HESITANT TO POST THIS BUT IT IS RELEVANT

@Richie Personally, I think, "unexplained", is great - or, certainly not [i]necessarily[/i] bad. I don't think, "unexplained", is the questionable tactic - I think the questionable tactic was in simply producing an, overall, disfunctional example of Film.

Robots are only needed by a flawed race that sees the flaws in themselves and desire to fix it. The engineers may view themselves as perfect and had no need to create superior beings,or they had seen the folly in it and decided not to.

Expecting a completely alien, highly advanced race of beings to behave the way we might, is the height of ethnocentricity. It is also made clear in the film that the Engineers have some kind of belief system......something for which they're actually willing to physically sacrifice themselves. That means all bets are off, in terms of what we might "naturally" expect.

@allinamberclad...agreed..."unexplained" is the fuel for sci-fi... @bogger...anything that is great likes being reminded of it unless of course they have reigned in theri egos...When that sleeping enigneer awoke and then went nuts, that is not someone I would revere @artyoh....agreed...All life forms no matter what thier intelligence act out their own way. It reminds me of angry humans get when their pets misbehave... @hadleysHope...your comment made me think of .."he who has the gold rules" and might makes right...Thats what the Pharoahs did..no love for them, but fear

Robots?!? The SJ species has been around for MILLIONS of years. - Hell, maybe BILLIONS of years. - and you ask "Why are there no ROBOTS?" I would assume that a species of that age would have moved past simple "mechanical" creations. - everything will eventually become bio-mechanical. - Meaning, when you look at a dog, it "MIGHT" be a real dog; or it might have been grown from Dog DNA; OR, it might be a bio-mechanical dog, with enhanced musculo-skeletal features, vision and performance. I doubt anything will be "pure" after a billion years of science. Why would you want human muscles, when they can be replaced with a synthetic, which enables you to run 150 MPH, with limitless endurance and lift 20,000 pounds? Exactly. BUT, my assumption is that at this stage of their evolution, the Space Jockies don't have R2-D2 and C3PO walking around. - Come on man,.... get with the program. Robots are so 2012. - It'd be like someone from the year 1100BC looking at a video of New York City and saying, "Where are all the goats and horses?!?!?" /sigh.

Yes unexplained is ok as long as its not too barmy. Its the bits that seem totally out of context within the framework of the film - I just wish i was all much more realistic / convincing like alien was : ( ...anyway it can get better but some bits can never be fixed now : ( ...

Pickleguy...in th world you are describing in your comment, it makes perfect sense and your point is received...thank you

All of these ideas are pure speculation. - there's no definitive, conclusive proof at all anywhere in the movie regarding the motives of the Space Jockeys and what really happened on LV223. It's fun to hypothesize - whereby some of our hypotheses could turn out to be factual in subsequent movies, but really, it's all just conjecture. Lastly, to contribute to the discussion, I ask this: "Why would a BILLION year old species need robots?!"

@Richie: Well.... thanks?! Are you some Forum Moderator or something? I didn't know that I needed your approval to post. /gag.