To see it all

Octopoid by Forest Roger

Alien Isolation - the best game set in Alien Universe. 

This clip has that extra vitage video filter on. What would you do seeing him emerging from a vent?

And then... a disappointment. 

… 😳 …

… 🙄 ….

… 🤦🏻‍♀️

When you want to be an artist and make a very evocative movie but…

People are quite often convinced that an analysis of the movie, searching for a hidden symbolism and allusions to poems, literature or even religious topics are simply exaggerating. Going too far in this area can bring us to ususual or radical conclusions - some people may say.

The fact is however that the movie making is a long process often spanning years of preperations, modifications, refinement and discussions with many experienced artists from various fields of interests. So whatever we finally see on screen is an outcome of a very long and close cooperation of many minds and talents. 

“The original Alien finds horror in the idea of a man being forced to give birth. In Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the notion of a man voluntarily giving birth to an artificial son stands next to that, as a sort of original sin (…) David has been marooned for a decade, and has spent his time trying, in his own twisted way, to prove his superiority to the humans who created him by becoming a creator himself. As an android, he can’t impregnate anyone or give birth himself. So he’s become a breeder and zoologist, facilitating the process of turning a human body into an alien host (…) David’s desire to create, and to forge emotional bonds, is what gives the movie a series of dark turns. When the female protagonist, Daniels, spurns his kiss, David vows he’ll do to her what he did to his first love, Elizabeth Shaw, turning a potential mate into a lab rat. David calls Walter “brother” and kisses him as well. There’s a suggestion of incest in Fassbender kissing himself on-screen, and it’s an unnerving moment. But it’s also a trick that gets him close enough to attack (…) We’re left with David, alone and in control of the colonizing ship, opening up the drawer of frozen embryos. With a coughing shudder, he regurgitates two alien embryos he had secreted away in his gut. It’s yet another moment of a man giving birth to an unnatural creature. But for once, it’s voluntary, intentional, and not fatal for the father. The Alien films come full circle in this moment. For the first time, a man has chosen to give physical birth to his alien children. And in the process, he’s planted the seed for untold horrors to come"

Good job!

David as the Light Bringer/Lucifer is indeed the driving force of both Prometheus/Covenant movies. All of his great lines like in this scene:

Charlie Holloway: David, why are you wearing a suit, man? David: I beg your pardon? Charlie Holloway: You don’t breath, remember? So, why wear the suit? David: I was designed like this, because you people are more comfortable interacting with your own kind. If I didn’t wear the suit, it would defeat the purpose. Charlie Holloway: Making you guys pretty close, huh? David: Not too close I hope.

~ FROM PROMETHEUS TO ALIEN COVENANT: THE FIRE THIEF / THE LIGHT - BRINGER ~

The roots of all the Romanticism of Alien Covenant are in the first chapter of the saga, are in the movie Prometheus, are in the name of Prometheus itself. At the beginning of Prometheus, Weyland tells the story of the titan Prometheus, the one that stole the fire from Gods and brought it to the humans. Destiny wants that Prometheus was one of the most important literary characters for Romantic poets. The connection between Alien Covenant and Prometheus, these two movies apparently pretty different, is so strong.

Lots of Romantic poets wrote about Prometheus (Goethe, Byron, Shelley… ), the titan was a symbol of men’s struggle and rebellion against society, against tyranny. Prometheus was a symbol of a man capable to sacrifice himself and endure terrible pain in order to rebel to the “higher powers”. Sometimes the myth of Prometheus is used as a metaphor to express the desire to break away from being restricted. For Romantics, every person should be free to live how he or she want without being manipulated by society. Individual subjectivity is important for Romantic authors, the notion of “self” shouldn’t be repressed. Weyland is a sort of Romantic hero and has quite an admiration for Prometheus figure. In the Ted Talk he profess himself a god because of the powers given to him by technology, and technology, represented by fire, was stolen from the Gods by Prometheus. At the end of his life, Weyland doesn’t want to die (because Gods don’t die) and decide that he must try to find his creators to obtain eternal life. Prometheus was the creator of mankind, and Weyland pretends the gift of immortality from his creators (also because he gave it to HIS creature: David). But deep inside, yes, Weyland wants to find his creators only to obtain immortality. Only to be recognized by them as a God him too. He wants to really be a God. To be “superior” to normal humans.

