Engineers - Black Goo - Sequel ideas

Ah Prometheus. So, I watched the movie last night, and I’ve been reading theories all day about what is going on in this movie. Here are my thoughts and please ignore misspellings and bad grammar, I didn't want to spend all night editing: There are two things going on here that beg lots of questions. On the one side we have the Engineers, and what’s up with them. On the other we have the black goo, and what is that all about. Let’s analyze what we know for certain without making huge leaps and just stick to the facts. [b][size=200][u]First the Engineers[/u][/size].[/b] In the beginning of the film we have what is presumably a young Earth being seeded for life by an engineer. Worthy of some note is that his clothing is different from the engineers we will see later and that the ship he must have departed from has a significantly different design. The next thing we know we are on LV 223 and we find what appear to be weapons and a ship locked in on Earth with a payload of… something dangerous until things went awry about 2000 years ago. When we actually meet our first Engineer he is clearly hostile. Very very hostile. The tidbits we can gather from the other movies would also suggest that at one point an Engineer or Space Jockey may have been headed to Earth with a clutch of Xenomorph eggs, only supported by LV 426 being closer to earth than LV 223. We also see that the Engineers are vulnerable to the Xenomorphs and their other weapons. [b][size=200][u]So, a little speculation[/u][/size][/b]. I’ve seen a good number of posts that suggest the Engineers seeding Earth in the beginning and the society we see later are not one in the same, or are simply genetically related. I’m not sure that this is reasonable. What I think would explain the difference in appearance of the ship and clothing would be the intervening 5 billion or so years. I wouldn’t expect Earth or our vehicles and culture to look the same for that period of time and I don’t think it’s plausible for the Engineers to stay the same that long either. What I think may be safe to say is that we are dealing with the Engineers military or possibly a culture that has gone through a dramatic shift to being more aggressive and war like. So, it’s pretty clear that the Engineers have decided to end us, but for what reason? It’s important to point out that we would be looking at our world as of about 100 AD, give or take. We had the Roman Empire, and Jesus going on at about that time. It seems like, and is supported by interviews with Ridley Scott, that perhaps Jesus was a representative of the Engineers, and we all know how things turned out there. It seems really strange to think of it that way, and almost impossible to align the ideas of the movie with the ideas of Jesus’ teachings and the Bible, but these Engineers are starting to look like the petty vengeful Old Testament God, so perhaps that is the idea. Additionally, it isn’t as if you couldn’t say we were created in you know who’s image. Whatever the cause, about 2000 years ago the Engineers must have positively decided that they hate us, so much so that upon a friendly greeting, a lone Engineer decides to very aggressively and viciously attack all in his presence without much in the way of provocation. So this is my conception of the Engineers, they seem to be a very petty and vengeful sort, and maybe not all that adept any longer. If we are to take what we find on LV 223 as a clear indicator of their intent to shut down humanity, and what we find on LV 426 as another possible indicator of what they have in store for us, I think the question becomes why are they so incompetent? This is a race that has been trying to destroy us in our infancy, and failing, for about 2000 years. What exactly is the hold up? I think that is the most interesting question about the engineers. Not why did they make us or why do they wish to destroy us, but rather why haven’t they been able to? I suspect that we are going to find that there are few Engineers left and that they succumbed to their own weapons. I hope that we will find out in another movie. [b][size=200][u]On to the goo[/u].[/size][/b] Quite a bit has been made of the black goo. Again, I prefer to stick to facts before doing some speculation. We see something that at least resembles the black goo at the beginning of the movie. It starts out solid and then turns liquid and seems to move under it’s own power for a bit, but that could just be the liquefaction or boiling process it is going through giving it that appearance. The Engineer drinks this concoction and disintegrates in a pretty timely manner. I felt like maybe that wasn’t exactly what he was expecting, but I think we can pretty much dismiss that perception. Next we find our goo in the big head room, with the severed head. From this point, we get a few more clues. First, the engineer head may have been deliberately sealed in that room, as he seems to be going through the same transformation as our engineer at the beginning of the movie. Second, through David we know that our vases contain both the black goo, and another mysterious goo in glass vials, and that said goo in vials will infect a host then cause that host to impregnate a woman with a squid baby which will then turn into a