What is the current 'theory' for the storyline? (possible spoilers)

[Despicable Dugong]

Spoiler

They all melting together into one big organic mass, so the SJ can grow to its full size in the chair...

[close]

Im pretty sure that's eerily similar to the plot of a dodgy Dean Koontz novel! 

[jonc2006]

Is Prometheus going to flat out state that humans were made by a higher intelligence being? Who all along has also been giving us knowledge? And that the universe is full of alien life. I remember a Ridley interview where he said that he believed it was mathematically improbable for man to be where man is without help. Then is he going to mix that with HP Lovecraft? Where we have us, then space jockeys and then the shit hits the fan and just keeps getting worse. Maybe even to the point that the entire reason we want the alien is because we need it to save our own skin? However all along no one wants to admit the truth to the public because it is just that horrible of a nightmare.

i just had a great idea.

Prometheus could be the starting point of a Space Jockey "invasion" so to speak. or maybe its just a rather small group of SJ remnants that want to attack earth and destroy it, so not a really big "invasion", but you know what i mean. the SJs want to destory earth.
so Weyland Corp pretty much f*cked this up, but simultaneously they find out about the ALIEN creature (maybe even in Prometheus?), which is the ultimate weapon, created by the Space Jockeys, and the only thing in the universe that could stop them.
so when Weyland Corp back on earth realise that earth is going to be attacked, they more or less spontaneously decide that one of their mining vessels, the Nostromo, goes to search for that ALIEN creature because mankind needs this bioweapon to survive.
this would also explain why in the first three alien movies the WY corp is so eager for the Xeno creature.
assuming that LV-426 was the only place where Xenos ever had been found, after Ripley nuked the place it was the Companys last chance to find Ripley on Fury 161 to get hold of their ultimate Weapon against the Space Jockeys.

so to sum this up:
ALIEN Trilogy = Weyland-Yutani's search for the anti-Space Jockey weapon
Prometheus (+sequels) = Weyland-Yutani's story of direct encounters and struggling with the Space Jockeys (maybe eventually they find another way to defeat them)

Sorry but I just can't go along with this one, it makes WY sound like good guys who's real motivations are to save humanity.

[whiterabbit]

The idea of the space jockey "farming" humans would make for a good story but it doesn't fit well into the Prometheus myth. Also Pandora is connected as they apparently open up a box of horror while on the planet that could make the xeno mankind's bet last hope. Hence we probably do see one at the end. The xeno could also be the higher god. Although it'll probably just be a weapon in the jockey's arsenal. A middle tier one at that.

On second thought farming could fit in and Prometheus could be a jockey that fell in love with his creation and maybe even hid us from other sentient beings. In a way he stopped the asteroids from falling. Ridley did say the crew goes back to the beginning of time and does not deal with going forward. So we get to see why the alien universe even exists at all in Prometheus.

Weyland being the good guys? That would be a shocker wouldn't it?

[Zeta Reticuli]

Sorry but I just can't go along with this one, it makes WY sound like good guys who's real motivations are to save humanity.

Weyland being the good guys? That would be a shocker wouldn't it?

well, it depends on your point of view 

assuming the Prometheus mission afterall really was Peter Weyland's personal agenda, meaning that he is taking advantage of being the most influencial person on earth and being leader of the most advanced company, just so he could mess around with an alien race that is much more powerful than we are and thus putting all of mankind in danger - we wouldn't have any problems without Weyland in the first place.
and we wouldn't know - does the WY corp really just want to use the Xeno to defeat the Engineers, or do they still want to overthrow them and steal their technology?
would it be a "good" thing if Weyland-Yutani takes over the technology of the Engineers?

it is obvious that the outcome of the Prometheus mission will be kept a secret. so i doubt any future actions of the Company will be driven by kindhearted motivations.

[Ruzena]

Oh God, this makes me think we were bred just to have stuff put inside of us.

Yeah... I mean, I don't buy the 'standard alien invasion' idea - it's been done to death in like 500 films already and I don't think that concept interests Ridley in the slightest.

What would be extremely unsettling, controversial and new ground, is the idea that humans were made just to be part of a biomechanoid lifecycle of a higher being. Like the various parasites existing in nature, growing inside other animals as part of their natural lifecycle...

Those facehuggers in Alien sure were a perfect match for a humanoid head, weren't they? And there were thousands of them on that single ship... 

Weird, I quoted that similiarity when the first screen with prometheus face popped up, but because I don't have girl photo next to my nickname, they flamed me

[OpenMaw]

Weird, I quoted that similiarity when the first screen with prometheus face popped up, but because I don't have girl photo next to my nickname, they flamed me

Well, Eva does have a hot avatar, so flaming would be a bit redundant. 

[ChrisPachi]

What would be extremely unsettling, controversial and new ground, is the idea that humans were made just to be part of a biomechanoid lifecycle of a higher being.

I love this idea and I would buy it, but why would they 'guide' and 'upgrade' us if they only intended for us to be biological husks for breeding new aliens? It kind of throws the whole gods and cave paintings angle out the window (where it belongs IMO). By helping our evolution they must of intended for us to develop into a technological civilization for some reason.

If I had to guess this was all part of a master plan to get us to the point where we could find them - they wanted us to. That point in our advancement is somehow significant to their plan. Maybe we aren't part of the lifecycle but the biological 'blank' that the engineers augment with their own biology, and maybe that biology is entirely alien and the engineers that we see are a humanoid species no dissimilar to ourselves who have been assimilated by the enigmatic goo.

