ALIEN: COVENANT a Gothic fiction in space

"The set is a mad Victorian doctor's dream (...) this is where science meets romance - meets madness". Search for the hashtags: #table of contents #interview #analysis

[muthur9000]

I’ve seen a lot of people draw visual parallels with the Female Engineers depicted in David’s Drawings and the Necromancers in Raised by Wolves. I’d be interested in what @matthatt0n and @dane_hallett_art has to say about it. I don’t see the universes as connected but many fans of the prequels and RBW seem to think it is. posted on Instagram - https://instagr.am/p/CGBwNTSAMmW/

[muthur9000]

Thanks to @clayre_of_the_labyrinth for showing me this. @steampunktendencies • • • • • • Wonder Festival 2020 Shanghai photo by Jianhao Chen - 🎩 @steampunktendencies 🎩 👈 - posted on Instagram - https://instagr.am/p/CGEscXvg86q/

[gothic-fiction-in-space]

@muthur9000 😉

[muthur9000]

File #97714 David's Lab - Last Signs of Life | YouTube Space LA

File #97714 David’s Lab – Last Signs of Life | YouTube Space LA

To celebrate the 2 year anniversary of the Alien: Covenant home video release YouTube Space LA teamed up with Fox to create this short film recreated in a replica of David’s Lab from Alien: Covenant.

In my past interviews with Dane Hallett, Matt Hatton, Adam Johansen and Damian Martin they had discussed packing away items from the lab for this recreation. And a lot of the pictures had been…

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[gothic-fiction-in-space]

Capable of complex thought! Indeed!! *-*

Screenshot taken from “David’s lab - Last Signs of Life” 👉🏻 https://youtu.be/oLcUiIy_ghw

[gothic-fiction-in-space]

“THE TRICK WILLIAM POTTER IS NOT MINDING THAT IT HURTS” - What does it mean?

The first time I watched Prometheus I asked myself why David quotes the famous line from the movie Lawrence of Arabia: “the trick William Potter is not minding that it hurts”. At first I thought that was something related to David’s character alone, and maybe related to his silent struggle to tolerate his human masters. But at that time I had not watched the Ted Talk and the Prometheus deleted scenes yet. The first time I finally ended up watchig the Ted Talk I was surprised: Weyland was quoting the line too! And so I decided to try to figure it out why. In Prometheus and Alien: Covenant the fire represents technology, knowledge, and probably also the dangerous things you have to do in order to “change the world”. In Lawrence of Arabia, T. E. Lawrence is pretty obsessed with this “trick”: he holds a match between his fingers and then blows off the fire not only among his comerades but also before starting his adventure in the desert. In that scene the spectator notices that even if his superiors think he’s mad and that the desert it’s not a place for “ordinary men”, Lawrence is extremely confident in his possibilities. He can do that: he touches fire, he extinguishes fire as an allegory of that confidence. It’s not a coincidence to me that Weyland starts his speech full of ambituious and megalomaniac declarations with a reference to the famous trick of Lawrence, and then he proceeds to speak about Prometheus, and then he concludes with the line:

“These rules exist because the people who created them were afraid of what could have happened if they didn’t. Well, I am not afraid! (…) If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to change the world”.

From Weyland’s point of view to touch the fire, to play with the fire, the gift of Prometheus, is not a problem: the trick will be not minding that it hurts, it will be not minding about the consequences, the same consequences that scare the people that made the laws Weyland talks about. But Weyland is “not afraid”. He will not mind that it hurts. And so, we see a Peter Weyland that in Prometheus, for example, is ready to get Elizabeth killed to accomplish his goal. All of this is inherited by David, that does even shapes himself as the Lawrence he sees in the famous movie, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the son’s favorite movie is one that is so ispirational for the father too.

I do believe that the line from Lawrence of Arabia, is repeated (in a subtly way) a third time in Prometheus, but unfortunately this happens in a deleted scene: the scene where Janek goes to visit Vickers to try to make her feeling better after Holloway’s death.
 We see a Meredith Vickers clearly shocked by what she has done to Holloway. She had to do kill him to prevent the ship from being infected by whatever was killing the man, yet she’s in pain for that: her hands are shaking and she’s absent, she hasn’t eaten her lunch. Janek explains to her what he thinks it happened on that planet 2000 years before, that an incident happened, and then says to her that she killed Holloway because it was “her turn to push the button”, that was her turn to took a cruel decision for a greater good. 
This reminds me of the scene where Lawrence has to kill a man to prevent the failure of his project to conquer Aqaba. After the execution Lawrence is shocked and Sherif Ali says to him that there’s no shame in what he has done because he was in a position that granted him the right to execute the man (he previously saved the life of the man, so he basically owned his life) and because it was necessary. When Janek finishes to tell her about an event that occurred when he was a militar, when a secret facility was destroyed and the people inside it were killed to prevent the spread of something surely terrible, she asks him why he had to tell her that story. And he answers:

“Because you killed a man today. Looks like you are in pain”.

