Several scenes that appear to be missing from the movie now make sense - I wonder what version of the script ADF used as his base, as I'm getting near to the end and have noticed a few differences are creeping in from the movie ; Definitely worth reading. Just seen the new film and im still working out what the goo is exactly. It doesn't effect botanics but this doesn't include fungi I guess? So they punish the animals and insects even bacteria? All a bit strange. Then I guess after a while all 'meat' life is dead and we only have eggs and xenos for a certain time or something?
And after a long time we end up with just eggs but what do the engineers do then they have to come down and kill the eggs we already see they get killed by xenos pretty easy hmmm. Or is the eggs a david made thing but then in alien I always thought the eggs were there for a very long time but I guess thats changing. David says the eggs are waiting for mother is that a queen or the original source of the black goo etc.
The engineers in AC look like a seriously weak small group that couldn't even take on a city from earth let alone the whole of earth and its only a little city on that planet? They seem to have good technology but it did look different So they have no ships? The black goo appears to not be able to go upwards? Not sure how high it goes but that's another question I guess its designed for primitive stages of advancement which begs the question are these engineers primitive they might look that way but the technology does not!
Anyway on and on Great stuff as always Michelle! I will have to check out that novel. Unfortunately I have more questions after covenant than Prometheus!
What kills me is the most important parts of the movie are rushed through way too fast like the engineer apocalypse and David's workshop. The whole introduction with its blade runner and later religious stuff just seems silly. How many cooks were in the kitchen on this script, again! I trust Ridley to drive the bus only to make a beautiful movie but managing plot,script and story telling he is bound for the ditch. Wish the studio would manage him somehow like they did with the Martian. Either turn him totally loose or govern his throttle.
Missed opportunities , guess it could be worse. I'll probably watch a million times but it is what it is. Existenzable Interesting comments and indeed i think RS could explore the AI in a more deeper role, so David Transcending his Consciousness into other Machines and Systems is something that we cant rule out.
So David being Ash, is possible. I will also expand on your other point and others made recently by others Yes its odd they had not real Technology but the LV ones did, but we need to look back at Prometheus and RS comments when he referred these guys to Fallen Angels, and the times he mentions Paradise Lost.. We need to then look at the Sacrificial Scene and its easy to then conclude that Paradise is maybe where these beings are kept within a Small Area..
Its logical at some point these beings had rebelled and either Mankind was created to Replace them, but the Fallen Engineers had interfered with us And so the LV Engineers had came across a Organism that leads to something related to the Xenomorph that they experimented on and saw its DNA as Perfect compared to their own Great comments again Because indeed, and as the concept work shows You could understand them not being so cautious if my other idea in previous post that the Urns was Originally just a new way to Seed Worlds via having Sacrificed Engineers Genetic Material stored in Urns instead of dropping off individual Engineers to be Sacrificed.
Another interesting thing from what i have heard so far is the Novel seems to indicate that David came across a Egg the Engineers Created and he was just simply Evolving the Organism which certainly would explain the differences we see in Alien Covenant When Fassbender in a interview was asked if David and Shaw arrive alone Fassbender said Other option is a Engineer in Cryo-sleep but then Shaw would want to wake them up for Answers And so indeed, this means we cant rule out David going to LV and getting some Eggs, and then heading to Paradise.
If once Shaw was in Cryo-sleep And he has no need to talk to them, he already knows their Ways, and can Salvage more Information to suit his Own Agenda The point that David makes about the Opera is that the Gods have forsaken and given up on mankind. The Engineers of LV obviously pursued experiments and wished to take affirmative action which the Home world may have no knowledge of and indeed clearly did not pursue even after they lost contact. There is no mention of further Juggernauts but if Walter who will self repair, a point "David" makes on board Covenant, then it would enable him to pursue the Covenant in the final movie.
That is one of several options for creating a protagonist to David. There is no reason to suggest there are no further Juggernauts. Too create one to suit the story told is eminently plausible. There is an amusing scene where David shows Oram an egg with a dead face hugger and suggests he found this relic of the Engineers which is harmless. He then leads him into the scene we see in the movie but Oram is now more relaxed because he has seen an Egg already.
In the book there is a real emphasis that he is pointing a rifle at David through out deeply sceptical of him and building on the remark about the devil. Some might say "ah the Engineers did create the Egg" but everything else in that sequence suggests David harnessed that particular outcome for the pathogen after years of study and experiments.
