Were the Engineers chasing immortality, too? And other new ideas...

[u]Notice this: the Engineer at the end of the movie has an entirely different body than the Engineer at the beginning. [/u] If he's been bred to die, why would he have any adaptations for flying a ship like the pilot does? [u]I thought that the end engineer's body was actually armor, but upon further examination it looks like a combo xenomorph-type skeleton and traditional engineer. If so, wtf?! [/u] Or how about a Xeno is a combination of black goo, Space Jockey and their biomechanical suits? just look at the mural on the ceiling it seems to depict something like a human, in some sort of space jockey suit, with a melted helmet (and protruding 'trunk') but the arms look like a Xeno. And you saw from Fifiled's actions, after the black goo, that he leaped around attacking like a Xeno... what further changes would he have gone through if they hadn't killed him? [u]In their experimentation with this black goo, did they effectively develop some sort of co-existence with it? The Engineers are clearly religious or spiritual in some way or another, [/u] have you considered that religion may be used as a control tool on the Space Jockeys by their masters? Such advanced beings would have appeared god like to primitive humans, and that type of obedience would be useful to their masters. [u]2. When Dr. Holloway takes off his mask, he notes immediately that the species' were "terraforming" here. To terraform is to make a planet's atmsophere similar to earth's, so that it might be habitable. They were attempting to create an atmosphere for the planet. What, exactly, was terraforming? The Engineers, or the black goo offspring which wiped it out? Were the Engineers perhaps cultivating an environment to breed various specimens of the back goo within? [/u] Holloway is an idiot. Weyalnd Industries terraforms planets in a few years, and this place has a fucntioning atmosphere inside... after thousands of years only inside. It never occurs to him, that this is SPECIFICALLY for the inside of the dome? Think about what that means. We see that Space Jockeys can run around outside in that toxic air, so who is the clean air for inside then? Well, it suits humans perfectly. And there have been visits to Earth for at least 35,000 years and yet not ONE of these scientists says "Hey, do you think maybe they brought some humans here before?" Gee I wonder where they might be,... and hey, that think looks kind of like a big human,,, is this a lab? Is this big grey thing, the end result of what was done to those Egyptians, Mayans etc? Nobody raises this possibility. [u]3. If you think my ideas so far are whacky, how about this: it looked to me like the entire planet was infected with the driving force behind the black goo substance. In a sense, it was just waiting for conscious, organic beings to come "spark" its next manifestation. The organism, or force, that drives the black goo has made its presence felt everywhere on the planet: inside the hollow hill (David finds crazy organic, sticky stuff on the walls - not exactly the same as the black goo, but perhaps from the same source), planet (unbreathable), and in the chamber (when they enter the ritualistic chamber with the black goo bottles, the ceiling begins to change in an organic way). [/u] Well, if you want to go supernatural, it's hard to debate. There are more plausible explanations, such as they deliberately picked an uninhabited moon for their bunker complex, and that the green goo that David finds, sniffs and calls "impressive" was used by someone as a control. The whole chamber starts to change once the door is opened and the urns activate. Think of a couple of things... bioweapons labs, and also all those egyptian tombs we see in Indiana Jones type films... controlled environments, and also intruder systems, and booby traps. If the Space jockeys always wore their suits going into that room, then it may have always been kept cold, free of moisture and with a low level of oxygen, and basically dormant - otherwise the head would have rotted away, or been eaten by the worms. And then come the humans, helmets off, heat and moisture rushing into the room, and the door left open so more oxygen comes in. It could well be the trigger for the urns, and possibly the moisture destroys the art on the ceiling as accident, or to erase clues that they do not want intruders to know about. [u]Also notice that when the murals on the ceiling change, the storm kicks up at the EXACT SAME TIME. Is this coincidence? I think not. I think the black goo is driven from a common, very dark and complex, energy/life that has taken over the entire planet. The storm is also a result of the new life forms that have now come into contact with this "dark energy". [/u] You can imagine it as a ghost story, or possibly the storm is artificially induced, in order to make it harder for intruders to leave, while the black goo is released to deal with them. [u]commander's room of the alien ship, the same surveillance type of images appeared after NO ACTION BY DAVID (although he did sit in the chair - still, why would this simple action cause the replaying of the surveillance?). [/u] David pushed buttons. He's always touching stuff. [u]This time, the surveillance images do three important things: 1) show David how to steer the ship, 2) prompt David to SELECT the planet earth (note that the images disappeared immediately after David literally grabbed the earth - but the earth image remained, right on top of the sleeping Engineer..), and 3) alerted David to the sleeping Engineer. [/u] You think David, an android whose supposed to gather information would not have noticed the three dead Space Jockeys and one live Space Jockey, if some supernatural force hadn't intervened? [u]4. Charlie Holloway KNEW that David was putting something in his drink. First, they maintained eye-contact throughout the scene. Second, it was extremely obvious that David put his finger in Charlie's drink, and Charlie was looking right at him. [/u] Obvious? Yes, to the camera angle from the side, but hardly to Holloway's point of view. The 'plop' soud effect added in was to direct the audience's attention... dip your finger in a glass, see if it plops that loudly. [u]Fourth, Charlie took one sip, and then finished it off very quickly. [/u] That's not unsual in a drinking binge. [u]Fourth, David asked if he would do anything, and Dr. Holloway, looking David dead in the eye, said "Absolutely" in a very serious manner, as if he were clearly reading David's signals. He knew the mission was dangerous, he knew this was risky business, and he wanted answers. [/u] Yes, but David is not being straight with him, and is using Holloway's answers as a way of 'justifying' his own actions, a loophole if you will for his programmed inhibitions. [u]Fifth, after his risky endeavor, he wanted to elope with the one he loved, probably to get his mind off of the potential consequences. [/u] Elope? To run off and get married? It is hardly a big leap from getting a young man drunk, and expecting him to be in the mood for sex when he gets back to the bedroom and his girlfriend. [u]I am 100% convinced of this point. It is relevant in light of the themes of self-sacrifice (he dies like a true soldier). Moreover, his self-sacrifice for answers is parallel with the opening engineer's scene. [/u] You should never be 100% convinced of anything on such flimsy evidence. In case you missed the whole point of the film, Weyland was 100% convinced that he would get eternal life. Holloway and Shaw was convinced he would meet their benevolent makers. Shaw was 100% convinced, by Davids very cryptic vague remark that she was witnessing the start of Armageddon, and in fact she may be very wrong, but she still convinces Janek to kill himself, based on her beliefs. [u]7. The relationship between Shaw and David, beginning at the end of the movie, is something remarkable to think about. David is, for the first time, without a mission to base his actions on, and entirely dependent on a human. Notice that he says he WANTS to get out of here (beginning of the movie, he does not, and cannot, WANT anything). This breaks into the bottomless theme of human vs android. Why can't android be human? What makes them different than us? Could an android ever FEEL, WANT? It is fun to think about... [/u] He doesn't actually say that he wants to leave. He says he needs her help, and when she asks why she should help him, he refers to HER desire to leave. He certainly would prefer to be reunited with his torso as he can do very little as a disembodied head. Certainly, like any self aware life form, he is developing desires, and while he has no idea yet what his purpose is. He knows he will not find it, as a head lying on the floor.

