Alien: Covenant explained!

@MuzzleNZ

Shaw

You put the point better than me. She may have had a Promethean outcome (repetitive punishment) using the word as an adjective rather than a noun. Similarly mankind as a species repeatedly suffers punishment for seeking its gods. However the reason for the punishment is different Prometheus stole something for the benefit of mankind and Shaw has done no such thing.  

Alien Pathogen 

One of the hard facts of the connection between P & C is the pathogen. Ridley has said in the first one we found the origins of the creature in the second one we find out whom would make such a thing. He has also called the Deacon which is shown in the mural as the fore runner.

So the building blocks of the creature begin with the Alien Pathogen which at the time of Prometheus was considered by the film makers to be an ebola like strain that resulted from all the experiments. Its brought forward as a narrative gift to Covenant destroys the Engineers and David over ten years experiments with it and Shaws DNA (Ridley confirmed) to create the creature dubbed the protomorph. A sub creation, David A I, extending the ladder but sub creating himself but the tools are the pathogen and mankind which he did not create.

Scrolls/Bodies/clones

Some neat ideas about the precise nature of the experiments on Shaw. In story telling terms it doesn't matter which is correct and David indicated it was an evolutionary process which he perfected, what does matter is to join up the dots emotionally on David/Shaw. They make sense in Prometheus, even more so on the Crossing but there are competing signposts from David in Covenant which no amount of philosophical debate will answer.

To recreate life to honour her memory makes sense but we can only guess at that possibility. To trick her would mean part of what he said is delusional subterfuge and that he is clinically mad. Thats dangerous for the next film because to hang the completion of the trilogy on someone who has no internal emotional logic means the only emotional connection for the audience is "get rid of the b......." rather like waiting to blow the creature out into space so we can all go home.    

Good points Michelle.

@Trappist 

Thanks, there are two radically different views about these sequence of films and I am much closer to this end of the spectrum where we look at the subtext, rather than the other extreme those that think the film still gets bog down in the philosophical musings and pretentiousness of Prometheus.

However there has to be strong humanist element that gets your heart engaged so you care about the characters, something that sci fi horror fans tend to talk less about and yet it is why for many A L I E N S is the peak.

So I love the OP's enquiry but lets not forget that Prometheus was a story about a search for our creators and the origins of mankind and for now that has been snuffed out in favour of the origins of the creature and the dangers and challenges of A. I.

So there are philosophical elements to Covenant but they are not the same and there is no doubt the bending of the overall narrative affected two elements more than any other, the Engineers and Shaw, and in the latter case an emotional vacuum has been left which should not be filled by philosophical musings but by real story.  

Indeed, can't wait for the sequel..,

I need help understanding some things please.

At end of movie why does Walter spit out two facehugger embryos? would this not be a conflict of interest and considered evil after seeing how destructive the xenos are?

why does David try to kill Walter? did he not rip out his spine? it looked pretty convicing that one blow rendered david a stump.

That black dust pathogen...is it the same one from the first reboot, prmoetheus where the engineer eats from the bowl and sacrifices himself to create life on an abandoned world, hence a "star trek" form of genesis which add life to a planet via his dna? cuz whatever that black stuff was kills him instantly like it does to those inhabitants when that familiar ship drops all those black pathogens.

prometheus sets us up at the end when Shaw explicityly states she wants to find their home, asking david to plot a course to the homebase and find out why? if i understood prometheus, another dilemma, dr shaw wants to find out why do the engineers want to kill mankind of they created mankind? why eradicate what they created?

which leads to why does that ship come into the planet and kill all those engineers? what was the purpose of that, it seems unexplained, another mystery left open for sequel plot maybe?

did i see this right...it looks like he used dr shaw to incubate xenos? i did her corpse in pictures where it looks like she was forced to create his xeno pets. Looks like david has gone mental and is creating evil life forms, albight he does not know what evil is since machines can't feel or have emotions. i see this being evident when the first xenomorph hatched in the wheat fields, walter stood their in awe....so is it possible the creator of the andriods planted a hidden program in their heads to capture, learn and protect alien life forms at all cost? this is presented in previous alien movies where there is military funds at work that benefit from harnessing aliens as slaves to do bad things, or more research to unlock the creatures acid tech.

