Why did they explode?

Um... Maybe it's just perspective, but did anyone else notice the one huge Jockey in Freeze's pic above? Bottom left of the pile looks like a massive Jockey.

Also, I firmly believe that it was a Deacon- the scream is just too similar. I believe this is why we are shown/ hear the scream at the end.

Fleshvessel- yes I did notice it. It's one of a handful of clues that suggest to me that the Engineers and the SJ are separate species.

Major noob Do you think that the bottom left is a sj and the rest being smaller are engineers ?

Well its hard to say as the image is in the foreground and others in back ground, and we know what illusion that can cause.. as well looking at my thumb its bigger than my xbox 360 on other side of room lol But yes this guy does not look to far in front of others and some even at back look various sizes. So the Space Jockey could be explained away by a different sized Engineer. Remember us Humans stand about 5.5ft average. And if we take Males only well we average about 5ft9-5ft10" but can vary from 4ft10 to 6ft10... but even so we can have some around the 4ft Mark and 8ft Mark but these are usually people with some kind of growth defect i.e Dwarfism and Gigantism and they also have other psychical characteristics and bone shape deformaties. Lets save Arguments sakes most Human Males can stand from about 5ft to7ft now if thats the case then why could the Engineers not be passed off as a race that vary 7-12ft Tall?

Oduodu- I think it's possible. Also, consider David's needing a ladder to operate the door. The great size of the Troglybite Facehugger. Shaw's saying she wants to know "who made them". To me, all this points to something larger and more powerful than the Engineers, who themselves seem cloned.

Sorry, I've stared at the image of the piled up engineers and can't see much of a size difference between any of them. If you look at his leg, it is the same size as the engineers leg to the far right of the image. Also, he has a hole where his arm is missing, but slightly to the right of said hole, there is an arm or leg that might add to the illusion of him being bigger.

On the subject of the piled up engineers, it was either Fifield or Milburn whom pointed out that they looked like a scene from an holocaust picture (something to that effect.) Maybe those piled up "engineers" were actually test subjects from the engineers homeworld? Maybe they were sent there, to their deaths?

