I have watched Prometheus about a dozen times and I still don’t know why the engineer was so immediately hostile to Weyland and his crew, David spoke to him in his own language, but that being said, why didn’t Weyland just create a controlled environment for him to make a safe assertion as to whether the Alien was hostile or peaceful instead of meeting him in person when he didn’t know these things and putting himself in danger?
All in all though, despite all it’s flaws, I absolutely love this film, I always picture Musk as our version of Weyland for laughs.
Since a sequel was almost certainly being left open if not actually planned for, it is critical that this question should remain unanswered so as to drive the plot momentum of the second film. Elizabeth Shaw’s character, and the android, are off to the Engineers’ home planet to find out the answer.
What I’ve truly never understood is the meaning of the opening sequence. Is it just supposed to be an example of how the Engineers might seed a planet with DNA? Is that an Engineer who drinks the stuff and dissolves? Why does he have to sacrifice himself? Are these also questions that might have been answered in a sequel?
I too loved the film, in spite of its flaws, and heartily wish that it had done well enough financially to have the sequel actually made. Or at least have a script written that could eventually be novelized and published.
I didn’t love it – there were a lot of amazingly dumb scenes that were totally unnecessary (for example, ‘hey look at this snake-alien thing, let’s get close and pet it!’, and ‘this giant wheel-shaped spaceship is rolling towards us – let’s run in front of it instead of stepping to the side out of its way!’) – but it was very well performed and executed, and I was interested enough in the story to be willing to check out a sequel.
As to the motivations of the Engineer, I don’t know exactly. But we know that they had already decided to kill off humanity, so maybe the Engineer already viewed all humans as intrinsically malevolent creatures who must be destroyed on sight.
I can understand that, for me personally I hated that Geologist/Roadie
Someone said it before – perhaps even on this MB: Maybe it is just a very “human” reaction to being involuntarily woken up (and perhaps you’re a bit groggy). Maybe you put yourself in suspended animation for a reason and these apes figured the darn thing out and messed up your plan so you lash out at them.
I have always assumed that the Engineers seeded Earth and other planets for their own nefarious purposes - slavery or food. Once the Engineer meets Weyland and David, he knows that he’s been asleep for way too long, and the Monkeys are out of their cage, and are now a threat.
I thought I read the opposite somewhere: that opening the movie by showing the act of self-sacrifice that creates life was context for seeing them as supreme altruists who nobly die so that others might live – hoping, of course, to thereby produce unselfish and benevolent creatures who’ll in turn live to die for the greater good.
And this this jerk wakes you up to say hey, man, what’s a guy gotta do to get some eternal life around here, huh? Whadya want? Gold? Jewels? Women? Young boys?
I’ve wondered the same, but don’t have an answer.
However a sequel of sorts is being made, “Alien: Covenant”.
It doesn’t look like it picks up directly where it left off, however David (Michael Fassbender) is still in it. I assumed Weyland was still alive and hiding on the ship, because why cast Guy Pierce as a very old man looking to be restored to youth if he just ends up dying anyway (I.e. All that makeup really distracted me from his character). I thought the sequel might show him getting his wish.
The universe of Prometheus has always been a kill or be killed kind of place. The Xenomorphs are a planet-scale biological weapon. The Predators kill for sport, softened only by the fact that they don’t kill innocents. The Engineers seed planets only to kill off their creations, and the Engineers are ultimately killed by their own creations. Given all this, the Engineer is probably safe assuming the worst in that scene.
But the bottom line is that Prometheus is full of the vague and nonsensical. In that way, it might as well be Alice in Wonderland.
We’re a bio-weapon, same as the xenomorphs. The engineer freaked out at seeing us, not only alive, but in possession of advanced technology, pretty much the same way we’d freak out if we saw this.
And remember, the xenomorphs are their less successful creation. Every time a xenomorph runs into a group of humans, we kill the shit out of it. The engineer is fucking terrified of us, and rightfully so. We’re the scariest monsters in the galaxy.
It’s kind of circularly strange to me (although I admit I’m a bit confused about the plot).
