Unwilling Sacrifice?

We can only gain insight into his likely frame of mind if the original footage (and language spoken as a function of the ceremony) is revealed. They may believe (like *many* humans) that they have a soul that goes straight to some version of paradise when they self sacrifice.

First of all I don't think he sacrificed himself willingly. I find it hard to believe to ask an intelligent life form ' Here ya go mate, just go over there and drink this stuff.' There has to be a motivation to do that. So what is that motivation and why do it. I think anything from here on is speculation, but I'm of the opinion that what was going on may be similar to a right of passage. I have seen some similarities to the film Dune, where individuals (engineers) thought they may be the one who could drink and survive. Must admit this tradition has been carried out in my local pub every week-end, and there are always casualties.

You have to remember that this is an Alien Culture, I like to think that the engineer was sacrificing himself for something far greater than himself. Self preservation is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Especially when it comes to spreading life in the Galaxy.

^Batchpool... funny, like it was a prank! " I dare you to go down to that waterfall and drink this homebatch of goo I made!" LMAO No but seriously, he did look pretty surprised. His last words were probably, "Oh, this taste like ass." Lol

agreed....especially seeing the other pictures ***spoilers**** of the elder along with the "Sacrificial" engineer...and sacrificial may or may not be the best word for it, but I believe he knew that his purpose was to disperse his black stuff catalyzed DNA via his very own willful ingestion of the stuff....i think it was either a great honor (or MAYBE a punishment, possibly...but more likely i think an honor...one of them to seed a world...OR one of them to destroy it...the black stuff we encountered in the movie seems to only create hostile parasitic life....which to me implies a form of their organic base maybe manipulated TOO well......if in fact they used the same black stuff (before they reached that point of experimentation or whatever)...anyway...yeah..dude knew what he was doing and i suspect when blu ray with extras and the 30 minutes that was cut comes out we'll see more to validate that.....I HOPE....

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/56442 Per the attached image from a deleted portion of the scene, it is clear the young Engineer is being led by an Elder Engineer to his fate. He knows what he is about to do, whether he wants to actually do it is anybody's guess.

This kind of touches me that the young engineer have to sacrifice himself even tough he don't want to based on my assumption.

I think the Flying Saucer held the Engineers' masters. I think the Engineer knew what he was doing and was at peace with it (no idea if he agreed with it). His body language suggested that, anyway. Maybe they seeded the planet so that intelligent life would populate it and dig up precious materials for thousands of years. Eventually, mankind would have accumulated massive amounts of purified plastics, metals and other resources (slave labor, willing and innocent) so all the alien masters would have to do is swoop in, use their bio-weapon to purge mammalian life, and scoop up the goodies. And, being as advanced as they are, I bet they would have a good way of dealing with the aliens as they were scooping. Why do I think this? Well, if a race survives long enough, eventually their population will likely exceed the carrying capacity of their planet. If they move to space and continue to grow, then eventually they will strip their planet of building materials and again come up against a capacity problem. So, if they think ahead a little bit, they can not only find planets rich in resources that can be used to continue their fleet expansion and race proliferation, but they can also populate the planet with disposable slave labor. It just depends on how old the race is and how long they have been doing this. If they are millions of years old and have been populating worlds at the rate of 1 per 100 years, then tens of thousands of worlds out there are holding (potentially) intelligent life. And it would explain why they were coming to Earth at the time they were coming: they needed to harvest before we started sending our metals and plastics into space. If I needed lots of plastic, I'd rather raid a milk jug factory than pick up discarded plastic bottles along a desert roadside. Lastly, this would fit into the mythos and general feelings of being tiny, insignificant, powerless beings among gods and titan-ish monsters. How could we hope to survive in a universe populated by thousands of worlds worth of ships serving a common master/god race? Oh, wait, Stargate already explored that angle...

did he FALL or was he pushed? there is an ELDER behind him in deleted footage... ;)