Janek is right: Vickers is in pain, we see that. She looks terrible. But Vickers doesn’t want to appear “soft”, so, she raises her cold shield again and answers to him that she’s in pain only because:

“I burned my hand”

This sentence has an hidden meaning: Meredith cares about the consequences of her cruel decisions. Vickers pretending she’s suffering because she burned her hand is the opposite to Weyland and David’s “the trick is not minding that it hurts”. Unwillingly, Vickers is confirming to the spectator that knows the hidden allegory that she minds about the pain; she burned herself, she’s shocked by Holloway’s death; we see that. Meredith doesn’t manage to do not mind. 
Weyland and David “touch fire”, do unethical things without feeling regret, without minding that the “fire” burns. That burns their own fingers and that burns the people around them (again: let’s think to the threatening of Elizabeth in Prometheus and her destiny we discover in Alien: Covenant). 
In all of that David is more dangerous than Weyland because he’s even more good at being uncaring, unethical, amoral; he really lacks of real compassion, and he’s like that because he’s a synthetic. This is mirrored by another allegory hidden in the lines of Lawrence of Arabia: during the scene David is watching at the beginning of Prometheus, one character says, speaking about Lawrence and his obsession for the fire trick:

“He did it once too often. It’s only flesh and blood!”

The man cannot understand how is Lawrence able to extinguish the fire with his bare hands so many times if he’s made of “flesh and blood”, and this foreshadows Lawrence’s future downfall into an extremely tormented and suffering man. “He did it once too often”. But David is not “flesh and blood”. He’s not really hurt back by his cruel, amoral actions. He’s able to not care. He could really be able to do it “once too often” and not feeling the real pain of remorse.
 David is the real, ultimate personification of the “Lawrence archetype” Weyland adored so much. Well, at least this is my opinion on the topic.

[gothic-fiction-in-space]

“THE TRICK WILLIAM POTTER IS NOT MINDING THAT IT HURTS” - What does it mean?

The first time I watched Prometheus I asked myself why David quotes the famous line from the movie Lawrence of Arabia: “the trick William Potter is not minding that it hurts”. At first I thought that was something related to David’s character alone, and maybe related to his silent struggle to tolerate his human masters. But at that time I had not watched the Ted Talk and the Prometheus deleted scenes yet. The first time I finally ended up watchig the Ted Talk I was surprised: Weyland was quoting the line too! And so I decided to try to figure it out why.

In Prometheus and Alien: Covenant the fire represents technology, knowledge, and probably also the dangerous things you have to do in order to “change the world”. In Lawrence of Arabia, T. E. Lawrence is pretty obsessed with this “trick”: he holds a match between his fingers and then blows off the fire not only among his comerades but also before starting his adventure in the desert. In that scene the spectator notices that even if his superiors think he’s mad and that the desert it’s not a place for “ordinary men”, Lawrence is extremely confident in his possibilities. He can do that: he touches fire, he extinguishes fire as an allegory of that confidence. It’s not a coincidence to me that Weyland starts his speech full of ambituious and megalomaniac declarations with a reference to the famous trick of Lawrence, and then he proceeds to speak about Prometheus, and then he concludes with the line:

“These rules exist because the people who created them were afraid of what could have happened if they didn’t. Well, I am not afraid! (…) If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to change the world”.

From Weyland’s point of view to touch the fire, to play with the fire, the gift of Prometheus, is not a problem: the trick will be not minding that it hurts, it will be not minding about the consequences, the same consequences that scare the people that made the laws Weyland talks about. But Weyland is “not afraid”. He will not mind that it hurts. And so, we see a Peter Weyland that in Prometheus, for example, is ready to get Elizabeth killed to accomplish his goal. All of this is inherited by Davidm that does even shapes himself as the Lawrence he sees in the famous movie, and it’s not a coincidence that the son’s favorite movie is one that is so ispirational for the father too.