“We are the Gods now”

He probably doesn’t care much about asking to the Engineers the meaning of existence. The one that wants a “relationship” with the creators is Elizabeth. She’s the “true believer”. Weyland only wants immortality: with or without the Gods. Weyland was ready to accept the Engineers’ death if he could find a way to obtain eternal life anyway. Weyland was ready to STOLE the secret of “superhuman status” if necessary. “Prometheus”, the name of the “fire thief” it’s the name of his ship, the Prometheus ship.

“It is time for Prometheus to returns”

Said Weyland, and later in the movie, he asks DAVID to experiment with the black goo found in the pyramid. Weyland brought a sort of Prometheus with him: David. Weyland created David to feel like a creator, a God, but also to be helped by him to find the Gods (in order to stole their secrets). David is a sort of Prometheus. In Alien Covenant we see that David cares about individual subjectivity, just as like Romantic poets who wrote about Prometheus cared. What’s the black goo? The black goo is the Engineers’ power of LIFE and DEATH. The black goo can destroy, can create, can “reshape life”. The black goo is the POWER of the Gods. The black goo was the substance at the origin of mankind itself! David experiments with the black goo realizing that with it he can EVEN gets pregnant a sterile woman like Elizabeth! David steals the black goo, the Engineers’ technology, the fire of the Gods. At the end of Prometheus, Weyland dies, punished by the awakened Engineer, but David’s adventure continues. The Prometheus of the myth stole the fire because he loved mankind. He did that for love. David has no love for Weyland, but he develops love for Elizabeth. In the Advent video he says that he desperately tried to make Elizabeth MORE THAN HUMAN. David, just like a Prometheus who wanted to elevate human condition, tries to use the power he stole to probably make Elizabeth immortal, to give her the eternal life that Weyland wanted for himself. Romantic poets used the Prometheus figure because they liked the “rebel” figure… and Prometheus was a “good” rebel. It was easier to write about Prometheus than write about another famous rebel that some Romantic poets liked a lot: Milton’s SATAN. For Romantics, the fallen angel Lucifer of the poem Paradise Lost, was a sort of Prometheus figure, because as Prometheus stole the fire from the Gods to give man better possibilities, Lucifer gave knowledge to men in the garden of Eden. Some Romantics liked the charismatic Satan of Paradise Lost, but Satan had a problem: he rebelled for egoism, for pride, to ruin men because he was jealous of them, not for love, so, the Romantics decided to choose Prometheus… but, in the end, the “rebel” figure of Romanticism has always been a sort of “double faced” figure, half Prometheus and half Lucifer. David is just like that. David really is a Lucifer (and he knows that, he even quotes the Lucifer of Paradise Lost in Alien Covenant). Unlike others robots, David is born with pride. David is born with human traits. He’s born with the ability of self determination, with “free will” (even if Weyland doesn’t allow him to use it whenever he wants). He has pride, vanity, he can feel jealousy. Why? Because he’s the first robot made by Weyland: he wasn’t made to really help humans doing their stuff, he’s made by Weyland to be THE PERFECT CREATION. In order to be a God, Weyland built a man superior to man, a man better than the man created by God (David never ages, David can’t suffer, David can’t die). Weyland believed that the man should be amoral, free from ethic, and he built a robot with emotions, with human traits but free from the restrictions of moral and ethic. David was born as a mixture of terrible things: he’s an amoral, emotional, fearless, prideful super intelligence. (In Dante’s Divina Commedia, Lucifer is a MACHINE-LIKE monster ALWAYS CRYING… maybe is just a coincidence but the parallel is possible). As soon as David is “born”, he realizes that he’s better than Weyland and that he shouldn’t be his servant. David has a huge ego right from the start. The fault of Satan was believing that he was the “best creation of God” and so, that he deserved to be AT THE TOP OF CREATION. Satan believed he could be a better God than God himself. That’s EXACTLY David: David believes to be perfect and to be the one and only that deserves to be at the top of the creation chain of the Alien universe. One of David’s goal is to kill both Engineers and humans and to be the God, the father of his new creations. A better father than Weyland. (Is not really David’s fault: Weyland made him like that because he believed that the “perfect man” should be like that. Weyland thought he could decide how the perfect man should be like). The mixture of Prometheus and Lucifer in David’s character is really well done. David tried to corrupt Walter, the mankind latest and “better” creation, just as like Satan tried to corrupt the first men out of jealousy (Lucifer was jealous of men, the last creation of God, he refused to be considered less than them). Lucifer tries to convince men that they can live better without God, that God doesn’t love them, that HE (Satan) loves men MORE than God.