facehugger thing and then create a Xenomorph sort of thing. Third, when the crew of the ship enters the room, the goo starts boiling over. It might be reasonable to assume that this atmospheric exposure has the same type of effect as it did on the goo in the intro to the movie, but it may be a leap to far to assume that these two substances are one in the same. Fourth, we also see that the goo pretty much seems to be responsible for mutating the worms into what some are calling hammerpedes. Finally, at the entrance to the ship we find a stockpile of the vases, presumably containing a more stable formulation of the black goo. We also see David examining some type of greenish goo found on the control panel he used to start the hologram. I’d like to point out that one can see some type of tiny eggs, worms, or something inside both this goo and the drop he extracts from the vials on his fingertip, or at least thats what these inclusions looked like to me. [b][size=200][u]So, now for some speculation.[/u][/size][/b] Frankly, I’m not that sure that the goo is something that will ever be made sense of completely. There is simply far too much going on with it in different situations. This, however, is my hypothesis based on what I see in the movie. First, let’s notice that the general ideas presented in the film don’t track much with molecular biology to begin with, so we can pretty well assume that we are playing fast and loose with those rules. So, lets suppose this; whatever the black goo is, it breaks down then starts or accelerates an evolutionary course for those organisms that are exposed to it. It may also be the case that it tends to, somehow (insert miracle exemption here) increase the aggression of the species or genome that it comes into contact with along with sponsoring the evolutionary process. I don’t completely like this explanation as when we observe the worms they clearly evolve to a higher life form while the Engineer in the beginning is broken down into simpler lower evolved life forms, but this may be the best I have. So, if we accept that the nature of the black goo is some sort of accelerant or liquid gene splicer we might explain away the difference in how the worms reacted versus the Engineer in the intro by suggesting that these particular urns from the big head room are in some kind of quarantine. Perhaps they have been contaminated somehow. Now, we also have the black or green goo from the vials that David extracted from the vase. I think it’s fairly clear that this is a completely different substance from the black goo, but what is it? My best guess is that it is a parasite of some sort. The worms in David’s eyes are a real life symptom of some real life parasites. Know what else is kind of a parasite? That’s right, the Xenomorph. I’ve seen some people suggest that the vials contain Xenomorph DNA. I have an alternative suggestion. Suppose you are an alien race that created the Xenomorph, which I think is a fair assumption to make of the Space Jockeys, and let’s say you keep sending them out as a weapon in the form of a ship full of eggs. Let’s also say your ships keep crashing on uninhabited worlds like LV 426 because your eggs get out of control and your pilot gives birth to a Xenomorph effectively canceling the mission. What you need is a safer way to transport this weapon. So suppose you created this weapon from a fairly nasty naturally occurring parasite you found in your galactic travels and you also happen to have this liquid gene splicer handy that you used to make your Xenomorphs to begin with. You make a package, one part black gooey liquid gene splicer, one part innocuous or at least more easily controlled parasite. You now have your weapon: Xenomorph in a can. I think if we also analyze the Xenomorph life cycle we can see that it’s ridiculous. It’s very aggressive, completely dependent on hosts for reproduction, has a queen and eggs aside. It has a very complicated system, so much so that there is no way for it to have evolved independently. What selective pressure would give you the most ridiculously long and vulnerable chain of events to gestate in nature? Nothing, that’s what. On the other hand the Xenomorph is absolutely perfect if engineered as a weapon. You have a very fast population build up, fast wipe out of the enemy, and then a presumably quick die off of the weapons after hosts disappear. Instant scorched earth policy. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that the only thing that could emerge from the concoction of the black goo and vials would be a Xenomorph, but it seems that the Engineers could be reasonably well assured that whatever did come from the concoction would be sufficiently nasty and unpleasant to get the job done having stemmed from a parasite to begin with. Based on the relief carvings in the big head room it’s also pretty fair to assume that whatever the origin of the Xenomorph is the Engineers are aware of them. Of course, this is all speculation on my part and completely open to hole punching, but it feels like reasonable explanation for the unreasonable black goo. [b][size=200][u]Or, it could all be just to screw with us.