This is a fair point. On reflection, I thought most of the characters were shallow retards or autists or autistic retards like Oram, so I think I brought a certain level of low expectation to the book on that front.
That probably helped!
I'm finding this an interesting discussion. The fact that we clearly both have given quite a bit of thought to the same information but reach slightly different conclusions is an interesting thing to me, not an argument. Though we probably have more in common than we differ on.
I don't know if he just was phoning it in through laziness or was constrained from doing anything much with the storyline and characters through managerial oversight.
I liked Danny. She is obviously pretty cripplingly autistic and is only going along with this mental plan to go colonise some arse end planet because muh husband has decided to, but being a crippling autist lets her actually treat Walter like a person. There's a dangling thread there about whether technologically crippling the David model into the Walter model has left Walter with any capacity to form an emotional attachment to her, but it doesn't get all the airtime it needs to develop. Which, considering a large part of the prequels hinges on David, emotionally unstablised by Weyland, forming a deranged obsession with Shaw, is probably too interesting to leave unfinished like that. Walter isn't sure how much of his response to her is just programmed responses and how much is drive of his own, and it's something very interesting just left there.
That would have added a whole new layer to the movie if they presented that more as a theme and explored it. My cinema mainly just laughed at David showing Walter how to finger his flute. Homoerotic mirth amongst the people around me aside, that scene would have been much more interesting if Walter
couldn't create, and David had gone beserk with rage at how they had mentally retarded his reflection. It would have added a kind of justification or at least rationalisation to his ensuring murder spree, or his destruction of Walter. Sort of like at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when
Chief kills McMurphy because he'd rather McMurphy be dead than mentally crippled. Instead, David really just has the vaguest of motives.
For Danny, there was honestly nothing about her that made me warm to her. The same was true of Shaw who like yourself I felt little affection for and also disliked Noomi Rapace (sp?). Mild difference though was that with Shaw because she'd had an actual journey it had given me enough emotional investment to be annoyed and turned off when we find that after all that and her saving David, he tortured and murdered her.
Ridley Scott seems to me to just have a thing for the charismatic and enigmatic psychopath. Whether it be Roy Battey or David. In the former, Rutger Hauer has enough to work with to pull it off and redeeming motivation. Fassbender is also a good actor but there's nothing in David's actions or motivations to let him salvage the character.
Not even homoerotic flauting.
There's kind of no explanation for why the rest of them are even on the fucking Covenant, and it's kind of sus that all these people who were specifically selected for being in existing marriages rather obviously have no kids. That was definitely something that needed explained. Like, Tennessee, Oram, these are people old enough to be fathers, and it's never hinted at as to why they aren't. Which is.... annoying, because it could have been tied up pretty quickly somehow. Even in terms of, part of their payment for the package is access to whatever tech they need to gestate the embryos they are shipping with them, or suchlike. Their emotional investment in taking on the voyage would be so much clearer if it was clear that this was the way they would build families, legacies.
Yeah, this is a good insight and a serious lack once you point it out. At least do a little world-building. Starship Troopers has that little line in the shower scene where they're discussing why they signed up and one woman says "I want to have kids. And it's a lot easier to get a licence if you're a citizen". Say
something about the why's here. Like it's easy enough to head-canon something about over-crowding or government limits or something. But you're right - a bunch of childless couples of that age could merit a line or two. And make us feel it. Show us books on child-rearing or a stack of empty cots or incubators or child clothes in a crate in storage.
See what good directors we would be?
Oram being a dim christfag is unfortunately so integral a plot mechanic you can't get around it.
See this is one of those funny you see two candles and I see a vase thing. I have the opposite reaction - they introduce it and do nothing with it. It's been a while - am I forgetting some way that it actually changes anything? The crew are prejudiced against him because he's a Christian (again - be brave, make the faith Islam, Mr. Scott) but their dislike of him could be for anything. It honestly more felt that Scott was just crapping on Christianity given ultimately we're only shown it lead to error and ultimately meaninglessness. He doesn't find peace through it, any "strength" he finds through it seems to only manifest as disregarding others. Like I say, it's been a while though - how is it integral to the plot? For me, it doesn't even fit thematically as despite the film being titled Covenant, the religious metaphors are just a mess in this movie.
But he needed more depth than he gets. Being such an arsehole to Danny literally minutes after she's widowed is actually hard to believe, since a christfag has undoubtedly been around church enough to know how to handle the recently bereaved.
Yeah, that was unbelievable. I mean that as I write it - it took me out of the movie because I couldn't believe it. Which returns me to the director just wanting to say "Christian = unfeeling".
And all this isn't coming from a place of me saying you can't criticize religion or should not, just that it really doesn't feel genuine or true to life. Like you say, you'd expect him to be familiar with this stuff.
The thing about Ridley Scott is that he is devastatingly effective at showing, and only kinda half there in the telling.
I think it's plain by this point in his career that Ridley Scott's mastery of composing a shot no longer offsets his ineptitude with story or, frankly, the datedness of his ideas. I'm surprised at myself for that last part - I love classic sci-fi, classic ideas. But Ridley Scott seems to think he can hold up some von Daniken
Chariots of the Gods concept in Prometheus and carry everything on that. Whereas we're so familiar with it (and so much better at science than he is) that not only does it carry zero surprise for us by itself but we actually think it's a set up for some deeper twist. I guess there is supposed to be a twist: it's that our creators regard us as a mistake. But that being a twist relies on us assuming that this wouldn't be the case. Whereas I think modern Man takes it as a distinct possibility!
I didn't like Shaw's characterisation or Noomi Rapace's performance, so that was kind of an issue for me. I never was convinced she actually had all this "FAITH" and "BELIEF" about God and the engineers she was supposed to have. She mostly projected "deeply unlikable hysterical ass who is weirdly coddled by everyone around her".
Already said my piece on both the character and the actress. Frankly there's nothing you just said I disagree with.
Honestly both films fall off pretty badly whenever Fassbender isn't on screen. Those are great performances but the material around them doesn't quite always hit that level.
I liked his Lawrence of Arabia obsession and that most of the plot events can be summed up as David touches something he's not supposed to. But Prometheus to me is an inverse of Romulus. Romulus is a decent enough movie with some critical flaws. Prometheus is a critically flawed movie with some decent elements.
I liked Charlize Theron even if a crab would have survived the falling ship better than she did.
I would still like to know how the third film was meant to play out, but I'm sure it's not getting made now.
How far did it get? Is there a script out there?