David manages to obstacolate Walter’s and the crew of the Covenant’s journey to their promise land, to their awaiting Paradise (Origae-6).

“No one will ever love you as much as I do”

This sentence is a LOT of things all mixed together: here David is speaking as a sort of Lucifer corrupting Adam, as a sort of Romantic poet who only love himself (David and Walter are basically two different versions of the SAME entity, “it’s like meeting a distant YOU” says Walter to Daniels in a deleted scene), and here David is eventually trying to tell Walter that humans can’t love them, because they are robots, David says that they can receive love only from themselves. Anyway, the perfection of David is a “lonely perfection”. David doesn’t want to take the place of Walter to live as Walter among the humans, he steals his identity only to steal the Covenant and all the colonists. To steal the “lambs”. David doesn’t want the “help” of humans, these inferior beings, no more, he wants to take HIS future by HIMSELF. He doesn’t want the “friendship” of Daniels (that is similar to one of the thematics of Paradise Lost: God wanted to give knowledge to men at the right time, but Lucifer convinces the men to take it before receiving permission). The creativity that David wants to teach to Walter is the knowledge that Lucifer convinces Eve to take for her and his companion Adam. In the novelization that’s pretty explicit. David and Walter have lots of extra dialogues and David really seems a tempting Devil. Prometheus stole the fire, the fire is light, the “light - bringer” is Lucifer, and some Romantics believed that the “light” he brings was knowledge. (Look: in Alien Covenant David appears firing a signal rocket, David appears in astonishing light! And even in the dark of the Engineers’ “cathedral”, the lamps turn on when DAVID WALKS NEAR THEM). At the end of Alien Covenant David puts HIS SONS among the SONS of the humans, he puts the facehuggers embryos among the humans’ ones; it’s like the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way (…) The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil”.

Weyland thought he has a good Prometheus in David, but he was wrong: David is the “double faced” Prometheus of Romanticism, David is half Lucifer. David is egoist (just like Romantic poets were really egocentric). David stole the power of Gods and tried to use it for Shaw… but full of pride he decides to use it to purchase his dream to be the new creator, the new Engineer (Lucifer is called “the new architect” by some people even today).

Allow me to make a theory 😆… Weyland started the “adventure” because he wanted a Prometheus that could give the powers of Gods to the men (to him)… and yes, in the end, David will really give men the power he stole. But not to help them. One of David’s goal is to destroy mankind. David will give to the humans all the knowledge he stole from the Engineers because he knows they will use it to destroy themselves (just as like Satan convinced the first men to eat the forbidden fruit in order to have them sent away from Eden). David has put the lamb and the wolf side by side in the Covenant. David has put the Xenomorph next to the man, next to the man not even born, not already. Man’s destiny, in the Alien franchise, is bound to the Xenomorph. We already saw it in the original Alien saga. David will give Weyland-Yutani corporation all his secrets. David is a really mischievous Prometheus.

But, like Satan, he doesn’t have “real power”. David stole everything he has: he stole the black goo, he stole the Engineer knowledge, he stole the Covenant and his colonists… but all of this is not his. He’s only… “the man who broke the bank at Montecarlo”.

I don’t know if all of that was intentional in the creators of these movies’ mind or not… maybe it’s only a coincidence… but anyway, in my opinion, Prometheus and Alien Covenant depicted very well lots of Romantic thematics, and David embodies lots of traits of typical Romantic heroes.

David is more complex than he may seems at first sight.

In this post, I wrote about the figure of Prometheus. There’s a famous book written by a Romantic writer (a woman) that is considered the first Sci-fi / horror novel… (the SAME GENRE OF ALIEN oh oh!) … This novel was called “The modern PROMETHEUS”… but today we know it mostly as “Frankeinstein”… it will be the next topic. Thank you for reading! :)

This article presents a theory: we’ll have an Engineer, maybe Walter, and some men from Weyland-Yutani in the next movie. We’ll probably have only one movie to end this prequel saga… because Fox will not give permission for more 😐 probably. But they’ll surely end the saga.

The Engineers we saw in Prometheus were far shorter than the petrified Space Jockey we remember from Alien 1979.

     By any standards Alien Covenant is an incredible movie and deals with some very heady and complex philosophical issues and questions, especially for a horror movie and a movie in the Alien franchise nonetheless.  Paired with its preceding film, Prometheus, it forms one consecutive story arc of truly epic scope that recounts a tale of the origin of life on earth, mankind’s quest to discover their beginnings, and the strivings of one android to create life.  On top of all of this, tucked away in Scott’s films are various allusions to Christian mythology, poetry, Norse mythology, and other areas that help define character motives and draw interesting and enlightening parallels to the events of the movie.

