Daniels V Shaw (Lead role meat-grinder)

if Shaw is dead how can move the story forward? I certainly don't care about Daniels, too Ripley for my taste. If you want to go forward with a David guess which one would make sense from a drama point of view?

I'd go with Daniels....just barely!  

Though......I have little sense that Daniels wants to protect, or even cares about the 2000 colonists. Seems she was all about Branson and her cabin. Daniels story would seem to be at a end?

IF they had shown Daniels had a family and they were some of the sleeping colonists....... then I think she would have had a future.

"I've got to get out of this hyper sleep chamber and save my family!!"

BUT....I sure she would now happily live out the rest of her life in the sleep chamber(I know I would!)never to be awakened.

I would take Daniels. She was just a regular person, confident but not cocky. Shaw was just a wishy washy almost god botherer.

I prefer Shaw.

Daniels is a strong character, but it reminds me of Ripley too much. Shaw is like a breath of fresh air. 

I start Alien:Awakening like this:

Scene 1

Exterior shot: Long shot of a cabin in the woods..(a bit foggy...spooky...standard trope)

slow zoom on the cabin....

Interior shot:

Inside the small log cabin, Daniels is sleeping in a nice comfy bed...you get the sense this is routine and that this has been home for many years...she awakes calmly....Notices Branson isn't there...she gets up and looks out the cabin window...she sees him collecting wood...he stumbles with a arm full of wood and gives a goofy grin(typical Branson!)....he makes his way toward the door.....She opens it only to be greeted by David....David is holding a scalpel.

It's a cliche' scene, but I think it could establish Daniels importance.

It's pretty close, but I prefer Shaw. Not the most well done character, but I was more interested in what she was doing, actually.

I think it would be interesting to seen Dr Shaw, as in a Prequel to Alien Covenant, but this wont happen... maybe we could get a Book? who knows.

A lot of fans was not pleased with Prometheus, its direction, its set up to maybe distance itself from Alien, and Dr Shaw was a Character that many just did not like, she was NO Ripley, and the Naive Believer in God was just not everyone's cup of tea.

This however was  MISSED opportunity, one that Rappace seemed disappointed with because she saw potential in her Character..  Dr Shaw has NOTHING left..  No Parents, Cant have Children and her Partner is Gone... the only thing she has left is HER FAITH she refuses to believe the Engineers are the True Gods, and asked who Made them... she still hopes and hangs by her FAITH that all she was brought up on, was that GOD would not be so Wicked as those beings on LV-223

IF she FOUND those Gods or beings above the Engineers or even if the Engineers are actually the Gods, but they have Leaders and which ever way she finds how the Engineers Hierarchy works.  IF she THEN finds out their is NO GOD as per her Faith, and instead their are just Sinister beings with Wicked Agendas...

This could BREAK Dr Shaw more than we saw how Broken David was.. and THIS could have been interesting and given Dr Shaw a much needed Character Arc... as her Character for Prometheus was not very well Written

And NOOMI RAPPACE can Act and Handle a Very Good Character if one was written for her.

When looking at Daniels, they seemed to be pushing the Progress of a kind of Ripley Character, a Evolution of Ripley from Alien to Alien 3 all within the frame on ONE movie... while some parts of her Character was written well, i am not sure what makes her a Stand Out Lead.

And Sadly the Ending for Alien Covenant does not bold well for her, how can David continue his plans with Daniels knowing who he is?

i doubt we will be shown a flick of David and Daniels Interaction and Cat and Mouse on the Covenant, just for the same reasons FOX/RS did not give us a David and Shaw Cat and Mouse....

I feel Daniels will only appear in a few Flash Backs, just as the Flash Backs of the Engineer Bombardment when David was talking to Walter about Dr Shaw..

We need to Logically look at the path from AC to Alien, and i feel they will have to bypass a lot of events... much like the time the Juggernaught left LV-223 with Dr Shaw and David, to what ever events happened on the journey, and the arrival... right until the Covenant Ship arriving 10 years latter.

