Did David ruin Alien Covenant?

Nature is so fascinating. Right now I am binge watching a David Attemborough documentary series called "Natural Curiosities", and in each episode you can find so many cases where the evolution of creatures defies any common sense. Nature seems to be this inextricable brain capable of intertwining different species with a cruelty beyond imagination, and even displaying a twisted sense of humor. I think that is where Dan O'Bannon found the inspiration for the original Alien. And that's where we need to head back. We already know all we need to know about David, It is time to explore other mysteries. 

I'm all for expanding the story and things of that nature. And no one is disputing fassbendsers performance. He's brilliant as David. I just hate that the alien we've come to know comes from an android. The facehugger is made by an android. The eggs they come from is from an android. It just seems so far fetched and lazy. Now if he was some android created by the engineers then maybe. But no. He was created by weyland. If that's the case ash, hell even bishop should have had a better understanding of the alien being that they were more up to date androids and had a more direct objective coming from weyland industries. Especially bishop.

I'm not sure why so many people are hung-up on the thought that David created everything we know from the original movies. He's had access to the material most important to creating a creature, the Black Goo. The Goo is pre-loaded with all the Xenomorph DNA you'd ever need. Given the Goo, some time ("idle hands"), and the drive to create a monster, it's going to eventually resemble the base creature who's DNA is infused into the Goo. Every time you cross the results of your work together the stronger the imprint of the Goo on the result. Proof is shown on the Mural in Prometheus that a Xeno existed long before David was even built. Also, David himself says that he found an Egg and Facehugger, so they were not a new creation by him (see: http://www.alien-covenant.com/topic/45460).

auximenes Hopefully that is the case.

The Engineers created the Deacon, that is what is in the mural. Steve Messing, the guy who did the mural, stated it as such in 'Furious Gods'. The Xenomorph is descended/variant of the Deacon created by David. Joylitt, I respect your opinion, but that is fact.

The Art and Making of Covenant stated that Covenant, even though it's the sixth film in the franchise, was the first canonical appearance of the Xenomorph in this franchises history.

David is a character far more interesting than Roy Batty from Blade Runner. He started to hate his creator and the faulty human nature (I want more life father -- to realize that Roy's father was mortal), he found compassion by the same species (Batty - Deckard in the last scene) that created him and stayed loyal to Weyland in the scene with the engineer even though he hated Weyland, it was revealed that he said to him exactly what was asked by Weyland although he could have pissed the engineer off by saying other things offensive i.e. we came here to kill you. Also his obsession with Lawrence of Arabia is not a coincidence,  maybe he believes that he is living the same same scenario with other players

1. Lawrence although an English man he was different than his peers (Walter) more independent and deviated many times from the English crown's will although he stayed loyal to it.

2.  Arabs - the scattered human nations which need guidance to be united against a common enemy.

3. Engineers like the powerful Turks who oppress other nations they do the same thing to their creations and like the Turks who had advanced weapons to do so (advanced artillery, guns etc) they used bio-weapons to force their will.

Michael is a great actor by the way!

I thought it was just part of the "I'll go after the men in the audience" trope of Alien movies, it's made to make CIS men uncomfortable. If the lines like "You blow, I'll do the findering", "Whistle and I'll come" or "No one will love you like I do" didn't work then people wouldn't be quoting it all over the place.

David himself did not "ruin" A:C. I don't consider the film ruined. I consider it a "missed opportunity." What they DID with and to David was part of the missed opportunity. He shouldn't have had such a major role.

No It wasn't David, Who ruined Alien was Scott.

@Janekripley76

I can understand how this may not suit many people, a lot has evolved behind the scenes as far as the Xenomorph connection and indeed Nothing in any of the Movies shows us the Engineers Created the Xenomorph, Prometheus showed they had created or came into contact with a Organism that is related, but the Fresco Creature and Deacon Mural are not 100% Xenomorphs and the Face Huggers in the Mural do not match the Alien Xenomorphs.

I think while the intention was the Engineers may have been behind the Xenomorph, they are now going the route that i explained in my previous Post.

And that is to Explore and Explain that when a Life Form/Race decides to Create Life in their own likeness, this event has a eventual downfall and rebellious outcome by their creators, that leads to a event that ultimately leads to the Creators Downfall.

We do not know how far the Hierarchy is above the Engineers, so if we just take it from the Engineers POV

If The Engineers had not Created Mankind, they would never had needed to create the Black Goo to Destroy Mankind, thus the event and effects this had on their Society would not have happened (likely).

Had they not created Mankind, then Mankind would not have Created David who was then able to use the Engineers Technology and Ultimately bring Hell to their World in Alien Covenant.

