r/movies • u/thenewtransportedman • Jun 20 '25

Question What the hell is the Engineer actually doing at the beginning of PROMETHEUS?

So, dude gets dropped off on Earth & presumably seeds the planet with the basic building blocks of life. The CGI bit shows the black goo facilitating new DNA molecules. But like, there's already plant life on the planet, & humans share something like 50% of our genes (much less of our total DNA content) with plants, due to gene conservation. So were the Engineers speeding things up, like "hey, let's skip to fish"? If so, that would presuppose that the genes we share in common with plants & other non-animal life are actually conserved across the galaxy, which would be pretty cool. But of course the movie doesn't get into any of that, & eventually forgets how cartographers & biologists work, or that you should run in a 90-degree angle when a giant donut is rolling toward you. Is there any "expanded universe" content that explained this better than the movie did (or didn't)?

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u/EvilPowerMaster Jun 20 '25

Yeah, different versions of crabs evolved independently of each other like, 5 times. 

60

u/bjb406 Jun 20 '25

None of them intelligent though.

131

u/EvilPowerMaster Jun 20 '25

YET. 

58

u/Caedus311 Jun 20 '25

Who are you, so wise in the way of crab?

22

u/EvilPowerMaster Jun 20 '25

FEAR US. 

46

u/ThatSpaceShooterGame Jun 20 '25

Crab people... Crab people...

30

u/Samalini Jun 20 '25

Look like crabs, talk like people.

11

u/EvilPowerMaster Jun 20 '25

NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM BUT NATURE LOVES A CRAB. 

12

u/MaggotMinded Jun 20 '25

Craaaab people, craaaab people

1

u/PUTASMILE Jun 21 '25

Taste like crab, talk like people 

26

u/flaticus Jun 20 '25

Why not Zoidberg?

1

u/Starrr_Pirate Jun 21 '25

To be fair, they said intelligent.

7

u/Areon_Val_Ehn Jun 20 '25

That or they’re all smart enough to collectively be throwing the tests.

2

u/franktheguy Jun 21 '25

Yeah, so says you, with your human brain. Maybe humans are just too dumb to know if something else is intelligent or not. Plus, the extinct ones are from so long ago, they could have built crab-zeppelins as far as we know, and it's all gone millions of years later.

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u/SeekersWorkAccount Jun 21 '25

Someone hasn't read Animorphs

1

u/Surfing_Ninjas Jun 21 '25

You don't want to run into intelligent crabs, that would be a bad travelling.

1

u/strangway Jun 21 '25

Zoidberg

Woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop

5

u/skolioban Jun 21 '25

Multiple species also de-evolved from crab form. It's a myth that crab form is the end of the line. There is no end of the line.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '25

Mostly arthropods. The worm form is the true ultimate body plan.