[img]http://www.socialtechpop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ngbbs4edb958487321.jpg[/img]

Good points, Hadley's. I will try to respond to them when I can. Here's another observation: I believe the decapitated Engineer committed suicide. Whatever they were running from, it was worse than a quick death. It is simply too coincidental for it to be an accident. That he would fall squarely under the door, with it perfectly aligning with his neck? I think not - too remote a chance. And I don't buy that he died before he fell - that would be too quick a death, immediately after he was running at full sprint. He kneels before he falls, too.

Hadley's, I really like your ideas about a) the Engineer's masters using religion as a device to control them (perhaps in order to get them to carry on with their experimentation, which entailed what?), and b) possibly bringing the humans to planet. Let me ask you this (and I realize these do not have definite answers, but we can try): 1) Was the Engineer at the end wearing a body suit, or was his body actually different? If it was his body, would make sense with the experimentation hypothesis, that the engineers were combining their own DNA with the black goo, to try to harness its energy, or immortality. 2) Why would the engineer be cryogenically frozen for 2k years? If he wanted to destroy earth, why not just get it done with? Perhaps this was not of his own doing - perhaps the dark energy force that drives the black goo gained control over him? I don't know. 3) Why did the image of planet earth remain from the surveillance even after everything else disappeared? It's as if the system were choosing a destination right then and there, not 2k years before. When the engineer awoke, he was merely following the directive that had been laid out before him (effectively, it was chosen by David).

It would seem that the guy at the end had adaptations specifically for his role as pilot. It is hard to tell if is just a suit, but is seems to merge at the neck, wrists and ankles. I don't think they are cryogenically frozen. It doesn't seem to involve low temperatures at all, as there is no sign of it when the pod opens. Stasis seems to involve some other method, whereby the life signs are so slowed down that they only show up briefly every couple of hours (the 'glitch' Janek attributes to the 'pup' probe) It's not known if he was meant to sleep that long at all, whether there is a timer set to wake him, or if he was meant to be woken by someone in charge of the mission when it was time to go. Perhaps he was put in stasis, to be used when the other guys (some kind of lab technicians, working with the urns) were done with their work... but they all got wiped out, so he got left behind. It's not known if the guys we see in holograms on the bridge also deliberately left him there 'forever' or if they were later killed by whatever caused the deaths of the other three Space Jockeys on the bridge (see how the holograms point to the stasis pods which have holes around the chest area.) It would seem a waste to simply leave a pilot stuck in stasis. If there were quarantine issues, then they could have killed him, rather than risk him being woken. Either they didn't think it through when they left, or they never made it out alive. The flight plan to Earth was already indicated before David held the image of Earth in his hand. Perhaps that element faded last because he interacted with it. Like the way when shutting down a computer, the last window you've opened may be the last one to close.

@ JackTrigger The engineers dont need to chase immortality, cause there are Biologically Immortal (kinda like the jellyfish on earth but, humanoid). i mean with that vast knowelge of creation and technology, they dont need to, the probably have bigger problems to deal with.