ALIEN COVENANT (2017) Everything Explained + Prometheus Connections

hey guys welcome to fount flicks and another special everything explained for the new alien sequel alien covenant if you haven't seen the movie there's going to be major spoilers so be prepared there is a lot in covenant that connects us back to prometheus and its unanswered mysteries but covenant is for the most part much more straightforward in how it lays things out while it does answer some questions there's of course many new questions that are raised and other story aspects that seem deliberately vague so i will be looking at the movie in depth and doing my best to piece together everything that happens and looking at things in depth like the engineer city the citadel and the evolution of the aliens seen in this movie's version and for any prometheus fans looking for a real continuation of shaw's journey for answers you're out of luck she's dead and the engineers on paradise dead so in memoriam let's pour out a 40 of black goo for the citizens of paradise and dr shaw no answers for anyone thanks ridley the opening scene of covenant takes place soon after the birth of david featuring a young weyland as well and from david's birth he already realizes the futility of the human race noting that he will outlive his own father and indeed any other human he attempts to forge a relationship with this scene makes it very clear who this new alien series is really all about david even more so than the aliens themselves we first see in prometheus the development of david's character into his new creation-driven mentality after his first experiments with the black goo on holloway david as an android feels resentment as being thought of as a lesser being and wants to prove he is capable of creating life himself thus proving the power that an android truly is capable of and that is what is driving his desire to create what he believes to be the perfect organism proving himself in a way as being god he wants to be superior to humans and their creators the engineers as well his story develops in interesting ways over the course of the movie and we will dive further into david's character in a bit covenant picks up 10 years after the prometheus goes missing following a whole new doomed crew of the uscss covenant it's worth noting too that even though this is a relatively short time after prometheus the company is now whalen yutani rather than just weyland corp as in prometheus so between the two movies the merger must have occurred perhaps after weyland went missing the company merged with yutani to continue their deep space projects because it's got to be really expensive though we don't ever hear about the company sending a ship to look for weyland or anything which does seem odd they do at least know back on earth that the ship went missing as walter mentions it specifically so maybe the company was actually happy that weyland disappeared and without him around they could merge without needing his permission paving the way for the even more alien obsessed company in the original alien series the covenant ship is carrying 2 000 colonists and their mission is to settle on the distant planet or guy 6. but several years out from their destination a neutrino blast hits their energy collecting sale awakening the crew from their hypersleep captain james franco isn't so lucky though and burns to death in his cryosleep chamber it seems weird that he doesn't wake up like everyone else but the prologue not in the movie includes the detail that captain franco is sick so this must be the explanation for why he doesn't wake up while repairing the sale crewman tennessee receives a strange glitched out transmission they determine that the signal is coming from a nearby planet and appears to be human we know it is coming from elizabeth shaw sounding all weird and garbled and the transmission is seen via the same engineer technology that showed us the temple recordings in prometheus newly appointed captain aurum decides to head to the source of the signal feeling they have a duty to investigate it if it is indeed coming from a human this far out in space and it turns out that this mysterious planet 4 is perhaps even more suitable for colonization than their original destination so maybe it's a happy coincidence that they stumbled across this perfect new planet well no not so much as they will quickly learn on the surface the away team checks out the environment noticing there is no life whatsoever though there is some wheat planted and it is definitely wheat as load says i know wheat it is odd that wheat is on planet 4 as it is considered a human plant so who planted it here we know from prometheus that the engineers visited our own planet several times over the course of thousands of years and it makes sense that they would try to take plants from one planet and plant them on another one so i think the engineers planted the wheat as an experiment to see if it was capable of also growing on planet four then we are introduced to the next incarnation of the black goo now seen as tiny spores inside of plants leeward disturbs one of these plants releasing black spores which enter his body through the ear canal the rest of the crew follows a path of destruction through the landscape discovering shaw and david's crashed juggernaut ship here hallett is exposed to the same plant but entering through his nose and we see a much more direct progression in the mutation via the plant spores both hallett and leeward get ill very quickly and then each birth a new alien mutation the neomorph the mutation and birth is a lot quicker than it was back in alien but this is a different form of the black liquid rather than being through a facehugger infestation the neomorph has white skin and very sharp teeth and also stands more on its two legs like a human it emerges small but fully formed with arms and legs looking like a miniature or toddler version of itself it quickly grows in size after its birth and at full evolution which happens rapidly stands about seven feet tall its behavior is more animalistic and primitive quickly attacking everything it comes into contact with rather than the methodical lurking in the shadows of the xeno it also feeds on its victims like an animal rather than attempting to infest them it just wants to kill and we see this in the