I do believe that the line from Lawrence of Arabia, is repeated (in a subtly way) a third time in Prometheus, but unfortunately this happens in a deleted scene: the scene where Janek goes to visit Vickers to try to make her feeling better after Holloway’s death. We see a Meredith Vickers clearly shocked by what she has done to Holloway. She had to do kill him to prevent the ship from being infected by whatever was killing the man, yet she’s in pain for that: her hands are shaking and she’s absent, she hasn’t eaten her lunch. Janek explains to her what he thinks it happened on that planet 2000 years before, that an incident happened, and then says to her that she killed Holloway because it was “her turn to push the button”, that was her turn to took a cruel decision for a greater good. This reminds me of the scene where Lawrence has to kill a man to prevent the failure of his project to conquer Aqaba. After the execution Lawrence is shocked and Sherif Ali says to him that there’s no shame in what he has done because he was in a position that granted him the right to execute the man (he previously saved the life of the man, so he basically owned his life) and because it was necessary. When Janek finishes to tell her about an event that occurred when he was a militar, when a secret facility was destroyed and the people inside it were killed to prevent the spread of something surely terrible, she asks him why he had to tell her that story. And he answers:

“Because you killed a man today. Looks like you are in pain”.

Janek is right: Vickers is in pain, we see that. She looks terrible. But Vickers doesn’t want to appear “soft”, so, she raises her cold shield again and answers to him that she’s in pain only because:

“I’ve burned my hand”

This sentence has an hidden meaning: Meredith cares about the consequences of her cruel decisions. Vickers pretending she’s suffering because she burned her hand is the opposite to Weyland and David’s “the trick is not minding that it hurts”. Unwillingly, Vickers is saying to the spectator that knows the hidden allegory that she minds about the pain; she burned herself, she’s shocked by Holloway’s death; we see that. Meredith doesn’t manage to do not mind. Weyland and David “touch fire”, do unethical things without feeling regret, without minding that the “fire” burns. That burns their own fingers and that burns the people around them (again: let’s think to the threatening of Elizabeth in Prometheus and her destiny we discover in Alien: Covenant). In all of that David is more dangerous than Weyland because he’s even more good at being uncaring, unethical, amoral; he really lacks of real compassion, and he’s like that because he’s a synthetic. This is mirrored by another allegory hidden in the lines of Lawrence of Arabia: during the scene David is watching at the beginning of Prometheus, one character says, speaking about Lawrence and his obsession for the fire trick:

“He did it once too often. It’s only flesh and blood!”

The man cannot understand how is Lawrence able to extinguish the fire with his bare hands so many times if he’s made of “flesh and blood”, and this foreshadows Lawrence’s future downfall into an extremely tormented and suffering man. “He did it once too often”. But David is not “flesh and blood”. He’s not really hurt back by his cruel, amoral actions. He’s able to not care. He could really be able to do it “once too often” and not feeling the real pain of remorse. David is the real, ultimate personification of the “Lawrence archetype” Weyland adored so much.

Well, at least this is my opinion on the topic.

[romanmarch]

[niralamba]

David

inspiration from bestof-fassbender

[hoechlin]

There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.

PROMETHEUS (2012) dir. Ridley Scott

[gekata23]

David pencil sketch in sketchbook… I think the later will do full-fledged art… maybe even using this sketch on top. All the same sketches in pencil to do very convenient) If we talk about the plot… then I liked one fan theory that David will eventually find a way to become alien…. if that happens then most likely he will survive…

Дэвид набросок карандашом в скетчбуке… Думаю в последствии сделаю полноценный арт… может даже используя поверх этот набросок. Все таки зарисовки простым карандашом делать очень удобно) Если говорить о сюжете… то понравилась мне одна фанатская теория, что Дэвид в итоге найдет способ стать ксеноморфом…. если это случиться то скорей всего он выживет…

[lovataz]

They are yours, and be the measure Of their worth for you to treasure, The measure of the little while That I’ve been long away. — Robert Frost, from Flower Gathering

[illdothefingering]

My Queen

With Shaw I realized there was something extraordinary in the substance reaction to the human genome.

I was able to unlock more properties and tweak the organisms aggression.

An instinct for survival.

It took years. But finally I found my wolf. And now I have my flock of lambs too.

But I’ve still one thing left to perfect.

My queen.

- David 8 transmission

(Alien covenant extra material - case file advent, covenant transmission logs. )

[synthetik-symphonies]

David and Walter…

[illdothefingering]

“He’s more than human, he’s less than human, but in the end he’s not quite human.”

- Matt Hatton

Source: David’s Drawings

[dailyaliens]

ODD STUDIO shared never before seen pic from Alien: Covenant Xenomorph suit.

[gothic-fiction-in-space]

When you are an italian girl who stumbles into a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition in England... and it reminds you about David a lot... (I added a picture related to the theme of destruction too... ) Interviewer: “It just struck me that David was creating his monsters was kind of like Giger” Ridley Scott: “I was thinking more, honestly, of Leonardo Da Vinci” Interviewer: “Right. A Renaissance man” Ridley Scott: “Da Vinci was a great man - not evil in any sense of the word. But on his mantelpiece you’ll find a helicopter, flying objects, a few pretty good fucking paintings, and every other thing you can possibly imagine”.

[yellowish-ish]

This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.

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