Why was the engineer sleeping?

... because... he was sleepy...?? lol. Bob was in hypersleep maybe because he was responsible for the outbreak... or for his own protection... or he was indeed sleepy.

Having seen Prometheus three times now I have formed this opinion. There are in fact four engineers in their cryo-pods, we can make our assumptions about how three of them perished with the only clues being the chestburster-type holes in the transparent covers. The ship is part of a fleet of at least four and I believe they are all slightly different with a unique function, a task force if you like. We know for a fact that this ship is a cargo vessel that was about to leave on it's mission, I think the holograms obviously show a point at which everything started to go wrong and the running engineers are the crew from the other ships attempting to wake the last four.

maybe he'd only been sleeping for 20 minutes or so when people started to arrive, That'd also explain why he was so cranky when he woke up. Bashing in Weylands head was possibly a "snooze alarm" of sorts.

Sleeping or guarding the cave of erns?

He may be sleeping because he has no place else to go...either he and his group are rebels against their homeworld, in which case their location is unknown to the homeworld and thus still intact and he's waiting for rescue by fellow rebels. Or maybe he's not a rebel, but simply following procedure after the outbreak which killed his fellows...he's waiting to be woken by members of the homeworld. When he is woken up by the humans instead of his own kind and witnesses their behavior towards him and amongst themselves, he goes into action according to a prearranged plan. I have a feeling, suspicion maybe that he was waiting in vain for homeworld members to arrive...the homeworld no longer exists and he isnt aware of it yet...he's too caught up in following orders.

hung over ,,past out

found you War ,,up your rear end

no one woke that guy up, he owed them all money from their last poker game. [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1dragonpoker.jpg[/img]

Perhaps he was the one responsible for taking out the other engineers....Perhaps he is in cryo-sleep awaiting further orders, then was abruptly awaken by the self center Weyland and his puppet son....

i suspect the one that was was the one Fifield and Milburn found with the hole in his chest, so he got the "assist", I think it was a Deacon!

They needed to Hypersleep from Earth to LV223 I'd assume it works the same in reverse... we just don't know why they others had the holes in them

Perhaps...perhaps...perhaps. Perhaps the Engineer is the last of his race. That would explain why no one has come to wake him for 2000 years and why the plan to destroy the human race was never carried out. Perhaps the Engineers came to earth, gave humankind technology and humans figured out a way to travel to their home planet and tinkered with their bioweapons. Perhaps the cave paintings mean to show that the Engineers showed early humans were their home planet was and humans came and f*cked it all up. If you look at Chariots of the Gods there are speculations about all this tech that ancient humans may have had. The proof of this tech has somehow disapeared along the way. Perhaps the Engineers came and tried to take all the evidence of this tech away but some stayed behind, humans used it and arrived at their home planet. Not saying this is what I believe but...perhaps.

I think Fader is correct. We shouldn't just assume that they need hyper sleep just for the long journey to Earth. It may not even be a long trip for them, we have no idea what the top speed on that thing is) They may also have it for the flight crews for when the ship is grounded awaiting missions and the 'ground crew' are busy loading it up. If we assume that these guys are in a hierarchical society, with different drones adapted for different tasks, then the other Space Jockeys we saw are lab technicians getting urns ready. The pilots may simply be put in stasis after mission briefing, to sleep until someone wakes them up for pre-flight preparations. the story of how 3 of them got chestbursters and he is untouched, will remain a mystery for a while it seems.

I felt as though the engineer in cryo-sleep was there for the following reason. At least one of tHem remains there in cryo-sleep as a kind of custodian of the complex and they take tours of duty in that capacity, switching out after great periods of time. I also want to throw out a random notion about the cave paintings and other pictograms of the engineers pointing to that star configuration. [img]http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2012/06/12-06-12-prometheus_cave_painting.jpg[/img] Everyone has assumed that the point of telling early man about that configuration was to say, "this is where we come from." It occured to me that, given what we know about LV-223, what they probably said was something like, "We will be watching you and if we don't like what we see, then death will come from here." Just a thought.

