Sign of cross in Alien and Prometheus

I know the imagery which you are talking about. There seems to be a lot of religeous hints in both films, Prometheus especially. I truly hope that Ridley isnt going to go down a Christian track. Would ruin it for me...

Religious? ya.. rrRight!?

ANTI-CHRIST?!

I've done these small screenshots of what I mean about it.

I think the cross means something different to everyone, i.e. has multiple meanings.

The cross gained recognition as a symbol of oppression and death, but became one of sacrifice.  In the context of the films, I think it has a lot to do with sacrifice, as well as rebellion...

Sacrifice is a huge part of Prometheus, e.g. Sacrificial engineer, Janek's sacrifice. Holloway allowing himself to be killed/David sacrificing him to gather data etc. Everyone on that ship had an agenda, and some agendas were conflicting. Sometimes it takes hard work and a little sacrifice to get what you want. Weyland told David to "try harder". "The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts", [sacrificing a little] "it's only flesh and blood".  Nobody ever got ahead without expending a little bit of energy...

The symbol pops up quite a few times in the other movies. In Alien 3, the prisoners have their own modified set of beliefs. A system of worship in the prison. Alien 3's bleak atmosphere relates to the death/afterlife part of it. A funeral is held for Newt.  The prisoners' form of belief s one that can apply to sinners. The soul can be saved, some of the prisoners have tried to change their ways. Bringing up some ideas about their deeds in life, and the possibility of a final judgement after their deaths. Possibly about redemption and being forgiven for their sins in DIllains case.  Dillon became a spiritual leader within the prison to try to keep the peace, but in doing so he was also trying to redeem himself. Wipe away his sins. He would believe that they can be forgiven for their sins..

Ripley does a cruciform as she dives into the lava.

She spreads her wings and sacrifices herself. She also rebels against Weyland corp's agenda at the same time. By that point she suspects they want to freeze her only to get the Alien queen out. We see her sacrifice herself, and rebel at the same time. The fact that the penal colony was full of males who all had double y chromosomes is somewhat important, I feel, but that mainly applies to my other theories about the alien and that "the company knows everything" about it by that time...Ripley is resurrected after her sacrifice, because the company is the true monster, not Ripley 8...

In Alien Resurrection, Ripley 8 questioned why Call (Winona Ryder) worshipped the cross. Call's free androids were created by other androids, and for some reason the cross meant something to Call. Ripley was curious why an android would believe in a human creation myth...Maybe it's because Call's actually free, and chooses what to believe in...It might mean freedom from the company's program in a strange way, to these androids.. We never found out who created them, or who passed Call the info that led her on her sabotage mission against Ripley 8, the Queen and the Marines (honestly the only part of Alien Ressurrection that matters to me is Call's mission...). I think there are ways to retroactively make Alien Ressurrection better by the end of this series, by saying that the marines had complete control at that time (not Wal Mart, as the ex-Weyland scientists claim in the special edition, or MOTHER/FATHER...).

Symbols, logos, and even words can morph or take on new meanings over time... The winged globe symbol that Weyland corp uses is associated with the Sumerians and Egyptians. Earlier forms of the cross are found in these cultures. Romans used it as a symbol of death. Crucifixion was the preferred method of killing those who opposed the Roman Empire. It ended up making martyrs of them, but the idea was originally to display their power.

Symbols themselves can actually morph and change shape over time: splitting into similar yet different forms, with different meanings... When David said "I never knew you had it in you" he's being more than ambiguous, he's implying a double meaning, and being sarcastic. He made a "poor choice of words" because he lied in one interpretation of it. He told the truth about her survival instincts, and has a choice over things.. Perhaps it was hard for David to interpret the hieroglyphs when Shaw asked him if he could read them, because there's more than one way to interpret them.

As Hiveminded put it above, it has many meanings....

I think the broadstrokes is to show us that there is a connection between Creation to Sacrifice and Worship to Sacrifice and that maybe also there is a Tree of Creation i.e Order that repeats itself.

The whole Christ thing will not be too literal so do not worry about that, many wondered before does the Mural try show the Christ was a Alien Xeno... lol nope, as Spaights draft the Engineer stood cruciform before he was broken down and ate by the contents of the Sacrificial Bowl.

Thus the Mural just shows us a Sacrifice, but a Sacrifice that was needed to create something these Engineers had a Worship or a great amount of respect for or that with out the said Sacrifice would not have led to what the Engineers now had.

The movie has religious undertones, but its not going the Bible route, this movie is trying to show us that the Bible was bassed of older religons, beleafs and cultures that all are trying to be hinted as being our interpretations of a Alien Race of Giant Beings who created us and played a part in our evolution both mentally and also in technology.

I feel the movie is going the same route as the Ancient Alien theory.... so its not trying to say there is some Magical Being that created the World and Xeno and that Jesus was also created as in the Bible.... it may be hinting that the Engineers had produced and raised or played a part in some Humanoids on Earth who they use as emissary on behalf of the Engineers to teach Mankind and guide us down a path these Engineers wanted us to go.

@BigDave

Lol I remember all the Jesus is an Engineer stuff. The filmmakers even said that it would be a little bit too "on the nose" if they went that way. So yeah, the whole connection to christ and the 2000 years ago thing is more symbolic than literal.

It seems to be about Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, his death and re-birth, his rebellion against the Hebrew kings and Roman Empire. There could be parallels with this story.