[/u][/size] [/b] Seriously, people like us care about these characters and this universe, Ridley Scott on the other hand (not that I’m saying he doesn’t care about them at all, he certainly does in some way) doesn’t seem to care about them the same way we do. What we have here is a collaborative project based on the original director’s vision, the studio’s demands, and a rewrite by Damon Lindelof. What, if we are to for a moment realize that this is a story and not a documentary, should we do with that information when it comes to interpreting what is occurring in Prometheus? Well, first it takes a bit of the fun out for sure. Let’s look at the black goo. There seem to be some contradictory things going on with this stuff, and it would be great to find out what is really going on with the stuff. The reality is that I doubt the director and writers really care. They came to the project writing a suspense / horror / sci-fi movie, not a galactic biology textbook. We have already seen that even accepted laws of how biology works are a bit up to interpretation. What I’m saying is that everyone has this idea that Scott and Lindelof know what the black goo is and how it works and where and when the truth will be revealed. I think not. Let me be unequivocal about this, there IS no making sense of the black goo, the goo in the vials, or what any of it does. What it does is always going to be subject to whatever the next writer wants it to do. I know that’s a bummer, but I think that is pretty much the movie in a nutshell. It’s about the story and the imagery. The universe, its structure and nuances are mere afterthoughts if they are thoughts at all. I know many of you will be like me though, and you’re going to hold out hope for a sequel that maybe explains things further. Well, there are two things I can be almost completely certain of when it comes to a sequel: there will be one and Ridley Scott won’t direct it. Ridley Scott just doesn’t seem like a sequel kind of guy to me, he will have some other project and won’t tie himself up scheduling around a sequel to a movie I suspect he didn’t want to do all that badly in the first place. Now, a bit of speculation, what will we get in that sequel? Here are my guesses and reasonings. The sequel could follow one of two possible stories. The first possibility is that it will follow Shaw rocketing off to find the Engineer homeworld. Notice I say Shaw and not Shaw and David. Realistically, I’m not so sure Fassbender is going to reprise his role as David and it might stretch credibility to suggest that Shaw will manage to patch David back together anyway, even though we clearly see that she brings his body as well as his head along for the ride. Maybe they will consider switching actors or simply having the disembodied head and getting Fassbender for a few days of principle and voice overs. Neither is all that enticing to me, but it would be good drama and character development if David were to reveal to Shaw that he “poisoned” Holloway. Additionally, if we follow this course we are going to need new humans. These will always be suspense / horror movies at their root, and to have that kind of movie you need people to kill, so the writers will find some implausible way to shoehorn another cast of 3 to 6 people into the story with Shaw. Guess what won’t happen! Shaw reaching the Engineer homeworld, that’s what. There seems to be a rule with these movies that says however much you reveal you never go that far. So from there perhaps Shaw will meet more engineers, have more issues with black gooey substances, or if Ridley Scott isn’t at the helm we might just find a Xenomorph onboard her ship, who knows? In any event, there are lots of places to go according to that nice handy navigation map David pulled up on the bridge (too treky?) of the Engineer’s ship. So, plan B for a sequel: Return to LV-223. They did it with Aliens, and they can do it again with this franchise. If so, what will we see? More goo infections, more experimentation with said goo, less Shaw and David, more or less of Engineers. At some point back on Earth somebody at Weyland is going to say “Hey everybody, remember that trillion dollar ship with our CEO and one of our executives on it that set out to discover the origin of life on Earth? What ever happened to that?” In this case I’d bet we almost certainly see a Xenomorph enter the picture, (Again, provided Ridley Scott isn't in charge and the studio demands it, which I'd be willing to bet they do) didn’t we just leave a sorta-alien in that life boat? Are they not going to notice that? Yeah, they will and some android that’s programed to secretly only look for WMDs will start salivating and try to make another one and convinently find David’s data logs somewhere and use the information to make another squid monster and another Xeno looking thing and the movie almost writes itself. In short, I don’t know what really happened in Prometheus, but I still liked it quite a bit, but it you’d have to be a liar to not admit that the script was a wreck. We don’t have an architect here, we have someone just throwing stuff out there as it becomes convenient and seeing where things go. It’s just frustrating to know that it will almost be impossible to have a sequel that explains some of the mysteries in a plausible and satisfactory way. On the other hand if they did announce a sequel tomorrow, I’d be in line.