Ultimately creating Mankind has proven to be a massive mistake, the most costly of all is due to the Process that leads the Engineers Creation to Sub-create of its own and Bring about David... who has dire consequences for the Engineers.

But this Hubris also follows Mankind, because their creation of David has drastic potential consequences for Mankind.

But if we follow the Timeline and Accept Aliens and Alien 3 as Canon etc... Ultimately Mankind manage to overcome the Treat posed by the Xenomorph and David.

But Alien Resurrection shows that Mankinds Greed and need to try and Resurrect Davids Creation could potentially lead to massive consequences for Mankind again.

So the Whole Tale i think RS is trying to put over is that, we have this Xenomorph Monster that we see in its Final Form in Alien, and that if those Engineers had not tried to play GOD and Create Mankind... then this Monster and the Black Goo that Spawned it would maybe never had been Created and the Engineers would have not suffered the consequences of their Actions.

And so the Tale Ends with how RS has mentioned before... That Creating AI could actually be a very Bad Idea for Mankind.

I really like AC but I'm aware it's quite flawed. I don't think David ruins it at all, I think the fact that the narrative chose to stick with the Alien/s formula was a massive mistake - rather than less David I think the whole thing should have been told from his perspective. It is in effect an origin story, but we neglect the origin story in favour of the 'humans travel into deep space and stumble on something bad' story, which has been done, many many times before. The David story is actually very original, it's a shame that (I assume Fox) didn't have the confidence in that and instead opted to try to make something that fits within the existing Alien formula instead. Quite frankly I'd have been happy if the Alien never made an appearance in the film so long as the origin story was strong. It's not so hard to believe that a synthetic evolved the Alien, the most interesting part of the story is the one revolving around the idea of creation and what happens when the idea of a supreme creator - a god is removed. In essence it's what happens when Frankenstein's monster starts creating monsters of his own, especially when that monster is pretty much designed to kill its creator's creators! But you know, a lot of people, studio included seem to want the accidentally happen upon alien, run from alien, kill alien story - because apparently we don't have enough of that exact same story in the franchise already! 

joylitt OT, but I checked out an episode of Natural Curiosities last night and that is right up our alleys here at home. Fantastic show.Thanks for mentioning- will definitely watch more! 

Well yeah David ruined it but there were alot of other things that did too, alot.

dk yes. glad you liked it. I think O'Bannon actually got the idea of the alien lifecycle from the spider eating wasp.

George-TheGreek

I totally agree. David is fascinated with Lawrence and tries to emulate him. 

MU/TH/UR 9000

Great point. I'm surprised I forgot to mention that lol

BigDave

Excellent analysis, this is a tale of hubris, callousness, and carelessness  set in the cruel indifference of space. It resonates with the original 4 films.

@Lawrence

"George-TheGreek

I totally agree. David is fascinated with Lawrence and tries to emulate him. "

And not only that, he could have been Peter himself he resembles him a lot. One reason Michael was chosen for this role, is his resemblance to Peter O'Tool.

I get the sexual tones people are mentioning as the whole franchise is based on rape, reproduction and violence but I would connect ash and the magazine into that context. ash was just simply using what was available to him at the time to suffocate ripley then come up with a story. if hed strangled her then he would have had some explaining to do. it was just luck that parker and crew turned up when they did

David didn’t ruin it, the writers did. ; )  Eventually Ridley had a part in this also and Fox. Let Ridley direct but leave him out of the story writing. I listened to a podcast over at AVP-galaxy and there they said something about Scott trying to affect some story of a movie and they rejected his idea because it was dumb (AVP-galaxy number 50, 18:58 – 20:06).

I totally agree that the focus on the AI isn’t good at all. There are so many things to write about that are more interesting. For example: Bishop and Ash were both good and contributed to the story but they were never the main focus (the humans were).

The movie would have been better if they would have focused on the humans, Engineers, and the monster. AI is number four on my list as far as the importance of things in the movie.

Having David as the creator of the Xenos would be so lame. I would rather have the engineers as being the creators, or that the Engineers found some goo or what ever and created it from there. Simply put: there are many ways that could have been more interesting to have as an answer rather than the David thing.

“Because, in a way, the exaggerated focus on David together with the neglect of the human element of the story did ruin the movie.”

This and also:

“The FOCUS on David as a main character is what I didn't like. He is merely PART of the evolution. . . “

Exactly, he is a part of the story of things that affect each other (humans, AI, monsters, Engineers) and not the total sum of it all so to speak. There should be some balance of what they focus on and now that balance isn’t there. Maybe they could keep him but they should focus more on the humans and terror because these two parts were lacking in the movie.

Scott focusing on creation, well, but having David as the creator of the original Xeno is lame. I would not mind if he found something that the Engineers left and developed it as is own version.