Toward A Unifying Theory

So a lot of things in this film don't make sense--take the kraken face hugger: where did all of it's mass come from? Did it spontaneously generate mass from Higgs Boson particles or something? It doesn't make any sense. But there is a lot of stuff in the film that is fun to think about, so I tried writing down a few things I remembered from seeing the film: Some Assumptions I Am Making:     -the waterfall scene depicts the beginning of life on earth -the engineers intended to create human life     -homo-sapiens are the pinnacle of earth evolution     -the 'engineers' were a homogenous/peaceful culture whose values are essentially similar to Christianity (the self-sacrifice of the engineer in the opening scene, the decision to create life, the apparent gentle guidance they provided to past cultures, the decision to eradicate us following Christ's death) -the engineers made contact with past human cultures and did create an "invitation" to LV223 -LV223 serves as a temple/outpost for earth and not the center of the Alien culture     -the engineers intended to destroy the human race about 2000 years ago -the meta-narrative is informed by Christian mythology     -LV223, a biblical reference, was meant to be a film device that points to a meta-narrative Leviticus Quote: If any one of your descendants touches these things, that person will become unclean. That person must be separated from me. The Israelites gave these things to me. I am the LORD. Timeline:    -The Engineers created life on earth because creating and maintaining life is a deep cultural value that they hold.    -They observed human development and decided (around the time of Christ's martyrdom) that humans on earth should be destroyed.  It could be that they had the foresight to understand that our capacity for space travel, and thus for "visiting the temple" by making contact with them, was not far off. -They decided to kill us by sending planes loaded with deadly cargo to us--they knew that the cargo would result in the mutations of all lifeforms on earth (much like the worms and fifield were mutated), eventually causing rapid total degeneration of all terrestrial organic systems. -The engineers planned that in the wake of the destruction of earth would come the rise of xenomorphs. Nagging Questions: --Why kill earthlings? --How could the virus contamination have occurred in every temple/ship simultaneously, stopping their invasion of earth completely? --What is the relationship between the engineers and the "aliens"? In what regard to engineers hold the aliens? (We find hints of some kind of mutual admiration in the art which decorates the engineer temple) Theories: -Given the assumptions I'm making above, 3 theories seem possible 1 The engineers held the xenomorphs in admiration--the engineers are paradoxically more like the androids in the films than the humans--remember one android in the film Alien praising the "purity" of the character of their species? Perhaps the engineers' values are strange and even terrible to us, perhaps their great art was in creating a pure being, and their concept of pureness was related to invulnerability and survivability. Perhaps the engineers had little regard for individual life, but high regard for biological design (as they are perhaps designed themselves--all men/no nipples), and perhaps they saw the xenomorphs as being the ultimate step in galactic evolution. In this sense the film is not about human's discovering their true selves by finding the engineers, but rather brings us to a point in which humans must rebel against their terrible fathers. 2 The engineers saw the xenomorphs as a kind of pet, their own biological weapon (we do not see any other engineer weapons), and fetishized them as something to be admired and feared. They decided to destroy us not because they wanted to xenomorphs to inhabit the earth instead, but because they decided we were, as a species, dangerous. They decided this around the time of Christ's death because Christ, like civilizations before him, was in communication with the engineers, and through him they tried to warn human kind. Following his crucifixion, they decided that humans were dangerous, a few centuries away from space travel, and thus a real problem. In this sense they may have seen humans as essentially more dangerous than the "aliens"--they may be a terrifying and nihilistic species, but they aren't going to build spaceships and explore the universe. Due to their ability to annihilate any food chain they gain access to, they may not evolve at all under any conditions. In a way this makes them a perfect guard dog for planet hoppers. Ultimately the engineers died on LV223 due to recklessness or because there was dissent among the engineers about the fate of humans. It seems strange that their weapon, which their murals show was clearly very familiar to them, managed to destroy them all at once. Perhaps one or more engineer(s) decided to let the weapon loose on LV223 and destroyed themselves to spare us? 3 In the most strained theory, but which adheres most fully to the LV223/Prometheus myth--the black ooze is meant to be a tool which is brings both life and death. It is the cup of black ooze that degenerated (or something) the DNA of the original engineer, yet for others the ooze causes mutation instead. The difference is in the Leviticus quote--the original engineer was using the stuff to create life, and took so much at once that it just vaporized him in a moment leaving nothing. Anyone using it for any other purpose than turning themselves into seed will become "unclean", and the face huggers, xenomorphs, etc are just manifestations of incredibly destructive force contained in the black ooze. In this sense the ooze is like a liquid form of the black oblique in 2001:Space Odyssey--it is somehow essential and kind of beyond our understanding. Perhaps beyond the understanding of the engineers as well, since their temple murals all seems related to the effects of the ooze.