hybrid of Engineer and Evil/Dark Matter. Where this differs from the Bible is here Adam dies on the spot, but the curses are still passed on to mankind in the form of us being created as part Engineer, and part Evil Goo. Why I don't think that this guy is an Engineer sacrificing himself to create mankind (which is what I too thought at first): Firstly, these "Engineers" are way ahead of us. Especially that of what we currently know today. The navigation system on the cargo freighter (that was meant to destroy Earth) alone is a testament to their technological advances. So as long as all their advances in technology aren't solely devoted to really cool GUI's, we can assume they beat us hands down in the fields of science and medicine. Let me ask you... does humanity (at the current time) possess knowledge of genomic DNA isolation? YES. Do we have spaceships? NO. Ok. So the Engineers have advanced technology and an advanced undesrtanding of science, specifically molecular genetics. Making these assessments it is HIGHLY doubtful that they would employ a creative process that would require one of their own to die in such a grotesque way when they more than likely have a lab on the ship where they could have grown us in a petri dish and infused us with sugar, spice and everything nice - not past sell-date mutant Jello pudding snacks. The poor guy turned black, started falling apart as if suffering from advanced-stage leprocy, and then disintegrated into dust - probably thinking to himself the whole time "This was a REALLY bad idea!".... I don't think any person in their right mind would do that, and beings capable of creating or engineering life certainly wouldn't find the need to sacrafice one's own life in order to isolate their DNA sequence. Also I think an Engineer would have KNOWN what this substance was, and what it did. This being certainly did not. Hence, this was not an Engineer, but rather this was Adam. Why the goo is evil and not intended for use: Whatever it combines with it mutates it to become more EVIL, if it doesn't first melt your face off! It combined with the Engineers, it created mankind as we know it... and that's pretty damn destructive and dark. It combined with the worms and it created the creepy arm-breaking worm-snakes. It combined with us and created super smash bros. the "special" edition. It combined with a human egg and it created the evil squid monster. The Evil squid thing ate the engineer, and it created HR Giger's Alien. mmm... does anyone else have a craving for pudding? :D

"While Ripley technically "gets rid of" the queen xenomorph in Aliens by blowing it out the airlock, the movie never actually gives us any indication that the queen died. For all we know, she's still angrily floating out there in space" Dont give Fox ideas for Alien 5 lol... [url=http://ifonlyuk.com/interviews/interview-daniel-twiss/]Sacrificial Engineer Interview[/url] This is a interview with the actor who played the Sacrificial Engineer.. Here are a few quotes.. [b][i]"My character is that of a fairly young ‘Engineer’ who ritualistically sacrifices himself in the opening scene. This sacrifice is very different to any others as I have to drink an ancient mix which causes my body to literally disintegrate into the water around me. This then provides the first building blocks for new life to form on the alien planet"[/i][/b] This shows that it was a Sacrifice and that the purpose was to seed the building blocks of life.... again yes its odd and yes surely a Advanced race would not need his full Body to be uses as a Seed. Interesting point is he said Alien World?, this combined with when Ridley said that the planet does not have to be Earth it could be anywhere could be interesting and ambiguous. [b][i]They also forgot to send me my lines so I only received them the day before, but there were only a few words in alien to learn so it wasn’t too bad[/i][/b] This hints to the Elder scene and a full Dialog and thus the Sacrificial Engineer must have talked to the Elder Engineer and this also adds to him knowing and accepting his Sacrifice for the Greater Good and Agenda of the Engineer Race.

How about this.... The guy was part of a breakaway faction that just wanted to live on that planet in peace. When the engineers (his mates) turned up, they feared the worst and decided that someone should make the sacrifice and metamorphasise into a weapon to stop them. Remember, that something did happen to the engineers to cause them to abandon it all. Maybe he infected and attacked them all to stop their plans...?! I think that works better :)