We never saw what happened literally and chronologically in those 10 years, Alien Covenant was a 10 years later After Math movie, with clues and Flash Backs to some of the events that transpired during those 10 years

I FEEL... the Sequel will be the same... we will mainly be looking at another 10 years or maybe bit less After-Math of David arriving on Origae-6.  The Events of David leaving Planet 4 off to Origae-6, to when a incoming Human ship arrives at Origae-6... will pretty much be similar to when Dr Shaw and David left LV-223 to when the Covenant arrived at Planet 4.

I think we will get some flash backs for sure... but i dont think it spells to well for Daniels...

My only FEAR is they will use the Next Movie to introduce a RIPLEY connection...

shaw by a country mile. an original charater with different motives to anyone else wev seen in the franchise. shaw wanted to meet the engineers which would have continued in a better direction imo than what we got.

I would much rather have Shaw, yet I do want the story to move forward.

Maybe Daniels finds a way to survive and ends up learning things about Shaw upon surviving by doing research on some WY company computer log files or something.  So then, in a sense, Daniels starts to think like Shaw.  In this way, we could see a similar Shaw character come back, but the character would have a bite and not just rely on luck, like Daniels.  I would be interested in that character and that is the only way I could see Shaw coming back.  I really want the story to move forward though.

I agree with BigDave that the story will movie around 10 years after Alien: Covenant.  To be honest, I don't think we will even get flashbacks of Daniels.  I feel that there is just going to be to much information in Alien: Awakening to leave room for Daniels.  I think we are going to get a lot of answers that we've been craving.  All those answers are going to have to have build up and cannot be simply said by someone.  These answers are going to be part of a story.

I just hope that Alien: Awakening doesn't end with the space jockey crashing on LV-426 or implies that the space jockey is going to crash.  It would be cool if that derelict could have been there for millions of years since the prequels would only add to the wonder that the space jockey tells us in the original Alien.  Now, with the prequels, we can imagine all kinds of stories for the space jockey.  I would like it to be that way, yet I'm also up for some fantastic writing.  I trust the writers enough that we'll get something good.  I don't trust them blindly and at 100%, but I'm fairly pleased with the prequels so far.  I don't trust them with giving us a good scare though.  Sadly, Alien: Covenant wasn't scary.  Honestly, I could just go on about the fear factor in the prequels, but I don't think this is the thread for that.

totally agree moon girl. the derelict, as far as im concerned, should be left the way it was first assumed and that is that it is thousands of years old. for me, if they change that and make its demise down to David, it ruins so much of the mystery from the original movie. we don't really have to see what became of the derelict. we can have a scenario where David learns of the crashed derelict and he sets off to find it perhaps, which connects the 2 yet preserves the mystery of the iconic ship

Shaw

I missed her in AC

I don't care about Daniels at all.

thanks all, great points! 

Agreed BigDave Daniels knows to much for David to let live. My only question mark is that interview where Ridley Scott started talking about Awakening and Katherine Waterston excitedly cut him before giving things away...someone whom seemed excited about whats to come, not someone whose character will be killed off?? 

Shaw we know fights for her faith, and for answers to the questions about our origin.

I like Waterston as Daniels but I honestly don't know what she fights for. That being said we didn't really know what Ripley fought for until Aliens when the beast took from her a relationship with her daughter. From there it was her mission to exterminate the species.  So perhaps we will be given something in Covenant 2 that makes us root for Daniels??

Keeping Daniels alive would be a giant middle finger to Rapace, IMHO, and more of a reason to not pay Fox anymore money.

Instead of showing what happened on LV426, I would leave that Space Jockey alone. It's millions of years old and leave it at that.

Instead....

I would have the Covenant find another planet/moon with dozens (thousands!?)of crashed derelicts. ALL with SJ's that were chestbursted(or facebursted/backbursted)Like they have been in a massive space war.

Have juggernaut husks orbiting the planet, full of black goo and pods. Frozen pods scattered in space...maybe a canister or two. Hope no one brings any of that stuff aboard!

