Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Jonathan B — 29 Nov 2017

Prometheus left us with the question why did the engineers want to kill us. It's a disappointment that this film doesn't answer that question. However, the plot makes sense in why we never find out.

(Spoiler Alert).

After seeing Prometheus a friend and I got into an argument about whether or not David was developing emotions. My argument was that he was in fact developing emotions. He's angry that he's treated as less than human by some of the living occupants. This explains why he chooses Dr. Shaw's husband to experiment on. Shaw's husband seems to treat him the worst. He asks Shaw's husband what he would do in order to find out the mystery he seeks. When he tells David "Anything" David spikes his drink with the black death. Only because, I believe, he was more or less given permission to do so by his chosen victim.

Dr. Shaw is the only one who seems to treat David with the respect humans get. She says thank you and please to him and even apologizes to him before she puts his head in a bag. We see the beginnings of his affection for Elizabeth. My friend angrily asserted robots don't develop emotions. I think all of that proves it. David is capable of being humiliated and humiliating others, falling in love and wants to rule a world.

In the opening of Covenant we see David's first day with his creator. He is noticing that he is fact quite superior to his master and Weyland does too. To try to keep David from exploiting his superiority Weyland reminds him he is only a servant by requesting David pour him some tea that is right next to him. David has to walk across the room in order to do it.

It appears that during the trip, by Shaw and David, to the new planet David comes to realize he could be a God by destroying all of the engineers on the planet by releasing the black death intended for earth upon them. He becomes master of the xenomorphs. Xenomorphs seem to die out quickly if they can't find living things to eat. They don't like vegetables, it would seem. So when the Covenant arrives it finds the planet barren of all animal life. However, the seeds of the Xenomorphs are waiting for living hosts to attack and of course they succeed in doing so.

I think Covenant takes place at roughly the same time the Nostromo is coming back from it's mining expedition. I hope the new movie explains how the ship on LV-426 ended up there. The engineer who'd been piloting the ship had been fossilized. So it must have crashed long before the beginning of the original Alien movie. Probably about the time the engineers were getting ready to go and destroy earth.