The opening scene

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Digideus

MemberOvomorphJune 06, 2012

I have 2 possible explanations of that original scene. 1 - Seeding new life The Engineers chose a fertile planet with an atmosphere and send a lone engineer to the planet to propagate new life by sacrificing himself. He drinks the genetic material in the chalice and the process of breaking his body down into its componant parts begins with him literally dissolving in the body of water where his seed will be spread across oceans to reach every part of the planet where, eventually, new life will be formed from the building blocks of their race. 2 - Bio-Weapon testing The Engineers test a weapon on a deserted lifeless planet. they drop off a lone test subject and leave to observe what happens. the test subject drinks from a test vial and immediately his body is broken down to its componant parts, dissolving him and erradicating life... But due to the nature of the unstable organic material they are experimenting with, the accidental by-product of the process is to inadvertently seed life on this lifeless world. In both examples, the Engineers chose a planet (lets call it Earth) to test this substance on. Evolution begins as a by product of their interference. whether it was intentional or an accidental by product, I cant say, but both explanations fit with the other events in the film, although the decision to return to earth (from the Starchart scene with David and the Holograms) was made approximately 2000 years ago, but was never carried out for some reason. Are we the intentional product of terraforming or an accident of a weapons test? Would we be disappointed if our creators made us "because they could"? Would we be horrified if our creators made us by accident? Would they seek to eradicate us because we were somehow flawed (violent tendencies, different evolutionary development, accidentally creating something that could become more dangerous than anything the engineers had encountered before?) If nothing else, Prometheus has given everyone so much to consider. Maybe Ridley Scott and Damon Lindleoff are waiting for us to literally write the 2nd film for them!

BigDave
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June 06, 2012

Its hard to say.... Also we cant rule out that this scene was not the creation of mankind, but the creation and seeding of the building blocks off life... Thus science has theorised that life on Earth was formed from Amino Acids that came from Astroids that crashed on Earth (or Comet). This movie seems to had replaced that with it being the disintergrating Engineers Gentical DNA breaking down that seeded those building blocks instead.

R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017

colonial soldier
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June 06, 2012

Does the Engineer have male/female sexes? Why cannot they populate our planet that way? :)

Hadley's Hope
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June 06, 2012

I see a link to another part of Greek Mythology /history. Socrates, accused of impiety (amongst other things, lack of deference to the state and it's philosophy of might is right) was forced to die by drinking Hemlock. The DNA of socrates thinking, philosophy went on to help create 'western civilisation.' Likewise, there are hints in the opening scene. This guy arrived on a different type of ship, perhaps he belongs to a faction with a different belief system, or that ship was dropping him off for his punishment. Permanent exile on a planet with no intelligent life (and possible nothing that he could eat) or die or drink the poison. I would speculate that, while the black goo on the ship seems to contain little microscopic life that mutates other life forms, they may have simply distilled it in this case to whatever substance that little germ uses to break down the DNA in order to alter it. Hence, it has a different effect, and the man is destroyed, totally to the naked eye, but his essence goes on in strands of DNA, that give rise to man. Perhaps that was actually intended, hence the reference to Prometheus, but bringing the spark of intelligent life to the planet, rather than literal flames as per the Greek Myth. I'd say it may turn out to be intentional, because there are far simpler ways to kill someone than fly to a strange planet and offer them a drink that will melt them. And while the seeding of life could have been done via samples of their DNA rather than a sacrifice, they do seem to have a bit of a death cult going on, so sacrifice to the gods may have been part of the ritual. Just my opinion, and I'm not actually a fan of that line of plot at all (I find the whole exogenesis idea hopelessly idealistic and comfort seeking compared to the original cold, uncaring and very strange universe encountered by the crew of the Nostromo), but as a story teller, I could imagine an explanation among those lines being set up to fit in with the mythology. What the writers actually intended, we may never know.

highbrow
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June 11, 2012

In the opening scene, you can see an engineer committing suicide. You can also see a disc-shaped ship leaving. Later in the movie you can see holograms of engineers running from something in the caves. I think it's clear from this that the engineers lost a battle here 2000 years before the humans arrived. The battle was won by an unknown 3'rd party, which you can see leaving at the very beginning of the film.