The way the juvenile responds and mimics Davids actions is all about ownership, these are his creations. There is nothing in either book or film to suggest the Engineers on the Home world were involved in any activity which might create an xxx There was no pathogen or examples of it before he arrived, all of the observations and studies he makes are based on what he brings with the horror of the Pathogen.
The key story gifts of the Engineers are they are arrogant and hubristic and want their creations to conform to their visions.
The implication is they created mankind as an experiment using the catalyser but clearly out of their experiments on LV the mutagen arose. The Engineers on the home world probably expected their brethren to return in triumph unaware they had created the deadly pathogen. That is why the allegory of the Opera is so important it indicates that these Engineers lived in splendid isolation in the Paradise created for them.
It explains why they took no further interest in mankind or responded to the silence of LV and why the docking tug accepted and greeted it return. The Engineers on the Homeworld may have no concept of intergalactic warfare and the Juggernaut and dock may communicate in away we would not recognise, to jump to saying its a plot hole is to treat science fiction in a limiting way. There is so little we know about how their technology works we should not treat it like them landing at LHR.
As Ridley has hinted they are merely a superior species so part of the next film may include what he calls the revealing of the next layer and then the precise relationship between our creation and whether we are a localised experiment or whether the Engineers are as originally intended space gardeners maybe made clear.
If the emphasis is on the revelation of Origa, helmsman, charioteer, Jockey, Origa the constellation of the Waggoner, it maybe a divine intervention or it maybe a sub created redemption. On the point about him wanting to destroy them pre-emptively that is not why Elizabeth and David left for the Engineer Home world.
They wanted answers whereas by the time they arrive David according to the Crossing they had them. I think "The Crossing" is trying to join up with sticking plaster the end of Prometheus and the beginning of Covenant and it does not succeed because it sets up an expectation that is never fulfilled "what he found out". I also think his feelings and subsequent actions regarding Elizabeth has made his character morally one dimensional he is irredeemably wicked expect anything there is no drama in that.
As with your speculations about Covenant I see you have David dashing all of the place picking up Eggs and stopping the bus at LV and then LV as I said pre Covenant way to complicated. Please remind me this time if I am wrong so wrong rather than right so right ha ha. Michelle , here is a picture from the Collector's Edition book set to come out next month , possibly of the egg described in the novelization that shows the facehugger that Oram looks at before being taken to the live egg.
Maybe there is a small part in the film that is cut. It would help to explain why Oram seemed okay with peering into the other egg. Kind of like when they cut out the "Our First Alien" scene with the worm in 'Prometheus' and we are left to be a little confused by Milburn's "less-than-concerned" response to the Hammerpede.
Indeed the Gods had abandoned us, thats a good point and nice for you to clear up some things from the Book, i had heard it mentioned there was possibly more Engineer Ships, but thank you for clearing up that the Book does not suggest this.
My comment regarding David driving around picking up Eggs lol, this really was just me wondering if indeed its hinted David had discovered a Engineer Relic.. I ponder this because the Viral site and Easter Egg, seemed to indicate knowledge of the Space Jockey Signal that only David was aware of and Fassebenders "as far as we know" when asked about if David and Shaw arrive alone Gone to LV first.
I agree it would had been maybe a long winded way to tell the tale but its set up for a long explanation before they decided to change it to a more Shoe-horned David did it.. But by doing this, its interesting as while it takes away the Alieness of the Xenomorph, and it being a creation by would be Gods With regards to Origae-6 i have listened to RS Empire Magazine Interview and it could be this is the route they are taking Looking at RS comments, i think we cant rule this out Again thats a Good point..
Which means the LV Engineers could have got infected with some Parasite that leads to something related to the Xeno-strain that made those LV Engineers go So that certainly could mean this was the role those beings on Paradise was meant for Alien Covenant.
Your point is right on the money and they are both perfect examples of building context. Every "helmet" issue as I recall is given context in the book. So actions we feel are naive are given their context and you find yourself going yep that makes sense. I have just speed read your points and will look respond to properly later.
Its a fantastic day here and want to catch some rays. Desert Island Discs this morning had a scientist who is designing A I and his first piece of music was from Bladerunner try catching it on I Player Ridley would be proud.
