Big Head Room

Hey Mala'kak, do me a favor and try to focus on one point at a time and not make so many statements at the same time because it makes it hard to respond there are so many!!! I mean this in the nicest way possible because I do like answering your questions and points you raise. OK, having said that i will respond in general to a few points raised by Indy and you together. First of all imo this is not a trap that has been premeditated. The changes that occurred upon opening the head room were more like a burglar alarm that went off triggering dangerous results, like the black goo seeping out of the urns for example. When I first noticed the skull at the top of the mount/ pyramid I thought it was just made visible by the dust storm removing layers of dust that had obsured the features before. Then reading posts by others I realized the connection between opening the head room and all of the changes that resulted. I postulated the possibllilty that the oxygen that entered the room with the crew could be responsible for both triggering an alarm and the method could be by raising the level of oxygen, which is known to oxidize materials in the physical universe that we are familiar with including our own bodies. But let me make this clear, this is a hypothesis on my part. In fact every statement that I made is qualified by the abbreviation imo - in my opinion, and I wish all of us posting here would in a similar manner make it clear to readers that these hypotheses we come up with are just that - theories that we intuit or imagine, they are not truth because they are not based upon hard data, only on information we have brought together to integrate into a plausible explanation for questions raised by this film. So imo, I strongly do not feel that the pyramid was a trap for us or the elders. It was most likely the engineers version of a burglar alarm for anyone triggering it by entering the headroom. This is why David should not have been allowed free reign to touch buttons or anything else, much like a crime scene and a forensic analysis. The expedition should also have proceeded at a much slower and more careful rate to avoid triggering alarms instead of blundering in like they did. Of course if they had much of the melodrama that ensued would not have taken place and the story line would have evaporated.

I too gave both scenes a look. THe firsrt look was more full not as angular. With the storm rising the skull looked like a skull. A change wa apparent. At first i thought maybe the head was sort of filled in with sand to give a , as you called it , a humaniod face. With the storm rising it was looking more theatening, a preview of Death.

@Indy. Had to take a look at the bluray again just to make sure I wasn't imaging it. Sure enough, right before the team enters the dome/pyramid we get a quick glimpse of the head and it looks fairly like a humanoid face. However, when the storm comes and the team has to leave it is without a doubt a skull. Could it have been a skull the whole time and what appeared to be the "skin" just dust? Maybe, but I think having it undergo a transformation is so much more fun.

Indy - Good idea but do try not to get a Big Head about it!

Not me. Just tryin' not to lose my head

Pull your heads in you two :-P These are going to get out of control, aren't they.......?

Heads up! I had a similar question in another thread- regarding what happened to the 3 or 4 engineers who DID make it through the door! Did they end up in the pile? Okay- watching again, looking for footprints or other evidence!! Thanks Indy!!

Indy there is no way in hell that the engineers staged the head room. It would require that the whole thing was a set up starting in the cave back on the Isle of Sky. Regarding the floor, I just dont think it matters what shape it was in. All we know is at first it was all good, then due to probably oxidation everything was triggered to go wrong. Really when you think about it, David brought it all on by opening the head room. Remember at that point the indistinguishable head at the top on the pyramid showed itself to be a skull- the universal symbol from death!, and the black goo began to seep out mutating the little meal worms into the hammerpedes, the head began to deteriorate. In fact all the critical bad changes were instigated by David acting on his own. If he had not opened the last engineers cryotube he wouldn't have killed almost everyone and then began to try to complete his 2000 year old mission leading to Janek and everyone else to die. It was David, David and David over and over again. He single handedly managed to screw up the entire mission, killing the big man in the process. What a f**k up!

There were plenty of worms in the Big Head Room soil. After 2,000 years, they would have destroyed any footprints many times over. There was a bit of dust that got blown out of the room when the door was opened. In fact, Shaw coughed several times as she was engulfed in the billowing dust.

"..indistinguishable head at the top on the pyramid showed itself to be a skull- the universal symbol from death.." I am glad you mention the 'headsone' on top of the pyramid. It caught my eye as something that was not practical judging by the outside of the pyramid. It was also placed at the highest point on the dome so it was selected to be there, not just a random placement. The comments abouts about not being staged by the Engioneers has more of ring of truth to it that some contrived plot to somehow fool the crew to act in a certain manner. To me that brings into question of the running Engineer Hologram. Were they staged, fabricated, presented for the crew's benefit? In exploring the tunnels it seemed to me that crew would have uncovered the headless body. even if it was 2,000 years old. THen when David opens the door(and you know he will) I could understand evrything in it's place : no dust, no footprints, everyting where it should be for our crew to discover. We could then discuss waht it all means. Since we did see the running engineers, and fallien headless man, and they seemingly entered what we now call the Big Head Room where is the evidence that they entered, running, disappeared somehiow from the Room and didn't leave a trace that they were even there. It sort of reminds me of Decorated house at a Home Show.. Everything is there, set in place for a reason but no evidence that anyone actually lived there. In thinking a bit that could be true for the whole complex of Pyramids and in particular the Orrery, Tunnels and the Juggernait that we see presented throughout the movie.

