Page - 11 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

in their own image by sacrificing a piece of themselves”.7 In the movie, millions of years after this first creation, David, the robot shaped by human beings in their im- age, to serve them as a neutral artificial intelligence device, will give the same dark liquid to Holloway. As a result one Engineer is resurrected through the birth of a monster child after Holloway’s sexual encounter with Shaw, an evil God (the Devil?) who wants to exterminate humankind. Shaw will confront this creature with her faith, symbolized by a Christian cross she possesses and a simple sentence she pronounces twice during the movie, when she is confronted by the unknown: “It’s why I choose to believe”, says Shaw, con- firming a choice that she will assume till the end. When she understands she (and all humankind) was created and modeled by the Engineers, her faith remains unshaka- ble. All she wants to know is who created these Engineers, arguing these monsters cannot be the main creator. She is convinced God is greater and superior. Is her faith the reason why she is the only human survivor (with the robot David) at the end of the movie? Damon Lindelof, the screenwriter of the film, said in an in- terview about this subject, “I think that the movie advances the idea that, ‘Can the two [human and robots] live alongside each other?’ Is it possible to be a scientist and maintain some faith in the unknown? And are you rewarded for having blind faith? I do think the movie makes the meta-commentary on these issues.”8 In Alien: Covenant, 11 years after the Prometheus expedition, a new ship, Cov- enant, is sent to the Planet Origae 6. Cohabiting onboard Covenant are the crew, 2,000 colonists, 1,140 embryos, and Walter, a new version of the android David but with the same look. The ship is forced to land on an unknown planet when a major 7 Jagernauth 2012. 8 Woerner 2012. Fig. 1: Film still, Prometheus (Ridley Scott, GB/US 2012), 01:54:10. 10 | Elie Yazbek www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 7–15