The ENGINNERS Bio-Suits: Based in part on symbolism of the 'Bird-Man' murial?

When I first saw the Engineers and we were presented with the head design my first thouhgt was it was more elephantine-like than Bird like. The Bird reference would be strictly decorative in reference to a past but a functional trunk is more logical and useful in how the Engineer lived their lives. If there is any Bird reference it would be because of the appearence of the worms.

actually the mural looks like an Engineer in a biosuit kneeling before another Engineer. is it a referce to the two factions of Engineers the Elders and the ones who rebelled against them. we assumed in the holograms that the engineers where running from a deacon or another infected engineer but could the Elders have killed them all ? maybe to stop the infected engineers bringing the infection back home. some of the bodies had holes in their heads like they had been shot. doesnt explain how bob survived unless he was like a spy or something. or we could be reading too much in to this and its an instruction manual showing you how to put the suit on. as it looks like it s fusing to the engineers body in the same way the bio suit is melded to Bob.

Regarding the first mural, after seeing the HR Giger image which appears to be a bronze statue, it is no doubt full of symbols and archetypes, but they are from the subconscious of Giger and so look more to dream interpretation to understand the keys to interpretation. The creature to the left is subhuman looking and seems to be almost emanating out of the hand of the Engineer or that he is giving it his blessing by touching its head. Because it looks so inhuman or alien, using Jungian archetypes, it looks like a personification of the shadow archetype while the one on the right looks like an Engineer or proto-man. So it could mean, from a Jungian standpoint the acknowledgement of the shadow - which is symbolic of all our fears and things that go bump in the night. It would be a powerful motif to accept rather then run and be controlled by our inner fears. That makes more sense based upon Jungian reading of the symbols and archetypes.

jung! blimey ok two points people need to be clear on first the creature in the mural has a short beak not a trunk its noot easy to see because of the crossed arms but its defo a beak imo secondly watch the pilot chair helmet as it closes over bob its made of a skull! see the interior these elements have been taken from another creature as we would take hide for leather but with more symbolic importance i feel.... i really hope we will get to see something more about this in P2 or P3 :)

Regarding the second mural, from what little I can see appears to represent the creature from the first mural on the left, the spindly armed and legged creature that I said, coming from a Jungian psychological perspective of Giger's subconscious, if it is an embodiment of the shadow archetype, our most basic and primitive representation of our fears, it is embracing the alien by allowing itself to be infected by a facehugger within the egg. It appears to be holding the egg up to its face. So therefore using Jungian archetypes and the Engineer-Alien creation motif, it implies a total acceptance and embracing of the Alien in the form of sacrifice - very high up in the values of the culture of the Engineers, and keep in mind that all of these images including the Engineers as made apparent by the first mural, are straight out of the subconscious mind of HR Giger.