I think the big head room is a trap, but based on nostromo's comment it could not have been meant for us. The question then is who set it (angry bob maybe) and who was the intended victim. Clearly bob never expected to see humans when he woke up.

Everything was preserved like a mummy before unwrapped. When exposed to oxygen and if the wrappings are broken the mummy will rapidly disintegrate. The helmet was preserved in such a way as to fossilize around the head on the inside and create a seal within the air sealed room, so the head on the inside was in a nearly identical state to that in which it died and oxygen hadn't had a chance to work on it. Nor any gases that remained trapped in the room. This allows them to actually examine it without it rapidly turning to dust before their eyes like a mummy would if not preserved. Even in museums they have to keep mummy wrappings in tact by preserving them and transporting/storing them within anaerobic (oxygen free) environments. It is oxygen that causes all systems to break down even faster upon their deaths on planet Earth. It gives us life and also helps return us to the environment, speeding up the disintegration of our bodies. If there's no oxygen, moisture and other microbes/organisms carried by oxygen in the air it means no decay. And preservation occurs. However, they are only preserved on the surface, as bio-chemical bonds between molecules have already started to loosen over all those centuries but they can't break until the air tight seal is broken. In essence Shaw isn't explaining all the details, the change in atmosphere line means air got into the sealed chamber along with the moisture and oxygen it was carrying. But it's really the oxygen that is present in the rest of the temple that does most of the instant damage to things that have not been absorbing the cosmic carbon (carbon 14) it carries. Only living things and certain metals etc will trap this. All living things will absorb a certain amount in their lifetime. After we die it escapes from our matter, or is replaced with carbon 13 and fossilization occurs. This can tell us how old something is by working it through an equation based on the half-life of carbon 12, and how much carbon 12 is left per one gram of matter. Which is important in carbon dating and figuring out when artifacts were created. Even David is not immortal and will suffer entropy. All systems are doomed to disintegrate and return to the cycle. All metals will eventually oxidize and rust in the presence of oxygen and moisture... it can take a very long time.... or be stalled, but David would die eventually. When David sprays the stuff on the one urn he already knows what's happening and has to preserve it before it instantly breaks down due to the exposure to oxygen and moisture in the air.

The use of the word 'trap' set off all kinds of alarms inmy head. Any non Engineer that stumbled across a sceen with a decapitation would I think create some interest. If they could figure out how to open the door then they were indeed caught in a trap. As infections occurred the ship's crew they arrived in would also be infected. Perhaps it was a trap for other Engineers(there have been hints of Rogue Engineers battling other engineers.). This would make even more sense if there was indeed civil wars or caste clashes involved in this world. What would Bob's reaction be if he woke to a fellow Engineer?

Has anyone ever tought about the possibility, that the Big head statue in the big room is a monument over the sacrifice engineer in the opening montage? He could be the first, and maby the last. Also, earth could be the only place they ever seeded with life. And its also possible that they didnt introduced life to our planet at all, they just added DNA to speed up the process, maby. I dont think the holograms in the corridor is a trap. If we dont see footprints in the dirt its probably becuase ridley didnt think about that detail. The mystery of Prometheus lays in the story, and its a great one.

I think it sort of became an impromptu trap, left for not us but another group entirely. Left just in case the Elders came by but we showed up first. The Elders knew their old servants were making new forms of the bio-weapon there to fight fire with fire, and it backfired. So they stayed away. The Engineers almost killed themselves trying to establish dominance over us and the Elders... The Engineers were making all those weapons to destroy the Elders first and foremost. We became a secondary target over time. At first they only wanted to lead us into the stars to deceive us into helping in their crusade against the father. Like a combination of Prometheus and the serpent who offered us knowledge that ultimately got us in trouble in the Garden of Eden, or Paradise. Their new goal is to use us any way they see fit against their elders. We're sort of their younger brothers and they want to turn us against the gods. Possibly use us as part of the bio-weapon to aim us at the Elders/father... "Because doesn't everyone want to see their parents dead?" They're like the fallen angels, sort of like dark angels who acted like Lucifer. I think there is a war going on amongst the Engineer factions, but it's mainly the Engineers vs the Elders. Which ties into why David has secretly rebelled against his father, watched him die, and is now a little bit more free from his programming. When Shaw asks David what he'll do after Weyland's gone he says he imagines he'll be free. I think the Engineers were servants and wanted their freedom as well. I think there are some very deliberate parallels between David and the Engineers, and between both and fallen angels/Lucifer themes. I wouldn't doubt that some of them knew how to set up a trap for the elders that spans many, many years. Or that they had certain tricks in place, with foresight about what would happen once oxygen was reintroduced after being absent for a long time.