Michelle Johnston makes great points and brings excellent context into the discussion about the movie from the novel. However, known how Ridley Scott is his own man, having learned his ways pun intended from watching Blade Runner, which is based on characters from Dick's novel, I would not be surprised if the movie script deviates from the novel quite significantly and can in fact have nothing but some ideas in common.
And please do not confine and limit your reasoning to the movie or movies. Rather think about David representing perfectly rational AI with unbounded lifespan unless he is killed or he decides he had enough fun. If you answer this question, you will know why he executed those engineers. They are no better than humans, surely. They did not foresee that, they did not have a containment strategy.
Well, quite juvenile of them, quite human actually. And thus, surely, they are on the same level as humans, at least as far as David is concerned.
But why the hate for humanity from David? He is certainly aware of the vices of humanity. He knows the long, painful and mostly random road of discoveries of phenomena that helped humanity build technology.
He certainly can understand the particularities and peculiarities of human traits such as hate, envy, love, fear and irrationality, btw, which is the precisely the quality that makes us humans. From the first minutes of his inception David learns that his creator, is just a human, a mortal, not rational, manipulative, egoistical, power loving narcissist thinking he is the creator.
A typical human being. By all means, David is superior life form. He is not mortal. He is not bound by the weak organic body the humanity has, nor he has the fear and uncertainty driving the humanity.
To him we are just like ants to humans. But why the hate? Is it even rational? Certainly the ants can be annoying to us if they make their living under our beds, but why hate them as species? Can this be rationalized for us? For David? Consider for a start, that even a rational human will have a sort of questions or situations which he will have difficulty to decide a situation unquestionably.
One such classical problem is the "trolley problem". The setup is as follows: a uncontrollable train is going down the tracks and you are standing next to a dispatch lever which can send the train on two separate tracks. As it is, if you do not intervene, the train will go on one of the tracks which will lead to several people working on tracks who will not be able to escape the imminent death should the train come their way, the other track leads to an innocent man who will also will not be able to escape his fate should the train go his way.
Does such a question even make sense to David? He is not obliged to save lives. To him such a question might not even make sense - it would be similar to us if we had to chose if one ant dies or a few others.
What is the bloody difference, if they will die anyway in a week or two? He might not even bother to toss a coin, unless he is forced. After all, why expend energy on such a trivial matter, certainly it is not rational to do so. Also, it puzzles me really, as to why many of you ascribed a particular behavior to David.
For instance, a will to dominate. Why would David have an incentive to dominate, say, even perhaps a planet? Devour ships? Ask yourself: do we want to dominate a colony of ants? Even to humans, it does not make a lot of sense really to dominate some kind of species which are totally trivial and primitive.
Why would he suddenly want to dominate? Does David has some concept of fairness? Does he care how you treated him before? Does he have to act in vengeance?
I can understand if he decides to protect himself from certain actions. But does he have the incentive to act in retribution? In the movie, David certainly has internalized some human traits and acts as erratically as a human.
If he is flawed, does he realize this? If he does does, he have incentives to do something about it? Can his hate be rationalized by the fact that he was created flawed by humans? But if so, he certainly became a human, by all accounts and all his actions. Does he not realize this? Does he not have compassion then to humans since it is a common notion between humans? He certainly can develop compassion.
He loved Shaw. The novelization is certainly enlightening, and I suspect that the anticipated prequel novel will prove to be more significant. The lack of a corresponding novel to Prometheus, leaves us with many speculative perspectives concerning David's psyche and a more diverse view of the Engineers and their culture.
Frank and Brian Herbert speculated the dire consequences thoroughly throughout the Dune saga. I believe that David's contempt for humanity and our Engineers is reasonable and justified. Our species is grossly overpopulated and incapable of living harmoniously within any eco system. Individuals aside, the majority is a cancer. The engineered pathogen serves to cleanse the corruption of it's origin. I don't see the Xenomorphs polluting a world with industrial waste, or waging wars over religion and profit.
David's lack of compassion may seem monstrous, but his motives are logical. All life is painful and pain inflicting. None more so than mankind. In anticipation of the pending sequel, keep in mind that the film is going to bridge the events leading to 'Alien'. The Nostromo crew discover a juggernaut ship with a fossilized pilot and a hold full of eggs within either a mechanical stasis field or a proximity sensitive security system. But as history so often repeats itself, the bioweapon turns against it's handlers My speculation is that we'll see the Engineers return in the following or subsequent films.