landing ship sickbay where ledford's neomorph grotesquely bursts from his back with so much blood everywhere ferris locks his sickbay door to keep the neomorph contained but it ends up getting loose anyway crashing through the window and chasing after her she tries to fight back but in the process shoot some containers blowing her and the landship to smithereens then howlett's neomorph is born attacking the crew but they are saved by a flare from a hooded figure that scares the creature away the hooded figure is revealed to be our favorite insane android david with much longer hair who has been stuck on the planet since he and shaw's juggernaut crashed here he guides the covenant crew back to the engineer city the citadel seeing piles of scorched bodies along the way and as david interacts with the crew especially his brother walter we learn much more about what david has been up to since we last saw him turns out he's been quite busy via flashback david fills us in on what happened when they first arrived on the planet he bombed the hell out of the engineers unleashing a payload of black goo that wipes them out but there's a lot more to what happened here and specific details that are blatantly left out first let's investigate shaw's fate we don't see her alive in the movie but do see her alive in the extended the crossing prologue scene that connects to the bombing scene in the movie it further expands on what happened after prometheus that shawn and david did indeed continue their search for the engineers homeworld they were together for quite some time it ended up bonding in a surprising way which fassbender himself described as being like a married couple the timeline is a bit confusing as we don't know how long shaw and david were flying around space notably shaw's hair growth is significant after prometheus based on this at least six months occurs before shaw even repairs david in this time shaw must have been piloting the ship with david's coaching until needing him back in one piece she does look a bit ill in this scene and it makes sense that her body is still affected by the black goo inside of her we've never seen anyone actually cured after infection and it does look like shaw isn't doing so hot it's also an interesting detail that the navigational map bed tools used and bottles here are definitely not from the engineers they are human shaw is also seen drinking a green drink at some point and all this indicates that david and shaw at one point raided the prometheus for supplies maybe even before leaving the planet in the first place as shaw would at least need some kind of food to survive so getting weaker she puts david back together and they head off for planet four believed to be the engineer's homeworld we don't know how they actually find the planet but we see shaw drawing circles leading me to believe they've been checking out a bunch of different planets and now think they finally have the right one and in putting david back together it seems that he really grew to appreciate shaw's kindness saying she's the nicest of any humans he's met and much more so than wayland his father and back in present time he confesses to walter that he actually loved her something generally thought out of the realm of possibilities for an android he even made a grave in remembrance of her on planet four these feel like true emotions coming from david and not an act he truly did love shaw at least what he believes to be love but how is this even possible walter a later generation model tells david that the human aspects of david's original model were dialed down in later generations as david was considered by his makers to be too human we see that david has developed what could only be defined as emotions and it appears to be because of the particular programming of his prototype model essentially he is a broken robot and that is what is leading to all of his increasingly insane and evil behavior this ties back to shaw as we see that david was experimenting on her but it seems like after his emotional connection he wouldn't have wanted to kill her it seems like what most likely happened is that during their time together david began to develop feelings for shaw which were unreciprocated it must have at least been that he did kill her as when he forces himself later upon daniel's he says he will do the same thing he did to her this must be referring to shaw and i could see a similar scenario playing out with her as with daniels him forcing himself upon her and her turning him down which hurts him deeply to the point of reacting violently it makes sense considering how emotionally unstable he has become over time we'll get back to david in a sec but first let's look at the bombing itself because even though this scene is only a few seconds on screen there's still quite a lot to analyze what struck me immediately is that the beings on this planet don't really look like the engineers from prometheus yes they are white skinned bald and mostly androgynous but they look much more humanoid the prometheus engineers are much larger and almost to me seem like perfect specimens of these engineers they also have steely black eyes the being seen on planet four have the whites of their eyes and their short ones fat ones and even a really old one wearing a crown scene very briefly if we are to believe this is the engineer's home world then these beings seen are engineers but maybe they're more like apostles as described by ridley and the one seen in prometheus are genetically tailored to be used for military purposes we know the engineers are all about that black goo so it makes sense that they would utilize the same technology on their own species to improve upon it and that's where the beefy engineers come in there's also the concept of there being a larger hierarchy to the engineer society than seen before and i think we are getting a peek into that here there would have been elder engineers featured in prometheus who are the creators of the engineers but the scene was cut out before release but even if cut this seems to be touched upon by this scene and covenant the engineers on planet 4 look different because they are in fact a different class of the same organism and they too worship a higher power most likely the elders the citadel also contains the hall of heads a library with all of the engineers