“David did not make an Alien, as Scott apparently did not, but a Minotaur, a VILE AND PHALLIC RAGE MONSTER born of unhinged ambition, repressed dysfunction masquerading as masturbatory self-indulgence. He is that fearsome id monster again in Covenant.”
This is a pretty crude article, I warn you, and sometimes it exaggerates a bit, but I think it has good elements that may help to see how Ridley Scott didn’t “ruined” the mystery of the “Alien” (later known as the Xenomorph) at all, in my opinion. This prequel saga to the original Alien is building up exactly that horrible monster we made a symbol of lots of terrible thematics, more than an extraterrestrial animal, in the first movie.
(In this article there are references to gothic fictions and Romanticism, the Isle of the Dead painting, King David, Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s The Tempest)
“It wasn’t dreaming. It did not have the capability. The omission wasn’t intentional, not deliberate. This was simply a known consequence of its creation. Where it was concerned, the intention was that there should be no surprises. In the absence of an unconscious consciousness there could be no abstract conceptualization. The speculative information dump necessary to allow for dreaming was absent. Yet—there was something. Difficult to define. Ultimately, only it could define its own state of non-being. Only it could understand what it did not know, did not see, did not feel. In the absence of dreaming there was also no pain. There was no joy. There were no hypofractionated percentages of either. There was only the ongoing state of not quite nothingness. Of almost being. Then, a sensation. Leading to a thought. Analysis: possible visual perception. A requirement for auxiliary neural stimulation. Neurons were fired. Electrical impulses traveled. There was a small but unarguable neuromuscular response. Eyes opened. It could not see its face. Had it been able to do so, it knew, and activate additional cognitive facilities, it would have taken note of a human visage. Smooth, almost glistening with newness. Fresh, unmarred, unlined by too much age or not enough thought. Angular and handsome. Blue eyes, unblinking. New. This particular face would not reflect the mind that lay behind it. Both face and mind had been designed, programmed, but only one was capable of change.” – Alien: Covenant: The Official Movie Novelization" by Alan Dean Foster.
One of the “men” that was used to “built” David’s character in Prometheus, is the T. E. Lawrence played by Peter O’Toole in the famous movie “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962). Ridley Scott said that David identifies himself as the protagonist of that movie, because Lawrence is a stranger among strangers, as like David is a “stranger”, a “different one” among the crew of the Prometheus.
The Lawrence of the movie David is watching at the beginning of Prometheus, endures everything he has to endure to demonstrate that he can behave like an Arab, like a Beduin, even if he’s an English man with no direct experience of war. He demonstrates he can go trough the desert. But there’s always someone pointing out he’s no Arab, he’s English, no matter which clothes he’s wearing. That makes me think about all the David and Holloway dialogues in Prometheus. Holloway asks David why he’s wearing a suit if he’s a robot and doesn’t breathe, David is a bit offended and answered that he’s made to look like a human and he has to wear a suit to look like a real human and help the crew to better interact with him.
There is an interesting dialogue between Ali and Lawrence in the movie. Lawrence has just told Ali that he hasn’t the same surname of his father because he’s a bastard son.
Ali: “Seems to me that you are free to choose your own name”
Lawrence: “Yes, I suppose I am”
David too chooses his name. Weyland made him choose his name as his first act of self determination. Self determination is extremely important to Weyland, and to the Lawrence of the movie too, and Weyland too likes that movie a lot (see the Ted Talk). David is no “real” son to Weyland, he knows that, he knows he will never be “at the same level” to his creator. But David was made capable of self determination… and we all know how he’ll use it (David: “I wasn’t made to serve”).
Lawrence tries to “integrates” between Arabs but after being captured and tortured by Turkish soldiers in Deraa (because he’s a white man, quite an “esotic”, kind of man, quite handsome for the district governor) he has a dialogue with Ali where he says he wants to leave the revolt and going back home and do ordinary things that ordinary men can do.
Ali: “A man can be whatever he wants. You proved it”.
