Shedding Some Light on David's Lab

...and a few more already posted here, but brightened.

Kethol - Amazing pics !!!!

The last one is most interesting after a first glance through. Looks like a hand on his head. Also reminds me of Prometheus and the head they find which ends up exploding.

Anyone got anything on this last pic with the dual head ?

looks like a sculpture by david perhaps

That is the only photo I have found of it. A section David sawed out of two Engineers that melded together after the pathogen bombing? It has a similar look to the deformed bodies that were outside.

I suppose it could be a sculpture David made, although I do not see any other sculptures in the lab.

EDIT - if you look at the photo underneath the one of Ridley above, you can see it in the background, to the left of the guy in the photo.

he has in a way created a sculpture of michaelangelos david using a dead engineer

More of a pose than sculpture, but he is definitely into drawing and displaying strange looking dead dead things.

David obviously came up with a way to neutralize the acidic blood of the face hugger and some of the other neomorph variations he has on display. They look like he has come up with some form of plastination to preserve them.

sculpt:to form into a particular shape.

regardless, I would say the 2 heads could go either way. david def isn't beyond cutting the heads off these 2 and displaying it on his mantle. is there a bright enough picture of the engineers outside for comparison?

wonder where the hosts came from to produce the early neomorphs.

pose: to place (someone, such as a model) in a studied attitude. to assume a posture or attitude usually for artistic purposes :)

There are several dead Engineer photos, but difficult to say for sure if this is the same process. Here is one of the night shots brightened up.

The actual props were painted a dirty yellow color.

yea its hard to tell. the 2 heads look more rock like to me but as I say could be either

It will be interesting to study the Blu Ray when it is released to see if there are any more "fused" bodies. Hard to determine from some of the screen caps we have.

from what iv read about the deleted scenes they all seem to be extended conversations and a scene where walter goes into daniels' room after her husbands death. nothing to suggest more on the citadel etc. the only thing iv heard that interests me is the extended scene 'down the stairs' or whatever its called when david takes oram into the egg chamber

That extended scene is probably just more of the dialogue that was in the book.

"wonder where the hosts came from to produce the early neomorphs."

I got the idea from something David said in the book that he had access to uninfected Engineers. They must not have all been killed in the bombing. The one he posed as Michelangelo's David looks un-deformed/uninfected. The skin on half of his face and in his hands looks clean and white as well.

yea would be plausible that not all engineers came to the citadel. iv not read the book yet. made the mistake of getting the hard back

This is what David said.

"As you can see, my time here hasn't been wasted. It's in my nature to keep busy. Keep the mind exercised and all that, lest it fall prey to disorder from misuse." He indicated the massive body of the Engineer. "This specimen was particularly arduous to complete, and messy, you can imagine. Fortunately with thousands of examples from which to choose, I was able to practice on as many as I wished before finally getting this one right"

you would wonder how, if there were thousands of survivors, why they didn't form together to take care of david

There is a whole movie there that we did not get to see.

and will probably never get to. that's my biggest problem with AC, it was to fast paced and jumped to often without filling in the gaps

Nice work Kethol some great images you have shared!

"As you can see, my time here hasn't been wasted. It's in my nature to keep busy. Keep the mind exercised and all that, lest it fall prey to disorder from misuse." He indicated the massive body of the Engineer. "This specimen was particularly arduous to complete, and messy, you can imagine. Fortunately with thousands of examples from which to choose, I was able to practice on as many as I wished before finally getting this one right"

I don't know if I would read too much into this.  He doesn't say they were uninfected or alive, just that he had thousands to choose from.  Although judging by the "charred" bodies outside, it doesn't look like he'd be able to get as clean or fleshy of a specimen from there.

Judging by the horribly desiccated look of those "charred" bodies outside, he had to have used an uninfected body for his "David" statue.

There also had to be uninfected Engineers and animals available to him, or his lab would be a bit empty :)

id would agree. he has early forms of neomorph in his lab so he had to get the hosts from somewhere I would imagine.

Looking at that plastinated engineer, it looks to be almost the same height as david and oram. He is standing on some type of stand/stone.

No, he is Engineer sized. Oram is just much closer.

He is still on a base on the make up picture. Looks to me like your average basketball player. "Shrugs"

That's about right. The one in Prometheus was just a little over 7'. They are not giants. The actor who played the Engineer in the Juggernaut was 7' 1" tall.

Thats awesome Kethol, its good to see all this, as the film moving fast, could not take it all in.

David8 definetly was suffering from HAL9000 syndrome, and when the engineers come back and see what he has done, they are going to be mighty pissed.

I added a bunch more. There is definitely a lot to see.

Such a beautiful set. Going to feature this post.

Do I spy the exterior of the set in the top right corner?  This is a still from the movie right?  I have to see if this goof made it into the final HD render!

http://www.alien-covenant.com/aliencovenant_uploads/xAlienCovenant_Luma_ITW_12.jpg.pagespeed.ic.IHNvxs4LeX.webp

Most of these are on set photos, not screen grabs, so some of the off set areas are visible in some photos.

The face hugger is a metaphor of the female genitalia, just to remind us how we once came out to this world violently by being grabbed from the head by two cold white hands (gloves).

So we have a cross sectioned Neomorph head and drawing in David's lab. Since Ridley has said those have smooth skin because of human DNA, I assumed we were meant to think this one was birthed from Shaw's body.

...but, the cross section drawing looks different, and there is also a baby Neomorph on the table in the lab, so David had more than one. Maybe this was a pre-exising breed, or it just looks the same if birthed from either an Engineer or human.

It looks identical to the one birthed from Hallett.

@Kethol

Wow, these are great! Thanks for posting them! The brightened picture of the vivisected Engineer is so much clearer! I kind of want to use it as my new profile picture...

Also, as for the double headed/conjoined Engineers...I do wonder if it may be a very dark reference to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele... He had a fascination with conjoined twins and, horrifically, tried to create some himself by surgically conjoining a pair of identical twin children.

Good point. David is just twisted enough to do attempt something like that.

yea he is certainly a twisted individual. but I don't see the earlier connection made to Hal900. 2 completely different arks

I am guessing these were transitional breeds, in between the Neomorph and the first version of the xenomorph birthed from mother Oram.

I count at least 4 drawings of other versions with elongated heads on the lab walls.

im guessing the top one would be the one david described as being too aggressive that he had to destroy lol looks one mean little creature