Agreed that they're making it about earlier symbols, ancient astronaut theory etc. The celtic cross and Egyptian ankh might have been associated with astonomy or mastery of the skies/heavens. Crossing the skies, an astronomical cool... The winged globe symbol could mean a lot of things as well.  I think there's a reason Weyland chose that symbol. I also suspect that we'll eventually see Aliens with vestigial wings... (an idea that's been talked about before and showed up in the toys). 

Christianity was growing by 1000 AD and Constantine needed to make some early changes to Yeshua's original message in order to preseve the Empire...  When Emperor Constantine took the growing christian movement and shaped it in his own way he adopted christianity and the message changed. He took Jesus's original message and re-shaped it, combined it with pagan traditions and presented it a certain way to appeal to the masses.  Maintaining control of the christians and his empire.  A number of symbols were combined, parts of the story were changed. Again...

Weyland doesn't know it but he's acting like a king. He's at risk of overextending his reach, spreading his colonies too far, and becoming an Emperor.

The Aliens have been referred to as "Destroying Angels" in the old Dark Horse comics.  Sometimes to create one must take inspiration from some of the old stuff and destroy it. Re-create it. Use some of the concepts, but break them down, and recombine them...

I think Spaights took inspiration from "Aliens Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels", and that's where some of this religious stuff and the bird design of the Prometheus comes from... Dr. Lucian Keitel had some crazy ideas about how all life on Earth had already been destroyed by the Aliens 3.2 billion years ago. Keitel supports his argument with data from an Australian archaeological dig that matches what happened in a sister derelict that his company found (these companies are hiding info from Weyland-Corp/aren't Weyland corp, hiding in the shadow of the conglomerates).."A strata of shale that predated by a billion years the previously earliest known formations"...

In that comic we never learn how the Aliens were created, or how human life was created. Just that all life on Earth had actually already been destroyed at least once before... In Destroying Angels we learn that the Aliens have been used to wipe out the existing population of Earth in the past...According to Keitel's crazy theories... Maybe not so crazy, because it could still work.. Ridley specifically mentioned in one interview that there would be very little evidence left of things like Atlantis etc if they existed that far back...

If you follow the myths, we've been destroyed and re-created before...I think the cross is also about immortality, in a general sense. Death and rebirth. Recurring ideas about death/rebirth in the series, or tricking people back to life.

Dr. Tellurian gives Throop a special bird when she embarks on her mission to find Dr. Keitel...In the comic, Throop points out that Tellurian is wearing a cross, he's a believer, and member of the order of St. Thomas". Keitel wonders if the bird Throop brings with her is a sign, and that Tellurian was trying to tell him something... This bird had amazing predatory instincts, could sense rats aboard the ship, almost as if it had a sixth sense.

Dr. Keitel was a "seeker" and a "great" man, although "greatness is always achieved through great sacrifice"... Keitel saw the "big picture": "The numbers that create the patterns and forces that run our infinite cosmos". He learned how the aliens behave and operate, he gave the humans a treatment of a special gas that made the aliens perceive us as one of them, and then they could be observed...He wasn't controlling the aliens, like some will tell you, he made us seem like them to their senses. They couldn't identify us as prey, until the treatment wore off. He peered beyond our reality, the aliens "allowed [him] to glimpse those patterns"...Crazy or not, Throop thinks there's something to what Keitel was saying by the end.

"Keitel's mad you know. He's seen the wheels and gears that turn the universe". He tells others that the Alien will be thier salvation.  "The Eggs of the celestial host! My salvation..". He tricked his men into getting turned into aliens. To learn more about them. He claims his crews' souls became immortal through the Aliens.

Keitel discovered that death is necessary. Death is part of "the natural order of things", but took his worship of the alien a little far. Imo the Aliens are angelic helpers of the "gods" in a symbolic sense... One of the choirs of angels. They help the "gods" destroy and re-create...They're the perfect organism, and act as a balancing force in the universe.   We perceive them as the embodiment of evil. The androids perceive them as instinctual, natural, and necessary. Unclouded by delusions of morality. "They were a universal wave of extinction". There was evidence of extinction on a massive, cosmic scale.

Prometheus actually works well alongside "Destroying Angels". They don't really contradict eachother, and Keitel even hints that there are older and newer forms of the Engineers.  Prometheus potentially adds more context to some things Keitel was saying. The bird Tellurian gives Throop before she sets out is a Great Gray, and it has amazing abilities of perception. "They have developed senses which locate prey far beyond the scope of our limited facilities". As Tellurian gives her the bird we see Wicket (the Great Gray) dive into a snow bank and pull out her lunch. "That snow bank is at least four feet deep, Ms. Throop. The force of Wicket's impact was meant to send shockwaves to the bottom". Dr. Tellurian also tells her not to "underestimate the scope, the depth of the situation in which you're about to immerse yourself.  Learn to look past the surface".

Very Interesting... will have to see if i can get that comic.

I was working on a story for Paradise, and indeed in mine we find out the Engineers had been to earth to destroy to allow something new over and over, i only vaguely touched upon stuff that included the Engineers destroyed the Dinosaurs as they would prove a threat to their experiments to create Mankind, and vaguely touched upon Atlantis and a whole host of other things but losely.

Also, in Alien the Xeno was hanging UPSIDE DOWN whilst in the cruxifix pose.The upside down cruxifix pose is supposed to be indicative of the Anti-Christ. Literally the exact flip-side of the Cruxifixion of Christ upon the cross.