Terrestrial life has thousands or more procreative strategies. Some lay eggs, some of these eggs are (as with blue ants and some other wasps) laid inside a host. Some lay eggs on their own bodies and those larva eat the mother. Sometimes the creature lays live young. Some sex is gendered and a lot of sex is not gendered.
My suspicion is the promethean strain of life is completely cut&paste, a true toolbox species in terms of procreative freedom. It makes it up from a palette of options as it sees fit. In doing so it does take "memetic" inspiration from its environs.
My take on it -
..the pale white giants (PWGs) at the start of the movie and the Biomechanical body white giants (BBWGs) are not the same. My take is that species X (we haven't seen yet, but 'they' might somewhat resemble the features of the Fossilized Derelict Elephant (FDE) in Alien. So I will go with as having established the above as factual. My hypothesis is based on the idea of cinematic irony. I conjecture that the BBWG is an android, the PWG equivalent to David so to speak. A PWG wouldn't have survived 2000 years in cryo - but an android would have.
I also conjecture that something seeded PWG's on Earth (and possible many other worlds in a region of space at least hundred, conceivably thousands of light years across). This is a practical consideration - Ridley Scott wants to leave a legacy beyond his death with extremely rich narrative (or franchise) that may last decades to come. By introducing an alien benefactor (?) who has taken hominid specimen from Earth some ten thousands to a few hundred thousand years ago, "uplifted" these hominids from a relatively primitive state in to a more universal intelligence (language, tool use, abstract thought, imagination, time awareness, social programmability, etc. etc.) thereby producing the modern strain of homo sapiens on Earth. Ridley has more or less said this flat out in interviews, so we can take it as Canon. Ridley has hinted the PWG's are NOT the engineers. Ridley has also hinted at biblical themes, and there's a possibility the events on LV223 about 2000 years ago (...) as depicted in these Prometheus alien holograms to be the death of a bunch of Bad PWGs, along the lines of the Nephilim mythos.
...what I think Ridley and successive directors will aim for.
...An utterly alien species has seeded hundreds of thousands of planets for reasons we will never know. Species X (we might as well call "True Engineers") will be cinematically very enticing, and will push all cinematic boundaries of what it means to be "alien" as to both shock the viewer as well as create a viable long term franchise and consistent mythos. Ridley will aim to juxtaposition certain banale terrestrial stuff, machines, corporations, marines, guns, robotics, etc. etc. with extremely alien environments and actors, hence hostile settings, and he will try to push the narrative boundaries of shock horror, gore, special effects, symbolism, mythology and storytelling. I think in the next few (...) movies we will learn the PWG"s are just errandboys - slaves, servants of a higher power of true Engineers, who are at first not seen, but slowly become seen in consequtive episodes of the franchise. These aliens will be extremely dangerous, almost impossible to communicate with and will allow for splendid vista's where there's a striking contrast with just how banale and flimsy humans are in comparison. It will probably be revealed the TE's are in a civil war, echoes of which we find in the bible - the fall of angels, hell, damnation, etc. I believe we will see horrific things that have been never before depicted in movies.
What I would do, what I would prefer
The TE's are a species of completely alien horrors a few ten million years old. Even at that, these horrors occupy a small fragmented sliver of space scarcely a few housand light years across, and are surrounded by far more gruesome and hostile alien species, some much older. I would depict a cartography hologram in a future Prometheus/Alien movie where you can see, in color schematics, overlapping 3D zones of control, conflict zones, et al. I would slowly reveal the Engineers to be a branch-away from an alien strain that lives in the more dense Orion-Cygnus arm of the Galaxy.
My take is, these TE's are beyond good and evil, and they live very stretched out lives. My take is these TE's are quite terrifying shapes, generally somewhat reminiscient of the FDE, but many "fused with technology", or cybernetic, or grossly misformed or re-engineered. COmmunication with FDE's / TE's will prove impossible or extremely diffcult. It won't be that they are hostile, they are just extremely strange. FDE"S created the alien horseshoe ships we see in Prometheus, and these vessels have been stolen/commandeered by the evil guy BBWG's.
The plot is fairly simple - BBWG's are an expendable species of android-like hominids created from human BWG stock and metamorphed in to near immortal android BBWG status. They are pawns on a galactic chessboard, and for each world with complex life in the galaxy inside the territorial zone of control of the TE's, there are equivalent "uplifted" lackey species to do their masters bidding.
The TE's have a policy of scorched earth tactics when it comes to their galactic competitors. In essence, this gruesomely alien species simply destroys planets with a substance that makes these planets next to impossible to colonize - the black goo. Black goo is a weapon that turns entire planetary biomes - including the total hydrology (!) - into a weaponized ecology of death. Infections with alien eggs, xenomoprphs et al. would be very very bad - infection with black goo capsules is exponentially worse. Even more gruesome, every single black goo strain does something slightly different. Some black goo strains turn a hominid in to a mechanical servitor BBWG, whereas other strains just turn every form of multicellular life in to tentacled, serrated, fanged, armored, acid-blooded horrors. Xenomorphs are just one cut&paste super-mimicry specimen out of millions of possible permutations and variations. Black goo monsters (BGM's) don't just take humans or cows or dogs (alien3) and turn them in to tailed, chitinous and fanged monsters - they take queues from the environment - the mechanical ducts of the Nostromo, a sperm cell, the womb of Shaw, the helmet of Fifield - the medbay of Wayland, etc. These external morphologies are all assimilated an emulated in a matter of hours and turned in to infection, death, rebirth. Eventually (mere months) some dozen cannisters of black goo would absorb all life on Earth, most of the water cycle and most organic molecules into a planetary jungle of biomechanical terror. Like I said - scorched Earth.
Something went wrong. I'd focus in on what went wrong. The evil inclined WG's were doing something unexpected, or were faced with something new, and something backfired. An urn "hatched", infected them and they died. LV223 must be assumed to be infested with dormant xeno's. LV223 wasn't much biological material to work with, but 2000 years ago the planet was infected and must now be regarded as "extremely dangerous". Ditto LV426 - that one may not have been infected by black goo, but it was infected with some form of (derivative) xeno. The big elephantine horror was NOT a "cargo cult" suit, (the ones worn by the BBWG's to allow them to interface with the vessels) - the derelict on LV 426 is the real deal. An actual engineer mummy.
Finally - Weyland and the Corp knew this for some time. They pieced together many parts of the story decades ago (maybe humans already knew in the 20th century, from studying fossils and archeological materials) and Weyland was on the lookout. Weyland thought that the original species of BWG's were occasionally taken by their Masters and elevated into godhood with some kind of blessing derivative from these urns. Weyland thought inside the urns (of which some were find empty on Earth) was some kind of elexir of life. Weyland was obsessed and terrfied of death. In the next few movies we will see some form of galactic cartography, we'll see glimpses of the 'elephant-headed' aliens (many-limbed horrors half fused with technology) and we will see Weyland return as an android.
The events in the original alien will be showcased as accident. The Nostromo accidentally ran in to the derelict, and consequtive movies will establish a causal reklationship between the Elephantine horror on LV426 and the (later/earlier???) events on LV223.
http://khannea-suntzu.zerostate.net/?p=3380
Of course if anyone of scott free reads this missive, I am available to serve and toil as assistant screenwriter.