I choose to believe that the Engineers were undergoing the same sort of head first mutation that Fifield was suffering from somehow, or a similar strain. However, their genetics were safeguarded so that if the mutation cycle started up from the spores within the green goo, they would not mutate all the way like Fifield would. So, that left some of them knowing they would head burst before a creature could come out and in a way their genetics were missing a key ingredient that allows both the transformation to complete and the egg laying traits to go forward. Their x chromosomes are altered, and they have increased testosterone and lower levels of estrogen, creating a man who is genetically coded to be stronger and taller than us, based on levels of hormones and things going on under the surface. David has certain sets of programming, but the Engineers have themselves been engineered genetically by a higher species and follow genetic codes where the junk DNA triggers subroutines in them and not in us, hormones etc regulate the behaviour of most Engineers. The Weyland corp may have had a manipulative agenda for their crew, and programmed David to do certain things, yet he may gain his own free will. The Engineers could be almost like a runaway faction that was once completely obedient to the Elders. The idea of the head might not be as important as the idea of the mind. The morphing side of the genetics might usually attack the mind directly. The brain might be more important than the head themes, because it's what's in the head and below the surface that matters. For some reason I think the Engineers were coded so that certain aspects of the Xenomorph's lifecycle couldn't move all the way through them and caused their heads to explode, or caused the chests to burst prematurely and kept chestbursters down to a minimum... and it needed the addition of Shaw's x chromosome and Holloway's sperm. Making the sex themes/psycho-sexual nature of things in the alien series very important. Fifield and Millburn ask if the Hammerpede is a boy or girl, but it looks like both. Worms are hermaphroditic so it is both... the Alien species also shares this trait...but has many other traits, and can take traits from its host... The Alien may even be able to evolve faster than any other species, because if it did survive for long enough it would carry its traits to the next generation and be the perfect harvesting tool to carry the genetics forward from one species to the next, if you can use the fire the right way and not get burned. In my theories the Engineers were coded to not let the mutation cycle start bringing about more octopoid/facehugger creatures and then chestbursters, so the cycle wouldn't keep going forever, but David accidentally got their evolution started again, and it quickly and rapidly moved through the mutation cycle to try to find the traits it needed to get to Original Xeno form... However, it became a Deacon because Shaw was infertile -- she gave it an x chromosome so it is almost there, but the trait it needs to be able to lay eggs is dormant in Shaw's genetics. The Deacon cannot become a Queen... The Ultramorphs become Kings.... but they die even faster than the Hermaphroditic ones if they don't develop a hive. The Hammerpede lacks the ability to transform, the sperm side...But has amazing regen capabilities like worms do.. Worms can split their genetics...it can heal itself in a way similar to the original facehugger, but can't deposit spores. The Hammerpede used genetic memory to try to attack the head and enter the brain or chest... The brain is as important as the head themes/symbols. In Frankenstein it is the bad brain the monster has that causes him to be a monster... This is similar to some things we see in Prometheus, The modern Frankenstein. David is a monster. He is different than all other androids because his artificial brain has artificial feelings.. Ash said the Alien is the perfect organism, unclouded by conscience and delusions of morality... However, just because the Alien is instinctive and not burdened by logic all the time, does not mean it is not intelligent. It doesn't mean it doesn't exploit the intelligence of others and control the minds of its drones and warriors... The Alien Queen may control minds in her hive, and Cameron was wrong to say they're in any way like Ants... The characters were wrong, they were so wrong, too many horrible traits from all across the universe in the species.It's more like the wasp/bee idea, the ones that paralyze their ant victims and turn them into Zombies, take full control over their minds, over Fiefield's head/mind, before even changing him all the way... The Alien is building its hive mind before a queen arises because the male side is rising to dominance. The green goo side/green crystal side contains the nanospores already, and David found this out and pieced it together. The green goo is from an alien Queen that reached near maturity, and almost the very last stage of the alien cycle where they become fully intelligent... The green goo is sort of the idea of a Queen's royal jelly, whereas the blackgoo actually is a product of the extremely rare Alien king that some of the factions fight over to try to make the perfect strain(s). In one of spaight's scripts they were almost farming them in beehives, and had 8 different types of alien egg. This particular Engineer faction only has one strain...and big things have very small beginnings. The goo can contain different ratios of spores and nano spores, and the black goo is secreted from an Alien king or male aliens..-- the Engineers worship them and have to kill/sacrifice a King to get this rare highly weaponized form of it. The alien drones and warriors can usually only secrete the black goo and resin to transform the environment in minor ways, to get royal goo you need a king or queen. But a king has his reign and then he dies, its inevitable. The Queens are usually dominant in their species, and males Kings are extremely rare because they start hermaphroditic until the female genetics rises to dominance... the reverse of what happened in Engineers and humans, favoring kings over queens... Weyland wanting a son so bad he created one. It'd be about worship and obedience to the head of the hive, the colonies, the Empire etc. Mind control, tricks that don't really hurt pyhsically, but emotionally and psychologically... hive minds... possibly collective consciousness and the idea of the singularity. I think the heads exploded because they were programmed to if infected with one strain of the alien, it was trying to get to the chestburster stage and some of it managed to within their genetics, because they do have x chromosomes, and are a match for us, but the x ad y chromosomes have been altered to produce more and less testosterone. The series becomes about a parallel path, a parallel evolutionary track that can split away from the creature that normally prefers to take the she approach... and can combine back with it later on in the series... We've never seen a King before because the normally hermaphroditic alien represses its male side as the Queen comes to dominance and controls their minds... David and Weyland were tricking people/controlling their minds in this movie, and David cut off the feed to Weyland. The head of a company can regenerate like the head of the Hammerpede...because the brains behind the operation is too important, and much work was done to make it so David's head will be able to be revived.. In the early posters there was a green light coming out of a hole in the head statue. There are reasons the characters behave the way they do, and that some people might do the same in similar situations if they were uninformed beforehand... many were picked for their "skills" and ability to be manipulated, as well as their egotism. Like the happy birthday video for David, the crew interviews in the special features are clues. Weyland corp analyzed each of their psychological profiles, and David might have edited Shaw's dreams/memory to almost program her to respond in certain ways... He didn't plant a fake memory like Blade runner, they used her memories and beliefs, her genetics and her father's image, to their advantage... Shaw will feel like her mind is about to explode when she finds out all of what Weyland and David did. The Engineers were coded to almost make the organism self destruct within them. The Last Engineer was actually trying to destroy this other factions outpost, cause them to have the outbreak, but stop the outbreak dead in its tracks, kill them all, then stop them from leaving for Earth.... The last Engineer then stepped into his hero chamber and thought all would be well, that the Elders would come pick him up. But a bigger war was brewing back on Paradise. The Hero Engineer had already stopped the supply of this strain, but we kick started the organism again, because the other faction tried to leave a trap for anyone who would come for the goo. The Elders decided not to approach the planet at that time,a s they were engaged in war elsewhere and forgot about the hero engineer/knew the area would be full of deacons and chestburster, but no full xenos who could plant eggs.., they did want to try to take some of the royal goo, but knew the area could be compromised and had no way of knowing if the hero died completing his mission or not. The Hero engineer actually thinks David is an idiot for screwing it all up, they were planning to go to earth but that Engineer stopped them. the others who were part of his crew of sabateurs only succumbed to the chestburster stage, and it did influence his mind because the infection got into his head, but he was only killing us so he could get off the planet and not leave people alive. He needs the pulse to die out before they become infected. His head was David only worked out the broad strokes and made Janek kill himself. There could be gaps in David's logic because of emotion... Humans are emotional creatures, David almost gets emotional while watching Lawrence of Arabia. The reason logic flew right out the window for Millburn is because his mind was blown... He had never seen anything like it, and he was hypnotized by it. It was not successfully mesmerized by him, and he was being completely illogical because of emotion, and his own inner character, i.e. trying to impress Fifield, and thinking he could handle the situation by spouting something about snake charming (which he may know nothing about, although yes he was a biologist, but may not have any experience handling snakes of any sort, and wanted to appear in control to Fifield who was panicking)... A sort of fight or flight response, Millburn chose to fight back his fright at that point, but the panic and lack of real world experience causes him to act irrationally like Vickers when she keeps running straight and develops tunnel vision... There are problems with the characters characters, i.e. their psychologies, not so much an intelligence thing. They were all found to be easily manipulated by others.

