SPOILERS! Those dates in Prometheus

[Dutch90]

I wouldn't be too sure the "star maps" were really an invitation. The way I see it, they were just depictions of the Engineers visiting, made by ancient human civilizations. Let's not forget Shaw's "we were so wrong" exclamation - a nice analogy to the distress call from the Derelict turning out to be a warning.

Of course, the main problem with my theory is that, if it was really just a human depiction of the Engineers that the Engineers themselves had no involvement in, it's unlikely it would've been possible to determine the location of LV-223 based on these depictions.

[deezelboy]

The only way that humans could have known was if the Engineers showed them. The system's not even visible from Earth, so it's not a case of the Engineers pointing to a particular star or constellation when they were meeting humanity. They would've needed to show them a hologram of it (perhaps even inside their craft), and it's difficult to see how that wouldn't be an invitation.

After all, no need to warn them about LV-223. That species isn't getting off Earth for thousands of years!

[beckmen]

Maybe it's the old "Hey, see that tree over there? Don't eat from it." trick? 

[Darkfox]

The way I see it (which is no doubt wrong), the Engineers on LV-223 were a rogue faction, bent on destruction.

Previously, other Engineers bent on creation start or tamper around with life on Earth, with a view to creating a lifeform like themselves - which results in us. They leave invitations around saying 'Come to LV-223' - which perhaps they've set up as a paradisical meeting place between them and us.

The rogue Engineers get pissed off with the notion of creating life in their own image - after all it's only going to come back to bite them - and settle on LV-223, turning it from a meeting point into a weapons lab. Unfortunately they manage to wipe themselves out in the process.

Eventually we get to LV-223 and find it's not a very nice place.

My only problem with this is that well after the rogue Engineers wipe themselves out, we've got other Engineers giving star maps to humans in 600AD. Perhaps they didn't know what happened (seems unlikely, but maybe they spend a lot of time in stasis) or maybe they just viewed it as a test for us.

If we started along these lines, I would even prefer another explanation: the creators of humankind were a rogue group ("The Prometheuses" ), who continued visiting humans, until eventually the "real", non-rogue Engineers got to them, punished them, and almost went to wipe out humankind, only they didn't... or something along these lines.

How did you find David's understanding of both Engineer writing and the spoken language in Prometheus?

I had no problem with that. First, because there is no telling how far the civilization has advanced by the time of Prometheus, and how big is David's capacity - if he spent some ridiculous time of the whole space-travel by studying languages, and if he is able to process it and memorize lots of stuff, and if the technology and science at this point are able to reconstruct the ancient languages to their roots, then why not. I mean, even today you can find, or try to make reconstructions of ancient languages and common roots of some language families etc., of course the question is, how deep into the past you can go and also how well you can decipher the way it actually was pronounced, because pronounciation is something that changes quite drastically throughout time (and space).

It is true, now that we are speaking about it, I don't remember how it was with David and the writing in Prometheus... was he really able to decipher the script as well? I thought not, I thought he just operated randomly...

Anyway, last of all, there is never any definite statement that David actually understood the Engineer, resp. that the Engineer actually understood him. He just looked at him and chopped his head off

We do see the same picture on each of the walls, to the extent that the information given is the same. Despite very different cultural aesthetics, each culture has managed to transcribe the star map so that it can be recognised by folk in the 21st Century. So we're very lucky that the Engineers showed the stars to artists who had a photographic memory and weren't inclined to interpret it by the standards of their cultures!

Again, I think it's fair game and not dissimilar from the way Anderson went out it in AVP.

Okay, well, perhaps. The whole star map thing maybe was the only thing that raised my disbelief a bit in Prometheus, but seeing it only once, I didn't have time to pay attention to what exactly those drawings looked like, so...

No, but I bet you have to when the subject of a very light unknown element crops up! (Or in Alien when we are told that the signal heard in space is from an acoustic beacon!)

It was acoustic? Whoa... never thought of that 

But just to once again clarify my point, there is "mild disbelief", being faced with a reality that is not actually mundane, or that is something fantastic (like a monster with acid for blood), but that does not require you to suppress your own rationality and knowledge too forcefully to be able to continue. But there is some stuff which just requires this effort, and for me that was the pyramid-predators-whatnot-stuff.

But dodgy writing aside, my feeling is that when a film calls itself Alien vs Predator we shouldn't expect any subtlety. It's not a subtle title - it's a description of a wrestling match. We are being told what to expect, very bluntly indeed.

Well, for me, "Alien vs Predator" does not first of all denote a wrestling match, probably since it was quite early in my knowledge of the mythos when I first heard this expression (related to books and games back then), and it simply meant "double-creepy universe this time" for me. But yes, there's no doubt Anderson made it a wrestling match.

Hey, I like that! Nice find.

You're welcome.

[deezelboy]

I had no problem with that. First, because there is no telling how far the civilization has advanced by the time of Prometheus, and how big is David's capacity - if he spent some ridiculous time of the whole space-travel by studying languages, and if he is able to process it and memorize lots of stuff, and if the technology and science at this point are able to reconstruct the ancient languages to their roots, then why not.

But we're talking about an alien language. There's no indication that the Engineers taught us to speak or write - unlike AVP with the writing - only that they gave us star maps.

It is true, now that we are speaking about it, I don't remember how it was with David and the writing in Prometheus... was he really able to decipher the script as well? I thought not, I thought he just operated randomly...

From memory: we see him look at a series of glyphs, he wipes his hand over them, there's some biogunk on them. He smiles, as if in understanding, and starts selecting a series of glyphs which then glow. Then the hologram is triggered. Much the same thing happens in the Orrery. It looks like he knows what he's doing. I mean, maybe the biogunk contains an operating manual in molecular form that he can decode, but...

With the spoken language - it's true, he may have been speaking gibberish at the Engineer. But then again, Lindeloff and Scott say they know what he said and that there was a discussion about subtitling it. Which I find crazy - he could have picked up a snippet or two from the holograms in the Orrery, but surely that would mean he'd only be able to parrot it.

[Hieronymus]

Didn't he say, though, that he'd deconstructed a fair number of ancient languages?  Presumably that includes the spoken versions, at least for those languages where we have an understanding of how they were pronounced.

[deezelboy]

Yes, but how does that help him read/speak Engineer?

That is, other than compiling all those kinds of writing into a common origin which came from the Engineers, though?

[Darkfox]

But we're talking about an alien language. There's no indication that the Engineers taught us to speak or write - unlike AVP with the writing - only that they gave us star maps.

I don't recall how anymore, but my impression was at least that the point was that people in ancient past spoke the Engineer language. At least in the sense that the aliens had to communicate with them somehow when they visited Earth, not? But hey, I saw the film once. I am just talking about what I thought after seeing it.

From memory: we see him look at a series of glyphs, he wipes his hand over them, there's some biogunk on them. He smiles, as if in understanding, and starts selecting a series of glyphs which then glow. Then the hologram is triggered. Much the same thing happens in the Orrery. It looks like he knows what he's doing. I mean, maybe the biogunk contains an operating manual in molecular form that he can decode, but...

I think that's a matter of impression, then. To me, it seemed like he was just messing around and pressing some letters at random, and something happened. I remember all the time I was wondering what he is going to randomly trigger, if it will be opening something, activating self-destruct, you name it.