The engineer and it's suit are definitely one

oh poor thing, god i love the Engineers - why did he have to die! Cuddles, you bad thing you. Anyway: Yes the suit and the engineer are indeed one! How this is achieved, isn't clear - I assume the black goo had something to do with it. The suit could be a form of mutated skin tissue maybe?

I still prefer the Replicant Idea... A race of artificial bio-tools shaped in many different models. So the one we see is a Soldier Model, thus enhancements and strenght, as well as a though exterior.

I always thought it was part of his skin. When I saw the photos of the toy model engineer that were posted here, I thought to myself that I didn't see anything like the cuffs they had in the movie. Was he born like this? Did he take something to make the skin grow like that? Was it a cloak that he put on that subsequently meshed with his body? We don't know. Lovely alien technology, whichever way you look at it. What is very clear is that the purpose of the skin/suit, whatever you want to call it, is to provide protection. Look at the segments around the shoulders, like those that you see on an armadillo. Designed to allow a broad range of movements but at the same time resist trauma. Indicative of someone prepared for a fight, or involved in heavy duty physical work.

Warrior Model

Yer I always thought there technology is so advanced its like biology and technology are impossible to distinguish at times. There is another angle as well Ridley might have made the ones on lv 223 that type of skin to distinguish them from the one that sacrificed himself. As in one idea might be that its to show this is an engineer thats much more advanced in technology to the one at the beginning. Or the ones on lv 223 are a different faction to the homeworld .they could be a sect as such that worships the xeno technology / bio organism hence the mural etc. etc.......

Could be, but the specifics are complete speculation, I'm afraid. Let's hope we find out more about this kind of thing in the sequel.

Indeed, but this line of thought is more kin to what we could expect from the original ideas, because it was implied that the being at the derelict juggernaut class ship on Alien was a noble creature, Ash even saying he expects humans to meet them out in the Galaxy as something fruitful and good, whereas the engineers as we see them on this movie are blood thirsty beings, capable of absurd sacrificial acts to seed life (given their tech back then that was utterly unnecessary) and now plotting the extermination of a whole species, a hardly noble act in any given moral frame... Who knows those there are exactly that, terrorists with a twisted set of beliefs, bent on killing and ddestroy, and Shaw might find herself in the way to meet the Real Space Jockeys, gentle yet real alien beings, yet ready to fight the freak engineers out there, who might or might not be their "children"

@Voidhawk: I don't know where you get the idea that the being on the derelict was in any way noble. Not from the movie. Ash says nothing like that in [i]Alien[/i]. We really don't know enough about the Engineers' motivations to pronounce the opening [i]Prometheus[/i] scene as 'absurd'. I can think of a dozen perfectly reasonable explanations off the top of my head that are far from absurd. Here's one: the Engineer doesn't actually die...

I agree the suit is one with the Engineer. I think the mention of the Space Jockey on the derelict in 'Alien' being noble was what Ridley Scott said he had envisioned?

here's another image, just part of a bio suit-collar i guess... [img]http://www.prometheus-movie.com/media/engineers_behindthescenes12.jpg[/img]

As i have said before i think there Technology is so advanced that their suits will actually bond and become part of their body. Like how say you could go buy and wear a Fur Coat but it does not become part of your body not like how it did to the original animal the fur came from. The Engineers Tech is different their suits actually bond with them, so essentially it would be like getting a Fur Coat that when worn will bond with you and not be like a coat but actually like a animal skin coat as it would on say a Gorilla itself.

The "noble" reference is more canon than the whole franchise post Alien. It is both in the book and in the Alien Director's Cut which is a more faithful transcription of the book, so yeah, Ridley Scott said it, Ash said it (in the deleted scene when he explains to Ripley te Company plot and the message they deciphered, scene restored in the DC version), the book wrote it very clearly, so the idea was that a tragedy befell that pilot WHO was from a noble species THAT whished for no one to risky themselves landing on the moon the last pilot used as his grave, as he knew his oncoming fate. It was a war vessel carrying a bio-weapon so we might think how noble they are indeed despite those lines in movie and book, but we know nothing of the conflict it was part of, and that was one of the misteries then... Canon concept, even more than Queens and Mutating Space Ants XD The noble reference by Ash is related to the actions the last pilot took after landing, enduring enough to record an audio message and set it off before dying, in order to avoid further contaminations. I will reread the book for if I recall the message had more info on them as well, and saying something about the SJ species but that is not on the movie scenes, it is in the more detailed dialogue from the book - the scene in the DC verson only shows Ash's admiration for the noble alien...)

Nothing can be immortal without the inclusion of mech These guys had a lifecycle until they were able to augment their bodies When they see this "immortal" David - he had to be killed

Jealousy? Well, following this idea, as they are fond of biotech, it also could mean they follow something as the Buttlerian Jihad concept/ideology from Dune? Technology, especially sentient ones, are forbidden and hated??? By the way, when it was said they are immortal??? Oo ?

It does indeed appear that the Engineer at the end of the film had more of a connection with his suit than one would with average article of clothing...I wonder if the Engineers on that vessel were designated to incubate Xenomorphs and the suit somehow helped to facilitate that...it might explain why the suits somewhat mimic the body structure of the adult Xenomorph.

MVMNT, one of the earlier behind-the-scenes shots of the Enginner showed this real vivid -- look at the 'join' (or lack of it) at the wrist area -- it grows from hand to forearm, veins overlaying the genetic-blend region. [img]http://www.prometheusforum.net/uploads/FileUpload/61/e8a9e63c419cf48336e32dba65ecb1.jpg[/img]