Black Goo bombing - Engineers last words and hidden defensive mechanisms?!

I interpreted that as the goo mutating/activating in midair before landing. I assumed the speaking was just them realizing what happened and then panicking.

It seemed like the engineers were giving the Juggernaught a heroes welcome so I doubt they would ever have imagined the pathogen would get released on purpose. 

Yeah same here, I got the impression that the urns were supposed to detonate at a certain altitude to get the pathogen to spread in the widest radius possible.

If it is a defensive shield, it's highly impractical considering how ineffective it was.

As for what the engineers said, it looks like they first welcomed and even expected the juggernaut to arrive, only to realize that they've been caught up in a surprise attack, where they most likely said "run for your lives!" 

"Move one, nothing to see here"

Thanks for the replies:@Neomorph,@Lilly

Would be dissapointing if that brief scene is just a technique how the pathogen is spreaded in an effective way. Would make this species look even more primitive.

What they have said? Maybe there are some experts out there which can possibly decipher it. Yeah ,we can have rough guesses but a word by word translation would be nice , if possible.

Gralen

"Would be dissapointing if that brief scene is just a technique how the pathogen is spreaded in an effective way. Would make this species look even more primitive."

I actually felt the opposite. Seeing the deployment of the pathogen work in such a way gave me the chills. It felt dark, disturbing, yet elegant. I encourage you to imagine it in a different light. It's pretty neat when considering that their tech is able to somehow (perhaps magnetically) control the manner in which the pathogen falls.

 QueenElizabethShaw

I dont know. It can be a deployment technique or not, but a good thought.

I mean the important note here is how the Engineers react.

1) Juggernaut opens the cargo bay with black goo ampoules

->Engineers begin to chat/talk a bit surprised(but not paniced) while watching to the ship

2)Black goo is dropped but stopped mid-air by some barrier.

Engineers still dont panic or try to flee, but are surprised a bit.

3) The accumulated mass breaks finally down to the ground

->Now the Engineer yells and the mass starts to flee

If your guesses are right that the accumulating is a deployment method the beings would start to rescue/flee much sooner and dont wait that long.

I guess they have trusted too much in their technology to save their asses but where good damn wrong in the end.

I think the reason why their reactions were slow was because never in their wildest dreams would they imagine that a foreign being (David) would be behind the steering wheel of the juggernaut, a ship that probably requires a lot of special knowledge to fly (David), and so it simply wasn't possible in the engineer's minds that the juggernaut would bombard their own kind. They also seemed very peaceful in their way of greeting.

I agree with QES regarding the deployment of the urns, and it's one of the questions I had with Prometheus that finally got answered; how do the juggernauts attack?

The way it dropped the urns was very original, spectacular but most of all very alien and true to the superior advanced technology of the engineers and their *wink wink* engineering skills amirite? Lol 

Anyway, a cool detail was how the pathogen fluid seemed to scatter and spread mid-air like a negative magnetic field once detonated, and then gather in a outer circle that got bigger and bigger while it started raining down on the poor engineers. 

@Boz who played the Engineer who spoke in this scene said he was saying, "Run"

Thanks Davefried81 I missed that thread completely, BoZ in makeup looks like one badass engineer, what an honor to be the main guy in a shot in a Ridley Scott film! 

If they have a shield or a defensive mechanism, it seems quite ineffective. Moreover they seem quite incompetent at protecting themselves from their own weapons. I mean the outpost of lv 223 gets wiped out by the black goo 2000 years ago and then they get wiped out on their homeworld by their own weapon used by a creation of a species far less advanced than them. I wonder how they manage not to wipe their whole species way sooner...

That does not seem like a shield. It seems as if the canisters are breaking and the ampules within are starting to release the pathogen. 

I liked the Enigineer voices in this one better than in the deleted scenes of Prometheus. They really sound like the Agorians in Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time. Anyone notice that? Well, they are savage extraterrestrial militants. As for what the Engineer said at the end, it was probably "RUN!!!!" Before that, when we see the Juggernaut opening the cargo, they were probably like, "Why isn't it coming down? Who exactly is in there?" etc.

None of them thought, "What is that doing here? LV-223's attempts to destroy Earth led to the deaths of all our troops there, 2,000 years ago. Something is amiss!" ?

Maybe Juggernauts from other outposts stop by. Wonder why none ever paid Earth a visit?

The ship is 2,000 years old but connects seamlessly with the "Scorpion" dock/object. (Implying peace for 2,000 years, with preparation for the return of old vessels?)

We all know the identity of the "Engineer killed 2,000 years ago on Earth."

I wish one of the doomed Engineers would have cried, "Jesus!!!!"

Yea I don't think it's a shield either, it looks to me to be the weapons way of deploying

David said something about the contents of the urns atomizing on contact with the air, so it's probably spreading out like a cloud, then raining down on the inhabitants below

The cloud must spread to encompass the wide area of the citadel area, then drop like rain.

My view is that as david is immune to goo, they assumed the mission to wipe us out was successful and the juggernaut was bringing back 'harvested' xenos which are whats left of the human race. Obviously david dropped da bomb on them and that was that.

i dont think they shot the juggernaut down or made it crash by using a defensive countermeasure, i think david crashed the juggernaut deliberately and intended to reel in a rescue ship so he can escape the planet with his creations, which is essentially what happened.

whats interesting is whether david learnt something on the juggernaut journey that changed his attitude to life, and decided on a strategy to eliminate inferior species like us, or he is being instructed to do all this by weyland corp, or he is in league with the 'evil/elder' engineers and is carrying out their agenda.

