User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
No
Owner's reply
June 16, 2013
To answer your two questions about specific edits:
-- Removing Weyland's "what happens when we die" line - it's not just that the archeological find had nothing to do with this. My take on Weyland is that he's a materialist with zero belief in the afterlife. When he says David has no soul that is a just a rhetorical flourish to underline the areas where David's mimicing of human behavior is lacking. The TED speech that you find boring blatantly states Weyland's belief that through unfettered use of technology, humankind can conquer almost any problem. Through the use of technology, he says, "We are the gods now." So he has no interest in the spiritual or the afterlife, he does not want to see "what happens when we die", he instead wants to avoid death through technology and live forever, hoping the Engineers will gift him that. For Shaw to believe the Engineers may know something about "what happens when we die", as she says in her phone call pitch, makes sense since there is a spiritual side to the Engineer's mystery for her. For Weyland, it does not.
-- Including David watching Shaw's dream -- there is a theme throughout the movie of children with traumatic, or troubled, relations to the parents: Humanity --> Engineers, Vickers --> Weyland, David --> Weyland. This theme is introduced through Shaw's dream of her dad/mom (her relationship with them was good, unlike those other relationships, but they both died when she was young). This is also referenced by David's later statement to Shaw about watching her dreams and knowing about her father's death, which also, given its place in this edit, underlines that her vision of the Engineers she just had when out on the table is a dream.