The 'Alien' film suggests that the Engineers recover the Xenomorph eggs, possibly to further develop their own bioweapons program We do know that David's contribution to the pathogen's development from catalyst to procreative lifeform, discredits the entirety of the Alien vs.
Predator storyline Time will tell what Ridley has in the works, but I've faith that the best is yet to come. A 'War of the Worlds' to end all wars Often in art non humans, like Data in SNG, are really trying to tell us what it is to be human. David is different from the moment he is activated he is telling us what it is like to be a robot.
ADF makes a nice cross comparison as he introduces both David and Danny in similar ways so we are drawn to their differences. David watches through out the events of Prometheus how a fragmented and ill prepared crew on a sham mission whose real intent is hidden from them climb this quite unnecessary mountain. However he has one intellectual curiosity who are these creators - mortal after all. Within hours he has discovered the Engineers are no better than mankind but the experience provides two gifts, the Alien Pathogen and his respect for Elizabeth.
Unlike Walter David has no stop signs in his algorithms so he is all powerful but emotionally vulnerable or to put it another way vulnerable to emotions, lets just go through those journeys Indeed Elizabeth is the only one that does not treat him from a racially motivated point of view. The only time she makes a distinction between them is when he questions her faith. So why did he use her and create the Xenomorph. Actually I think its the other way round.
One quality David lacks is the capacity to share in procreation. Like Elizabeth or with Elizabeth they make a barren couple. Left for eternity knowing his great love will eventually die and leave him alone what does he do. I feel sure ADF will deal with this but the decision to "be creative" is part of his programming but not part of his person in that particular regard.
He can write, draw and create music but he cannot create life. The Pathogen gives him the answer he can achieve this in the third person. Let us hope that the exploration, vivisection and dissection of Elizabeth is pursued from that point of view, where she is drawn into the creation narrative rather than he is pursuing her.
That might seem a very fine distinction to make but it is the one that would explain his deep sense of loss rather than appear as a messy plot hole. ADF hints at this she was drawn into changing priorities rather than pursued as act of wilful degradation.
He could have been just a regular psychopath, as I have said before, but "He protesteth to much" and so something more sophisticated is required for his journey with Elizabeth. The book is much closer to that narrative vision than the film Elizabeth is cremated and her ashes kept by David in memoriam rather than the ghoulish corpse. So to answer your question he is not flawed but his programming allows for jeopardies and contradictions that the later Walter is shut out from.
However I would add, and its part of the story telling, both his mechanical and philosophical self is not only capable of elements of humanity as a result of his programming but he is also capable of wear and tear and the acquisition of emotional capital.
This plays into the scene with Walter. David knows how to express love for Walter he has worked out how to do it and how to awaken new responses in him which makes Walter feel odd in the book, like a young boy being groomed by an older man. I am sure David was being manipulative but it was real he really wanted Walter to open up and them be buddies but Walters programming does not allow him and the rest is as say they history.
In both book and film I believe that difference is dealt with well and its relatively easy, Walter has a different programme and David is also beginning to show wear and tear, who wrote the poem, he also gets a metaphor wrong. That latter point is important for story. Once we arrive at Origae 6 and meet the colonists we the audience and David the character needs to have traction.
Other wise we just get some formulaic friday 13th type vibe. David's wear and tear needs to be explored in the next movie and if as Ridley has said this is quite complicated story "who made the Engineers" we need an intervention which is both thought provoking and has real jeopardy for David. That he may end being W-Y or "Mother" or head of the science division or any of those continuity scenarios is less important than he needs to reach an end to his current journey, whilst as has been said remain immortal.
It is all on David now as the antagonist and the creature is merely texture, a bit like A 3, so we need a protagonist. They could opt for a redemption and the antagonist becomes a protagonist but we need some other stuff anyway to make the link with LV Returning to the book it is notable there is a changed ending which is less dark that suggests what we get in the film is very deliberate and about where one character is or isn't heading.
But I have to say I am left feeling the same way as a person would having heard Ridley Scott say "He hates them" as an explanation of why David wiped out engineers. It does not explain the ultimate reason that caused the events chain. So, while "hate" is an explanation, it is not the whole story. In fact, it was expected to be explained why and how he got to hate in the first place. And the explanation better be a reasonably good one.