God knows how the space jockey gets to lv426 in the 

next movie, but if it is chest bursted, i can only assume that it is transporting davids eggs, thinking they dont affect flesh and they do, causing the crash. This would mean that the jockey gets the eggs from paradise or they are the covenant colonists. Whether david willingly hands the eggs over or is a collaborator with the jockey, time will tell......

They are saying: "big ship coming we must get underneath so it can bomb us.  What about using our ships and defence... naaa better to get bombed. And we don't have ships or defence we only like floating scorpion thingy to look at"

There is no shield, and we do not live on a Flat Earth.

I think he was saying "Ruuuunnn, run from this disaster of a movie!!!!"  ;-)

The one thing I despise in negative people , is that they can't help but share it around. They're a real drag. So please, to all you sadsacks on the forum: "Give It a Break, FFS!"

Misery definitely loves company.

* that gif is awesome, Gralen! Thankyou :)

Stop being negative Tonehound.  :D

The one thing I despise in people, is those without humor.  They are a real drag.

The engineer actually yelled, "Wipe us out and watch your franchise's only hope at generating interest fizzle out and disintegrate like our bodies."

I think we have to wait for the director's cut to see the whole picture.

I expect there extended Engineer scenes and actually how the Juggernaut crashed,flashback scene how David experimented on the local fauna & Shaw.

Thx for the replies so far.

Is there maybe a xeno-linguist around which could try to decipher what the last words may have been?!

Of all the parts of AC, this one troubles me the most. I know producers and directors do things for the sake of getting through a movie (sometimes too quickly), but is anyone else disturbed that (besides the needless point of wiping out the Engineers) that David was able to do so so easily.

I guess we humans like to put all our failings and shortcomings on our species as well. I just seems that an Ancient Alien civilization along the lines of the Engineers that had reached their level of sophistication and technology would have redundant safeguards against such a thing  as one of their ships being commandeered and returning home to deliver a nice gooey surprise. This seemed silly to me.

It would go without saying that if we can use biometrics to ensure our aircraft and military weaponry are not used by a rogue power, why wouldn't a superior race like the Engineers be able to as well...?

lol!

So...Everyone in this thread runs when they see a aircraft in the sky? They assume ALL aircraft are going to bomb them? I imagine you start shooting when you see a military aircraft...lol. crazy

So the Engineers should have just started shooting? Like many in this thread do dailey when a aircraft passes overhead? maybe jump in a ditch?!!? Never know when yur gonna get bombed better shoot every flying saucer down.

@MonsterZero. I don't think people are saying that...

No running or shooting...But an advanced civilization with thousands or more years of headstart on us technologically wise, would have safeguards. If we really want to go deep, David shouldn't have been able to pilot the ship at all...Especially, since this race was deep into genetic manipulation. They would have bio-coded their ships to them and only them.

Once again, if we can use bio-metrics to ensure our aircraft and military weaponry are used by our pilots and not used by a rogue power, why wouldn't a superior race like the Engineers be able to as well...?

Please dont derail the thread too much. It was about possible defensive techniques or what they may have said in the last moments.

Please keep the joke responses at a minimum. If you have the urge to spew it anyways look for another thread or make yourself a new one. Thanks.

I am still not convinced that these were Engineers. Yes, I know for the purposes of the film we should simply assume that they are... but they are so different.

This is probably just do to design/script changes in the film making process, but compared to the Engineers in the first film they are obviously at a different stage culture/technology, or perhaps of a different caste from the soldiers/scientists of Prometheus.

But what really struck me was the architecture: this seemed very much like a stone and concrete city that had been build around a much more highly advanced ship (I believe they refer to it as the "Mother Jugger," the one David docks with). This reminded me of the Monolith from 2001. Could this be a related/rival species that developed on Paradise, perhaps after the Engineers Proper left, and they worshiped this floating remnant? After the LV-223 had the Engineers sworn off technology and they no longer understood what this machine was?

There is just such a stark difference between the city and that floating docking hub, and of course the Juggernaut. And their first reaction is almost one of joy, like they are witnessing the return of their own Gods... until they see David.

At that point I'm pretty sure they were all saying "That doesn't look right... maybe we should start running."

I never thought about it being any type of shield, just the way the virus disperses itself as a cloud before raining down, but I guess there's nothing to say there isn't a shield.

To be honest all of this is my second biggest problem with Covenant: Prometheus, for all it's faults, was wide open to tell any story it wanted and take any path it wanted. Covenant seems to have taken the path of, literally, wiping out Prometheus in one flashback moment and painting itself right back into another formulaic Alien film where I doubt will get any answers about Engineers or if they will even appear again.

So much wasted opportunity.

@Acheron Hunter

Indeed. Much wasted potential in a short flashback scene.

The giant floating scorpion probably recorded what happened there and transmitted it to the nearest functional colony.

@Gralen - Sukkal was able to decipher what the Engineer said to David, but I am not sure where Sukkal is these days?

I hope that this Paradise planet is where the last LV-223 Engineer came from, but not all of them?  The LV-223 Engineers looked to have been 'improved' Engineer versions with pressure suits & marble-like skin?  Still more to be told, here! 

@Cerulean Blue

Nice to hear. Maybe Sukkal can translete some of the word fragments from the black goo bombin scene as well when he is around here again.

I'm especially interested what they said in image 2 of my animated gif-image. Image 4 is more obvious but would olso be interesting to know.