Maybe the black ooze is pulling all of the strings, like some viruses in nature that do the same, just on much larger scale.

[Kol]

Ridley did say the crew goes back to the beginning of time and does not deal with going forward. So we get to see why the alien universe even exists at all in Prometheus.

the crew themselves won't be "at the beginning of time" - that is a scene that explains how the earth we're made inhabitable. and with "not going forward but backwards" ridley did meant the story, the terrain of prometheus. the origin-story.

[ryanjayhawk]

Oh God, this makes me think we were bred just to have stuff put inside of us.

Yeah... I mean, I don't buy the 'standard alien invasion' idea - it's been done to death in like 500 films already and I don't think that concept interests Ridley in the slightest.

What would be extremely unsettling, controversial and new ground, is the idea that humans were made just to be part of a biomechanoid lifecycle of a higher being. Like the various parasites existing in nature, growing inside other animals as part of their natural lifecycle...

Those facehuggers in Alien sure were a perfect match for a humanoid head, weren't they? And there were thousands of them on that single ship... 

I agree, if the Jockey/Engineer will turn out to b our creators then the idea they would come to conquer Earth seems silly.  It has also been done to death as you said. 

I also agree that the idea we were bred to be biological incubators would be a great plot device, I remember the first time I saw the Matrix and the idea that humans were being bred to be biological batteries was pretty unsettling.  I think we as humans being the apex predator on earth think very highly of ourselves.  To find out that we are not special snowflakes, would make for a great movie. 

[EXTERMINATUS]

Ummmmm where has this been done to death in a movie?

[Qwertify]

Ummmmm where has this been done to death in a movie?

Farming humans, or using them as a host has been done in a number of very popular films, enough so that you could not say you were being original if you tried to incorporate those elements in another film.
e.g.:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
The Thing
The Blob
The Matrix
Alien

None of these deal with aliens using planets to farm humans - but the films more or less would cover the idea. That, and if that were their motivation - I don't see why they wouldn't simply do something far more direct - like putting the ship right on Earth. Besides, Lindelof had described the planet in Prometheus as a sort of way station for these superbeings.

I can't say that you're wrong - but if that were to happen, I am sure Ridley would be disappointing a lot of people, myself included.

[EXTERMINATUS]

ROFL.Ok invasion humans were replicated not farmed.If anything the pods were farmed so wrong there.The Thing absorbed and assimilated beings.So wrong on 2.The blob absorbed or consumed people and got bigger.Again where is the farming.wrong also.3 The matrix u may have minor point but since everything turned out to be a simulation your wrong on that too.Not to mention we were farmed by our own creation in the simultaion.Not whats going on in this movie.That is all.

Oh yeah and none of the movies except alien used people as hosts.Also there was no people farming in Alien and only one person was a host.

[Qwertify]

I think it would be best to mold our knowledge around the key questions and the myth. This should really be the only starting point, rather than what the eggs mean in Alien, or what the SJ is all about, or what the connection between the two films is.

How is it related to the myth Prometheus?
He stole fire from the Gods to give it as a type of technology to mankind.
Most importantly, what is the fire in this movie? (Try to answer this fundamental question before speculating that Vickers is an alien-cyborg who plans to use SJs to travel back in to time rescue the dinosaurs.)
Scott had said before, that the ship represents a challengeto the gods, and that by crossing that line, very bad things start to happen.
What is this challenge, or how do they cross the line?
Also - the main reason why this expedition takes place is due to Weyland's/Shaw's desire to find the answer of our origin. They are convinced that they left behind maps to come and find them to join them. Why are they wrong? Why are the maps on Earth not an invitation?

One answer is to simply say that there is no fire, that the Aliens/Engineers simply used the planet as a mechanism to stop their creation from getting too advanced (whereby if they were able to travel so far away), and as such send a Juggernaut back to Earth to stop their advancement. This I believe is the most putative response. From here I believe we can add, deduct, and morph the concept based on other things we have heard/seen from trailers, interviews, etc.

[OpenMaw]

ROFL.Ok invasion humans were replicated not farmed.If anything the pods were farmed so wrong there.The Thing absorbed and assimilated beings.So wrong on 2.The blob absorbed or consumed people and got bigger.Again where is the farming.wrong also.3 The matrix u may have minor point but since everything turned out to be a simulation your wrong on that too.Not to mention we were farmed by our own creation in the simultaion.Not whats going on in this movie.That is all.

Oh yeah and none of the movies except alien used people as hosts.Also there was no people farming in Alien and only one person was a host.

All those examples which you cite as being wrong are in fact examples of humans being little more than live stock. They're used to expand an alien threat akin to animal live stock.

In The Blob it uses humans to grow. That's exactly what people do with cattle.
In The Thing it uses humans to replicate and procreate itself.
In Body Snatchers any time they duplicated a human, they were using that human as food, basically.
Alien is most definitely an example of humans being little more than live stock for the alien.
The Matrix is probably the biggest example here of humans being used as livestock. We are used to power the entire robot empire! We're cultivated, bred for that one purpose.

[ChrisPachi]

Most importantly, what is the fire in this movie?

Maybe the 'invitation' is a counter measure to ensure that we never reach our full potential. Conversely to 2001, the aliens might of left the clue not to signal that we were ready for something, but rather that we had over stepped our bounds and needed to be put back in our place. There is no literal stolen fire, just a level of technology that we were never meant to attain.

Kind of like leaving a key inside a locked rat cage, with an alarm on the lock that signified when it was turned. If the rats figure out how to use the key then holy shit you better stomp on those f**kers, because that is outright terrifying.