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Shaw as an antagonist

QueenElizabethShaw

MemberChestbursterApril 13, 20174865 Views21 Replies
Shaw as an antagonist

While I was reading about Oram's character, it occurred to me that Ridley appears to have taken a liking to depicting some level of poetic justice being enacted on those who hold blind faith (see Shaw's experiences in Prometheus.)

I then began comparing what I know about Shaw and Oram's characters

Admidst all these trailers and what has already been released in interviews, it appears Ridley will portray Oram as difficult, stubborn, a bit of an annoyance, and perhaps a little bit of a jerk.

With this assumption in mind, I then started thinking about Shaw. She indeed has a similar vibe in Prometheus but it is more subtle.

At the end of Prometheus, she says she "deserves to know" why the engineers did what they did. A look of entitlement washes over her face as she says this.

In the deleted version of this scene when David asks if it really matters and goes on to say he doesn't understand, the tone of her reply is much more callous than we find her at any other point of the movie.

"I guess that's because I'm a human being...and you're a fucking robot."

In this alternate version of the scene, she proceeds to aggressively snatch up David's head and jam it in the tote bag ignoring his requests for her to hold on.

This was the most off-putting I found her throughout the entire movie (I'm expecting Oram will become more off-putting as Covenant progresses).

My curiosity is whether we will be left at the end of Covenant with the feeling that Shaw deserved a dark and twisted outcome, or if we will be left sympathizing with her.

I have seen little discussion on these boards alluding to the idea that Shaw might end up a type of sub antagonist. I've also wondered if anyone has considered whether Shaw might end up believing herself to be the virgin mother, and willingly ask David to bring life from her womb.

Has anyone else let their imagination go down this path? Or any variation of it?

 

EDIT:
After several replies to this post revealed that I had poorly outlined this topic, I attempted to elaborate in a follow up comment. Pasting that here to help avoid any further confusion about what we're trying to discuss here.

 

I think maybe I didn't convey my original post as clearly as I could have. Some of the responses here seem to pull meanings from it that I didn't intend.

The closest to what kind of a discussion I was aiming for are the remarks of BM.

In summary, I was mostly looking to discuss the idea that it appears a space for a certain discussion has been made by the events of Prometheus and the themes we see Ridley aiming to highlight with Oram. This potential discussion would be one about human arrogance and the pitfalls of faith based reasoning. I intentionally left out some of the details about Oram that I now think would have made the comparison between him and Shaw more clear. I learned these things while going through the recent interview with John Logan (which has some structural spoilers). Was hesitant about bringing them up and didn't want to add a spoiler tag to the post.

Overall, I'm not making the claim Shaw is an antagonist as much as I'm posing the question of whether Ridley may aim to include a vague echo of this concept in the Covenant story. In my opinion it appears the door has been left open to give Shaw any outcome Ridley wishes.

Ultimately, I am wondering if Scott intends to make an example of her. An example of what can happen when a person relies on faith and has it heavily challenged. Some people walk away from the faith and recover a part of themselves, but others can dig themselves deep into insanity, sometimes justifying the rewriting of their own beliefs so as to maintain their emotional vices.  I do not claim, but am considering if we will see this happen to Shaw.

I further am attempting to illustrate this with a tangible example. We are all familiar with the theory that Shaw is going to act as some type of mother to David's creatures. Most people have proposed this would be done against her will at David's hand. If Scott were to go in this direction of faith creating dark outcomes, he would have the option of allowing Shaw to alter her beliefs. She could come to see herself as a spiritual being paving the way for the kingdom of god. Of course this is an extreme outcome, but it was only meant to give color to the concept I was explaining.

 

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BigDave
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I will further add that indeed returning to Earth instead on one hand may be a safeguard against alerting other Engineers etc on Paradise to how far we have Evolved and become a threat.

But you can be sure the Weyland Company would want to get its hands on the Juggernaught and Tech, and this potentially could prove disasterous for Mankind, even if David has no intentions to use the stuff on us...  Mankind should not be messing about with this stuff as it caused Death to those who created it, or at least those (Engineers) who had greater knowledge of what it does.

For Mankind to mess with the Black Goo could be a Disaster, even if they wanted to try and get a Vaccine of sorts, they could on the route to that lead to the Destruction of Mankind.

As far as the Ship running out of Fuel and Paradise being closer, who knows how far Paradise is, it could be closer it could be much further.  I would assume the Engineers ship could easily make it to Earth in no Time though.

I made a Thread that is Relevant to this Subject (Shaw as Antagonist) Here

In Hindsight to save space i could have just added it to this Debate/Topic but then it could maybe go off track a bit to what this Topic was intended for.

R.I.P Sox  01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017

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