They might have had to cut and sacrifice ones who were infected for the trick to work and leave traces of his form of the infection on the other side of the door... the side with the body. The trick was not minding that it hurt letting the others die before making their escape and resealing the room as a trap for the Elders. But humans showed up at a the wrong moment in time and were able to open the door. While the Elders knew better and stayed away from the planet entirely, because they feared what the Engineers could be up to with their stolen technology They were always the angels and part of how the hierarchy of the angels works towards creation together, but they fell out of line shortly after we were created when they returned and tried to influence our culture. They come from a time before us as Shaw hints, and the level of interaction between the cultures must have been great to leave each culture and their culture with traces of each other's cultures... Specifically the language connection that David uses to speak to the Engineers. This is also why Holloway is so focused on actually meeting them... His thesis was based on the assumption that deconstructing the languages to their roots would allow David to communicate with the Engineers. David was able to, so Holloway's thesis was correct. Although we're almost only seeing David's version of the adventure and not getting the full picture on purpose with the way it's cut, the ambiguity etc. Which explains why Holloway can seem like such as ass, and does make a lot of mistakes for a higher purpose that's yet to be revealed. Holloway was right, whereas none of the other characters are right about a lot of things early on. Holloway also wants to know whether or not someone put that temple there... he treats them as a culture and acts more like an archaeologist from the very start. Holloway is actually approaching things logically and scientifically until he realizes he's infected. His problem is that he's so sure they're a human-like culture... "Gods don't build in straight lines". He knew they weren't "gods" and he applied a basic archaeological principle for finding man-made sites from the air. Even David doubted that Holloway's thesis was correct, and David gets jealous when he starts to realize Holloway is correct and he can read the hieroglyphs to operate the door. Oops is almost a statement to himself on David's part... he understood some of what he was doing when he opened the door, but didn't know if what he was reading was correct until it worked to open the door... To understand how to open it he must have realized those were the controls and interpreted the symbols a certain way. In doing so he's still working out exactly how to read the language because it differs from the spoken form. This is mostly only my opinion at this point, but from that point on he's secretly reading everything.

Anybody that quotes a Sam Cooke song is OK in my book. Are you suggesting that there are changes in the Skull Rock's appearence from earlier pictures? I'll have to check this out. I wish I had a way to see the same skull side by side. I don't know if it is a sign of anything, b ut it placement, it's construction and it's placement was done for a reason. In a builiding area that has little decorations as part of the Pyramid it stood out and in I hope for a reason

What if we substitute the word "sign" (with all of its biblical connotations) for alarm to describe the changes to the skull rock. When david breaks the seal (another biblical reference?) The changes in atmosphere release the goo from the sealed cannisters (the 2nd seal maybe??) The crew is thereby exposed to a highly dangerous and imo airborne biohazard or at least some components can be transmitted that way (that is why I think the room as set up is a trap). The changes to the skull rock are an alarm that the trap has been sprung, but they imo are a sign that "a change is gonna come" to quote sam cooke. I don't know what the deacon symbolizes but clearly it is important to the decor of the big head room and the end result of david breaking the seal. Btw I would have posted sooner but I was having a few problems with my android. Lol

@Mala'kak [i]Holloway acts more like an archaeologist from the very start.[/i] Name one archeological thing Holloway does? They discover the temple - an archeological smorgasbord - and what was he do? Bemoans the fact that it's a tomb and hits the bottle. Just come up with the evidence and stop making things up. The terrain data computer picks up that the dome is not natural yet nobody takes any notice of it. And looking at the dome with the square wall around it, Holloway can't even tell if it's natural or not. Some archeologist. Not to mention all the mistakes he makes in his presentation. Would you like to explain them? And all David said was "if your thesis is correct." It looks like both you and Holloway don't know what a thesis is.

On another thread(Kneeling/Genuflecting Engineer) there was a suggestion that the Big Head Room was devoid of Urns and without a Goo threat the Running Engineers could seek safety/shelter from whatever is chasing them The implication was that someone not yet known removed the trapped Engineers and started to store 'the Urns filled with Goo. I had not come across this thinking in recent times and offer it as another explanation for the missing Engineers and a clean floor.

"..storm comes and the team has to leave it .." There is a later scene not so much of the Skull Head but how it is viewed. After the storm david, riding in an ATV is following the transport back to the pyramid. Then Daviid stops on the road with the transport continuing toward the dome. David while stopped looks at the dome and i think he is checking out the exposed Skull head. He has look of 'pleased' somehow knowing that events in the night affected Fifield and Millburn. Remember David ask permission to fix the pups not to help in the search for Fifield/Millburn. That in it's self makes me suspicious of what David was thinking: He knew bad things are happenning to the crew. But stopping for no other reason than to look at the Dome, take stock of events is quite telling as it shows David's devious mind satisfied that one deed is done and now is the time to start to stir the pot one more time. It is just a quick scene easily overlooked.. But David's stopping, gazing and watching the transport enterting the pyramid area is there for a reason.