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alien franchise - Where is the possible location of Engineer's sacrifice scene?


Is this scene happening on Earth? I mean, perhaps this scene was made completely with CG effects. But if not, which waterfall looks like that? Please, answer with images and sources.


credits scene with waterfall character looking at a pit



Answer



It was filmed at Dettifoss.


Scott used Dettifoss, in Iceland, as the filming location for the scene (many thanks to @Paul D. Waite for the link). The links provided show that very little except the spaceship was changed in post-production.


But its location in the fiction of the story is deliberately undetermined.



From this movies.com interview with Ridley Scott:



Movies.com: That is our planet, right?


RS: No, it doesn’t have to be. That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space.



So it could be Earth, but it might not be, and it doesn't matter to Scott or the story; that scene exists as a generic representative of a process which occurred on an unknown-but-large number of worlds (including Earth) in much the same way.


And it's certainly not meant to be Dettifoss, Niagara, or any of the world's other current waterfalls. 3.5 to 4 billion years ago --roughly when life first showed up on Earth-- Niagara Falls didn't exist (it was first dug out by glaciation 10,000 years ago), and neither did the crust on which all of our modern waterfalls sit.


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