New Alien: Covenant Footage description hints at David's role in Alien: Covenant

Holy ....! This sounds awesome! I was just looking for news in Google for Covenant when i saw this...I can't wait to see this on the big screen. 

Oh and this is my first comment, i was lurking for years here...so hi everyone! :)

This is too huge. I won't watch anymore trailers or read anything until May. I'M DONE.

I do hope this is true and David's evil has no boundaries

However, Red Herrings everywhere....

good grief...So are all of the "alien creatures" hanging out around Paradise?  

There's been a lot put out there to this point and this new piece of information is big, if true, and eliminates some mystery, which I'd prefer to keep.  It would be different if it was accidentally leaked, but if they are mindfully releasing this info, I have to believe there is more to everything or the info we've gotten so far is intended to send us down an incorrect path on purpose, so we are surprised when we finally watch the movie.

However having Weyland as your master and instructor and Lawrence as your idol, I can picture David carrying evil out to this level all day long

This post needs needs a 'large spoiler' sign on it

This has me thinking we may see some Deacons in a flashback sequence 

Hmm... Fishy...

If he pulls a "hover over the temple and bomb 'em" stunt why is there a crashed ship in the forest? 

Tiwaz, maybe he was hovering too low and an alien makes its way onto the Juggernaut?

hehe, april fools came early this year

Maybe, Membrane. I can think of a lot scenarios too. But my guts tell me something's amiss. Can't put my finger on it, though.

I thought the same thing regarding April Fools Day.  I've seen several articles and information on various movies today that seem very odd, but it is only March 30.  Who knows... maybe they figure a day earlier is a real way to fool people, but then eventually, people will be fooling people in November.

Wow....I knew David was evil, but not a terrorist who wants to wipe out the whole human race! He really wants that Villain of the Year award it seems.

Well, now we know what happened to the engineers on the planet and who caused the mutation of fauna in order to prevent humans from establishing a civilization there. I guess it would be easier to just head straight to earth....

*script looks angrily at me* 

Ok never mind..

If you look in the herrings eye, you can just make out Shaw 

I really hope this is not an early April Fools. 

This is one bombshell of a reveal... No pun intended. 

@Dr.Raven

And i hope it is!

Nothing on AVPGalaxy (I hear ya shouting "HERESY!" already) and also nothing on Robots&Dragons (German site) either.

And i do hope its an april fools thing.

The bombing by David seems like a cop out. Unless these primitive engineers lack any advance technology and are inferior to the other Engineers seen in prometheus. They would have seen that ship come way before it got a chance to get to them. Yeah maybe they thought it was one of their own coming back but thy dont have communication?

Too easy for David so i call bs on it. I hope!

Correcting. It's on AVPG, in the forums.

If im not mistaken,4 chan leaks did mention this,but didn't described it in big detail.

@Goddam Tropics in here

Ha ha!!! There she finaly is!!

But seriously, i feel the smell of herring here... But if it is true, it's really cool, aint it?

If you read the 7th paragraph of The Playlist, the part about hundreds of years, I smell a bit of B/S?

Tropics, I read that and also thought "Hundreds of years have not passed.  What are they talking about?"

@ Membranes - Seems like B/S to me.

The bombing event may be a flashback hundreds of years ago, but they state it's David, dosnt add up

@PP - I agree it would be epic if it was David and he was that evil

Or Ridlers finally lost it and went all cameron... Wich would be sad.

Goddamn Tropics in here... It sure would!

@Tiwaz Let's hope not...

Tiwaz

maybe Shaw tried to stop him resulting in a crash landing

Well, we will see. ;)

The 4chan leak was slightly different. And no I don't think this is an early April fool's day joke, that's not really how that works haha if it's not on the day, it doesn't count.

However, if David is the one to pilot the Juggernaut and bomb the Humanoids on Paradise, why did the ship seem crashed in the trailers? If David can operate it properly, you'd think he could land it too. Unless partway through his assault Shaw tries to stop him and that causes the ship to crash? That's the only part that confuses me. 

...so who planted the wheat?