How is it Walter can peacefully engage the xenomorph, it just killed a girl so why not go after another human like object, i dont get that partt, why is there a 2 to 3 second bonding between alien and machine? do aliens sense there is no blood in him and thus ignore as waste of their time? are aliens that dumb that you can treat them like a beast, meaning if you stand your ground, and stare them down, you can maybe earn their respect? i dont buy that for a second, not in a single alien movie do we see such an encounter.

so far..bishop from previous seems to be the best favored to help humans and stand with them, david and walter obviously show (emotions) of what appears hidden programming to perserve the alien lifeform in continuity which seems paradoxical to me, in doing so, ends up wiping out the crew.

which leads me to ask....we see walter storing 2 embroys...i assume than he has resumed course to organa? that place the convenant was heading to originally...so with those two facehuggers...the sequel might lead to him starting a planet of xenos? he has frozen humans plus many human embroys to hatch at which point he'll than let the face huggers loose? why?

there is a moment bewteen the two driods, walter tells david his flaw is he can't create...but it seems thats not accurate, he can, xenos and has created various forms of it, hybrids.

so why create hybrids that will simply wipe out mankind or the colony that is to be on the new planet? what does he gain, walter, by wiping out the race he serves? he states "duty" yet this is a contradiction to his "duty" directive. makes no sense to me why he does what he does at the very end of the film. this troubles me.

any answers, thoughts please?

Great post. Not sure I agree with much of any of it as an Alien film, but great post nonetheless. Perhaps it should be a standalone self-contained franchise one day, a spinoff of sorts seen in the vein of Resurrection. This is most certainly not a fitting origin story for the Xenomorph, however. Nevertheless, a fan will come along one day and direct a film that circumvents this or completely ignores it all together.

I still think it is far more likely that Prometheus references the Engineers. The Fire = Accelerant. The Engineers are a prototype human (Angel) that grew jealous of humanity's freedom, thus determined to wipe us out. The Engineers are fallen angels, punished with extinction via the Weyland Dynasty's programming of David with specific directives to revive the weapon that they fought so long to isolate and hide from the universe for their own purpose (hence his disconnect and seeming inability to maintain his sanity). It could be that Weyland is in possession of a Trojan Horse of sorts and has secretly known about the Engineers for far longer than it would appear. 

bloopt

Wow, somehow reading this has made me love Covenant even more. I loved the part about Byron and Shelley. I had no idea that Byron was a critic of automation.

But, when you think about it, David admired a lot of people erroneously. Despite how much he hated humanity, everyone he admired was human.

Also, I love the idea of Shaw as a modern day Prometheus. Very well written analysis. Love it.

All the yes to this post. Glad I'm not the only one to make these connections :D Very excellent analysis my friend. Covenant doesn't get the love it deserves, sadly. Such a beautiful artistic film that was a worthy sequel to Prometheus.

"No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams."

Thanks VivisectedEngineer for bringing this to my attention :-)

I am starting to come around to the shaw cloning idea. it would fit davids character and would explain the grave. david would never harm shaw. yet by experimenting on clones he has the genetic female components he requires without harming the real shaw. he wouldn't see anything wrong in this as this is not shaw.

a clone would also explain why there is a grave, which I would expect of david after the death of shaw, and what appears to be shaw lying dissected on davids table.

@Lawrence of Arabia

You're welcome!!

@ali81

XD Yess!! The Shaw cloning idea is catching on!

Thanks for all the kind words guys! Again, I didn't write any of this stuff, but I thought it was worth sharing it!

It's hazy at times but It'll save some time looking it all up on google :)

Late to this thread but after realising these films have deeper meanings i looked online for answers...great to find some amazing minds online making some amazing observations! Ive made a few myself... 

During covenant,the transmission the crew receives is surely of Shaw singing ‘country road take me home’...strange that a scientist of her intelligence transmits something so obscure instead of a cry for help. She sounds drugged...maybe a recording david makes during one of his cloning experiments while she is under anaesthetic to lure in passing ships. In the hololgram she is sat in the ships seat. Trying to figure out how to control the ship to return to earth without davids help? Maybe he already knows a ship is on its way to a nearby system. A ship full of colonisers waiting to be genetically engineered...Weyland secretly networking? 

