What is the significance of Lawrence of Arabia?

ninXeno426

In Prometheus,David watches Lawrence of Arabia and quotes it through out the film.So does Peter Weyland in the TED 2023 viral video.The story of T.E. Lawrence is well known so i won't elaborate on it here,but instead i ask what exactly does it have to do with the Alien universe?What are the deeper philosophical connections?One thing i thought of was the Lawrence of Arabia was pretty influential on Dune.Dune does have a lot of connections to Alien,Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger met while working on Alejandro Jodowrosky's ill fated Dune.Ridley Scott was even attached to direct Dune prior to Blade Runner.But i think that's probably coincidental.What am i missing? 

S.M

Maybe David 'goes native' in Covenant and sics an Alien horde onto the visitors and shouts 'NO PRISONERS!'

Though more likely it's probably just a film he likes.

ninXeno426

Lol ok S.M. you got me there 

ninXeno426

Double post

Centauri

Makes me watch the film again

Ruhaniya

His significance in the film is that David views himself as the real Lawrence, especially when driving his motorcycle straight into Hell after defeating the Ottoman Islamic empire. Very similar to the Space Jockeys are riding their Xenomorphology at it's finest!  David too desires to overthrow empires and does not minding in that it hurts.  Mainly for Humans!  David is pretending to act like a queer puppet submitted to serve humans and is probably in tune to coincidence of looking like one. Yes like One of those colonial skin jobs.  

Goddamn Tropics in here

This came from an interview with Lindeof in 2012

David has been watching Lawrence of Arabia while the crew of Prometheus was in stasis for two years, why that movie?

Lindelof: Ridley and I started talking about Lawrence of Arabia, for some reason, very early on in our process. I'm a huge David Lean fan — we were talking about The Bridge on the River Kwai and then Peter O'Toole etc. etc. we just started saying oh what if David was just obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia? Why would he be obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia, and i think the short answer was: Lawrence is a stranger in a strange land. A white man who is entirely different, ultimately becomes the most pivotal figure in that movie, independent of his differences. That felt slightly analogical to what we wanted to do with David.

i also think it was a tribute as it's one of Riddles favourite films...

No-one

Hi there, I thought I would share a few links explaining the relevance of the movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBLQiFGhteg

https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/muthur9000/164765977815

https://gothic-fiction-in-space.tumblr.com/post/164805053339/dying-suffering-french-stalkers-so-if-david-8