There are actually answers to most of your questions. And Ridley Scott himself admitted to a lot of the religious tie-ins.

Just spent 10 mins finding this for you (I read it about a week ago and found it made a lot of sense):

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html 

Found that linked elsewhere, it is the biggest pile of mind-numbingly tedious anally retentive nit-picking micro-analytical drivel written by someone who could painfully contrive lifetime's worth of deep meaning in a 30 second advert, I failed even to skim-read it and I doubt any of it actually relates to any sense behind the film. 

OK, but you should read it. It answers your questions. It quotes Scott. It explains so much of the plot, like why all the engineers were dead, why the engineer commits suicide at the beginning etc. 

proceeds down a path that Scott says was considered (I'm not convinced but it doesnt matter) but dropped. 

'Cause it all made perfect sense to me, having read that article and seen the film twice.

Like about why the engineers happened to die 2000 years ago.

The name of the leading character.

The engineers acceptance that death happens before life as opposed to the human code of trying to stay alive at all costs. 

'And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.' 

What a cool film :)
Should have watched it a long time ago.
I was put onto it by a Youtube 'top 15 scary films' video, and saw a clip of a guy having his face peeled off...... 

the Scott quotes are taken out of context for a particular purpose.

I dont deny the religious imagery, just that to link it like that is only an opinion not fact. 

Anyone can spout a load of shite on the internet.


I'm asking questions on here because I think most of the main funcers have the brains and sense to give some interesting answers. 

thing, that is no direct link. It wasnt Elizabeth who had the immaculate conception was it, she was a barren cousin. The movie character could have been named Elizabeth for many other reasons.

And Jesus the Engineer Emissary, last I checked, he wasnt a giant. 

this search for answers and the proposed solution has far too much irony. 

It is possible that he would have been normal size, and resembled a human.

Explain the 2000 years thing then. Explain the 'I need to know why?!'.

Heh - I love how the film is so open to interpretation. It's purposeful I'm sure. It gets everyone thinking about creationism and science. 

 

Why was the Engineer infecting himself at the start? What was the ship at the start?
If this is supposed to be the Engineer dissolving himself to produce human life, why does the planet look like LV-whatever and why does the fluid look like their black fluid later on?

It can represent any lifeless planet, not just Earth. It shows how the Engineers seed life. The black goo reconfigures the dna of an organism in some way. The goo in the intro was used to reconfigure the engineer into a microbial soup that presumably becomes the starting point for an entire planet's ecosystem. The goo later in the film had different functions, but still was all about reconfiguring dna, that's the common link with the goos.

What were the Engineers in the holo-recording running from?

Xenos? Tentacle beasts? The specifics are not important, but it's obvious that their engineered bioweapons had backfired on them.

Assuming there are at least 3 stages of Alien micro-evolution (parasite via consumption, squid via secondary infection (impregnation by parasite host), Alien via tertiary infection)...

Why was there a bas-relief of an Alien behind the Engineer head?

They are proud of their creations. It's like going to BMW head office - I'm sure you'd find a framed picture of a car on a wall somewhere.

Why the change in the nature of the lifeform?

Do you mean "why does goo mutate an organism into something else?" or do you mean "why does the path go: infected mutant -> facehugger thing -> xenomorph thing?"

If 1) then, the goo found on LV-233 was bioweapon goo and turned things into bioweapons. If 2), then I would say "because it's body horror and more gross/disturbing/alien to show a convoluted reproductive pathway that includes multiple stages of different monsters". The same question could be asked of Alien/Aliens - why can't the xenos just reproduce directly? Because throwing facehuggers into the mix makes it more disturbing and "alien".

Why did she "give birth" to a squid?

Let's work backwards - to create a xenomorph you need a facehugger. Facehuggers come from Alien Queens - a type of xeno. So how do you get a facehugger if no xenos exist? That was never explained (lol) in any Alien films, but Prometheus gives us that answer. In some way, Shaw became the Alien Queen.

Assuming the oral infection of the abandoned human duo by the "cute" tentacle thing and the oral infection of the enginner by the squid were the same, how did the cute tentacle thing develop?

AFAIK, the "cute" cock-snake didn't infect anything, it was just a mutated worm bioweapon that killed stuff. It killed Milburn, and didn't get to attack anyone else, apart from acid spraying Fifield, who then faceplanted into the goo, and became a goo-mutant bioweapon himself, like the cock-snake. Dunno if this answers your question, you'd need to go into more specifics as to exactly what you're asking here.