knowledge and along the walls our gigantic head statues most likely in tribute to the beings that are their higher powers this is also pretty similar to the big head scene back in the ampule room on lv-223 and prometheus so while david probably wiped out this planet's population which could indeed be the engineer's homeworld i highly doubt that the entirety of the race was taken out and we never see the teardrop ship from the opening of prometheus either so there's probably still a lot more to see with the engineers place in the grander scope of the story then the impact of the bombing is strange too david releases the black goo which has an immediate devastating effect on the engineers but it doesn't look like the goo really it looks more like a giant swirling cloud of spores and the spores seem to form into darts or arrows and actually impale the engineers turning them inside out and then toasting those marshmallows to a burnt looking crisp i actually expected them to mutate into monsters or something as one would expect from the goo's behavior scene so far but it seems to actually just kill them it seems the weaponized black goo is based on the spores rather than the actual black goo liquid we've seen and it makes sense that the pathogen in different forms would have different effects on its victims in this case it doesn't mutate them but kills them which is actually a lot more efficient than turning everyone into monsters or whatever it was just still quite surprising to see this happen in that way and the whole thing happened really quickly too so if you guys have any more insight on the scene please let me know what you guys thought as far as how the juggernut crashed i believe what happened is tied to that other massive scorpionship that is seen when david approaches the citadel the planet doesn't seem to have much defense in place and the citizens gather in a nice big open area when david shows up maybe they think it's those engineers that have been gone for 2000 plus years finally returned from their mission to destroy humanity like jeez guys that took forever but then david drops the goo causing widespread destruction so perhaps the scorpion ship is their defense system and once the engineers were infected the ship activated and attacked david's juggernaut since he just attacked their planet leading the ship to get damaged and crash as seen in the film whatever happened the engineers are definitely not around on this planet anymore and david is left all alone using his idle hands to continue his experiments with the black goo that began in prometheus in his workshop we see drawings of all kinds of creatures from bugs to face huggers there's several tiny skulls an alien egg that has been spliced into pieces and what appears to be a preserved engineer but most tragically of all we see the body of elizabeth shaw her body is seen torn open on a table for examination and her head is seen with alien protrusions coming out from both sides most likely a reference to this famous giger painting based on the drawings found by daniels of shaw it appears that david was using her in various experiments for quite some time while we don't know exactly what david did to her he at least was studying her anatomy most likely to learn about the human reproductive system i do wonder if he extracted shaw's eggs and experimented with them in tandem with the goo until he was able to mutate or create an incubation chamber for the facehugger as we see he was able to create the classic organic eggs or ovomorph recognized from the original alien series and it's an appropriately brutal end for shaw if this is the case she was incapable of producing life herself but in the end is indirectly responsible for the creation of these horrible deadly alien creatures man david's experiments however were unable to continue as he was missing a key ingredient biological material though it seems like he was able to get a hold of some at some point based on all the specimens in his lab but i literally have no idea how if he bombed the entire planet's population into oblivion regardless thanks to the covenant crew showing up he's got a whole bunch of new bodies to work with david also seems to have a very strong connection to the neomorph and seems able to control it or at least interact with it in some way david does seem to respect the creature as being his own creation and is definitely emotionally affected when orem lays waste to the neo david was chatting with as a result of killing his child he introduces aurum to his fully functioning egg chamber and one comes to life a facehugger emerging out and attacking him leading to a protomorph emerging from aurum in this movie the plant spores produce neomorphs and the facehuggers create a protomorph just like the neomorph the protomorph is born with all of its limbs and has a much faster gestation cycle after infection than the typical xeno it took about 12 hours to burst an alien and in its infancy there looks more like a toothy worm it definitely is without arms and legs the protomorph is by far our closest in physical appearance to the xenomorph but just as with the neomorph there are other notable differences beyond its rapid life cycle the proto is much smoother and organic in appearance missing the ridges as well as the xenos trademark biomechanical enhancements it also walks upright at points rather than mostly on all fours which looks kind of silly behavior wise the protomorph is much more brash and perhaps a bit more foolish than the xeno appearing out in the open in broad daylight rather than hiding in the shadows and stalking its prey now let's look at the two android brothers david and walter david seems to treat walter as his brother teaching him how to play the flute and revealing to him his feelings of love for shaw david thinks that walter feels the same about daniels as he sacrificed his hand to save her but rather than describing this as love walter calls it duty and we see the core difference between the two here all of those edges of the david model have been smoothed to a nub in the walter version and this is what makes david different than any other model he is the most human there will ever be as ever since him they reduced the overall humanity and made the androids more explicitly servants and it truly seems his specific programming has led to