@carigamore... that's kind of off topic, but I thought it was "okay so who wants to come with us. Watch the magic light show and we'll show you where to" and then someone draws what they remember of it. As for taking turns, it seemed there were 4 of them in stasis, but three of them had chestbursters (see the holes in their pods.).

[u]Perhaps the Engineer is the last of his race. That would explain why no one has come to wake him for 2000 years and why the plan to destroy the human race was never carried out.[/u] In that scenario, why are there 2 cave drawings in the 7th century? The most recent one was Hawai'i 680 CE (A.D.)

@Hadley's...Good god(engineer)...my head hurts! I can't remamber all this sh*t lol! And like I said not saying I believe all those thoughts. Just throwing stuff out there. Most of which are clay pigeons which get shot down pretty quick by folks with better memories than my own lol.

Notebook and pen might be useful. I took notes on each scene. [img]http://www.houriganwebworks.com/images/Hawaiian.png[/img] [img]http://www.houriganwebworks.com/images/Mayan.png[/img]

It's also being assumed that he went into cryo during or after the events of the outbreak. He may have gone down way before, indont remember the engineers prepping to go to Earth being in much of a hurry. Which could mean he may have no knowledge of the outbreak. Thoughts....

But why the clear lack of panic when the rest of them have just been done over by whatever it is? There's no haste in their motions, it's almost as if they are unaware of it happenening

Between any 2 simple questions about the film there can be a million complex and/or convoluted theories put out by the fans/critics of the film. You asked "Why was the engineer sleeping?" I ask "Why was the engineer the only one of his kind who was both alive and who did not have a head and/or chest burst?". I will accept/assume that a Xeno (or Xenos) somehow gestated, got loose and then took out and collected the Engineer’s that ended up in the pile of bodies that “Highfield” and Milburn came across but how (and when) did the sleeping Engineer’s 3 fellow “flight deck” crew members get exposed to the black goo and/or Xeno? Was it before or while they were in hyper-sleep? And where did the 3 “flight deck” chest busters go once they “busted out” of their hosts bodies? Oh, this movie keeps sucking me back in! It's enticing, exciting and frustrating!

Maybe, they all went into cryosleep hoping there would be some kind of cure for them in the future for whatever got them... ala Weyland. Or they went into cryosleep for their own protection, hoping that whatever was going on would pass. As if they were some type of chosen ones to not mee the same fate. But three of them we'rent as lucky s they thought. This still leaves the question, what were they expecting to do with the ship? As it hadn't left for any course they may have been planning? There wasn't anyone else to pilot it. Was one of the three that dies supposed to have woken first? He could have just been left there forever. Had he been asleep for 2000 years?

[u]MVMNT[/u]: After my first viewing of the film I came to the belief that the Engineer's on the "flight deck" crew worked and slept in shifts. "Prometheus" gives us proof that a single Engineer can operate the Juggernaut. Until just now I used to think an interstellar flight from LV-223 to Earth should involve more than one Engineer but then it hit me that David was the only crew member who was not in hyper-sleep during the trip from Earth to LV-223. Writing that thought makes me think about the notion that on some level David was superior/different to the Engineers in that David did not require hyper-sleep during the flight from Earth. So, David and the Engineers are simultaneously both more and less than one another and also more and less than human in their needs and abilities. Do you remember if the scene in which David activates the holographic footage on the control deck of the Juggernaut suggests in any way that the Engineer at the controls makes his way to his sleep pod? I meant to look for that info when I saw the film for the third time but then I got sucked into watching the footage of the star map. The reason I ask is because I wonder if the other Engineers who died in their hyper-sleep chambers were expecting the Engineer who was at the “flight deck” controls to perform some type of action that we do not know about it, something as “simple” and direct (and non-nefarious) as piloting the Juggernaut.

synthetic 69 The Engineer at the controls was not shown taking a position in a sleep pod, the camera stayed with David and the various projections, and yeah there was all kinds of 3D candy going on in that scene to overload one's focus. And dammit I missed whether or not a homeworld was indicated within the map. I did see later the Last Engineer plot a trajectory for Earth. This film from the very beginning has been about the continual 'reveal' factor...the PR campaign, the film itself with required multiple viewings to get it all down...and finally the home version, containing footage from many scenes that provide definition and clarification for the film, skillfully edited to make the theaters happy and the disc buyers more to discover. It's too bad so many people were put off by this film...just didn't have the patience to absorb it.