Assuming the cute tentacle thing is a black-fluid induced development of the maggot worms (similar to how the fluid mutated tattooed geologist), where did the worms come from?

indigenous life

How was David communicating with Weyland senior via a mask (before Vickers interrogated him)?

Weyland was in a sort of pseudo-cryo-sleep state that preserved his dying body and had to communicate via some sort of brainwave interface. I dunno, this one is easily handwaved away with "it's the FUTURE"

Why were Weyland also trying to infect humans and how did they know how to do that? Was this Weyland senior's instructions?

Weyland weren't trying to infect humans but David used his own initiative and infected Holloway after Weyland's instructions to "try harder". Weyland wanted answers, and David was determined to get those answers. Holloway sort of unwittingly gave his consent to David "what would you do?" "anything and everything". And David, being a sinister as fuck robot, did what he thought would yield answers.

Why was Weyland senior kept a mystery?

To mask the true nature of the mission i.e. that Weyland could meet god and request immortality (all other crew expendable).

Why did David want Weyland senior to die ("dont all children want their parents to die")?

Eh I dunno, you got me. SINISTER ROBOT. 

Why is the surgery machine only configured for one gender and why does Vickers have it? If it was for Weyland, why was it in her quarters?

The lifeboat (i.e. "her quarters") was never meant for Vickers, only Weyland.

Why does Shaw have a change of heart and accompany the Weyland team even though Fassbender tried to use her as a host?

She wanted to know wtf the Engineers were playing at with all their goo, tentacle shenanigans. She had no idea that David was up to stuff, or how Holloway got infected, so why would she have any animosity towards David? Or the rest of the crew?

Why does no-one bat an eyelid about Shaw's near-birth experience?

I didn't notice anything wrong here, maybe I'd need to watch it again, but that said - who else knows about it? David knew obviously but AFAIK, everyone else had other shit to worry about whilst Shaw was aborting it. Maybe a couple of medical personal knew, but they weren't in any scenes afterward were they? 

+2 informative, I want to have your alien parasite babies.

Some good answers there, especially about David and Weyland.

A few that still stand out.

Engineers proud of Aliens....hmmm okay so maybe the temple is a shrine to their bio-weapons??

I still don't get the large variety of xenos from squids to Aliens themselves?? Unless the squids are the original precursor and anything Alien-esque is depend on the species they have impregnated...

Are you sure the cute cock wasn't trying to impregnate Millburn?

And...

Surely Shaw would suspect something was up with David when he refused to help her abort the Squidien?? And surely she would be a bit suspicious about WTF is going on and why was that thing in me??

AFAIK the other female doctor was one of the people trying to put Shaw in quarantine, and yet she is there with Shaw on Weylands trip into the Engineer ship, without any questions??

(I am assuming that David would have liked to have had more control over Shaw after her failed gestation, but at that time he had to focus on serving Weyland more??).

Ta, xxx 

"In some way, Shaw became the Alien Queen."

Oh, like Queen Elizabeth, get it, the virgin queen? Time to start a blog about how Prometheus is all about Tudor history and how the Engineers were basically not happy with Henry VIII having six wives. And Ridley is english after all. 

+2 informative, I want to have your alien parasite babies.

Some good answers there, especially about David and Weyland.

Cheers, although I'll admit there are plenty of areas that I'm still fuzzy about.

A few that still stand out.

Engineers proud of Aliens....hmmm okay so maybe the temple is a shrine to their bio-weapons??

I don't know what the exact role of the temple was. It could have been where they engineered/manufactured the goo before it was transfered to storage in the ships (remember in the flying croissant ship they had thousands of goo canisters packed densely together). It could have just been a display room. Who knows? Ultimately the exact purpose of that room is unimportant to the story. The giant head and the murals do appear to be decorative though, and a sort of celebration of the life they create.

I still don't get the large variety of xenos from squids to Aliens themselves?? Unless the squids are the original precursor and anything Alien-esque is depend on the species they have impregnated...

The "squid" was just a big prototype facehugger, and facehuggers are basically just the reproductive organs of xenomorphs, existing independantly as a very specialised organism. Xenomorphs looke different depending on the host, because they obviously get some of the host's dna. I guess in some way this allows them to be optimally configured for killing the host species (e.g. the engineer-born xenomorph was very big, and when fully grown could probably kill an engineer easily. A human-born xenomorph is smaller and can kill a human easily, but maybe it wouldn't be so good against an engineer).

