Weyland's true aim(s) in Prometheus and Alien. . .

I'm not sure how important mankind's beginnings are to Weyland, he seems more future-oriented. I think the search was more Shaw and Holloway's thing, and their discovery of the star maps just pointed Weyland in the direction he needed. Clearly any civilization that could get to Earth from those stars must possess technology not yet discovered by humans, and Weyland wants it.

I'm somewhat concerned about the role of Weyland in the film. I've always seen the 'company' in the Alien films as simply a hugely ambitious corporate entity that will stop at nothing to increase their gains by whatever means comes there way. There is something believable & deeply sinister in this idea & we can maybe even see this sort of behaviour going on right now with our banks, causing a right old global mess!! Anyway, the idea that Weyland is a company head with delusions of grandeur & a God complex makes him seem a bit bad guy pantomime to me.

In the Ted Talk he reminds me a lot of Tony Stark, Iron Man. The genius, wealth, name, rock star status, technology oriented public address... It's pretty risky to put a face on a company like Weyland-Yutani, which has (excluding the AVPS...OF COURSE) until this point remained ominously lurking behind the scenes. It's no longer "The Company", it's a human, and apparently an old one at that. Hard to really hate on an old dude who's just trying to hold on to his glory. Well not that hard, but harder than hating on "The Company".

We know that Earth is going under water due to global warming, and that Weyland is engaging in 1) Building man-like humanoids 2) Terraforming (making deserted places inhabitable, starting from the Moon) 3) Interstellar travel, in order to a) harvest resources b) perform terraforming on planets that are more "suitable" than the Moon or Mars, but are far away I think it's fair to say that Weyland's efforts are to try and make the best possible imitation of what the the creators / engineers / SJ have done this on Earth (and possibly other planets) millions of years ago with excellent results; it only makes sense that they would jump at the opportunity to get their hands on the "real thing", just like the original Prometheus did. This would fit perfectly with the "we are the Gods" and "building better worlds" statements. Eventually the mission fails (which is probably a good thing) and whatever chain reaction / evolution starts to take place on the Derelict ends up staying there since the spaceship is damaged. It would make sense then that Weyland 40 years later would want to bring home a sample of whatever the green goo / SJ / Prometheus crew have evolved to. I don't think they'd know about the eggs / facehugger / etc; I rather think Ash is looking and learning as they go. Just speculation though.

Weyland Industries = Space Jockey & Co. Space Jockey/Engineer/Elder Gods etc send infiltration unit to Earth to take over corporation throughout the ages. Their purpose is to single handedly deliver warm bodies, set up colonies for fake reasons, for their genetic experiments or insane birth-death rituals.

"[b]I rather think Ash is looking and learning as they go.[/b]" Without a doubt. But his special order is very specific - "bring back lifeform. All other priorities rescinded". Sounds like someone knew something was there, which could tie in very well with the Prometheus story. The company want it because they think they can gain from it i.e. package it up & sell it (essentially).

Shaw's "we were so wrong" speech was sent to someone, so the company gets informed, to whatever degree- that something else is out there. I don't think that is the "warning signal" from Alien. I think the whole 30+ year delay for the Nostromo, plus the -Yutani addition are a direct result of Weyland losing enormous monies and investment on the Prometheus mission. Old rival Yutani steps in and bails Weyland out. The "signal" from Alien just rekindled some old curiosity from Prometheus' failure, and the hope of cashing in on such a huge loss previously. Perhaps the signal from Alien will be the speech from Shaw, but I doubt it. She didn't send it from the SJ chair, she sent it from her quarters.

What I mean is Weyland-Yutani's aim in Alien was to retrieve the Xenomorph no matter what, but what was their mission in Prometheus?? As surely they weren't aware of Xeno's existence yet. . .