@HiveMinded; It is very interesting what you are suggesting! I think you are basically saying that the engineers genetics have some kind of fail safe so that if they do get infected, they will self destruct as opposed to them mutating. That is a very good reason as to why they exploded!

Thanks, Yeah that's the gist of it, i just had to explain the context of how it would fit with a few other things and theories i have. I have a lot of suspicions that the last engineer was on a sabotage mission like some others do. So, he would have known he could try to infect them all, and stop their mission to earth, while causing the organisms within them to burst prematurely, and take them all out with one shot. Almost a suicide mission too, but i can't figure out how the infection spread. It had to start with someone being infected by the goo it seems, but we don't even know yet for sure how the mutation/infection thing works. We saw it at work most clearly on Fifield. I'm almost 100% certain that Ridley is incorporating some of his old ideas for egg morphing/the morphing cycle. And there are similarities from this plot and earlier drafts to not only Star Beast, but some portions of an unused Alien 3 script I believe... Where the Alien was almost miniaturized by way of spores, and starts transforming a person from within. In that script though, it was in the air. Something different is going on here, but some of the science talked about in that unused alien 3 script might be applicable to the spore aspects (the stuff inside the green goo, and what looks like it might be specks in the black goo at the beginning). Basically I think a lot of it actually has to do with being programmed to respond in certain ways. Like in the Happy birthday viral, they ask David what he sees to almost check and see if his brain is alright. David might have found the secret to lying though, only working out the broad strokes and remaining ambiguous so he can get away from his programming... David is becoming a real boy, like Pinocchio, and cannot tell a complete lie... It would hurt his emotional circuits, but the way for him to get around that is a logic loop of some sort where he used double meanings, and actually used a very tricky choice of words at all times... It wasn't his bad, he gets away with saying he didn't know it was "in her" because he pretends he is referring to her survival skills...This is David's trick, a deception of the mind, he cannot feel physical pain and is immortal, but this android almost feels emotions.... The Engineers might have known that if they started transforming like Fifield they would become mindless zombies, so they made it impossible for their genetics to keep transforming.

@BigDave Brilliant it makes a whole lot of sense instead of trying to figure out what the goo does and this explains it to a Tee. Cool thoughts on why and how they exploded.

