All about prejudges

WOW That was beautifully written! Welcome to the forum!

Sincere thanks, Svanya

Welcome, Lucipherus. You may be reading a bit too much into the Engineers' intentions when you allude to their only purpose being destruction. We really don't know what's going on yet... it may be the case that David's theory is correct - that sometimes in order to create one must first destroy - but if so, create what? Or that may be completely wide of the mark. However, running with the notion that they are intent on genocide... Maybe us humans have turned out to be despicable vermin in the eyes of our creators. Perhaps we are one of millions of planetary experiments that produced a very bad result. I have to confess, if I was an Engineer, I'd perhaps feel like hitting the Kill Switch when I see the kind of stuff that we get up to. Perhaps it's a kindness, putting us out of our misery... Whatever, the long term plan of the universe in general must follow Darwinian principles (despite interference by the Engineers) in that an intergalactic civilisation that comes out on top (that is an assumption as far as the Engineers are concerned since we've only seen a small bubble of our local space) is by definition fit for purpose and would therefore qualify as being the superior species.

ZZPLURAL, I tried to response your post and instead "reported" it by mistake. Apologies, new on the forum and thought it was a "citing" key instead. I don't consider your commentary reportable at all, just me being an idiot. >_< I think you pointed the main theme on my rant when you cite Darwinian principles. In our society we misanderstand Darwin in the same terms: the ultimate predator on the top of the pyramid is there "for a purpose", and therefore "has the right to do his will". Well, yes and no. I hope I don't sound pretencious cause I am in no way an expert on Darwin, so my solely intention is to share my point of view. But allow me to say Darwin was more into survival without breaking the perfect equilibrium between species rather than into a "race for supremacy". That understanding "evolution theory" as a "race for supremacy" is the kind of prejudgement I was refering in my first post, and it's an actual mistake, since no animal -but humans- gives a damn about the concept of supremacy, the only thing they want is to survive, to have space to live and enjoy and enough resources to endure and reproduce. No "dreams for power" on their minds. Only in ours. Now I do agree with you I might be reading too much on the Ingenieers intentions and most of it must be left to mystery. That was probably Scott's intentions. They are suppossed to be an "alien race" after all, and therefore, their motivations are beyond human comprenhension... ...But for some reason, I "smell" they are actually not so "superhuman", and that they indeed share some of the most human lower qualities. My point is: at the start we -I mean humans, the characters on the film- take them for Gods... because they are able to do things we can only dream about... But then it turns out to be a mistake, a prejudgement again if you wish, caused by the fact we consider superior Technology and Military Power a sort of "divine" quality. --- But they are then depicted more as "demons" than as angels. Creatures unable to show compassion. Therefore, souless? This seem to be a quite common topic on Scott, mainly "Bladerunner", where the apparently "souless" robot then shows mercy and compassion on the end. So, therefore, he HAD a soul after all. These Ingenieers are closer to souless soldiers, like Nazi drones or the like. I wouldn't say THEIR CONSCIOUS intention was purely Destroy... They probably had a sort of objective on their culture, say, a phylosophy or some sort of ideology... But same as the Nazis, in the end all that ideology only hides the truth revealed by facts, and the facts in the movie are quite clear: in the end, their culture can only create suffering and death. So, taking your own words, wich I think are right on their own way, if the existence of this "degenerated race" has a meaning on the universe, it cannot be "letting them to so anything they want to do" just because they "look" like gods and therefore have "divine -or darwinian- right". Their existence must be explained to prove the existence of another force wich equilibrates their extremely death-driven existence. That means, another "culture" wich are life-driven. Like demons and angels. Cause if the Devil exist, God MUST exist too... only "he" (or better said, "it") must surely be way harder to find than the demons, simply cause the demons have bodies, but God surely has not such thing. xD ----------------------- Magellan9, I'm not from the past. xD I'm simply from Spain and need to carefully writte my english in the most worked form I can in order to be sure I will be understood. :) I'm glad you share the same feelings about the theme, cause I have the impression that's exactly what it is: a "smell" or instinctive aware, rather than an intellectual reasoning... Cause intellectually, yeah, no doubt they are way superior and godlike, compared to us. But with that reasoning only, I just couldn't stop feeling SOMETHING IMPORTANT WAS MISSING, and I really think the Noomi Rapace character was actually quite aware of it the whole trip... and indeed goes searching for it in the sequel! :)

@Lucipherus Utterly perfect written sire, may thine extraordinaire threademus help us be mended :D Lol just joking, welcome. Interesting thoughts there, especially about the Engineers being more decadent and not far ahead of us. I got a similar feeling that the engineers were an ancient species that completely lost it when developing the bioweapons. And yes Weyland was a crazy old bastard indeed.