Very interesting stuff. i think there's a lot of hybrid concepts in this movie. I'm totally seeing the suit the as a symbol for the bird headed people described in Egyptian myth now. And depicted in their art. It seems pretty obvious that he's subjugating that creature. Could that thing be what's in the suit and the Jockeys simply stole all their technology from these beings and replaced them in the hierarchy. They stole their suits and wear them to honor them, and represent them stealing their power. I think they had a relationship with the "bird-man/dog-man" like creature... it looks like that creature is being subjugated. It definitely seems like the creature's hands on the egg (the original genetics) means something important... Could that species be the actual creators...? Do they have some sort of relationship with the Engineers? are they slightly taller when they stand...? What if this thing is not only the original Jockey, but the female jockeys in the species... basically meaning that the Engineers subjugated all the females, stole their tech, reproduced it and engineered themselves away from the species. In some species sexual dimorphism can occur and even though the genetics are the same, the phenotype (the look of the creature) changes over time... What if these are actually the light angels, and the Engineers made themselves look like light angels, when in fact they're some of the true monsters of the story. Sort of between light and dark... The Elders are the truly evil group... The monsters are also us. The company. David. Our older siblings the Engineers. We're all rebelling against the hidden Goddesses. Everyone is obsessed with kings and gods. They forget about the Queen until the end... What if the Engineers are obsessed with kings and gods too? They represent only the male side of things, this is a story about how the mommy and daddy species meet.. What if this creature is actually a bird-woman.... and they actually are pilots who fly through the sky. The true creators of life.... The goddess aspect. The female side that creates all life, even if it takes a strange form. "In some species such as insects, spiders, many fish, reptiles, birds of prey and certain mammals such as the spotted hyena, and blue whale, the female is larger than the male. As an example, in some species females are sedentary and sparsely distributed, and so males must search for them. Vollrath and Parker argue that this difference in behaviour leads to radically different selection pressures on the two sexes, evidently favouring smaller males.[23] Cases where the male is larger than the female have been studied as well,[23] and require alternate explanations. One example of sexual size dimorphism is the bat Myotis nigricans. In this species, females are substantially larger than males. They differ in body weight, skull measurement, and forearm length.[24] The difference in size is believed to be caused by natural selection for a large female size due to a fecundity advantage. The interaction between the sexes and energetic needs such as time and energy required to produce viable offspring make it favorable for females to be larger in this species. Females bear the energetic cost of producing eggs which is much greater than that of the male who only bears the cost of making sperm. The fecundity advantage hypothesis states, that a big mother is able to produce more offspring and give those offspring more favorable conditions to ensure their survival. This is true for most ectotherms. Another reason why females are believed to be larger is due to the fact that they provide parental care for a substantial amount of time while the offspring matures. The time of gestation and lactation is fairly long in the M. nigricans, where females suckle their offspring until nearly adult size.[25] They would not be able to fly and catch prey if they did not compensate for the additional mass of the offspring during this time. In addition to the hypothesis that explains an advantage of large female size, it is hypothesized that smaller male size is an adaptation for males to increase maneuverability and agility. This selection for agility in flying is a helpful adaptation which allows males to better compete with females for food and other resources." So in humans the female side of the genetics, the x chromosome that the Engineers must have suppressed, is passed on to us. We're able to have females, but as Prometheus shows our programming is the same. Designed mainly for men. Even in the future Weyland is perceived as king. It's sort of about the subjugation of the female side. Vickers never got to be Queen. That's why we might see a new type of Alien called a king Alien emerge from the Deacon who carries mainly the egg morphing/male side of the Alien lifecycle. Something so big it had to have a small beginning to make the King Alien concept work... now the Deacons can become it... they are born with a reliance on the morphing cycle and have bred out the female side of the genetics to try to make it an even more aggressive bio-weapon.

U guys put way too much thought about something we havent even seen yet. So lets wait for the second movie but even then I dont think they are going to explain this. Its too much fandom that may or may not work out. Ridley could explain why they wanted to come to Earth in the first place and why man came about. You guys might be disappointed to learn about how this all happens.Knowing Ridley he'll take a sharp right or left turn on you.

Chances are their females probably look alot like ours just maybe with a bald looking head. They got to be mammals like us humans and probably the females do indeed breastfeed their young Engineers as babies. Gestational carrying could be up to a year instead of 9 months like a human.

Symbolically all it just means is that our universal drone like-engineer (Adam) is laying with the bio-mechanical beast or Devil. An ancient moment of passive communion and serenity between two distinct species. Although distinct there still seems to be a blending of the two in their humility. What is most interesting to me is that the Beast is completely biomorphic like a Xeno Alien and the humanoid engineer is in a state of change but still got his boots on!

"..U guys put way too much thought about something we havent even seen yet. So lets wait for the second movie.." I think this kind of mind exercise is a poster's way of influencing the script for the next installment of our movie.(Do you think the script is already done?) That way with the next release posters can say that it was their idea all along take pride it was included.! No writing credits, of course. I guess anything and everything is somewhat possible. I just don't want 'Prometheus:The Musical'

I forgot to add that the first image looks like that portion of the Sistine chapel fresco by Michelangelo of God reaching out and touching man, which is why it reminded me of a creation myth.

Here are the knarly hands of the hybrid-creature 'Bird-Man/Woman' and that of the alien Xeno and compare the differences. [img]http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/1275/bm2y.jpg[/img]

yes theres a visual link between birdface xeno and engineer though they would all have the giger/biomechanical look maybe this is a missing link creature or a predecessor of the engineer who knows.... yet going by arm and torso length compared to adjacent engineer it looks like standing would be taller if only by a couple of feet but still this would be a cool spectacle if used in the next movies!

These are comparisons now with the FACEHUGGERS prehensile tail juxtaposed with the tubular 'funnel'/breathing apparatus upon the ENGINEERS Bio-Suit. [img]http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3644/bs4g.jpg[/img]