Maybe Shaw tried to operate the ship to get away from David and crashed?Something indeed happened.

We will soon find out.

Chris, I think that's the most reasonable explanation to the crash landing; Shaw trying to stop him when she realised what he was going to do.

Chris - Can you magic up a final trailer or give us some more on the blue mist puzzle?

I choose not to believe this.

Epic!

after ship crashed teory, this news not fit on the plot.

As I read this I thought is every element of fan theory going to be included in this!!! It makes no sense!! I smell a rat - a huge black gooey one!!!

Could be David got shot down by the "real" god(s) that are supposed to be the real creators of the xeno and the rest of us humanoids

We will all see what we see when we see it.

BUT, for me, erroneous info or not, I can still glean much from it for my literary works, and smooth out, edit away any continuity problems and contradictions later...right now, I'm just gonna have fun with it.

Yeah I think if any of us had to suffer Holloway then we'd feel a bit genocidal too.

A busted juggernaut in the trailer, and a full-functioning one in the new description, is not a continuity issue. There's ten or so years in and around the 2 events, so plenty of time for many other shenanigans to have caused the wreckage.

I remember some set pictures from Alien Covenant that supposedly showed Engineers and they didn't look like corpses where creatures burst out of them but rather they looked similar to the human remains of Pompeii (after the eruption of Vesuvius). 

If they were infected with the black goo or they died, wouldn't their bodies decompose after so many years?

At any rate, if this is not an April Fools story, then David seems to be a massive super villain.

We will know in 48 days or if a new trailer reveals David's side of it.

mmmm..... me thinks this is a sidetrack special for April fools day, i don't think fox and ridley would allow a major plot spoiler to be given away like this, just a feeling, i would take it with a grain of salt. 

@Goddamn tropics, lol! that Red Herring exactly mate!

When will we get the trailer?

I love the idea of David wishing to destroy all of creation be it Engineers or humanity but something seems off about this, i mean as many of you have stated it could be April Fools Day done come early..or perhaps the voice over and the scenes shown were cut up to appear as if David dropped the goo on the engineers but her are my issues:

1. if David drops the goo and it turns all the Engineers into creatures then why do they all look very human not at all like mutations or Alien creatures

2. Even if he dropped the goo why do they all look like petrified humans instead of mutated creatures or why didnt the disentigrate, as those were the only two options Prometheus showed us that the black goo was possible of....having it petrify too makes it too much of a Macguffin and i just think having it have too many other capabilities outside of endless mutations or breaking down life forms is lazy screen writing and it seems off

3. If David is skilled enough with the ship to make it hover while he is on a deck below it, then how did it crash, clearly it crashed from the broken trees and there would be no engineers to shoot him down if he bombed them with the black goo...what i mean if he can hover the ship without being at the controls then he is good enough to not crash it

4. to me most of the petrified beings in the photos do not look or appear large enough to be engineers

5. If he did this then he did it long before the covenant arrived, and Shaw would be dead if he did this, Rapace was on set for 6 weeks, thats not a cameo or flashback appearance to me...6 weeks of filming, shes in it more than a little is my guess 

6. ok lets say he did drop the goo then what about all the other engineers not located on this planet in that one spot, because clearly from the trailer stills and production photos it does not appeat that many left that specific area....seems off and a little to contrived 

what are all your thoughts on my suspicious items listed above??

SIGH 48 DAYS LEFT ; ) 

When are we gonna get to see all these clips that are getting shown at SXSW and Comicon or whatever that was ? And no one recorded it on their phone? Really? Wtf... how large are these audiences at these conventions or whatever they are? 

Also, why would the black goo bombs transform the Engineers into aliens? At the start of Prometheus it disintegrated the one after drinking it before he fell in the water... 

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. Hm.

These dudes explain even a little more:

https://youtu.be/xKSICi_spRo

They say the civilization is not human or Engineer but different humanoid, but the description is pretty much the same and cool sounding. If you've already read the description, watch these dudes video, the one guy seems genuinely exhilarated by the insane scene 

@tomburns Interesting video! Especially the part about the civilization being something other than human or Engineer is very intriguing and also that Ridley is not holding back. 

