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Manchu wrote:
Ho ho well she is certainly hawt "enough" for me! Plus she was likable. Plus plus she is one of the only characters I have seen in mainstream media for a long time who was not forced to choose between being a good scientists and being religious.

"Good" scientists? Careful there! The Prometheus crew acted like a bunch of tourists, touching everything they could possibly find. I suppose David had his ulterior directives, but their behavior was pretty ludicrous. Now, I don't think Shaw was the worst of the bunch (cough, cough, Mr. Forgot-I-Had-Those-Map-Thingies and Mr. Touch-the-Pretty-Alien-Snek-Thing, cough) but she was certainly one of them.

Yeah there is no defending them - including David. I just meant, Shaw was not defined as a character by the classic "pick science or religion" false dilemma. Her Christian faith was portrayed positively, rather than as a professional, psychological, or moral hindrance.

Well sure, that point I can totally get behind, it was actually kind of a refreshing take on the subject and does factor into the plot a little. Definitely plays a role in her last minute decision to leave to look for man's creators.

Couple new shots here, if you slow down the speed and watch the neomorph...well...not 100% convinced by that CGI.

In a series known for excellent creature design that neomorph is particularly lazy.

RUN


PRAY


HIDE



I'm starting to feel a little bit doubtful that this film will be good.

Manchu wrote:
What was wrong with Shaw?

Constantly Irritating and behaved in a stupid manner throughout (like almost every member of the crew)
Holier than thou was another annoying trait - "oh no lets not have bad security men with awful guns" whine whine whine.
They try so hard to make her another Ripley and they fail so badly.

I liked David and I would probably have liked Ms Vickers if they had actually given her anything to do.

No one else in the entire cast was memorable enough to deserve a mention.

You don't remember the biologist who tried to domesticate an alien space snake with his face? He wasn't memorable? I thought he was the most memorable character in the whole movie. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat yelling "fething dumbshit!" at a movie screen I can't escape even in the depths of wine-drowned oblivion.

That guy had memorably stupid moment but was still a forgettable character.

Was David even memorable really? Hmm, probably not. More like, Sir Ridley insisted on focusing on him constantly for the sake of driving home the theme.

Anyhow, I don't mind. It wasn't a movie about characters. I will say I did not find Shaw whiny at all. If anything, it was a bit too far in the opposite direction.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You don't remember the biologist who tried to domesticate an alien space snake with his face? He wasn't memorable? I thought he was the most memorable character in the whole movie. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat yelling "fething dumbshit!" at a movie screen I can't escape even in the depths of wine-drowned oblivion.

He wasn't a memorable character - like the rest of the crew he was just there to do stupid things to advance the "plot" - people complain about b movies but this was as bad - I am surprised they didn't all wonder around in bikinis.

Without decent characters it just becomes a series of increasingly silly set pieces without any form of plot or story coherence - Prometheus is for me the worst Alien movie yet filmed.

David - I liked the fact that he was a slave/servant to what he considered inferior, weak beings and obviously resented it. Enjoyed the whole "Imagine if you met god and he was a disappointment". Some of what he did made little sense - but that was true of 90% of the film, sadly.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Some of what he did made little sense - but that was true of 90% of the film, sadly.

I am curious. . . how so? Can you give examples of David doing something that didn't make sense?

Personally, I thought he was in line with most of the android units of previous films, especially ones where they receive alternate orders from Wey-Yu.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Can you give examples of David doing something that didn't make sense?

The infamous example was him pushing buttons willy-nilly in the Engineer structure.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Some of what he did made little sense - but that was true of 90% of the film, sadly.

I am curious. . . how so? Can you give examples of David doing something that didn't make sense?

Personally, I thought he was in line with most of the android units of previous films, especially ones where they receive alternate orders from Wey-Yu.

He did not seem to be acting under specific direction to infect the annoying scientist woman with the baby and why do so - except maybe revenge on his masters and a "lets see what happens"

Pushing buttons randomly has been mentioned.

I liked the psychotic little robot guy

*Infecting the dude.
*Trying to keep alien pregger from being noticed.

Anyone know what he actually said to the alien?

He told him, "this old guy says he banged out your mom last night."

The ‘Professor’ in the clip is in fact the real-life linguistics consultant used for the film and taught Michael Fassbender (David) the dialogue. I managed to track down the consultant, a Dr. Anil Biltoo of the SOAS Language Centre in London, to see if he could shed some light on the mysterious final scene. He was most helpful and provided the following:

The line that David speaks to the Engineer (which is from a longer sequence that didn’t make the final edit) is as follows:

/ida hman?m a? kja nam?tuh zd?:taha/…/gh??vah-pjorn-?ttham sas da:t? kredah/

A serviceable translation into English is:

‘This man is here because he does not want to die. He believes you can give him more life’.

Manchu wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Can you give examples of David doing something that didn't make sense?

The infamous example was him pushing buttons willy-nilly in the Engineer structure.

