Re: Paradise (Prometheus Sequel)
Arts Andrew
[This is interesting to think about but I think you might be reading too much into it, especially if you take the deleted scene into consideration. The sacrificial engineer knew what he was doing and he clearly wasn't forced. He saw the ship leaving before he drank which meant he knew he was never going back. I think the pain might have surprised him but not what happened.]
Art, its precisely because they choose to loose the alternate multiple Engineers version and kept the single person that makes it feel far less like a willing sacrifice to me and more a scientific experiment. The " religious " overtones are immediately lessened.
And when nobody else wants to be around when the substance in the cup is exposed to the atmosphere (note the same thing happens when the ampule room /head was opened /exposed to the air and it becomes highly active), even though it seems to need to be ingested to work at a cellular level, it suggests a calculated act.
Also sacrifices are more commonly viewed in groups because thats the precise purpose of the ceremony and I cannot help but feel by the expression on his face, that that engineer looks like he is being abandoned to his fate by ship crewed with beings who simply don't care.
That he also doesn't make any religious like gestures, signs, chants nor prayers before he performs the final act which results in his terrible death is even stranger when you think about it.
And if the Engineers can so easily create life easily why would one of them be so keen to waste his own? It seemed an uncommonly nasty and painful way to die . "Sacrifices" always seem to fall to the next poor unfortunate thing down the food chain rather than the actual being performing the ceremony ie the sheep ,calf, goat , chicken and often your defeated enemy much rather than your self.
And I 'm sure they should have discovered a painless way to do it, ie anesthetics, alcohol or a swift bump on the head to render unconsciousnesses, rather than suffer a horribly painful but rapid disintegration.
Which is also why I don't think much to the level of the Engineers intelligence. Holloway choose death by flamethrower rather than a bullet to the head then being burned. The crew of the Prometheus and the Engineers are so similar its almost impossible for me to think these are "godheads" and more like workers.
But hey its all a game of smoke and an infinite number of mirrors until the writers and Ridley actually decide to tell us whats happening or not. I just hope they think it out rather than trust to dumb luck like you said.