Will be interesting to find out why David suddenly has this hatred for humankind.  At the end of Prometheus, Shaw is explaining why she needs to go to the engineers homeworld to get answers about the events that let to prometheus and David, being an android, doesnt understand why its important for her to find this out, she is even says "thats because im human and your a robot" hes not supposed to experience any emotion, this is brought up multiple times by Holloway, having digs at him about not being"a real boy" I hope the events that take place between them leaving LV223 and landing in "Paradise" are explained, so Davids behaviour makes sense. 

Hmm too much information me thinks and some things just don't add up, unless the footage people saw was deliberately mixed up so it would be taken out of context?

I'm not 100% on board with this info, April 1st may have come early! :)

David needs to be rebooted! Obviously he has a burned out transistor.

I think it is a red herring. I've been thinking that the wiped out civilization was something the "bad" engineers did before they went to LV-223. And there is nothing keeping the LV-426 ship from being in the same situation .... a ship that landed to wipe out another "planet lab" but didn't work out.

Apparently it really was shown. I hope we will able to see such trailer.

If it is true then I think its a good direction to go. It helps when a villains motives are unclear, it gives the opportunity to debate and work out what has happened to the character. It isn't often we get to see an android or robot that is acting with an agenda that isn't machine like. If David is acting in his own self interest then i think thats brilliant.

For one its going to make me view him in a different way when I watch Prometheus again. You would have to wonder what sort of android he is, can he already act beyond his programming, what was he really doing all that time whilst everyone was sleeping during the trip. Was he a normal android at the beginning of the mission but changed his programming during the time he was alone. Im now going to question if David is truly following Weylands orders or is he doing this for himself. 

double post

So essentially, David's experimenting with the black goo in this reveal (and lord knows how many more he conducted before the Covenant arrives) is likely to have completely infected the planet. Could that be why it appears so bleak (dark paradise)? This answers the question as to why the Covenant crew heard no birds or water or anything, David wiped out a lot of natural life. 

This reveal definitely has me much more excited for the film. It seems like Ridley may actually answer questions directly this time around. 

Also really anxious to see what happened to Shaw. 

Agreed with earlier post.  I can't read anymore. Want to be surprised a little in may.  I'll return after the i see it.

@For Close Encounters    Same here. Even if they're holding something much deeper, what I think to be the case, I don't care - this is such a major spoiler I didn't want to know about, supposing it's true. 

IF it proves to be true, I think it's a major change over David's character. We've been thinking about him by the point of view of Creation - his "reasons", "motivations" to create a perfect organism, or even to become one. Now we consider him by the via of Destruction, and it's a long new path ahead if - again - all of this proves to be true.

"Sometimes, to create one must first destroy..."  Even this statement would fit perfectly a "motivation" of him to destruction, but again - lead by this wish of becoming "God", and passing from creation to Creator - not moved by some hate towards human race, or something like that... but anyway, that's just my thoughts.

Damn longest 49 days in mankind history.

A theory I just came up with prior to any coffee this morning :-) ...

Between 'Prometheus' and 'Alien: Covenant', David has been using Shaw, or her reproductive system in some way, while he goes around to different planets with different civilizations and runs experiments on the civilizations in order to try to create the "perfect organism" that will eliminate humans or any of their "relatives" (like Engineers or other humanoids).  David's motive?  Not sure, but maybe he thinks humans are beneath him and the "humanoid" experiment has run its course... it's time for synthetics to rule and he is "God" now.  Anyway, something happens and the ship eventually crashes on one of the planets he visited.  Unfortunately, this planet did not have any spacecraft.  David, having no ship to fly to another planet and continue his experiments (no life left as noted by Daniels' comment "No birds. No animals. Nothing"), sends a signal waiting for another ship to arrive.  Along with the ship comes more life to experiment with and of course a ship to allow him to continue to more planets.  The ship that arrives... Covenant.

This would also explain why Weyland ceased making then David and Walter models...which give us Ash. 