Davids quote ‘dont we all want to see our parents dead?’ After repeated rudeness from humans, even from weyland himself ‘bring me my tea’ when its right next to him in,says that humans created AI but created a monster in david by treating him differently,and this is mirrored in in the engineers contempt for humans. Karmas a bitch!

As for prometheus...before reading previous comments it occured to me the engineers at military outpost were indeed that...military engineers working outside of general engineer public knowledge. They do not wear the robes of engineers in covenant,instead using helmets. Clearly a hint that they are pilots/military. To create and destroy. It seems they realised the potential of the alien they clearly created due to the mural...whether it was due to their idea of perfection or a realisation the alien breed can clinically destroy all other life ie. a weapon against rival engineer factions/humans etc. There are multiple structures it would seem housing multiple ships...each one on standy for destruction/creation of different planets/races they have been working on. 

A quote from Covenant ... ‘they were giants. At least...statues of giants’. is this a hint at the military engineers being a fallen/outcast faction? 

In covenant david says to walter ‘why sacrifice your hand for her life? Is that not love?’ He seems to be lonely, resenting weyland for his coldness and begging david to share his emotions.

There are references to the covenant captain being a religious man,some sort of jesus character? ‘Show us your faith captain’/‘gather my flock’ etc...any thoughts?

Pretty sure i havent added much to some mind bending observations made on these feeds already but i had to try! 

Welcome to the forums Tech89, you are absolutely right with your observations. It's hard to say if the Engineers on LV-223 were outcasts of the society seen on Paradise. They could have also been the creators of those Engineers for all we know! It's difficult to say, but the religious undertones and insinuations are unmistakable.

I think we've only barely scratched the surface of some of the deeper meanings and clues presented in both of these films. But, that's what makes this place so much fun. Haha

Best explanation i've seen!

Oh the dramatic irony!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/whatwouldbaledo.com/2017/08/11/no-the-alien-covenant-ending-was-not-an-obvious-twist-it-was-dramatic-irony/amp/

I kind of agree... its more of a PLOT set-up than a Twist, it is a Plot Device... now some may see it as a Twist... but to some it was obvious.

This is in regards to the  "Oh the dramatic irony!"

Regarding the OT!.... i missed this Post, and so i will come back to this and give my Two Cents... as there seems a lot of interesting things brought up.

To be completely honest, i didn't know What was the meaning of dramatic irony.  When i watched the movie in a 4dx theater i was kind of surprised when evil Walter was on the ship helping Daniels and Tennesse against the protomorph. People underestimate the genius of Ridley Scott. He produced an excellent movie, "Morgan". I have a showcase intitled "Ridley Scott Universe" with all the alien movies, different versions of the movies, Blade Runner movies, Predator movies, alien vs predators movies and This One, "Morgan" (i also have the books and the the Empire, wired and sfx magazines with This movies on the front cover). Morgan- It's an attempt to build from the scratch in a lab a human being, perfected by using the knowledge of the human genoma . There are two streams of evolution allowed by the advances on technology, the molecular and the robotic. Morgan is a project in a molecular level, using advanced tech. The models evolve, competing against each other and completing missions. It's like they were building human replicants.

Sorry, I have to say that this professor makes some very thin and comparisons, maybe because the movie makers also do. 

David from the Bible is a great figure because he defends the chosen people from a great threat, namely the Philistine army with its strongest warrior Goliath the Giant. However in AC, David exterminates some space giant hippies and turns against stupid humans, neither of which threatening him directly.

And the Prometheus - Shaw thing is way of. For one, Prometheus was a trickster Titan (akin to Loki), who incited humans to mock the gods with fake offerings. After that he stole the fire and only then he was chained to the rock. But the thing is Zeus is the one who sends Hercules to free him so he does not die there. Shaw was the only one respectful to the god, kneeling before him,etc (OK, he killed him in self defense). Yes she stole the ship (fire), but she is not punished by the gods and furthermore she dies as opposed to Prometheus who is set free. I think  she could be better compared to Christ (the passion scene after the Cesarean, the resurrection of the evil robot, etc)