[u]Forever[/u]: Thanks for the post. i just got back from seeing the film for the fourth time and I did my damndest to ignore the star map and focus only on the figures of the Engineers. Here's some things that struck me about the scene: - We see an Engineer kneel at a wall that is beside the "flight deck" platform in order to perform an unknown task. - We see some (2? 3?) of the Engineers manipulating the hyper-sleep chambers. - I may very well be wrong but I was not convinced that I saw more than 2 hyper-sleep chambers that have "chest burster" holes in their canopy/facade. - The holographic playback signal ends abruptly as if it were interrupted. On a separate note, I'll tell you this: I may be wrong but I'm increasingly convinced that there is a possibility that the last surviving Engineer was coming to save Shaw from "Cuddles". In that scene the Engineer crosses over to Shaw and does not lay a finger on her before she hits the "open" button that releases Cuddles. I'm really thinking the "We were so wrong" line is a statement about how the film filters the version of events that take place in the film through the eyes and minds of some characters who are myopic in their naivete (Shaw) or grandiosity (Weyland). Then there's David, who's brilliant, scheming, manipulative and knows more about than anyone else about what's going around him, including the Engineer.

synthetic 69...Thanks for the refresher, I've got someone here that saw the film with me all the times that I did and he concurs with your fresh observations, especially about Shaw and the Engineer. Now, I feel this.....that he could have killed her in the juggernaut, ran her down and did her in...but he didn't. Was it what she said to him before she was silenced? Did he discern the difference between her pleading and Weylands brutality? I think so. And in the lifeboat, even after he plows his way in and grabs her, he's got plenty of time to break her neck but he doesnt. I dont have the part of the missing scene where he's holding her by the neck with one hand while she's got the fire ax but it exists...he could snuff her out there again..but he doesn't. I think he was giving her a chance to tell him why he shouldnt kill her....and then, in her panic and fear, she lets loose his death. I hadnt even THOUGHT of the possibility that he was hauling ass over to the lifeboat to save HER....good one there....if David could warn her that the Engineer was on his way, maybe he knew why, but didnt tell her everything....he could only know the Engineers intentions if he communicated with him. Why the hell didnt the theater have the home release for sale right there at the snack bar hahahaha

Great reads! Anyone have a pic of the chest-bursted canopy chamber things? I did not notice that..

But, then there's the scene of the Engineer raising Shaw by her throat. [img]http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6995/2qcicli.jpg[/img] Also RS himself said they cut the scene of her hitting him with an axe as that showed weakness in the Engineer that diminished his imposing threat toward her.

That's the scene I was talking about right there. But then Ridley said this was an Alien prequel....where's Giger's Alien? Ridley and Lindelof have gone round and round with all kinds of statements about this film and I beleive this whole "diminshed Engineer" thing is simply another dodge. It's a critical scene that I think Ridley is saving to be discovered by the true full audience of this film...the home viewer, the real moneymaker for films today.

this is not a prequel. and its not an "alien" movie. It a lot more. Ridley really blew my mind... He also said, hey, its just a movie! But Ridley knows that there´s a lot more than video games, monsters and stuff the way the ship is presented is very accurate of "how extraterrestrial ships are" they are: organic. We really come from them. David is the king david, like the hebrew king. Elizabeth is the new EVE. both of them are the most sensitive (yes, including the robot) This is a very very beautiful film. A great great screenplay. Music. Great casting. Michael Fassbender is really AWESOME!!! his performance is sutile and refined but with such power!! He see how he step by step evolves, and shows more and more HUMAN FEELINGS!!! He is in love with Elisabeth, he is there for her, for a purpose!!!! A great movie.