Being Emotional About Characters, Massive Issue It Is

IRAPTUS - Oh, gosh! I would certainly hug the Newborn and tell him it is going to be alright - provided he was not interested in tearing me to little bits. :)

The big chap before he got blasted out into space in Alien! :-) poor fella 

daliens

Do you realize that in 2000 that were more christianities (as in dogma evolved and many "heresy" arose)? I think that the cross is a stand in for faith in general, as in the believe that there is a higher power thus an objective meaning to the universe, view inherited from her father. So the ask those questions from a "alien" (in this case ancient humans) about how they see themselves in the vastness of space, living there for millennia is pretty reasonable. If they create were they also created? if they go for a hierarchy of flawed creation and time itself has a start then who was the first creator? The JC connection is pure bogus.

Of course there is also the problem of engineer's sacrifice. Why do they do it? The whole business indicates that have some sort or morality and the simple answer that they create life because they can is simple a cop out.

So yeah, it think Shaw could have found out some "stuff" and could have been a more interesting juxtaposition to David's pure logic.

And before Covenant, you must realize David was just a simple unit of the David 8 series (see the Prometheus novelization thread) coming online in 2089, not the first android built by Weyland ever. That was ret-conned in Covenant, as was Weyland's search for his creators, original his was just a megalomaniac who saw himself as a god because he creates AI and gods don't die. And the Satan stuff also happened.

Sorry for me this remains all crass lack of creativity and cynicism taken to extreme from which no good will emerge.

I guess Shaw lived only to fix David and the engineers were only a side dish. But that is my guess, you don't have to agree. 

To all those asking why Shaw had to die...

It's because it's HORROR! We're supposed to have a love/hate relationship with it. We're supposed to be HORRIFIED. It's supposed to be f***ed up.

If Walter dies in Awakening, I'm going to be horrified. HORRIFIED! But...I'll probably still go to the theater to see it four more times.

Horror isn't supposed to be a happy, everyone-gets-their-questions-answered kind of genre.

It's supposed to be a life-is-f***ed-up-and-then-everyone-dies-unceremoniously sort of genre.

I'll tell you, Alien 3 f***s me up, badly. It's just so gosh damn...UNFAIR! It's the exact sort of thing I'd write, lol.

That is the purpose of art. To elicit emotion. I both admire and despise Alien 3, passionately and in equal portions. It has definitely occupied more time in my mind than any other Alien movie, as Covenant undoubtedly will for you all, because a beloved character dies.

But you all probably know this already. To acknowledge it breaks the fourth wall and ruins the illusory escape art builds for us. We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

(...I'll watch Alien 3 whenever I'm in the mood to be very deeply disturbed. Which does happen on occasion :)

Guys, awesome!

Purvis, Clemens, The Thing (whatever "he" was), Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) and, yes, Daniels, Hicks, Shaw, Janek (my favorite hugging pal), Hudson, Kane...

We cared so much about them, we sympathized with them, somehow. And they had to go.

Then, there comes @VivisectedEngineer - and I'll stick to it - "

To all those asking why Shaw had to die...

It's because it's HORROR! We're supposed to have a love/hate relationship with it. We're supposed to be HORRIFIED. It's supposed to be f***ed up."

And, then, just before I go back to "Apocalypse Now" and the famous Cel Kurts' saying: "The horror, the horror", I think...

"We need this horrifying mourning. Otherwise, we would be watching 'The Love Boat' or the kind."

VivisectedEngineer

Give me a break. I watched in the last week all the 4 original Alien movies. 3 was not that shocking. Newt and Hicks died painlessly in their sleep while Ripley had a heroes that. That was no where near as killing a main by having them vivisected (as is the case in the novelization) after doing the humane thing.  And we know better, it was more about the money...

From when horror life-is-f***ed-up-and-then-everyone-dies-unceremoniously genre. Maybe cheap millennial shit like Saw or Hostel or some zombie crap. Can't have something more original something more insightful? Only visceral crap for our lizard brain?

The only thing that this movie (AC) made me feel was disgust which I would have rather avoid. So yeah, don't count me in for another one.

Lol, ok red0guy@gmail.com , you're entitled to your opinion. Aliens 3 was shocking to me. Although, I really couldn't care less about Hicks, Newt or Ripley. They were not particularly sympathetic or compelling characters to me.

It's Bishop's gruesome demise that grips me.

I liked Shaw's death. Shaw was a complex and sympathetic character so I like that she was denied the answers she sought and that she was used as a tool to implement horrors she would never have condoned. 

To me that's chilling and that's what I like to see in a horror movie. 

VivisectedEngineer

It seems that I would fail a reverse Voigt-Kampff test.

@red0guy@gmail.com

"It seems that I would fail a reverse Voigt-Kampff test."

Well, I guess that's because you're a human being...and I'm a robot.

[My husband has speculated that David probably said this (a reversal of what Shaw said to him at the end of Prometheus) to Shaw while he was medically torturing her. :) ]

Who would I hug goodbye? Captian Branson. I (for some reason) am a pretty big James Franco fan, so a send-off before his cameo death in Covenant seems right to me.

VivisectedEngineer -

"Lol, ok red0guy@gmail.com , you're entitled to your opinion. Aliens 3 was shocking to me. Although, I really couldn't care less about Hicks, Newt or Ripley. They were not particularly sympathetic or compelling characters to me.

It's Bishop's gruesome demise that grips me.

I liked Shaw's death. Shaw was a complex and sympathetic character so I like that she was denied the answers she sought and that she was used as a tool to implement horrors she would never have condoned. 

To me that's chilling and that's what I like to see in a horror movie."

I agree completely. I found Shaw's death far more horrifying than any Xeno could be. Xenos have the jump-shock factor, but it's over with pretty quickly. I find suspense and psychopathy far more jarring and a mind-f*ck. Why I love Hannibal so much! David reminds me of him...

The first few times I saw Covenant, seeing what David did to Shaw actually made me cry... It was horrifyingly sad.

the little chestburster in aliens. as soon as he was born he was wiped out of existance. he never got to feel the breeze on his (face?) never got the satisfaction of punching someones head in with his mouth. such an innosent creature killed long before his time. RIP

I'd say Shaw.

And IRaptus, please, your mention of "that" thing makes me cry...but not because I mourned its death...quite the contrary.

@Vivisected well done on Bishop. I like it!

@Seph7

Yes! So agreed on all counts! ...David is very Hannibal-esque.

@Starlogger

Much appreciated! I feel pretty strongly on this matter, lol.

(Also, I have to admit, I'm embarrassingly glad someone actually read it! I was afraid it was too much of a wall-of-text, so I thought my impassioned little Bishop eulogy had disappeared into obscurity, much like poor, unregarded Bishop himself. So THANK YOU!...for indulging my long-windedness.)