gothic-fiction-in-space:

Recently, the AVP Galaxy website, released two new early scripts for Alien: Covenant. Now we can read online three early scripts:

1) Paradise (John Logan, August 8, 2015): the early script of the part of the story that lately would have become the prologue video The Crossing;

2) (Alien:) Paradise Lost (John Logan, August 19, 2015): the earliest script of the movie we have now,

3) Alien: Covenant (John Logan, November 20, 2015): a subsequent old script of the movie.

Thanks to those scripts, we can now elaborate an idea of the creative process that was behind David’s character. Why? Because between Alien: Paradise Lost and Alien: Covenant there is a huge difference in David’s characterization, in David’s personality, a difference that has an impact on the story, especially on the relevance of Elizabeth’s figure in the whole picture.

In Paradise and Alien: Paradise Lost David doesn’t love Elizabeth. He doesn’t have real emotions. Only a big ego and big ambitions. This aspect was changed in Alien: Covenant, where David really was in love with Elizabeth (in an unhealty, obsessive way). In Paradise David plays the part of the sad, lonely, broken robot who doesn’t want to die alone and uses Elizabeth’s kind hearth and loneliness to his advantage. Elizabeth puts him back together and the two grow very colse to each other, even physically.

“They grow more and more comfortable … Cooking meals … Exploring the ship … Washing in the Water Room…
Then, one day, they are working side-by-side, chatting easily … Her hand reaches out. Takes his. Holds it for a moment. Tears in her eyes. He looks at her.
Then, they are curled together in one of the Engineer’s huge sleeping pods. Asleep. Lovers perhaps. Intimate certainly” – Extract of Paradise

From David’s side, it‘s only an illusion to obtain her trust. This really makes me think to what Ridley Scott said about David in an interview in 2014, about the plot of “Prometheus 2″:

“Once that head goes back on, (David) is really dangerous, but he’s also very seductive. So maybe he’ll persuade (Shaw) to help him put the head back.”

Then, in Paradise, when the Juggernaut arrives on Planet 4, David lets Elizabeth watch the planet, the Engineers’ structures from above, and then abruplty breaks her neck when she least expect it. Right after we cleary understand, by the text, that David was lying all the time, that he was faking his emotions, entirely.

“And all the clever simulations of humanness fade from his features. He has no need of them now. He can just be himself.
His eyes are glacial as he stares down at the world at his feet” – Extract of Paradise

This old characterization of David had an impact over the subsequent story. In that old version Elizabeth arrives on the planet awake and never manages to see the Engineers. She didn’t manage to learn about their gruesome fate. David builds a grave for her in the garden and says to Walter he loved her, but probably only to emotionally tempt Walter (David uses emotions to tempt Walter in the final version of the movie too, trying to convince him he loves Daniels), and nothing more. He talks less fondly of Elizabeth in Alien: Paradise Lost. He doesn’t make references to her kindness. He only pretends he loved her, and thanks to Paradise we know that in that script it was a lie, entirely. In fact there aren’t the David’s drawings of Elizabeth in Alien: Paradise Lost. Why?? Because in that version of the story David had no obsession over her. No emotions. He probably didn’t even used her to create the facehuggers. In the subsequent script: the Alien: Covenant old script, David’s obsession becomes extremely important. The drawings appear and for example, they are even considered a sort of pornography by Walter (it’s only his opinion, nothing confirmed). The drawings are a relevant clue to David’s emotions in the final version of the story too.

“Oh he (David) absolutely did (loved Elizabeth). In many ways, not all of them healthy. She
encapsulated humanity for him in the end, even more than Weyland I
think. Look at the religious adoration even as he eviscerated her. Hence
the iconography!”

–
Matt Hatton (one of the two set decorator and art illustrator that made David’s drawings, and the owner of the hands we see in Advent)

In the old script of Alien: Covenant David says to Daniels he loved Elizabeth enough to want to make her immortal like him, and that he wants to turn her (Daniels) into the first one of a “new species”, hinting that he tried to do the same to Elizabeth. All of this arrived, partially, more subtly, in the final version of Alien: Covenant, where we know, thanks to Fassbender, Scott and other people, that David loved Elizabeth.

“A.I don’t love their mistress or master, they respect them but
technically they don’t have emotions. But he had emotions, that was a
problem, emotion is a problem, emotion can lead to bad behavior (…) Confusingly but understandably, the monster had fallen in love with the
woman. All right? So, this is real. He said this is an ode to my dear
Elizabeth, ‘cause he knows he’s about to leave. He thinks. ‘Farewell
Elizabeth” – Ridley Scott (Alien: Covenant, blu-ray, the director’s commentary)

Thanks to the Advent video we learn that David wanted to create a “second Eden” with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth refused to be part of his projects and he had to kill her. In Advent we also learn that David tried to make Elizabeth “more than human”, “evolved”, hinting a bit to what David says to Daniels in the old script of Alien: Covenant, that he wanted to make Elizabeth immortal (probably always to use her to produce his creatures, but as a living being, not as a corpse; he says a “second Eden”, and Eden means Adam and Eve but means creation too, and we know by interviews and by the final movie that David has always wanted to create something). This may connects to what David says at the end of Advent, that he’ll make “his queen” with Daniels. As if he previously tried to make the “mother creature” with Elizabeth but couldn’t entirely finish the job as he initially had planned it and that he’ll perfectionate that concept with Daniels. This ties beautifully, to me, with the plot of Prometheus, where Elizabeth cries because she can’t “create life”, becaue she can’t have children, and where David experiments on Holloway managing to get Elizabeth pregnant, effectively creating a proto-facehugger (the trilobite) thanks to Elizabeth’s reproductive system.