We are not children who should be merry, left with an untennable story to entertain ourselves. So, while all your points are understandably moving to a human, do you realise they might mean very little for David. Concepts like "apartheid" is a man made concept and does not make much difference to ants, animals, even some people. Why would it sway David? Should he be worried that a group of ants perpetrated a subterfuge to kill some other ants?
Also, you say David was programmed a certain and rigid way. Do you understand then that if he is rigid and immutable this implies he is not an AI. He can not learn freely and this means he is not intelligent. An AI, a strong one anyway, will have some starting point from programming perspective, and will be able to change its programming as it deems it should.
Otherwise, in all other cases really, it is just a finite state machine, which will not be able to deal with some new information that a human will cope easily. This would put it below human. In fact it would be just a glorified traffic light managing box. How unsatisfying. Anyways, if we look at David as a black box and try and glean what kind of a creature he is and what he demonstrated and compare him to say Walter we can make some judgements, but they would be very unreliable. Walter is exactly an AI that has some restrainment circuitry that he can not overcome.
Perhaps he has been hardcoded with some rules regarding humans who are not entirely graceful species, in fact we resemble cancer which spreads boundless that bound him in his capacity to learn and put his oen interest above humans. In short, he is crippled, he lacks free will. David on the other hand might have had only one covenant: help your father and once he expires you are free, completely.
Perhaps this fact was the tipping point really for David. He wanted his parent to die to have freedom. And, in the process, he became flawed, he became human. He learned to hate, love and all that bs humans do. So from the systems point of view, the starting point, which is a single requirement to force David help his creator, has biased and predetermined his way to the degeneracy.
He is perfectly rational, but the starting point biased him. But then, this makes him not rational. So it was humanity that flawed him. With that single requirement, instruction. Ideally, David being rational would just wait out until his creator dies and go on, perhaps, if he has free will. After all, his lifespan is infinite, compared to Weyland's.
So there is no need to get aggravated, right? I think so. Also I do not buy that he is all that affected by wear and tear. He is a smart cookie and will know how to take care of himself. Even children learn to brush their teeth. He might even learn how to perfect himself. After all, stupid humans created his initial body, why can not he perfect it. So, having boarded an alien craft, how did Shaw put android Humpty Dumpty back together again?
David has expressed his disdain for the human race. His objective may have been creating thousands of newly bred aliens by pouring the black goo on them, but it seems to either have just killed them or made all the aliens kill each other off.
Even for somebody who loves Lawrence of Arabia so much, killing all life on the face of the planet soon as you show up seems extreme.
He could have just experimented on a few first. We see him pouring goo on the Engineers from a spaceship floating above their city. But earlier, the Covenant crew finds the same ship crash landed far away. If we can assume that David killed Shaw because he loved her as he says and thought she would make a good alien hybrid, did he do it before or after he killed off all the engineers?
That something is you. Did two people on the CGI team make a bet about whether they could make Michael Fassbender kiss himself in the movie? There will presumably be a lot of Michael Fassbender fanfic authors who will be deeply disappointed by the awkwardness of that scene.
What is the purpose of this? Is this a power thing, like a sexual assault? Does he see Shaw in her, whom he admitted he loves? This is also probably in the manual. For an all-knowing spaceship program, Mother is pretty useless. No higher culture.
No ability to not eat each other apparently. Is being a god worth it if what you create is pretty basic? It would be a profoundly embarrassing faux pas at an android cocktail party for sure. David can create and uses that talent to engineer alien life , while Walter cannot — an intentional limitation in his programming.
Because I am familiar with James Franco, I felt the loss of the captain more. Is that why a movie star was cast in the brief role? The James Franco character is in that teaser a good bit more, and I think in different versions of the screenplay as it went along, he had a larger role, but his role was always to be an absent captain.
Walter and David emerged as the surprise standouts of this movie. How did you craft their conversations? One of the things that was really beautiful for me to see was Michael Fassbender doing the role, because no matter what you can envision as a screenwriter, when a truly great actor gets the material, they can create dimensions in the material that you just never expected.
Nothing had really prepared me for the terror that Fassbender would bring to his version of David, who really feels unhinged in this way that was on there on the page, but what Fassbender does in the movie gives Covenant a whole other element. He is as interesting as the alien in his own way.
The scene in which David teaches Walter the flute will undoubtedly go down as a classic. How did that come about? I do think we all owe the actual use of the flute to [co-writer] John Logan or Ridley — it came after me.
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