      First, I’d like to explore the writers’ choice to include a quote from english poet John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost in Alien Covenant.  Towards the end of the confrontation between Walter and David in which Walter is apparently trying to kill David, David feigns that he is all but subdued and tells Walter that he must now make the choice whether he will, “reign in Hell or serve in Heaven”.  This is a direct quote from Paradise Lost, from a scene in which Lucifer states to all the gathered fallen angels his thoughts on the fall and why he and the others have made the choice to rebel.  In Paradise Lost, one of Lucifer’s main arguments for rebelling is that he believes God does not merit unconditional praise, service, and glorification simply based on the fact that He is Lucifer and all the other angels’ creator, stating that he prefers “hard liberty over the easy yoke of servile pomp”.  This directly echoes the argument that David maintains with regards to man, and in his conversation with Peter Weyland even goes out of his way to highlight the irony of him, the immortal, serving his mortal creator, and at several points throughout the film echoes the idea that he was not made to serve.  Even David’s introduction to the crew of the Covenant could be taken as another instance in which he is portrayed as the archangel Lucifer.  The name Lucifer literally means “light-bringer”, and when we first see David in his present state he announces his presence by firing a flare/flashbang into the air which explodes in a bright, blinding light, so he is literally in this case the light-bringer.  Now if we extend this David/Lucifer parallel, then in the fight between him and Walter Walter represents Michael, Lucifer’s brother and equal in power (if not his superior), who fought with Lucifer after he rebelled.  Michael in Lucifer’s eyes is simply a drone: a mindless soldier devoted in servitude to God, willing to obey any order without hesitation or question.  This is very similar to how David undoubtedly sees Walter, who has been specifically programmed to be less free-thinking, less creative, less imaginative, and less human, and effectively acts as a simple service robot.  David on the other hand takes much more after his creators, stating that he made the humans uncomfortable because he himself was too human-like, and that being said he shared his creator’s love of imaginative creation and independent, curious, questioning thinking, the kind that leads him to try and transcend his own nature and become a god.   

     That is, ultimately, what occurs in the film and what Prometheus and Covenant tell the story of: David’s journey from being created a robot servant to developing his own quasi-consciousness, ego, and identity (without his humanity) and attempting to become a self-giving creator/god like the engineers.  This story of a created being trying to venture higher than his natural allotment and struggle against the natural order of things is once again echoed in Lucifer’s story as told in Paradise Lost, where he strives to rise above his own angelic nature to stand equal with God, if not in power than at least in glory or adoration.  Lucifer states in one soliloquy regarding his own actions: “lifted up so high/I’sdained subjection, and thought one step higher/would set me highest”, implying that his already glorious position lead him to try and reach one step higher.  This specific brand of egotism presents itself in David’s philosophy as well, as he on various occasions expresses resent for the circumstances of his own creation and disdain for his creators, and his desires to ascend to godhood.  This idea of him trying to establish his own standing as a god is hammered home by the final scene in which he has Mother play the song “Entrance of the gods into Valhalla” as he walks into the area containing the hypersleep pods of the colonists.  Valhalla in Norse mythology is a great hall in which congregate the dead, so in selecting this song he is directly comparing himself to the “gods” of the title, entering into a literal “hall” or hallway on the ship full of people who he intends to sacrifice so that his creation (the xenomorphs) may live: hence, a god entering the hall of the dead.  Another scene in which a connection is drawn between David and a God is when he is confronting the neomorph adult face to face and attempting to win its trust; there he says to the captain that to win a horse’s trust you must breath on its nose, and as he says this he breathes onto the neomorph’s face.  In the book of Genesis in the Bible, God gives life to Adam’s corporeal body by breathing the breath of life into Adam, an act which is represented in a literal sense by David breathing onto the face of his creation, symbolizing his god-like relationship to the creatures and highlighting his own image of himself.  

Since I personally hate Alien Covenant for various reasons, I’ve been waiting for deep structural analysis of the plot and all religious and cultural allusions people can decrypt/notice. So there it is. 

Now everything begins to line up in order:

Engineer sacrifes his life to seed planet Earth with life.

David sacrifies his beloved one to achieve the same - to start a new life. He would obviously dedicate his own body, but since it was synthetic body it didn’t fit the bill.