@HiveMinded some nice theories some may be tad complex but some good ideas... And yes maybe the goo reacts differently to Engineers, i will make a thread to explain a theory that could explain what Fox and Prometheus could be trying to show us, but at moment would take a long post... In a nutshell they are trying to imply that the Goo at the start and during the movie are all one and the same... so i had tried come up with a theory that could explain that. This theory basically suggests the Goo only breaks down complex life and only evolves basic life, the worms are basic lifeform and thus took on Xeno traits... Like Worms Sperm is a more basic lifeform so maybe the Goo mutated these to take on Xeno traits and when one of these now hybrid sperm got into Shaws Womb it fertilized her Egg... Where as the rest of Holloway was breaking down at a slower rate due to lower dosage. Fifield came into contact with the Goo via a different means and this caused him to start to mutate slightly and become aggressive, his head starting to swell and then eventually explode (as some on the production team suggested would been the outcome. This has holes though as how did the Engineers get infected like Fifield surely their Bio Suits protected them? as the rest of the crew of Prometheus may have came into contact with goo off the floor, Milburn and Fifield was surrounded by it but Fifield only seemed to get infected when his visor was melted and he slipped on the goo and fell face first into it. In which case the Goo could now contact his skin. Thus is Space Suits prevented the Goo from effecting him prior to that... Would the Engineers Space Jockey suits do the same? Also if the Engineers had been infected like Fifield and the end result was a head explosion, then that means the Engineers would have gone further down the route of infection than Fifield had done. Which we then have to ask why was they all piled up and running away when surely some of them would have been turned into aggressive SOBs... unless those running only just started the process and they was running away from others at a latter stage.. But then when that door to the ampule room had shut and the other area where those bodies had piled up, surely if they went through same process as Fifield they would have gone berserk maybe attacked each other... maybe thats why some bodies never had head holes? Maybe they was latter dragged there and piled up? Or maybe their infection was more like Holloways as he did not become aggressive... Anyway thats some way to make sense of all this if we try use the explanations that Fox wants us to believe in. Or maybe the Engineers are just not affected the same way, so if infected like Fifield they would not become aggressive mutant toxic avenger dudes like Fifield? Na i prefer my theory from the clues i had obtained as opposed to the above.

"On the subject of the piled up engineers, it was either Fifield or Milburn whom pointed out that they looked like a scene from an holocaust picture (something to that effect." This is one of those clues that Lindeloff speaks of, he implies the movie has all the answers and others are like WTF does it hell. I think what Lindeloff is saying is we are spoon fed the explanation not via what we see but by what members of the cast say... The Milburn and Fifield wondering if the Hammerpede was a Boy or Girl, is another clue which the answer is that as they come from Worms they are hermaphrodites but none of them never said they was hermaphrodites... The is it a Boy/Girl is a vague clue to suggest it is both. Likewise others such as when Milburn asks if the head statue is maybe God.... And how Shaw says on a number of times about a outbreak. And Janeks mention of how he had to destroy a compound on Earth because the scientists was working on something and they split some of it and they whole complex had to be destroyed. And also how he suggests they was making Bio Weapons and the place was a Bio Weapons plant etc. Throughout the movie its these assumptions by the crew that was written into the script to explain what was going on, even if maybe a little vague. This is what i think Lindeloff meant by the answers are there... But they are vague and they are just members of the crews own assumptions so maybe not to be taken as fact, but i think Lindeloff expects us to have taken them as the answers. So basically if you watch the movie and are deaf with no subtitles you would not get more answers than if you was blind etc.

Yes I agree BigDave. The crew are like commentators in a way, like when Holloway say's "It's just another tomb." The tomb of the gods? But then again, Janek say's it is a military facility, so which one is it? Is it both? Very confusing!!!

My interpretation and again its based mainly on the deleted scenes is that maybe these Engineers was on LV-223 as a watch post, they essentially created life on Earth as a Garden, and the Engineers are Gardeners.. Well i recon a contingent of them was placed on LV 223 where they can watch over us from afar, they visited us from this place and they may originally had planned to make it a heaven for us once we are ready... i.e the Invitation. But something happened, either a war broke out and some Engineers decided to rebel against their creators and their creations (Mankind) and wanted us destroyed, of the Engineers on LV 223 had found a new Organism to Worship... Or simply there was a point where they had got fed up of how Mankind had turned out and given us one last chance we which failed and so they decide to turn the Watch Post into a Bio Weapons Facility. Which would be ideal as its closer to Earth and we have a invite anyway so when we come to LV 223 all that awaits is death.

I was also wondering if the Engineers could be controlled by their creator with the black goo? They have it in their blood & it can be used against them if the do not obey?

Possible..

Ridley had watched 'Scanners' and decided to rip off Cronenberg! :p 

When fiefield and the other scientist are being told by the captain there is life movement I believe there was a alien .. maybe not a xenomorph but it's too soon to be the cobra style snake ... What's weird is when the acid for blood of that snake sprays fiefield his face gets submerged in the black goo.  And he doesn't do much more than turn Into a zombie so I doubt that in covenant the goo is going to transform anything into a xeno unless that deacon comes into play and gets infected by black goo then evolves from there maybe