I think we will hear David and Walter using the phrase "perfect organism" or something very similar.  Ash ends up using the same phrase as we know.  Maybe no matter what model android is made by Weyland, there is a "ghost in the machine", i.e., a thought or purpose or even sentient being inside Weyland's mainframe and it will always "come out", regardless of which model is made. In other words, Walter may not be everyone's best friend either.

I feel Walter will change to obtain Davids magnificence for the company. David in turn will shut Walter down and take his regenerative qualities, which will be used to further perfect his work

As per @membrane, he now has transport, with a bonus of 100's of juicy colonists at his disposal 

However Mother Daniels may have a big say in the outcome 

I guess David is holding a grudge against the engineers for the whole ripping his head off thing still.

Some are saying (those who attended) the footage shown will not be in the theatrical release. 

A red herring curve ball!

The new website style is amazing.

Well, I didn't want to look . . . then I did  . . . then wished I hadn't.

I hope this is mixed up or a fishy fools tale.

Doesn't seem 'right' to me?!

I'm confused about one thing, if these engineers/humanoids were bombed with the goo, begin to transform horribly into xenos, then why are they petrified and not blobs of flesh? Perhaps will have to wait for movie to get answer...

Viral marketing, anyone? ;)

Maybe the scene showed at CinemaCon is actually from 'Alien: Awakening' (the movie between 'Prometheus' and 'Alien: Covenant' per Ridley Scott's comment).

Membrane:  (Mar-31-2017 6:36 AM) Awesome theory Membrane – and before coffee too!!! I can visualise this actually happening. Please do share more if you find “caffeine” elaborates or accelerates your thinking further or generates new ideas! This new “reveal” at Cinemacom has totally messed up my thinking lol!!! :D

TBF thats a good shout

Some bloke in the pub just said that 'I hear its tea David pours on those poor engineers' 

The trick William Potter is not minding that its red hot tea....

I think red herring, as theres no trailer or footage shown to the public and a major debate is how the planet gets hit by something.

could it be the engineers are into sacrifices? Beginning of prometheus, engineer sacrifices to create life, maybe the bad ones just crash their ship into a planet and allow themselves to be wiped out with the enemy, like a suicide bomber? Maybe david has learnt the engineer ethos and crashed the ship deliberately and set off the beacon or his internal transmitter to bring in a rescue party, which can then be co-opted. Like a sniper hunting a squad, injure one, the rest will come.

david is pure evil.

Hold on... let's back up a bit.

A couple of the reviews I've read mention at least two ships arriving - One report states "A bunch" and the other "Two ships dock together - tail to tail"

Who's piloting the other ships? - I'm beginning to think the sequence of events are edited together to confuse those who saw the trailer. The first could be a flashback of what the Engineers were doing 2000 years ago (destroying their creations - not just us on Earth, but other seeded civilizations). Hence multiple ships.
Then 2000 years later, David pops along to Paradise finish off what the Engineers started?

And what's with all the Juggernauts crashing all over the place - One in Prometheus (admittedly it was knocked out of the sky), this one in A:C and the one on LV426?

If David dropped the mutagen on the population on Paradise, they might have defended themselves and “shot” the juggernaut down (crash landing close to a brook where the mutagen continued to leak out). But why do all the bodies look petrified? It’s been popular in this forum to compare the bodies with those of Pompeii, but those are casts made in this way:

@David007

"Some are saying (those who attended) the footage shown will not be in the theatrical release. "

Could I get a source on that?

Assuming this "David deciding fate" angle is accurate:

When compared to the Prometheus story, one must ask ...

1) Are the Engineers like Prometheus, being punished by a higher power for stealing their tools?

2) Or is this the opposite .... a Prometheus story where the Gods got what they worried about - the Created used their tools against them and destroyed them?

I am intrigued that I can't say one way or the other

@Grinning & Dropping Linen

"Rapace was on set for 6 weeks"

I am sure it was said she did a weeks worth of shooting or arrived on set to do weeks worth, both as in 7 Days worth so that would equal to about 5-8 Minutes of Footage. I dont recall any mention  of a number of weeks but a number of people have mentioned she must have more than a cameo because she was on set for weeks... but again it could be a misinterpretation of the report she was on set to do a weeks worth of shooting.

