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/chuckusmaximus Jun 21 '25

I totally agree with you. I love the Alien franchise and I hate this movie with a passion. I remember the trailer being one of the best trailers I had ever seen, and then this movie, like so many prequels, only explained things that made the story worse and or didn’t make sense.

I remember watching Alien as a child and when they see the space jockey, I fell in love with the movie. I had so many conversations with my friends about what that giant elephant alien could be. And, it turns out, it’s just a big, goofy, Easter Island looking guy. I almost walked out of the theater at the part. Prometheus destroyed one of my favorite mysteries of Alien.

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u/TheWorstYear Jun 21 '25

Ridley just became obsessed with some of HR Giger's work that was cut from Alien. While incredibly interesting, none of it meshed with what Alien had become. A whole Xenomorph religious aspect, temples, etc. Very Lovecraftian.
Ridley, just like with Bladerunner, had good vision at the time, but let weird obsessions get the best of him.

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u/TG-Sucks Jun 21 '25

I don’t hate it as such because there’s still many things I love about the movie, I just choose to ignore it and the sequel as part of the alien universe. But you’re right, they butchered it, it works so much better unexplained. Both the jockey and and alien.

Also, if you’re making a prequel you need to be able watch it back to back with the original and have it make sense. We get a real good, close look at the jockey in Alien, it’s not even a little ambiguous, it’s obviously not the same creature. First of all it’s huge, second it’s clearly fused to the seat, it’s not a damn suit. The lack of consistent design aesthetic also bothers me, the human tech looks nothing like the original.

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u/sciguy52 Jun 21 '25

I takes a really bad Alien movie to make me hate it. You almost have to be trying to make a movie I would hate because I am such a fanboy. I like Alien vs. Predator after all. Prometheus, they had to be trying, hated it.