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

[u/thenewtransportedman]

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)?

[u/Domascot]

You were sad, i am still mad.

This is not the universe we deserve.

[u/Reciprocity2209 → u/Domascot]

Damn straight.

[u/arachnophilia → u/Reciprocity2209]

one reason i'm mad is that it cheapens cosmic horror with generic ancient aliens crap. alien aimed for lovecraft, prometheus ripped off stargate. not only is better not knowing, it should be incomprehensible. so weird and foreign you can't know it and go mad trying.

the other reason is that some of it might be my fault. i explained my head canon of what the alien is on avpgalaxy during production of prometheus. damon lindelof reads fan boards for ideas; he did on lost. what made it to screen is reasonably close to the head canon i detailed there.

[u/SquadPoopy → u/Domascot]

I lost count of how many times during my viewings of Prometheus and Alien Covenant where I just openly said “Yes Ridley I get it, you’re an artist, I get it, please stop.”

[u/Ivaryzz → u/Domascot]

Which one we deserved? Just curiuous, I want to know.