Ultimately who knows how long she was on set and what Scenes she had done, she could even had done some to be used for the Next Movie it would make sense if she also has a small role in that one to get those scenes all done together.

"Also, why would the black goo bombs transform the Engineers into aliens? At the start of Prometheus it disintegrated the one after drinking it before he fell in the water."

@SparklingAmbien

Indeed this was the one element, but we have to remember the stuff David was carrying with him is the same stuff that turned Fifield into a Mutant and the Worms into Hammerpedes and infected Shaws Womb to give us the Trilobite and Deacon.

"A couple of the reviews I've read mention at least two ships arriving - One report states "A bunch" and the other "Two ships dock together - tail to tail"

@SenseOfDoubt

I am not familiar with this, could it have meant Human Drop Ships or Engineer ones?

@LV226 and Response by Most others.

Indeed that is a puzzle those Engineer or other beings bodies are like Charred/Mummified like a Pompeii Incident, the scenes we have seen of these Engineers/Humanoids are and was Props so its interesting we will see Live Engineers that are then infected, but it makes you WANDER ... WHY use Props the only reason would be to either show then Blow Up, or Dissolve or indeed so they are found that way be the Covenant Crew i.e like  POMPEII 

This is something we have NOT seen the Black Goo do before, it would have either as far as what Prometheus had shown.

1) Mutated those Humanoids into Hybrids and so think of Fifield from Prometheus but maybe much more Xeno/Deacon DNA and thus something more Alien.

2) Broken down their DNA so they dissolve and then Potentially new Life would start from their broken down Molecules.

3) Maybe some infected Females, could turn into Fifield like Monsters but then they would give Birth to a more Alien Organism which would be more like a Trilobite/Face Hugger.

WE NEED TO LOOK AT THE FACT!

That the crew of the Covenant do arrive and come across the Charred Remains of some of these beings, which rules out the above 3 Potential Fates.

This Logically means...

A) Those behind the movie have ignored Prometheus and came up with a whole new way the Black Goo can work in certain ways and gone for a Straight Forwards Lazy Plot.

B) At some point a Fail Safe Device has been Activated to Destroy these Infected Engineers/Beings.

As for the Crashed Juggernaught...

Thats a good Question where we have to consider a likely explanation as.

1) Shaw or something else on the Ship, manages to Crash the Ship, either as a attempt to Stop David or just a consequence of them attacking him.

2) David loses control of the Ship due to him leaving the  Controls to watch over his Destruction and the ship losses control.

Both of these will still leave us with the puzzle as far as how many of these beings still look Pompeii style when the Covenant arrives.  So Option 3 is my preferred one.

3) After David causes this Destruction there are a few or one Engineer/being in that Central Cathedral and he activates a Fail Safe that Discharges a Energy Weapon that changes all those beings into Pompeii like Remains (Thus stopping the effects of the Black Goo) and at the same time this Energy Blast sends Davids Juggernaught crashing into the Woods.

This is intriguing:

How has David’s relationship with Shaw changed over ten years?

FASSBENDER: Like any good marriage. [Laughs.] There’s a real affection there between the two of them. I think they get on each other’s nerves. Well, he gets on her nerves rather. But I suppose they went through quite a lot together in Prometheus. So there is a bond there, for sure.

http://collider.com/alien-covenant-michael-fassbender-interview/#poster

I still don't know bout this. There are a few things that bug me.

First off, the reports seem to be quite different, depending on the source.

The Ship:

"... the ship from the last movie...". Wich one exactly? Excluding the Prometheus, for obvious reasons, there are two other ships. The juggernaut AND the one from the beginning, when the engineer is sacrificed.

Some even say there is more than one ship involved.

The androids voice:

The "androids" monologue is apparently presented as voice over. Therefor it could be out of context.

It is possible that there is a scene when David tells the covenant crew about the engineers and what was THEIR opinion bout mankind. He could even be citing the Engineer from Prometheus. As far as I'm aware it is still unclear what David and the Engineer were talking about.

