The black goo - A Life on Earth UPGRADE??!!

[ChrisPachi]

For some unknowable reason, 2000 years ago the engineers had decided that life on Earth as we know it had 'run its course' [..] They were about to re-start life on Earth with a new form of biology, 'brewed' in the giant head room 'laboratory' on LV223.

Or we did something to incur the wrath of the Engineers and needed to be wiped out, an idea that both Scott and Lindelof have forwarded.

The murals say it all really.

The murals say bugger all, other than there is some xeno-like something that these guys decided to make pictures of. It doesn't makes sense and it's not meant to make sense. You are better off staring at this for 124 minutes...

Spoiler

[close]

[180924609]

The Creation of Adam



The Creation of Xeno

[ChrisPachi]

The fundamental problem with this is that the creatures that they seem to idolize are the same ones that wiped them out, so why would they 'upgrade' an inferior species to a form of life that is beyond their control? Why do they even want these f**kers around? Two films now have shown us that the Engineers come off second best when a given instigation of these 'organisms' are about, so it makes no sense that they would idolize them (unless they have major self-esteem issues), let alone create them.

[Predaker]

Why do they even want these f**kers around?

[180924609]

why would they 'upgrade' an inferior species to a form of life that is beyond their control? Why do they even want these f**kers around?

Ask Mary Shelley... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

"Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment..."

[ChrisPachi]

Again, why would they keep making them? If I remember correctly, Dr. Frankenstein ends up properly dead, along with most of his friends and his family. I think that the theory Scott had for the original SJ is still the best one - they are biological weapons; it explains why they would keep making them at great risk to themselves and why they were going to dump them on Earth. The murals in the temple don't really disagree with this either, but the suggestion that they worship them is way off IMO. I think of it as more a kind of alien labeling system.

[Negatronix]

An upgrade for who.. I think it feels more like a trekky assimulation. There is never shown any positives for the life it affects, at best it benefits the one spreading the goo.

[180924609]

These two guys seem to be spouting a few ideas about what they 'thought' was going on in Prometheus regarding the Engineers' motives. It's a pity that these ideas weren't implemented a bit more clearly and more logically coherent in the context of the actual movie presentation!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvI_kYY2PLA#ws
@3.00

Spaihts:
It opens up that array of possible answers, which is horrible all along its scope because you might find that the answer is: 
"You failed us in every conceivable way; we reject what you are, what you have done"

And it might actually be horrible in the opposite way:
"Oh nothing personal, time is up! We just ran this experiment, we need the world for something else!"

Lindelof:
"It's time to throw out this Petri dish and start a new one!"

Spaihts:
Exactly - it's the Douglas Adams answer!:
"No, we're just putting up a traffic circle here! Nothing personal at all!"