@Lucipherus: I believe your instincts to be correct that the Engineers share at least some of our human base instincts. The main reason I have is the behaviour of the Last Engineer when he went berserk on a couple of occasions. Funnily enough, not because of his actions – extreme though they were – since he may have had a very good motivation for acting the way that he did, but because of the unmistakable grimace of anger on his face when he upped the tempo. That was base stuff. Who can really say how much of a 'soul' the Engineers have? To me, they seemed to be getting along with each other quite sociably in the flight recorder playback that David triggered in the map room. I'd say they have souls. IIRC, Scott is on record as saying that Roy Batty acted on pure instinct in Blade Runner, so no soul there, like David in Prometheus. The question of whether a hostile and soulless race is superior or not to us is moot. Ash admired the creature's qualities in Alien (a survivor, remorseless) for example. From that point of view insects on planet Earth are doing a pretty good job in the superiority stakes! As for the Engineers, we've really seen so little of them and so much mystery remains that it's not possible to make any definitive statements about their ethics, although there have been hints that we've got completely the wrong end of the stick. Roll on the sequel!

First and foremost I want to warn that my keyboard is acting weird and I cannot produce the question mark. Instead I will use the asterisk to replace it * I personally think Luchipherus opened up a pandora`s box here. I really enjoyed reading his OP as it aligns with my understanding of the movie and where the idea is going. The thing that triggered me the most is how barbaric the engineers were. Very ritualistic race who seem to have cracked the secrets of the universe to become as powerful as they are (bioengineering, faster than light travel, seeding worlds with life in a highly ritualistic manner.) Yet they experience the most basic animal social traits, war, weapons and as mentioned before facial grimaces and violent aggression. I would not say they are that evolved. Having said all that however, we must also keep in mind they came before us and the DNA contained inside the engineer who sacrificed himself to populate the earth contains the entire experience of the engineer species up to the point of sacrifice. It is because of this that we must see that their evolution continued with us. So we are actually more evolved if not equally evolved. When I speak of evolution here I don`t speak about advances in science or technology, because we are clearly no where near their level. I speak of the evolution of morality and wisdom, although we cannot boast to be on a higher moral ground either! The best and most fitting example of this would be the creation of nuclear arms on earth. Could we have prevented the discovery of fission that led to nuclear power or did it all take time to get to nuclear weapons, meaning it happened while we weren`t looking, so our physiology and it slowness allowed it to happen*. The same can be said of the engineers. The events that led them to the path of bioengineering the xenomorph must have been very slow and gradual. There must have been a long series of events, containing much drama, that resulted in the decision towards that path. How can a species as advanced as they are be so blind to create a weapon that can destroy them* Unless of course its the bipolar emotions they attach to creation and destruction, screaming ritual, that caused the equilibrium to swing and break. Compromising the fulcrum of their own equilibrium (as stated by lucipherus in is original post). I believe Luci (if I may call you Luci lol) was on to something that we are missing and will lead to the answers of what to expect in the sequel to come. I am reminded by a line the android David uses when Shaw and the other doctor are examining the severed head in the medical lab. Mortal after all. This must mean that they experience the same weakness to reality as we do...wear and tear. This of course will lead, as has been stated many times in this forum, what we search to discover might not be as peachy and fuzzy as we expect it to be. Just because they are a more advanced species, expecting their homeworld to be paradise might indeed be the letdown of all letdowns. Of course this remains to be seen :) Once again I apologize for the lack of proper punctuation and hope it will incite more in depth discussion. Have a hairy hairy Christmas...cause its cold an all in them times of year.

Very interesting idea. When I saw it with my mom, she pointed out that the main reason engineers want humans dead is because humans are becoming smarter than them. So that's definitely possible. But then again, we know so little about the engineers. We don't know if its the entire engineer race all in agreement to destroy humanity or just a group faction with its own agenda. We gathered lots of information about the black goo, but the movie never showed just what exactly happened to cause all the space jockey to die in the dome. [quote]What if the Ingenieers had LOST THEIR SOUL along their way? Yes they have absolute superior military technology but... since when does that make SUPERIOR a species, if they are unable to live in equilibrium with their enviroment? A species whose only purpose is destruction seems to me more like a CANCER or a VIRUS than a true living, natural species.[/quote] This is a interesting point, and it can also describe us humans as well seeing how we keep on destroying nature, mother earth. and also war, cruelty violence that is going on in the world. Yes we are the most superior species on the planet, but we too have lost our souls. And seeing as how we came from the engineers, we might be actually following their footsteps. Engineers created humans, but wants to destroy them afterwards Humans created robots, but also wants to destroy them afterwards as shown in Blade Runner and A.I.

