Prometheus: a CINDY film

[Hamamelis]

As for your particular thoughts, the human characters aren't really the point of these films. I think it works better in Prometheus with David as this emerging central figure embedded within a more conventional and human cast.

You're right of course, they aren't really the point. I also agree that David's central role works better in Prometheus, where he's present from the beginning. In Covenant, the human-centered first part does feel mostly wasted.
But exactly this is unsatisfying to me: that the humans basically only contribute "Nothing matters beyond who created us" and "We made androids subservient to remove them from the uncanny valley" to the discussion. It would not have been vital for the movie, but you could have e.g. scrapped the whole ridiculous Trolley problem of "do we lower the ship into the storm, risking 2'000 colonists, to know sooner if my wife is dead"; or the boring sex scenes, and instead have the humans respond a bit more thoughtfully to David. That's my complaint, basically, not that the focus of the movie should have been more on the humans.

As an aside, that whole explanation around the "upgraded" psychology of Walter was really weak - how would David be "too human" compared to Walter? If anything, David made people nervous because he was clearly inhuman. Maybe this was implied in the movie, but the way I heard it, it sounded completely wrong.

I really like these movies. Some of the only good real science fiction in movies this century. Definitely the best at this level of production scale.

Agreed!

[anthony]

As an aside, that whole explanation around the "upgraded" psychology of Walter was really weak - how would David be "too human" compared to Walter? If anything, David made people nervous because he was clearly inhuman. Maybe this was implied in the movie, but the way I heard it, it sounded completely wrong.

I find Walter interesting, as a superior (for humanity) successor to David who is more tame. I think that's a kind of clever point that the less human one sounds warmer. David isn't cold, detached, and cruel because he's simple. It's because he's complex, rich in character, however you'd like to put it. Walter is David turned into a Golden Retriever.

Then we get back to the poetry mistake, again I think that might actually be Walter's spiritual inferiority giving him a kind of edge. The impression I got from that sequence is that David is human enough to be conceited and hubristic. To get so caught up in grandiosity and identification that he makes mistakes. It's been a while and I haven't looked closely over all the symbols and implications throughout the movie, there might be more than that. Something deeper implied in the poets and David's error. If anybody here knows their poetry and has thoughts on that I'd be very interested in hearing.

[Hamamelis]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: — Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed
And on the pedestal these words appear
‚My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!‘
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I had some additional thoughts about the choice of including this poem in the movie. It lends itself to the surface level interpretation "Ramses was a fool for aspiring to undying fame among mortals, because only sand remains of him and his works now". I would reckon that, by only quoting the last five lines of the poem in the movie, the viewer is nudged to this conclusion. However, on a more meta-level, a better interpretation emerges - and I would also presume that Shelley might have favoured this, because he chose a third person to tell the narrating voice about Ozymandias, instead of narrating the story of the ruined statue directly. This to me seems like an invitiation to evaluate what is told more critically.
Considering that, within the poem, Ramses' fame indeed does survive to be retold over the ages, and that this is true in the real world, too, we can easily conclude that the fact that Shelley knew which Pharao to choose as an example of a great king of past times is in itself conclusive refutation of the above interpretation. As far as kleos aphtithon goes, Ramses achieved it plainly, and it endured beyond his culture, even his era.
If this contradiction between "easy" and "refined" interpretation is a central part of the beauty of this poem (I think it is), then I would say its inclusion in the movie suggests to the viewer to look for an "easy" and "refined" interpretation there as well.
In summary, I think Scott chose this poem to make it clear he knew that the masses would dismiss David as a run of the mill villain, but that he also offered sensitive young men to look at the story in a more thoughtful manner.