On June 1st 2012, the long awaited “semi-prequel-canon” film to 1979 classic ‘Alien’ arrived at Cinema’s. To me, and many others, the hype for this was pretty damn large as I really wanted to know the origins story to one of the best creatures in my childhood.

On top of that it had Ridley Scott back at the helm and with help from David Lindelof, writer of Lost and the Star Trek reboot, things were looking to be very good for Prometheus.

Let me tell you now, it does not disappoint. Below, you will find some theoretical explanations to some of the questions posed, including where we as humans come from, and the origin of the famous Xenomorph!

*IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN PROMETHEUS AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ANY SPOILERS, PLEASE GO AND SEE IT BEFORE READING ON*

On with the show…

First up, where do we as humans come from?

The first 5 minutes of the film are all you need to see really in order to know the answer to this question. However, it will take you, as it did me and my fellow movie-dissectors, till the end of the film to try and break it down in your head logically. 

You see Earth in it’s early days, possibly very shortly after its creation. Standing at the top of a waterfall is a cloaked humanoid figure, and a huge space ship taking off from his location. This figure you will later learn is called an Engineer, his skin a pale white and eyes more akin to shark eyes, full black. He takes a sip of a black liquid (very important in the story) and proceeds to break down, literally. His skin falling away, his limbs falling off. He tumbles down into the waterfall and as he hits the water, you witness his DNA break down, his body disintegrate, and his DNA reform into other things.

Now, what we took from this was: This humanoid is our creator. He was dropped off by his own kind by the spaceship, and sacrificed himself in order to create life using this black liquid or “goo”. If this goo can create life, why not pour it into the water on its own you may ask? Well, it seems that this goo breaks down a life form and creates something similar to it. So he broke down his own humanoid form in order for a similar life form to be created on Earth, ergo, us! This does however pose a question in itself: Why did the Engineer want to create life in a similar image to himself?

Before this is answered, there are other things to take into consideration. Later in the film, it is said that the Engineers created us and then for some reason, turned their backs on us and wanted to eradicate us completely. Why is this? Maybe it was because we as a species became much more intelligent and dangerous than they thought possible and saw us as a threat to them? Perhaps it was because the sacrificial Engineer at the start played God and created us in his own image, maybe against the will of his own people, and so orders were given to destroy us? It’s not really clear in the film what the answer is, but this could explain why the sacrificial Engineer created us in HIS image. Or perhaps, as David says in the film, “maybe they created us simply because they could.” I stand more for this explanation as much of what we do as humans is a journey of testing ourselves, our limits, whether we can or cannot.

We also came to the conclusion that, to eradicate us, they decided to use this black goo as a sort of biological warfare but before their plan could be put into action, something happened that put themselves in danger. Either contaminating themselves, or creating something that killed them outright. This is not made clear in the film.

Where did the Xenomorph come from?

Okay, this could possibly get slightly confusing.

First, you need to know that the black goo is the start of everything. Whatever this stuff is or where it came from, it has the power to give life by breaking down and rebuilding into something similar. 

During the film, you will see a tomb of what looks like eggs but are actually just “pots” of black goo, hundreds of them. No animals inside. What is important to note though is that there are earthworms in the dirt below them. How they got there is unknown but what clearly happens is that the black goo leaks out the pots onto the worms and quickly changes them into some snake-like creature that is able to latch onto skin and tightly wrap around limbs, breaking them, and eventually burrowing into the throat of the victim. Clearly the early stages of facehugger/snake form of a Xenomorph.

Now, the Sacrificing Engineer drank a substantial amount of the goo and broke down very quickly. Holloway, the guy from the dig team and possibly seen as the main male character, has a single drop introduced into his body and goes into a strange process of breaking down very slowly over the course of what seemed like around 12-15 hours. However, before he kicks it by being burned alive by Vickers, he has sex with Shaw, the main female lead. I believe, if the thinking in my head is right, that this action was the very start of the Xenomorph.

What transpires is that Shaw, unable to become pregnant normally, becomes pregnant in a couple of hours. “3 months on too”, as David says, so the process of birth and change is again very quick. Shaw opts for a very quick Caesarian operation and what comes out is some sort of mix of Octopus and facehugger.  

Quick recap:

the goo lands on a worm = creates a snake creature with extreme physical strength which likes to burrow inside bodies.

the goo is passed from man to woman through sperm = creates a facehugger like creature which does lay eggs inside throats.

What is to be noted here is that though these two things are unrelated somewhat, they share similar qualities to what the Xenomorph is and how it evolves in the resulting Alien films.

We learn at the end of the film that the facehugger creature that Shaw gave birth to grows crazily fast and is extremely large, basically the size of the room its in. It manages to facehug the Engineer and we see at the very end that a Xenomorph rips out of his chest and the facehugger is lying dead in the background.

After watching all of this happen, it was unclear to us as to whether this was the Queen that starts the proceedings of the Alien films or not. After some debate, we don’t think it was. Explained later.

If i was trying to put in a timeline how the Xenomorph was born, it would go something like this.

1) Black Goo

2) Add sperm to black goo

3) A creature somewhat similar to a sperm (pre-facehugger) that can lay eggs in “hosts” is produced.

4) Pre-facehugger lays egg in “host”

What comes after can happen in two ways:

5) Pre-facehugger dies after birth, Xenomorph Queen produced

6) Xenomorph Queen lays eggs which are small facehuggers

7) facehuggers lay eggs in host

8) chest bursters created

9) chest bursters rapidly grow into full Xenomorph

Or:

5) Pre-facehugger dies, Pre-Xenomorph produced

6) ??

The reason why we think it may not be the Queen is because firstly, all the events that happen on this planet are not even on the same planet as the Alien film. Prometheus was set on LV 223 I believe and Alien was set on LV 442 or something similar to that! (numbers probably not entirely correct). Secondly, it doesnt even look like the Queen. Thirdly, the famous space jockey from the start of Alien with his chest burst open has yet to be seen.

It’s still unclear, in my head anyway, as to how/why the forms change from facehugger to chest burster to Xenomorph.

What I do think is clear though is that the Xenomorph has become the embodiment of the goo’s power. It can now adapt to things that it uses as “hosts”, becoming more humanoid when it uses humans and more animalistic when it uses dogs/cats for instance.

The acidic blood that was seen in the worm/snake creature is pretty baffling to be honest. It is awesome in my opinion, but how it managed to go from a simple sperm/worm to something with acidic blood has stumped me good!

There is still some more story to come after Prometheus. Many unanswered questions and debates to be had. Who knows if we will get it!