Lawrence (pointing at his white skin): “Look Ali, look. That’s me. And there’s nothing I can do about it".
Ali: “A man can do whateverhe wants. You said”
Lawrence: “He can… but he can’t want what he wants. This is the stuff that decide what he wants”
David is a robot, so, he should only serve humans, but David, once free from Weyland’s programming, manages to “be whatever he wants” (a creator) and “want what he wants” (Elizabeth: “do you want it?” David: “Want? It’s not a concept I’m familiar with”) and even fall in love with a human.
The Lawrence of the movie is also a bit narcissistic, he has a big ego… and he has a “funny sense of fun”. David is pretty vain too.
In Prometheus David quotes the movie Lawrence of Arabia several times, but there are few things that remind us of that movie in Alien Covenant too. First of all: David’s face under the hood makes me think about the face of Lawrence under his white robe. David fires a little… signal rocket to save the crew of the Covenant from the Neomorphs, and Lawrence uses this object in his movie too. But the very certain reference is this one: while David is washing himself and cutting his hair, he sings the same song that Lawrence sings in the desert. The song is “The man who broke the bank at Montecarlo”. David is probably singing that song because after hearing that the Covenant vessel has 2000 colonists on board, he feels like he has won the lottery. David really broke the bank!
But why I wanted to write about the similarities between David and the Lawrence of Peter O’Toole??
Because the Lawrence of Peter O’Toole is a ROMANTIC HERO. He really is a romantic hero in the first part of the movie, and in the second part of the movie we see that the newspapers too tried to depict him as a romantic hero figure.
What’s a romantic hero? Wikipedia has a very good definition: “the romantic hero is a literary archetype referring to a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has himself (or herself) as the center of his own existence”. It isn’t quite an accurate description of David’s character? Of the David of Alien: Covenant? David was a romantic hero in his disillusioned identification with the Lawrence of his favorite movie, but at a certain point, after Weyland’s death, he’s free to purchase the “dream” to make himself a “true” Romantic hero and rebel to all his creators (humans and engineers). One of the most famous example of the Romantic hero archetype was Lord Byron, the poet that David is erroneously thinking to quote in Alien Covenant.
But in Alien Covenant David has shifted… from the Romantic hero… to the ROMANTIC VILLAIN ARCHETYPE (but that’s another story for another day 😉).
Byron, Shelley and others Romantic authors wrote about PROMETHEUS. Prometheus was a typical Romantic character, because of his rebellion towards the tyranny of gods, because of his tragic fate.
I’ll write about the titan Prometheus next time, because he’s one of the deep connections between the movies Prometheus and Alien Covenant.
The Romantic hero is a literary archetype referring to a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has himself (or herself) as the center of his or her own existence. The Romantic hero is often the protagonist in a literary work, and the primary focus is on the character’s thoughts rather than his or her actions.
Literary critic Northrop Frye noted that the Romantic hero is often “placed outside the structure of civilization and therefore represents the force of physical nature, amoral or ruthless, yet with a sense of power, and often leadership, that society has impoverished itself by rejecting”. Other characteristics of the Romantic hero include introspection, the triumph of the individual over the “restraints of theological and social conventions”, wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation.
god i want to make a david-8 dating sim. the only option is david. depending on your choices you either die horribly, end up accidentally complicit in his schemes, or become his equally responsible partner. option to bone the robot included
At first you think there’s another option; Walter. Nope, that’s David too. David killed Walter and stole his clothes
Michael Fassbender in ‘Alien: Covenant’ (2017). Dir. Ridley Scott.
I love these expressions
So anyway, with this lighting, it reminds me a hell of a lot of that shot in the original Alien of Jonesy watching Brett get killed, which raises a lot of questions:
Was this an intentional throwback?
Is this foreshadowing?
Does David eventually become Jonesy??
Oh my god, has Jonesy been the real villain this whole time??? It’s all making sense now.
It’s all coming together!
Jab loves robots 