I think that probably in the last version of the story, Elizabeth does manage to land on Planet 4. I have this “theory” because David puts her to sleep in The Crossing, and because Elizabeth was meant to ask help for the Engineers and then to pray for them in the hologram found by the crew of the Covenant, in the last version of the story (but then Scott changed his mind and decided to make Elizabeth to simply sing a song, just to make the scene looks better, not for more relevant reasons). In the final version of the story Elizabeth probably arrived alive on the planet, and probably she came to learn about David’s terrible plans. And so, she refused to cooperate, as David says in Advent, and probably tried to go away, or let David understand she would have gone away.

“He (Walter) doesn’t incorporate concepts like vanity or jealousy or
gratitude. He doesn’t fall in love with characters like we saw the
strange relationship between Shaw and David. There is a bond that
develops there which is a very human one, and human flaws that come with
it. You get the impression that Shaw is wary of David, and I think he just
wears on her nerves. He’s like this love sick stalker in space… The idea
is that these human traits have started to overcome the synthetic ones –
and I’ve treated him like a serial killer really. He’s afraid of things
leaving him, so he incubates them. Like a Jeffrey Dahmer-type
character, David doesn’t want things he loves to leave him, so he kills
them and keeps them in caskets or preserved one way or the other. He
(David) killed her, essentially, to prevent her from leaving him”

– Michael Fassbender

“What choice did I have?” Says David in Advent. There is a “bond” there, says Fassbender. And he was right. Because some elements of the story, from Paradise to The Crossing, changed, but not the entirety of the story. For example we know for sure that the Paradise scene where David’s broken body floats outside the juggernaut managed to come into the final version of the story, but was cut from the final version of The Crossing (as I explained on this blog in an older post: https://gothic-fiction-in-space.tumblr.com/post/171624040368/gothic-fiction-in-space-davids-head). But the part of Paradise where Elizabeth grows fond of David too managed to arrive in the last version of the story. It’s confirmed by another statement of Fassbender (and we are discovering, day after day, that Fassbender’s statements in interviews are believable):

“ – How has David’s relationship with Shaw changed (post Prometheus)?

– Like any good marriage it’s, you know, there’s a real affection there between the two of them. I think they get on each other’s nerves, well he gets on her nerves rather, but I suppose they went through quite a lot together in Prometheus, so there is a bond there for sure”

So yes. Maybe they weren’t so much close, aslo physically, in the last version of the story, but anyway, yes: Elizabeth grew fond of David too, more or less. Probably it went like we can read in Paradise: David played (but not entirely faking it) the part of the broken lonely robot, Elizabeth pitied him (it’s confirmed in interviews that he convinced her to bring him back inside and that she pitied him) and so David’s obsession for her developed into something more, and Elizabeth started to get affectionate to him too, probably out of loneliness, as we read in Paradise. And so we see Elizabeth trusting David, in The Crossing, and smiling to him.

So, in my opinion, at a certain point it was decided that David really loved Elizabeth and that this element had to become relevant in David’s characterization and in the creation of the Xenomorph too. This fits better with Prometheus too, where David wasn’t meant to feel real emotions (a change that can be explaind by how synthetics work in the Alien franchise according to Ridley Scott: I talked about that in some old posts) but was already very interested in Elizabeth, as several people who worked at Prometheus already thought back in 2012.

“He’s (David) always been interested in Elizabeth, remember that: he’s watching
her dreams when she’s sleeping in much the same way that he watches
‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He’s a strange robot that has a curious crush on a
human being”

– Damon Lindelof (scriptwriter of Prometheus). (I wrote about the several connections between David, Elizabeth and T. E. Lawrence in some old posts here on my blog).

I like the final version of the story more than the old one. All the themes regarding creation/reproduction, philosophy, and more, tie perfectly together from Prometheus to Alien: Covenant, and David is even more complex than before. He’s more intriguing now.

“What’s interesting about David is that he’s very needy. He feels like he needs validation from those around him. He’s looking for love in all the wrong places” – Michael Fassbender

In the final version of the movie Elizabeth’s figure has more relevance: being David’s obsession and being an important part of the process of creation of the Xenomorph. A process full of twisted, meaningful, extremely fascinating elements that give depth to the alien and reinforce all of its old violent simbolisms, even the “sexual violence” related ones that it had in the first Alien movie (and also in the subequent ones, to an extent).