Why was the "squid" facehugger a giant lumbering beast, whilst regular facehuggers are small and start in eggs? I'm guessing here but maybe because the squid is like the starting point for a xenomorph colony it has to be very big and aggressive and independant. It needs to aggressively hunt down a suitable host in order to seed the first xenomorph (which I'm assuming will be a queen). Once the queen is born, then I guess the queen can do a lot more of the heavy lifting (i.e. capture the initial hosts), and it only needs to produce small facehuggers from then on, to impregnate already captured hosts. Just my theory.

Are you sure the cute cock wasn't trying to impregnate Millburn?

I don't know to be honest. It was still alive after it was done with Milburn, which was inconsistent with the behaviour of more traditional facehuggers, which die after impregnating something. Could just have been a simple killing machine.

Will try to tackle your other queries later... 

Surely Shaw would suspect something was up with David when he refused to help her abort the Squidien?? And surely she would be a bit suspicious about WTF is going on and why was that thing in me??

Firstly, wasn't David trying to put her in cryosleep so that they could deal with the squidien back on Earth? Perhaps he thought it was too risky to go dicking with the squidien whilst on the ship right now, with limited knowledge of just what the hell they were dealing with. Sounds like a pretty rational and sensible approach but of course Shaw wanted it out of her right now.

As for being suspicious about why it was in her? She knew it came from the infected Holloway, and she thought Holloway got infected by accidental exposure in the caves, and she did not at any point suspect David's shenanigans, or other foul play.

AFAIK the other female doctor was one of the people trying to put Shaw in quarantine, and yet she is there with Shaw on Weylands trip into the Engineer ship, without any questions??

I dunno maybe the "sorry for trying to freeze you" and "that's ok, sorry for hitting you" conversation took place off-camera :}

(I am assuming that David would have liked to have had more control over Shaw after her failed gestation, but at that time he had to focus on serving Weyland more??).

Yes absolutely, at that point in the story it was "all hands on deck, let's get Weyland to the engineer before he dies of old age", and any other shit would have to be dealt with later. 

For shambler:

http://youtu.be/-x1YuvUQFJ0 

Thanks.

The giant squid explanation was a good one :).

My girlfriend is STILL complaining that she shouldn't have given birth to a squid and that it should have been something more human-derived, but to be honest I am happy with your theory that squids/facehuggers are sort of reproductive organs and the squid style one is a primitive pre-cursor to more specific xeno ones.

One more thing....Shaw being strangely unsuspicious....I get how she might have been unsuspicious of David, although he is pretty fucking creepy in that scene, he is in general so perhaps she didn't suspect him. But my point was more, why was she not more wary of going back in the temple given that it just terminally infected her boyfriend who then caused her to gestate a squid. Avoiding the temple like the fucking plague might make more sense?? 

yeah ricky Dagon is a good horror. finally a decent lovecraftian movie with the right atmosphere! 

I liked it. Spoilers? Film's at least a few years old anyway. The mermaid girl was a bit much / conventional, and it was clearly based on Shadow Over Innsmouth not Dagon, but they totally captured the degenerate village feel and the threat from the sea. One of the better Lovecraft films.

Too bad del Toro's At The Mountains of Madness is never coming. 

If this is supposed to be the Engineer dissolving himself to produce human life, why does the planet look like LV-whatever and why does the fluid look like their black fluid later on?

I think I read shortly before watching it that it was shot in Iceland so I was just thinking "ok here's an alien dude in the past on Iceland". The pre-alien intro Iclandic footage was very nice in any case.

Random annoying part from the movie: arriving at an unknown planet (planets are huge, mkay?) looking for something unknown and just descending to the surface and going "hey let's go down this canyon" and landing in just the right place. 

Kinn's link was hilarious and it only covered a few of Shambler's questions. The other guy's confused facial expressions contributed awesomely to the humour. I'm fine with things being unexplained as in Alien, even all the way up to the Twin Peaks level, but Prometheus's script was really just messy and incoherent. I've never seen Lost but apparently the guy who wrote that and Prometheus, tends to do that.

Also happy to see Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter is getting ripped on. Oh, OF COURSE Tim Burton produced it. I'm starting to worry that he might actually be a zombie/vampire/etc and never retire. Though it is enjoyable to read critics coming up with creative ways of slamming people, like calling Johnny Depp Burton's "enabler." A few months ago a friend said, if you just killed five people in Hollywood, the ratio of good films would increase.

And yes, landing in exactly the right place WAS RIDICULOUS, I thought that instantly.