There’s a mural of an “Alien” looking alien on the engineer’s ship, and the holo-engineers are evidently running from aliens run amok. But then the android slips a little death tar into the anthropologist’s drink, he knocks up Noomi who has a squid kid.
OK, tar-human-squid. The grown squid does the down the throat/out the sternum number on the engineer - and that’s when the “Alien” looking alien finally makes an appearance. Not quite a Ridley chaser, it appears, but getting there. Second (or third) generation effect of death tar? The worm in the guy’s eye wasn’t really explained.
As for the opening sequence, that engineer must know what he’s getting into. A cup of death tar and the ship’s leaving, but the look on his face seems like he wasn’t really ready for instant disintegration. Maybe he should have mixed some blue champagne with it. And no sex, so no engineer-squids, no eye worms.
We see that death tar and nematodes yield penis snakes, did the worms disintegrate before forming penis snakes? Does disintegrated engineers yield humans? No, we need to fly this ship of death tar to Earth to disintegrate humans, and mix that DNA with all the other DNA on the planet - worms, dogs, fish? The guys who mixed it up with the penis snakes didn’t turn into “Alien” looking aliens, or squids.
Makes my head ache. Liked the visuals, though.
My favorite thing about the movie is that it made this possible, one of the best things Red Letter Media has ever done.
I always took it this way:
You’re the captain of the ship that was to sacrifice one of your crew to kickstart life on the planet. Ideally, you’d choose the best among your crew. But would you be willing to send down a Batman or a Captain Kirk? Or would you be at least tempted to send down your most useless and annoying crew member…
Now imagine you gave in to that tempatation and put yourself in suspended animation only to wake up thousands of years later to find the descendents of that most annoying crew member all around you. Wouldn’t you be a little bit miffed?
I’ve made this joke before, but…
David was a bit overconfident in his ability to speak an alien language, and wound up telling the Engineer that his hovercraft was full of eels and then inviting him to come back to his place for some bouncy bouncy.
But then why did the Engineers (ostensibly) leave a map for the monkeys to come find them?
Pretty much this, according to a Ridley Scott interview I read a few years ago. Basically humans turned out to be such vicious screwups that the Engineers sent an emissary/teacher to get us to mend our ways. We, of course, nail him to a cross. So when the Engineer wakes and finds himself surrounded by a crew of evil space monkeys, he acts accordingly.
It’s astonishing that movies like Prometheus and Avatar can spend hundreds of millions on all aspects of production and - somehow - forget to invest just a little time & effort into writing a script that makes sense. You’d think that at some point, someone would’ve asked a question or two.
Here’s a hint - When the porn parody of a movie has a plot that makes more sense than the original film, there’s something wrong.
Written by Damon Lindelof. The answer to all of your questions is, because ‘Cool!’
I didn’t get the opening scene either. The movie is full of dumb so I suppose I shouldn’t care. I’ll watch the sequel of course.
Were the Engineers supposed to have put life on Earth? Then why was Earth already covered with green moss stuff? When was that? 3.5 billion years ago or 500 million years ago? They’ve been doing this stuff that long?
They found Hawaiian and Aztec cave paintings except there weren’t any Hawaiians or Aztecs 30,000 years ago. The Engineers must have painted them knowing we’d find them and figure it out and come visit them but then 2000 years ago they decided to wipe us out but never made it. So this Engineer wakes up and realizes it’s humans from Earth I better go wipe them out but duh, it’s kind of too late since those Earthlings already have space ships and are traveling around the galaxy. What did he think he was going to accomplish?
There’s a deleted scene with an extended conversation with the Engineer.
As far as I remember, David tells the Engineer that Weyland wants immortality, the Engineer asks why, Weyland says he created David, therefore he is a creator and a god just like the Engineers. The Engineer rejects this thesis by ripping David’s head off.
There’s a lot of plot holes in this whole scenario. If a breakout happened at this one facility, why would it have affected all the other ones - it should have been easy to quarantine.
Why haven’t the some Engineers from the home planet checked out the situation in the centuries since the incident? Why doesn’t the Engineer check in with the home planet before going off on his genocide mission; the ‘Don’t kill all the humans’ party could be back in power.
It’s a bit of a mess.