Alien Covenant
I've been pouring over pieces of this one as well as trailers, additional content, and fan fights since it came out this summer. Even after watching the film for the first time at Thanksgiving, I've gone back and watched specific scenes for closer study. So what have I found?
The opening scene tells us right off the bat that Ridley Scott wants to have a serious conversation about Creation (just like he wanted to talk seriously about the corporate dehumanization of American workers when he shot Alien). Each item in Mr. Weyland's collection is a creative masterpiece. This is the beginning of the film's world as it is the beginning of connecting character David's world. I've had the privileged over the years of encountering almost all of the creative pieces on display (Wagner's Das Rheingold in performance at HGO, a Buggati throne at the MFAH, a concert Steinway at the Forsche Studio, and the David in Florence -if I saw Paolo Francesca's Nativity in Italy I've forgotten). Knowing the chosen works, each one serves as a powerful icon of what is to come. David was a biblical king swelled to the status of Greek god by Michelangelo, and David 8 will seek to enthrone himself. He will seek to become god and the movie will witness the nativity of his child, the xenomorph, as in Prometheus Elizabeth, who was barren, gave birth to trilobite that testified to David's future creation. Like, Wagner's dwarf, Alberich, David will renounce love (Elizabeth and Walter) to forge a ring of power (the circular eggs and embryos). Finally, like the gods of Wagner's opera, David will steal a celestial castle from the working class and ascend to a creative paradise accompanied by the full orchestral score of the same scene in Das Rheingold. Foreshadowing the next film, now that David 8 has his Valhalla, we know that he is doomed to lose it and his creation when his own Gotterdammerung comes.
Wagner aside, there are also less overt parallels with Shakespeare. Comparisons have been made between Rosenthal's severed head and Millais' Ophelia (though I would point to Waterhouse and Moreau's paintings of Orpheus' head). The deeper resonance, however, is with the Tempest. Like Prospero, David 8 is marooned by his enemies. There is free to follow his dark arts with the aliens serving as his erstwhile Calibans but he cannot return to the human world to wreck his revenge. Fortune, and a space storm, bring David's enemies within reach as well as a means of escape. David, Prospero-like, uses his dark arts to orchestrate his own alchemical drama and escape. Missing is the key character of Prospero's daughter Miranda (her name is linked to the Latin word for "wonder"). The woman who could fit the bill, Prometheus' Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, is dead.Without the magic of Miranda's wonder to spark compassion in Prospero and forgiveness for his foes, one wonders how The Tempest would have turned out. Alien Covenant gives us an idea as we see that if "it is not good for Man to be alone," then it is not good for androids either. Having killed his sense of wonder, David sees no "brave new world" in the human crew of the Covenant and instead uses them to fuel his dark arts and his quest to make the dead Shaw the mother of a better species and wreck vengeance on the humans who created him.
I've been pouring over pieces of this one as well as trailers, additional content, and fan fights since it came out this summer. Even after watching the film for the first time at Thanksgiving, I've gone back and watched specific scenes for closer study. So what have I found?
The opening scene tells us right off the bat that Ridley Scott wants to have a serious conversation about Creation (just like he wanted to talk seriously about the corporate dehumanization of American workers when he shot Alien). Each item in Mr. Weyland's collection is a creative masterpiece. This is the beginning of the film's world as it is the beginning of connecting character David's world. I've had the privileged over the years of encountering almost all of the creative pieces on display (Wagner's Das Rheingold in performance at HGO, a Buggati throne at the MFAH, a concert Steinway at the Forsche Studio, and the David in Florence -if I saw Paolo Francesca's Nativity in Italy I've forgotten). Knowing the chosen works, each one serves as a powerful icon of what is to come. David was a biblical king swelled to the status of Greek god by Michelangelo, and David 8 will seek to enthrone himself. He will seek to become god and the movie will witness the nativity of his child, the xenomorph, as in Prometheus Elizabeth, who was barren, gave birth to trilobite that testified to David's future creation. Like, Wagner's dwarf, Alberich, David will renounce love (Elizabeth and Walter) to forge a ring of power (the circular eggs and embryos). Finally, like the gods of Wagner's opera, David will steal a celestial castle from the working class and ascend to a creative paradise accompanied by the full orchestral score of the same scene in Das Rheingold. Foreshadowing the next film, now that David 8 has his Valhalla, we know that he is doomed to lose it and his creation when his own Gotterdammerung comes.
Wagner aside, there are also less overt parallels with Shakespeare. Comparisons have been made between Rosenthal's severed head and Millais' Ophelia (though I would point to Waterhouse and Moreau's paintings of Orpheus' head). The deeper resonance, however, is with the Tempest. Like Prospero, David 8 is marooned by his enemies. There is free to follow his dark arts with the aliens serving as his erstwhile Calibans but he cannot return to the human world to wreck his revenge. Fortune, and a space storm, bring David's enemies within reach as well as a means of escape. David, Prospero-like, uses his dark arts to orchestrate his own alchemical drama and escape. Missing is the key character of Prospero's daughter Miranda (her name is linked to the Latin word for "wonder"). The woman who could fit the bill, Prometheus' Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, is dead.Without the magic of Miranda's wonder to spark compassion in Prospero and forgiveness for his foes, one wonders how The Tempest would have turned out. Alien Covenant gives us an idea as we see that if "it is not good for Man to be alone," then it is not good for androids either. Having killed his sense of wonder, David sees no "brave new world" in the human crew of the Covenant and instead uses them to fuel his dark arts and his quest to make the dead Shaw the mother of a better species and wreck vengeance on the humans who created him.
Comments