There’s a fairly interesting interview on IfOnlyUK with Daniel Twiss AKA Daniel James who plays one of the Engineers in Prometheus. He talks about his time on set, what it was like working with Ridley Scott and what it was like in the costume. But most of all, he reveals his character’s fate. Fairly big spoilers below:
We have seen the virals, the teasers and the trailers. We have seen the alien life forms and the spacecraft from Scott’s Alien. What information can you give us on your character as the ‘Space Engineer’?
In the original Alien, the crew encounter the ‘Space Jockey’, now known as an ‘Engineer’ (the name for the alien race) however, as this is a semi-prequel, the ‘Engineers’ have a much bigger part to play. My character is that of a fairly young ‘Engineer’ who ritualistically sacrifices himself in the opening scene. This sacrifice is very different to any others as I have to drink an ancient mix which causes my body to literally disintegrate into the water around me. This then provides the first building blocks for new life to form on the alien planet. There are two other ‘Engineers’ who are in the rest of the film and have fairly large parts, but you will have to wait for release to find out more.
Thanks to seeasea for the news.
The engineers made themselves. They don't even procreate, they just cre-ate (themselves) genetically, via some religious protocol of gene-sequencing that outlines what their race SHOULD be. And in the process of their demented quest for being perfect they eradicated all their women.
Again, imaginative insights...and if there has to be a feed-back loop that somehow involves humanity, I would prefer your take on the concept.
...and you were the only one to notice my sig. based on "The Right Stuff". Not sure if anyone else happened to notice the "Ridley" reference / quote under my avatar, but it is a phrase uttered a few times during the film by Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), right before historical awesomeness would ensue. I thought it made for a nice "wink" to the artist behind Prometheus.
Thank you for comprehending and liking my Hitchcock twist, 'out of the box' idea.
Who knows, it may yet come to pass:
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- Two distinct titles on the soundtrack; one called 'A Planet', the other 'Earth'
- Dettifoss Waterfall Engineer's body very human, as opposed to LV223 bio-mech engineer
- Peter Weyland almost certainly wants to become 'one of them'
- 'Saucer ship' nothing like anything LV223 or Giger
I suspect Ridley would love to end this movie with something awe inspiring like this:
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tombsofkobol.com%2Fimages%2Fclassic%2F2010web20a.jpg&hash=18a3e42ddf2fe47d066a7d5d98f75e37df25b28c
Imagine how cool it would be if a closing scene of awesomeness was something engineered by....humans!
Anyways, Ridley has WETA and a bigger budget this time so...
more bucks, more Buck Rogers!
http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Asian++unicorns++face++extinction+risk&NewsID=333372
Nope.
This would also explain how unicorns are real too.
That was kinda of my point. The engineers might of derived from 'natural' processes, evolved mightily and then created us. The idea that we aren't of natural origin doesn't preclude our makers from being so.... I guess.
But this is not the implcations that bother or interest me.
It's to call them out loud like this.
"Engineer" suggests a colder, mathematical mind, with dark designs and cryptic motivations.
I have an impression (which might prove completely wrong) that Scott's intention is to debunk the delusion(s) at the core of all monotheistic creeds.
I just find how they get the name quite lame.
I would have prefered that they did not named them on screen.
OH WATCH OUT THE ENGINEER IS COMING!!!!
THAT ENGINEER IS REALLY MEAN...
"We call them creators.
Why?
Because they created us."
Why?
Because they Engineered us."
Hum... OK....
Oh yes, I agree...backwards time travel is a deal breaker, and I will personally throw my popcorn at the screen if Prometheus invokes this concept in any way, shape, or form.
Yes I think it's a good idea too, I guess my point was that it doesn't need to be a future evolution of us traveling back in time to create ourselves. If we can do it, some other species can do it; if we can create life and somehow guide it to becoming like ourselves, then so can any other life form. There is no need for us to be the originators of the human form to my mind. And as you say, if humans were created by an intelligent species (or our own time traveling ancestors) it doesn't automatically preclude life arising naturally elsewhere. The engineers might be an evolution of 'first' life, or maybe they were also created by another species who is an evolution of 'first' life, etc.
Bleak mate, bleak! But also kind of poetic...
However great or godlike we might become one day, we will remain what we started as : somebody else's robots performing a programme whose finality cannot be apprehended.
David is pissed because he was made superior to man and yet is perceived as a dummy by his makers, the human crew suffer a major blow to their ego when they realize their makers were less than gods (and hardly good-mannered according to Sir Ridley), and the Engineers...?
The debate about whether we are alone or not in the universe is a moot one indeed. What matters is that intelligent life did appear somewhere in the cosmos, and that we are sure of. If the Milky Way is not teeming with life right now, it will be in a few billion years. Even if the many species that will populate it are all of human descent, they will necessarily be very diverse in morphology and culture due to their evolving in totally different environments - and their tinkering with their own genes.
In Charles Sheffield 's "Sight of Proteus", men have become so apt at transforming themselves through genetical engineering that the term "human" has been totally redefined. Hopefully Prometheus will induce us to redefine the term "alien".
If it does not, no big deal so long as it's a hell of a ghost train ride.
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AVP movies did no justice for the series for having such a half assed origin of how Weyland Industries discovered the Alien.
I like it! Nice idea, and thinking "outside the box". Well done, 180924609. Although, you are almost certainly right...it ain't gonna happen. Also, it still begs the question as to why the SJ/engineers look are basically human/humanoid. You gotta' work that into your theory somehow.
