Ridley Scott made two great sci-fi movies, Alien and Blade Runner, that brought more realism and philosophical depth to the genre. In his new sci-fi movie Prometheus, which I saw and enjoyed, he uses actors and actresses from some of my favorite shows and movies. Kate Dickie played Lysa Arryn in season one of Game of Thrones (fantasy). Idris Elba played Stringer Bell on The Wire (police procedural). Noomi Rapace starred in the original Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (detective film noir). Michael Fassbender was in the WWII war movie Inglorious Bastards.

Fassbender's android robot David's favorite film is Lawrence of Arabia. I'm not sure of the supposed significance of this. T.E. Lawrence led an Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire. Maybe David just likes Peter O'Toole's mannerisms and style. The writers are assosicated with the TV show Lost so there be no meaning and it was included with the sole purpose of giving the viewer somthing to think about and create the meaning for themselves.

SPOILERS

The movie opens with a shot of some landscape which may or may not be Earth. (In actuality, Scott - like Benioff and Weiss of Game of Thrones - used Iceland.)  A humaniod alien on the surface commits suicide via bioweapon with a giant spaceship overhead. Why? What happened?

They don't expain it. Next two scientists discover an archaelogical finding in Scotland which has a map of planets (or star systems?) that corresponds to maps found at archaeological sites of other ancient civilizations. These civilizations couldn't have been in contact and had no way to discover this particular map of planet or starts which turns out to exist many light years away. The only conclusion that makes sense is that aliens gave them the map.

The scientists take it as an invitation, but maybe the aliens were just describing where they were from, who knows? The movie takes place in the year 2089 and so humanity does have the technology to find the particular set of planets (or star systems?) the map shows and to figure out tha one of the moons orbiting one of the planets is capable of supporting life. Humanity also has the technology to send a crew on a spaceship to the planet if a corporation was willing to finance the trip (apparently NASA remains defunded in 2089) and one is. I believe they say it cost a trillion dollars which wouldn't be a lot if inflation held at its 2 percent cross of gold rate these next 77 years. Or maybe a new global currency union has been constructed by then, who knows? Lost writers aren't know for having a tightly construed, logical mythos.

Anyhoo, the crew arrives at the moon to discover that A) the aliens share our DNA and so probably created humanity and B) the moon actually isn't the aliens' homeworld but rather is a bioweapon storage facility with many spaceships buried just below the surface. The ships' cargoholds are loaded with deadly bioweapons the scientist learn to their dismay. (I kept wondering about their lax safety protocols. Had OSHA been defunded like NASA?) They also discover many dead aliens and homemovies of the aliens fleeing in panic.

But not all of the aliens are dead. One is found in suspended animation or cyrogenic sleep. Making yet another mistake, the crew wake the alien who is very large, strong and violent. He immediately attacks them and rips off their android David's head. Then he jumps in the cockpit pilots the ship to lift off and head to Earth. How the remaining scientist know this I forget, but they are conviced their/our makers are going to to try to destroy us. They also believe the aliens were preparing to wipe out humanity before but they botched the handling of the bioweapons and killed almost all of the spaceships' crews.

Why would they want to kill their creations? There could be a few reasons like they were concerned that humanity would evolve to such an extent that they'd conquer their creators.

Or there could be multiple factions of aliens. Maybe some created humanity an act which was illegal and so the alien government was sending bioweapons to correct the illegal act? But the rebellious aliens sabatoged the aliens' spaceship with their own bioweapons. You would think that an alien race with the technology to create new species as complex as humanity would have some pretty thorough safeguards on their bioweaponry.

Or the aliens could have created multiple species which shared their genes but the aliens couldn't  completely control the evolution of these species and at some point - a couple thousand years ago when monotheism conquered polytheism - they deemed humanity a dangerous failure.

But why the alien suicide? My guess is that he sabotaged the spaceships and then killed himself. Hopefully there will be a sequel and we'll find out. The film ends with Noomi Rapace's scientist and the dismembered body of Fassbender's David flying an alien ship to the alien homeworld. Good luck, girl with the dragon tattoo, you're going to need it judging by the reaction of the live alien they found.