The android is watching...:

What was the scene like? Him being shown watching at something without this something being shown? 

All in all the screening could be crafty cut to deceive the audience 'coz they knew the communities, including us, would theorize and discuss the shit outta it.

Again, viral marketing, anyone? ;)

And then there is the revealing Gizmodo spoiler:

"The footage started with an arc-like ship flying in the air. Think of it like an upside-down U, with the opening at the bottom. It then links with the iconic ship we recognize from LV-426 and other Alien films—the craft is a similar shape, but is flying in a different configuration. They link with their open ends, kind of like a puzzle, and we realize this is all happening above a civilization of creatures. They aren’t humans. Nor are they engineers. They seem to be something in between. It’s then that we see David—the android we first met in Prometheus, played by Michael Fassbender—on the ship, where he unleashes hundreds of black canisters. These are the same ones we saw in Prometheus (and in the image above) and, as they hit the ground, they begin to destroy the population with the black, liquid death.

 The human-like creatures are running and screaming as this black death just takes over everything. Bodies rip apart. Bodies melt. They climb on each other but there is no stopping it. David and his disease, or whatever you’d call it, have wiped out this entire population. The footage continues, and it’s revealed that this is the planet the Covenant will land on. The crew will see this very destruction with their own eyes and not be able to fathom what happened here. We think they are about to find out.

After a montage of action and horror aboard the ship with the iconic xenomorph, we then see David again, and he admits that the human race is over but that he has found perfection. No—he has created it, and we see images of the xenomorph. (This was also revealed in footage screened a few weeks ago.)"

http://io9.gizmodo.com/new-alien-covenant-footage-showed-destruction-on-a-who-1793864681

That´s it: the Alien franchise is really all about AI gone south.  What´s ok for me.

Then it seems that David is in a mission to exterminate all the civilizations created by the Engineers.  What means that he has common ground with them, or learned something from them.  The question is: why he didn´t wiped out human civilization first?  Maybe he was just warming up, seeing what the black goo is capable, researching the "optimal lifeform" (what, frankly, I think is a very silly objective, because anyone versed in evolution knows that lifeforms can be optimal only given a determined context).  I also believe something happened that made his ship to crash, making him unable to resume his mission.  This gives more credibility to the thesis that he probably set up the common human distress signal to attract a new ship.  If this is true probably his main drive in Alien Covenant will be to take the Covenant by force...

If David bombed them, is it not possible that they had weapons and damaged the juggernaut before being overrun, causing it to crash.

Maybe the engineers have a failsafe and that's why there are burnt remains.

Maybe the burnt remains are from a past civil war and we get to see flash backs.......

I think this one will be very vague and drawn out but with lots of alien action. Its gonna be great I'm sure but give us some answers from the last film. Hey that protomorph rib cage chest plate looks just like that weird bone / tool that has opened the chest cavity of the cedaver in David's lab. The Android has really taken over here!

Indeed we have very different reports on this shot here are some of the differences, i cant remember the sources for each sorry.

*Juggernaught hovers above these beings and bombs them with Urns.

*Two ships join up together and then unleashes the bombs.

*Two other objects rise and join with the Juggernaught and then it bombs those beings.

As for what happens next, again we get THREE kinds of different reports.

*These beings start to try and run away and the Black Goo covers them and they claw at their skins and start to dissolve.

*These beings are covered in the Black Goo and start to cough up Black Blood and some turn into Monsters while others start to dissolve

*The Black Goo covers these beings and seems to burn their skin and they fall to the ground in pain.

So i hope they have a good explanation for the Scene and the following.

*Why this bombardment does something different to what we have seen the Black Goo do in Prometheus.

*Why there is no evidence of any empty Urns in any of the shots.

So i think they have to show us either.

1) A Fail Safe Device goes off that Burns all those Engineers and prevents a outbreak

2) When the Urns are used as intended they perform in a different way and so the whole Weapon System of the Juggernaught when it uses the Urns delivers a different result compared to messing around with the Urns on their own.

This is one of the posts that should have a spoiler warning to it before we click at the link.