This could show what happened to the Space Jockey on LV426 without having to go there. Just another casualty of interstellar war.

I think most would accept a war angle? 

Indeed IRaptus

She did cut him off, i think Daniels will had been part of the next movie, but she even dropped a hint by saying she is not no Ripley and the Story is about David.

The way they ended AC however does not bold well for Daniels, but then With David in Full control of the Ship, he could Quarantine Daniels off in a area of the Ship as a Prisoner, but i am not sure a movie with Daniels and David interacting would be something to spend  a large Quantity of the movie on... much like one about David and Shaw

A interesting thing is the Advent Prologue, as this implies David just needs his Queen,  and in AC we could see he was interested to see how Walters Relationship with Daniels was compared to his own with Dr Shaw,  asking if Walter Loved her... but for Walter is was Duty.

When confronting Daniels, he said he would do to her what he had done to Dr Shaw, and he mounted on top of her attempting to kiss her....  i cant help but feel David attempted this and got rejected by Shaw.

The other thing we know is Dr Shaw became Davids greatest piece of work, he wanted to start a NEW, and have her with him as they create a New World....  but in the end she was not going to take part in his plans.  And ultimately her Body became used for David to achieve his greatest creation... which surely means those Eggs.

And so i think David will look to Daniels to use her in someway to become his New Queen.

As far as the Space Jockey...

Prometheus had the Answers, you just had to look harder... and RS even then told us the whole Space Jockey Mystery.. which i can put on here if anyone wishes... but this is a U-Turn now.

The Source i had claimed Prometheus had the answers, but that the sequel would via certain events give us more clues, and we dont need and would not have seen the Space Jockey... but by virtue of showing us TWO Xeno related Organisms that are different, One being a Creation of David that was a (Re-Creation) and virtue of seeing another that David does not create... would show us piece by piece how the Xenomorph came to be.

So it would have been a case of Spoon Feeding how to Create Similar, would then show us more clues to how the Original was created rather than having to Spoon Feed/Shoe-Horn in the Actually Space Jockey Event.

It appears that with the changes, they had decided to keep the David Creator Plot, but now instead of RE-CREATING and Evolving something Related... David now Creates something which Evolves into the Xenomorph.

Shaw was a religious, stubborn, and indoctrinated without much of common sense. Even when a lot spoke against her beliefs she still with a fanatical outlook held on to it. I didn't like the character a bit. She deserved the way she ended up, it made me happy because of the way that she was. When a character is made up in a way that doesn't make you have much sympathy for it then something is seriously wrong because it seems to me that they tried to make her a somewhat sympathetic character or at least someone with many likable sides. A fact that made her worse was that she was the lead of the movie, yuck.

Judging from the end of AC Daniels will probably either end up totally dead or a test subject of David.

Daniels was too anonymous for me and didn't have very distinctive personality traits but at least she wasn't naive and dumb as Shaw. I would take Daniels over Shaw any day. As far as being a Ripley clone she was more like Ripley compared to Shaw but I think that they made a mistake by making her a bit more Ripley-like. It was almost like they thought that it needed to have some sort of Ripley if only a Ripley-lite to make a movie, I think that was a mistake. Daniels was alright but she could have been written a lot better, as could most of the characters.

I wouldn't mind if they have a new lead-character in the next movie but maybe that would be too much like repeating Prometheus to AC. Develop Daniels and add some more personality traits something that we didn't see in AC or make a new lead.

As Big Dave said: the problem wasn't Rappace, the problem was the character.

A lack of Ripley clues hasn't been a bit of a problem this far in the prequels, there are other issues that are more important to why the prequels have failed this far.

id say a character is half writing and half actor who brings the character to life. it might just be me but I felt the awful accent Rapace used was the characters biggest downfall. I liked the idea of the character as it was original in the franchise. id have switched Theron and Rapace personally and u would have gotten 2 completely different outcomes imo.

daniels was just boring for me. not an original character and wasn't portrayed well. just a member of the crew for me who couldv gone early on or later in the film and it wouldn't have mattered. Tennessee was a much better character