Mattimus
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June 11, 2012

There are some wonderful thoughts here, and check out http://coedmagazine.com/2012/06/11/prometheus-opening-scene-alternate-take/ for some very fascinating alternate takes on the opening scene. In response to highbrow's last comment, I'm hoping that battle might have been lost to the Predators, who might make an appearence in the sequal? Hopefully? We can't rule out the xeno at the end being the first queen since we really didn't see what the queen in the original movies looked like in it's newborn stage, right? I think that David/Magneto (can't remember his name) is the best new actor around. He played that part so amazingly and his character development was magnificent. You can't call him a villan or a hero. At some point during the Alien(s) movies or maybe AVPs I thought I heard something about the Aliens turning on their handlers? Am I wrong? Either way this movie was simply mind blowing, and its going to be interesting to see how the sequal plays out. I was really hoping that when they took the helmet off the head they recovered it was going to show that they are in fact the predators, but since thats out of the question we really dont know what to expect. I was hoping they would find the engineers to be the Predators, go to their home planet in the sequal, and maybe come in contact with another human civilization either at war or being held captive by the Predators/Engineers. Lastly... does The Hobbit not look amazing?! Can't wait!

JackieRush
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June 12, 2012

I really think the engineer simply took a drink of a substance he didn't believe was harmful and it turned out to be harmful when drunk in the environment of Earth. There is absolutely no reason for the aliens to want to seed life on Earth and especially not in that way. These aliens traveled across a galaxy and probably stumbled upon a place like home, studied it for awhile and decided to send someone down to take a look. If they wanted to create life, let's just say with all the work put into getting there they would have been a bit more proactive in their approach. Two reasons I believe it was a complete and utter fluke is that they started to study the effects of the black goop to see what it would do as they probably didn't realize it was dangerous and second the alien craft would have departed or would have been destroyed if the engineer were to be making a choice not to live, it would probably be that he knew he wouldn't be going back home. I don't even believe his dna sparked life on Earth. There was probably life already on Earth and if it did spark life on earth we would all be mindless monsters.

sveco
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June 14, 2012

Let's keep with the fact, that the name of the movie is a name of Greek god punished for his deeds. To me, the most elegant way of explaining the first scene is this: The engineer in the first scene is punished for something he has done. Maybe a religious heretic, or maybe it is also created by someone: a biological "android" that rebelled against his creators. But his punishment went wrong, and seeded the Earth with life. The other, non-rebelled creatures are tasked with cleansing this heresy. It seems to me, that there are many religious tones in the Prometheus: altars, murals, and large sculpted heads: the things that we usually see in the religious places. This would indicate maybe a religious war among Engineers. Maybe their creators are the Xenomorphs, on the mural there are several scenes showing how aliens bursting out of engineers. And even a scene, where an engineer holds the alien: [img]http://www.prometheus-movie.com/media/concept001.jpg[/img] There are other ideas popping in my head: Maybe the LV-223 was a secret installation of some alien company, (parallel to Weyland), that wanted to hide the results of their experiments. But that would not explain the first scene. And just maybe, the ship from first alien, was the ship that flew off at the end of the movie. Who said that the burst engineer was not on the ship that Shaw took.

foozy
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October 31, 2012

opening scene is very OBVIOUS!!!!! he's not there to create life, he's there coz he represents prometheus. he's been cast out of olympus and exiled on earth as a punishment. the black goo he drinks to either commit suicide or coz he's ordered to drink it and terminate his life, thus unknowingly creating life

foozy
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October 31, 2012

seems everyone forgets the title of the movie. it doesn't just apply to the ship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The opening scene

Digideus

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