I am thinking, Chris, that 180924609's hypothesis might still work if the term "galactic" engineers is more a metaphor. In other words, there still exists the possibility for Life arising through completely "natural" processes throughout our Galaxy (and the Universe, in general). The previous SJ/engineers, and their inheritors (us, in 180924609's hypothesis) only control a local (small) area of the Galaxy...and terra-form and seed Life throughout their small neighborhood. Possibly, there are other advanced civilizations doing the same thing in other parts of our Galaxy. So, there is a mix of intelligent Panspermia, as well as true ambiogenesis occuring at all times somewhere throughout the Milky Way.
Again, just expanding on 180924609's original idea, as a kind of fun thought experiment.
What are your thoughts?
That is circular logic though. It allows for any other alien race to also attain the same status. If we can evolve to be galactic engineers then any other species can do the same, and there is no reason that precludes that species from starting life as we know it. It assumes that life began on earth and nowhere else.
Thats not quite what I was driving at.
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I actually proposed that the scene at the waterfall has nothing to do with Earth - it is just 'A Planet' in deep space in the far distant future. Mankind has evolved into a superior species, taking over as the new galactic engineers, and starting the cycle all over again. This scene is actually taking place long, long after the events of Prometheus!
What you are witnessing is Earth2 (3, 4...?!), started by human God-like descendants of Earth or at least, Weyland-Yutani Galacticorp circa the year 10,000!!
This would be a 'get out of jail free' card for me because it then means that we, the viewer did not actually witness Earth's prehistory at all in this movie. Leaving the exact details of the creation of life intact.
Probably wont be the case tho
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That's a very appealing theory. Engineers as descendants of men. Space and time travellers.
That would bring a supremely paradoxical answer to the eternal question : who created us ?
We created ourselves. Causality loop. Elsewhere, I suggested the giant stone head resembled Pearce. You seem to second that.
There appears to be dissension among the survivors of that decadent race, judging from the beheaded jockey corpse and the fleeing Engineer. Maybe the conflict revolves around the way history - the past - should be tampered with.
Then there would be something of Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder at the core of Prometheus.
"There will be no home to go back to" possibly means that if the past is once again modified by the Engineers' action, a different species may become dominant on Earth. It does not necessarily entail Armaggedon, or a brutal xenocide, but a cancellation of the random chain of events that led to men.
But then, if Engineers and Men are related, the first would commit suicide by making man extinct...
Oh man, I 'm getting LOST in this (presumably) Lindelof stuff !
Not dissin'
Just being lucid ^^
And i love Bay's work.
Some might like to not stumble upon your post and be spoiled
Sorry.
Scott is driven by the visual, not by the story, nor by the actors.
He's like a thinking Michael Bay, he knows what is shitty script wise and choose top notch actors who know what they do.
How many times we've heard his actors saying he lets you try stuff and such, it just means he give them the basics and let them do their work, since he choose the best he gets the best.
He's one of the great visual storyteller of our time but he's no rocket scientist.
Science was never the point of the ALIEN universe.
It just feels/looks believable and real but it's clear it never was actually.
Discuss these movie with a science angle is fun but pointless you'll only anger yourself more and more lol
5 days to go ^^
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I'm still... I'm still dealing with things.
Don't want to bite off more than I can chew.
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Oh f**k it.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FGLkhB.jpg&hash=038c4705dbd97a0e7a23ebf4b37dbfc06118d957
It also goes down nicely with a nice cold coors beer.
Maybe this is more appropriate
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Oh shut up and go and change your armour
LOL!
RagingDragon, come back brother! The Ass-Flower cleans dirty undies. Or is it the cause of dirty undies? I can never remember which. I expect Milburn and Fifield may know the answer.
(stolen from GabusMaximums @ PF).
Shits pants.
Runs away.
Regrets running away with shit pants.
Brilliant, Chris...you just inspired me, mate!
(pic courtesy of Cvalda)
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I meant to suggest that it might be the intended story that there are elements of our genetic makeup that are of a manufactured alien biology (non-coding DNA was a bad example). Whatever, it's got star maps in cave paintings; it's all woo hoo anyway.
Smartass
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to be honest i just think your putting the emphasis too much on science when genre conveys we look at it in terms of fiction. i may have worded it wrong but i understood the DNA speak i just thought it was being taken too seriously and was affecting the way in which people thought about the film.
You know, now that you put it that way, the 'theory' presented in the movie doesn't just sound like pseudo-science but derp-science.
Hfeldhaus,
You do realize what the original topic of this post is about, right? Specifically, the information conveyed in the interview with Daniel Twiss. The discussion about evolutionary pathways, and the agent of inheritence (DNA) is kind of apropos...especially when someone with even a passing curiousity tries to reconcile:
Ancient alien "engineers" (which look remarkably human) -->
the seeding of biological Life -->
billions of years of evolution -->
resulting in humans (which look remarkably like the engineers).
Hmm I haven't seen that featurette. I actually completely buy what Carl Sagan's saying, but i was speaking more to the immense amount of coincidences that led to our existence, how unlikely it is for intelligent life such as us to exist I think Hawking said something to the effect of it being comparable to a Boeing 747 being reassembled in a tornado. It stands to reason that if we came from their DNA an evolved in a similar environment to theirs, we could eventually come to a species that looks somewhat like them.
It's not that they've used AA as a basis for their story. Not for me anyway. I'm sure for Deuterium even that is too old hat and so forth. But I can deal with that. It's when I start hearing the writer, and the director saying that they buy into it, and they're trying to spin it as being a reality, and the movie is basically just a way for them to spread the gospel. That reeks a bit of being pretentious, and it could harm the movie if it becomes overly intrusive. Which, I really hope it's not.