But it was intimated that the entire flight, while everyone was asleep, he was up learning languages so presumably, he has learned to read the cuneiform style language the Engineers use. I never got the sense he was pushing the buttons "willy nilly"


As for the infecting other crew with alien lifeforms, yeah it's a bit odd. . . but when we "later on" see other androids doing things which would violate the 3 Laws, it's accepted as a bug in their programming, or explicit orders from higher. In this instance, I would lean toward "bug in the system"

Well its even more then odd...its er stupid.

Dad needs to become immortal so I'm going to give this bio juice thats being used for bombs...

I think willy-nilly was a poor choice of phrasing on my part - I didn't mean that he was doing it randomly. The problem was, he was doing it unilaterally. I mean, they were all absolute fools just gallivanting straight in there but given that time was of the essence for Wayland, I can imagine him selecting his crew on the basis of something other than meticulous patience. And maybe David, too, was just trying to get from A to B by the quickest means - maybe that's what he was programmed to do. But of course this has all been an exercise in handwaving away characters doing obviously dumb things that had terrible consequence they should have been able to foresee generally, if not in detail.

Do you think the new android played by Fassbender will be more benevolent? I feel they may kind of copy/paste the transition from Ash to Bishop in the originals as a heavy-handed tie-in to the original films.

I think an easier question would have been-which character acted moderately intelligently in all their scenes in the movie? I can only think of the two pilot guys because they only had like two scenes...

*Captain doesn't act like a captain. No one is watching er the people you left on the alien freaking ship!?! And a bunch of other things.
*Shaw. She and her beau are just idiots.
*Vickers. So many. 1) doesn't appear the least bit interested with alien or dad going to see alien or what happens there. 2) WHY ARE YOU RUNNING THE WAY THE SHIP IS FALLING?!?!???
*Security dudes. Suck
*David. er...whats your deal?
*Two stupid guys that get killed by aliens that they decide to play with right after having run from aliens... Yea you go straight to warp factor Stupid.
*Super rich guy. Yea ok... not really stupid so much as lame.
Gee I'll just wake up an alien and see what happens...what could go wrong?
*Doctor yea lets shove electrodes into alien head we found and turn the microwave to defrost. What could go wrong?

Its like the adventures of the Failship Lollypop. Ripley would have taken one look at these guys and hit the self destruct to save humanity from these people potentially breeding.


Even the Engineer is not too intelligent.
*Wakes up from who knows how long.
*Surrounded by MonKeigh he was preparing to bomb (maybe). Instead of being cool because maybe the MonKeigh could kill him he has an anger management episode. WTF?
*Once his ship crashes, instead of, you know going to another ship, he goes to pick a fight with the humans. WTF?

Fassbender on Walter and David:

t’s pretty straightforward in the fact that Walter is very much a synthetic minus any of the human traits. So when the David 8’s came out, there was a resistance from people to that model. Because it freaked them out a little bit. Because he was demonstrating a lot of human qualities, and his programming was veering towards human characteristics, like ego and vanity and pride. They found that to be not so much useful as opposed to making people uncomfortable, so they designed the following models with fewer of those human traits. Well, none of them really.

So Walter is just a very straightforward, logical synthetic really. He’s more like a Leonard Nimoy/Mr. Spock type character. Whereas David is…it’s been ten years since we last saw him, without any maintenance. So those human qualities have sort of gathered momentum a little bit, I suppose. They’re as much a part of him now as his synthetic qualities. But Walter’s just really there to serve the ship, and its crew.

source

SHAW VERSION



Another day another Alien Covenant TV spot.

I just realized, Shaw actually was never aware of what David did. Just waking up with "hey looks like you're pregnant, and wow its an alien . What have you been doing young lady!"

Holy moly I am effing sick to the back teeth of all these oldies and/or covers of oldies played over trailers.

Manchu wrote:
Holy moly I am effing sick to the back teeth of all these oldies and/or covers of oldies played over trailers.

I think they took the idea of 70's truckers in space a little too literally.

The Shawlogram is interesting though.

 Medium of Death wrote:
The Shawlogram is interesting though.

Could not really make much out myself.

advance tickets now on sale for May 19.

I cannot believe someone mentioned THAT one....

Okay, I am really excited about this new film BUT I am also worries. Worries that they will feth it up as they did with Prometheus. As others have already mentioned, Prometheus was a terrible film, poorly written and populated by people whos collective IQ would make Igor look intelligent.
In fact it was so bad that I am honestly in the mind that the entire planet had some kind of mind-destroying gas in its atmosphere, or mentally reducing psychometric field.

So, as I say I am watching and waiting with baited breath.

I am also worries as well.

But I'll go see it all the same. Prometheus irritated me but I still think about it, so I guess it worked on some level.

New film looks incredibly boring and uninspired...really hope I'm wrong and something great comes out of it, but right now I'm not impressed on any level.