Drinking the black stuff

Topic started by scottp on June 10, 2012. Last post by Justpapito 11 months, 2 weeks ago.
Post by scottp (12 posts) See mini bio

Spoiler! I was just curious on what your opinion is on the engineer drinking the black stuff at the beginning.

Thanks

Post by Sandor (613 posts) See mini bio

@Xaviersx said:

When I saw it, I was thinking this is how they seeded animal life on earth. He broke himself down so that his superior genes would disperse in the waters and remix over time to form the sea creatures, that would someday become land dwellers, and ultimately form humanity in his image. I didn't think of the black stuff as a negative thing at the beginning.

This was my interpretation as well. There is also a line in the movie that goes something like "sometimes you have to destroy in order to create." The Space Jockey quite literally destroys himself in order to disperse his DNA in Earth's water supply. The way they made all of these elaborate special effects sequences to show us the individual DNA strands in the water further reinforces this theory.

Post by scottp (12 posts) See mini bio

Thanks guys I really appreciate your input!

Post by TheHumanDove (125 posts) See mini bio

@Xaviersx said:

When I saw it, I was thinking this is how they seeded animal life on earth. He broke himself down so that his superior genes would disperse in the waters and remix over time to form the sea creatures, that would someday become land dwellers, and ultimately form humanity in his image. I didn't think of the black stuff as a negative thing at the beginning.

Pretty sure that's essentially what it was. The strange part about it is, how when he was infected by it and had sex with the girl, it then gave her a squid baby? It just seemed an odd reaction if you look at what the purpose of the goo is originally.

Post by Sandor (613 posts) See mini bio

@TheHumanDove said:

@Xaviersx said:

When I saw it, I was thinking this is how they seeded animal life on earth. He broke himself down so that his superior genes would disperse in the waters and remix over time to form the sea creatures, that would someday become land dwellers, and ultimately form humanity in his image. I didn't think of the black stuff as a negative thing at the beginning.

Pretty sure that's essentially what it was. The strange part about it is, how when he was infected by it and had sex with the girl, it then gave her a squid baby? It just seemed an odd reaction if you look at what the purpose of the goo is originally.

Well it also turned ordinary rainworms into giant white cobra thingies capable of breaking a man's arm. Seems like a classic "just go with it" scenario to me.

Post by dezvous (92 posts) See mini bio

Holloway also had a much lower dosage. This is just one of those things where we don't have enough information to form any concrete answers with. We don't even know if it's the same black liquid from the beginning, let alone that all the ampules even contain the same black liquid between themselves.

What I'm more interested about is what that green goo was that David found on the panel he first interacted with. I was reading something a guy wrote up about Prometheus and he attributed it to being the same thing inside of that green, almost egg-shaped, thing interestingly placed right in front of the wall with what looks unmistakably like a proto-alien of some sort carved into it. It's the only one of its kind and its placement is so specific.

Post by Justpapito (2 posts) See mini bio

I believe the black ooze requires a medium to produce successful beings. Any progeny without a structuring medium is an aberration. We witness the deconstruction of DNA and its reconstitution in the water. This is going to get a bit abstract : I think the good doctor (and maybe women in general) was the constituting medium through which the huge proto-facehugger vagina being passed. The walking vagina became a being in its own right, as opposed to just re-purposing the body of its host. This has a symbolic analogue in the Weyland plot thread, I figure. Vickers is biologically descended from Weyland, she is a human to the core. Whereas, David is an artificial construct yet he claims his father to be Weyland. Weyland created him just as the "Engineers" created that black liquid. They both produced aberrations. I hope this shitty explanation helped out. If anyone has anything to add or to correct, please do so. I find this movie fascinating.

68 votes, 3.6 avg.
General Information Edit
Name Prometheus
US Release June 8, 2012
UK Release June 1, 2012
AUS Release June 7, 2012
Runtime 124
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Rating R
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  • In today's dollars
    Domestic $126,443,716
    Foreign +271,614,000
  • = total worldwide gross $398,057,716
  • - a reported budget of $130,000,000
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