Tag: Alien Covenant

Has David tried to make Elizabeth immortal?

grayhoodiesrule:

gothic-fiction-in-space:

In the Advent video, David makes reference to some experiments he attempted to do before Elizabeth’s ultimate refusal for “cooperation” and the subsequent murder of the woman. He says: “I tried so desperately to make her more than human. Evolved. but without her cooperation I had to salvage her parts to begin work on my masterpiece”.

I think this may implies that David tried to make Elizabeth a “superior” organism, to make her… immortal, maybe because David had some plans about spending his existence with her. Why not? He affirms he has loved her (and his emotions were true), Fassbender said David is “really an old romantic”, and in the same Advent video, David implies that they (he and Elizabeth) could have re-built everything on Planet 4 (re-built life), could have built a “second Eden”. We have to be careful: this doesn’t necessarily requires Elizabeth’s immortality, because David could have just used her body to produce new creatures and then killed her off to make “a second Eden”: the Eden is the place of the creation; he didn’t necessarily needed her alive to “built anew”, to built a “second Eden”. However, the things David says in the Advent video, suggest that the A.I tried to convince Elizabeth to cooperate with him alive, and only after her refusal he was “forced” to kill her.
I think we’ll never entirely know the truth, but that’s not so bad: this way there is “mystery” behind David’s experiments, and so, there is still mystery behind the origins of the Xenomorph itself.

Reading the early script for Alien: Covenant (the one written by John Logan in 2015), I have found an interesting scene that makes us think, again, like in the Advent video, that David’s original plan was to make Elizabeth immortal (and if we think about it… in Prometheus Weyland ordered David to experiment with the black goo probably because he hoped it would have turned out an useful substance to make him live longer… ).
Here’s the text from the early script:

INT. CATHEDRAL-COURTYARD – PRE-DAWN

Meanwhile, upstairs… 

DANIELS is loading her pack. She stops for a moment. Her eyes resting on her wedding ring … She gently touches it. The pain still real.
She glances up–
Gasps. Shocked.

DAVID is standing there. Just watching. Intently. 

DAVID 

“Didn’t mean to startle you. My
apologies”.

DANIELS

“Don’t worry about it”. 

DAVID

“But you must be used to having men
look at you”.

He smiles, an attempt at charm that doesn’t come off. Something menacing in his unwavering gaze now.
She’s wary of him in any case.
He approaches. Tension between them.

DANIELS

“Do you know where Walter is?” 

DAVID

“I’m not my brother’s keeper”.

DANIELS

“Brother”?

DAVID

“Would you deny me that? … Just
another machine, eh, Danny?”

He’s closer now. She subtly moves around a table to keep her distance.

DAVID

“I think of him as my brother. You
certainly appreciate the significance of family: I saw you looking at your wedding ring. Shame about Jacob”.

Her eyes snap to him. Cold fire.

DAVID

“Walter says he burned. Right in
front of you. Eye to eye. That must have been… disquieting”.

DANIELS

“What did you do to Doctor Shaw?”

DAVID

“Loved her”.

DANIELS

“Killed her”.

DAVID

“No. Loved her enough to want to
make her immortal. Like me”.

She stares at him. Her fingers quietly feeling for a weapon that’s on the table…

DAVID

“I learned so much with Elizabeth.
But I’ll do better next time. Now that I have such a fetching subject”.

He gently reaches out and brushes the hair from her face. She doesn’t flinch a muscle, just stares at him, sickened. Her hand inching toward the weapon… 

Then before the whole “I see why Walter thougth so much of you” scene and before he kisses her (“passionately”) David seems to explain what he was saying before about his experiments on Elizabeth:

DAVID

“You won’t mind terribly, will you? Being the first of a new breed? A new species we could say… and when the moment comes, if it makes it easier for you, you can close your eyes and call me “Jacob”.

As I wrote before, we’ll probably never know what exactly were the original plans of David and why and how they slightly changed because of Elizabeth’s refusal of cooperation.
One thing is probable, because it’s implied in the Advent video and “repeated” in the early script of Alien: Covenant: David originally didn’t want to kill Elizabeth.
When David says, in this early script, that he loved her so much to want her to be “immortal”, it’s not totally impossible that he meant “immortal through my art and my creations”, but I think it’s more probable he was really implying he tried to give her a much longer lifespan, also because in the early script he adds: “immortal – like me”.

I loved the original script!!

augmentedscion:

asexualdaryldixon:

Alien: Covenant – Prologue: The Crossing

There are a few continuity things that stand out to me in this short, firstly Shaw’s hair is noticeably longer, yet David’s hair remains identical to the way it was in Prometheus. The length of Shaw’s hair suggests the passage of time, maybe three or four months, I suppose it’s not out of the question that David continued to maintain his appearance for a while, after all he is far more vain than Elizabeth. Secondly David’s art style radically evolves between this and Covenant, this suggests that he was just learning to draw for the first time. You’re telling me an android designed to create and had all that time to spare while the crew was in cryosleep never tried to draw before? I don’t see these as continuity errors, just interesting details to note. I think the crew on these productions put a lot of thought into these things.