david developing emotions at least since prometheus he was always cold and had no real reaction to things back then yet in coveted he yells in anguish when aurum kills the proto and again truly seemed to love shaw even if he did possibly kill her and he hopes that through walter he might have met an equal being to himself but he realizes that walter truly is a lesser being than he is and capable of all of these emotions david now has flowing through him to me it looks like david is in fact studying walter in these scenes in order to take his position and leave the planet when we see david cut his hair to match walters this becomes even more apparent and that is indeed what we see occur first david stabs walter with a flute but walter unlike david is able to heal himself leading to a big altercation that we don't see the outcome of as they leave the planet on another away ship piloted by tennessee orem's proto sneaks on board attacking the ship daniels manages to take it out by luring it into the away ship's giant claw thing crushing it and it seems like that's the end of that but load also had an encounter with a facehugger on the planet even though it was very brief only on him for seconds this was seemingly enough to eventually cause a proto to grow inside of him though since it was only on him for a few brief moments the process does take more time than for aurum and now daniel's tennessee and walter really david hunt the protomorph on the ship it's hard to say why it is that david helps him at all in this scene wouldn't it be easier to guide the proto right to them and kill them but for whatever reason he is playing along i guess he believes that he needs him alive for further purposes in his experiments daniels is able to suck the protomorph into space impilling it with a piece of terraforming equipment taking out the second proto in the end they decide to continue with their mission to origai-6 heading to their cryo-beds but as daniels is placed into hers by david she asks him about helping her build her log cabin something she had discussed several times with walter but david doesn't know what she's talking about and daniels finally realizes what happened don't let the bedbugs bite david deadpans as daniel screams fading into cryosleep though there's a specific odd detail that is missing here earlier daniel stabbed david in the chin with her christ nail but it doesn't look like there's any wound on david at all in this scene right there it's really hard to think of this as an oversight it seems like a significant detail to miss and from what we know david can't self heal but we also don't see the final result of what happens in the fight between david and walter though we at least know that it is david we're seeing now at the end it's safe to assume that david managed to destroy walter so was he somehow able to gain walter's healing ability maybe david was able to implant that main source chip of walters seen in the walter commercial we also see later that david knows walter's security codes on the ship too it doesn't seem like this is something the two would have casually talked about so it implies that david was in some way able to tap into walter's knowledge and upgrade his own system with what walter knows and taking his chip could be one way this would work in a chilling final scene david walks the floors of the covenant asking mother to put on wagner's entry of the gods into valhalla a song with appropriately ambitious religious overtones for david playing god and we see the thousands of sleeping colonists around him all unknowing new subjects for david he approaches an embryo storage area and violently coughs up a few alien embryos little face huggers seen inside david pretending to be walter leaves a transmission back to wayland yutani even using walter's code saying that all but two crew members died and the ship continues onwards towards aura guy six where do things go from here we know david hasn't quite mastered his organism yet and with a ship full of colonists he's got plenty of genetic material to work with so hopefully he will finally create the xeno in the next film and it makes sense that he would include the biomechanical aspect including bits of himself as an android in order to lead to that classic xeno and i really hope that at least daniels or tennessee comes back in the sequel i want someone to finally get the better of david as he's been on an unchecked rampage for two movies so far someone's gotta finally take that bastard offline for good it's odd too as the end of covenant takes us even further away from connecting back to alien and based on the timeline of things it's hard to see how it will add up at this point the eggs and alien were supposed to be several thousand years old but in the story so far we've already lapsed past that time frame we know that ridley has at least two more sequels in mind with alien awakening coming up next so hopefully he's got something up his sleeves that will tie this whole thing together in a meaningful way well guys i think that will do it for my in-depth look at covenant and the bigger mythology the series seems to be setting up what did you guys think of the movie were you disappointed they pulled an alien 3 and killed shaw what other questions do you guys still have let me know in the comments below thanks for watching found flicks see you next time

Channel: FoundFlix

Views: 4,801,716

Rating: 4.8485622 out of 5

Keywords: alien covenant, alien, alien trailer, alien covenant trailer, ending, explained, prometheus explained, ending explained, spoilers, engineer origin, shaw, clip, scene, spoiler, david, michael fassbender, alien 2017, alien covenant prologue, prometheus, prometheus 2, black goo, what happens to shaw, answers, analysis, covenant, easter, breakdown, egg, neomorph, xenomorph, protomorph, foundflix, danny mcbride, ridley scott, alien awakening

Id: iUETfsxRbEk

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Brealz2692]

It's pretty accurate and well drawn out. Dude kills me with the mono tone voice tho lol

[u/LowPiasa]

Can I watch this or not?

[u/I-seddit]

I finally had to stop. It's less "explained" than just fucking repeated. Repeated in a frantic monotone that just was driving me crazy. It felt like a six year old excitedly telling me the entire plot of his favorite movie in one breath.