Yes I definitely agree with yur points of view and I'm really glad my questions had a similar resonance on you. ZZPLURAl, about the "lack of soul" of either Engineers and human droids, I would say THEY INDEED DO HAVE a soul, but the matter is they are probably not aware of it --in the Ingenieers case, their culture has come to forget "the true God" and now they only worship their own d%cks... and the droids have simply been educated on the belief they are souless, and just "tools". But they do have a soul, as every thing in this universe has. Aware of it, or not. Same as humans, as DAVUDA and KEEP-ITREAL points -I totally agree the Ingenieers are a sort of methaphor of the possible tragic future of humankind- we humans also have "forget" our soul along the way. But we still have it. As Shaw "knows", meanwhile some other characters doesn't even believe it exists -though they still have it even not wanting it-. Now "SOUL" is a slightly old-fashioned word, maybe, so I would note a synonim for it would be "CONSCIOUS MIND" or "SELF AWARE", joined to "COMPASSION" -wich is defined by the recognition of ourselves in others, the aware that the "other" is also me, and therefore if I see the other suffering, it hurts me too, so I truly wish the best to his/her/it-. When Scott said Batty was "acting by instinct", I think he is clearly pointing that "compassion" is on the very root of the droid, it's not an idea programmed on his brain, but a basic element of his deepest being. Methaphorically you can name that as "soul", I would say. I always saw "ALIEN" as a sort of methaphor of the ugliest, sickest part of humanity -a raper, a psychopath lost and full of anger, whose only way to communicate with other beings is killing-. To me is similar to "Henry portrait of a serial killer", or "Psycho", only on a monster disguise. It's quite reasonable to see "Prometheus" as another methaphor about our darkest side, namely, our obsession on power, supremacy, and god-wannabe fever... Of course, ambition and warrior attitude can be quite awesome and great virtues, sanely driven. But we all know how dangerous and sick humans can turn, driven by these same "virtues", if we forget compassion and humidity... we turn into monsters, like Hitler or whoever genocide humanity as known. And same as Ingenieers, all those "human monsters" never truly intended to "destroy" or "be evil", they all had an agenda and a whole constructed phylosophy, ideology, culture and aesthethic, but in the end all that was just "ashes" and the truth is their soul was as black as the goo on the alien urns. ---------------------- DAVUDA: no, you do not call me "Luci". xD ;) Btw I loved some of your ideas, as the fact that we, indeed, are a continuation of the Ingenieers in evolutionary terms. I wouldn't claim we are, therefore, SUPERIOR to them not even in morality -name the athom bomb as you did, to simply fade that arroganct wish away- but in some way, we are "THE INGENIEERS ESSENCE... PLUS SOMETHING ELSE". Something "NEW" wich had to come along the billion years of earth evolution. Something they don't have anymore, -but probably had back when they were a young species, and lost along the way-. I don't know exactly what it is, and we must wait for the sequel to reveal... but to me seems, somehow, related to the femenine sex... Ingenieers happen to lack "females" -as far as we know-, and his culture appears to be 100% "MALE". What happened with their females? What happened to erradicate all the femenine on their culture? Yes there are some femenine genitalia represented on the spaceship forms, and some "DEAD" femenine forms drawn on the hyerogliphs... but these forms all seem to be DEAD. In my opinion, something dramatic happened to their women, and after millions of years their culture went to totally forget the femenine energies of the universe. Worth to mention, Carl Jung identified "the soul" as femenine and masculine, the ANIMA and ANIMUS. It's like the Ingenieers had totally lost their ANIMA, and only conserved the ANIMUS -male mind-... so there you are, they are sort of incomplete. No wonder why it MUST be female the human heroine on all these movies.

I agree 100 percent with the OP. The power to destroy whatever you want à la SJ is nothing to be jealous about imo. We really should have had some subs when David spoke to the engineer. Who knows what the dude said?!? Weyland: 'David, make sure you say nothing offensive to the engineer when he awakes...' 'Of course, father.' *SJ wakes up with hangover...* 'This man slept with your wife and she liked it....And your mother thinks AvP is awesome!' *loses head* 'Oh dear...' LMFAO HISHE That way we could put everything better in perspective, I guess... Are they really an aggressive, I crush you humans like ants kind of species, or did David just offend him?