That said, though, I was very much at a loss for words the first time I saw Alien: Covenant. Basically, I thought it had many of the same issues as Prometheus (a cast of characters I, for the most part, didn't care about at, another troubled melding of deep, thematic exploration with cliched horror movie tropes, explanations for things that were more interesting when left enigmatic, and a story that was just a rehash of the plot of the original Alien), only compounded many times over in some cases, and I was taken aback by the sheer stupidity and predictability of many elements of the plot and the ludicrousness of its concepts. When the ultimate origin for the Aliens was revealed, I thought, "That's it?" I also knew the movie would frustrate fans of Prometheus because it didn't even bother to answer any of its questions and the third act felt like little more than a hollow, cliffnotes version of the original Alien's second half, combined with a helping of the Alien: Isolation PS4 game. I was fully prepared to make this an entry of Movies That Suck when I got around to reviewing it but, after rewatching it a couple of times before sitting down to do this (and yes, those were the first times I watched it since that initial viewing), I decided, as with Prometheus, not to go that route. Don't get me wrong: I don't like this film and still scratch my head at some of the decisions Scott and the screenwriters made, but like Prometheus, it does have strong elements, mostly on the technical side, that I can't overlook. In the end, it's a very frustrating movie.
In the year 2104, the Covenant, a colonization vessel with a 15-member crew, carrying a cargo of 2,000 colonists in stasis and 1,140 embryos, is inbound for the distant planet of Origae-6. While the fourteen human crew-members slumber in hyper-sleep, the ship is overseen by Walter, an android. While recharging the ship's energy grid through the use of large, paneled sails deployed from the rear, it's caught up in the shockwave of a large stellar explosion, forcing Walter to awaken the crew. In the chaos, Captain Jake Branson is burned alive in his stasis pod when it malfunctions, and 47 of the colonists die as well. Later, while performing repairs on the sails, Tennessee, the chief pilot, picks up a garbled transmission in his spacesuit's helmet. Analyzing it, they're surprised to find it's a human voice singing the John Denver song, Take Me Home, Country Roads. They pinpoint the source of the transmission as a small planet in a nearby system, one that appears to be quite habitable and is much closer than Origae-6, which will take another seven years for them to reach. While Daniels, the wife of the late Branson, is unsure if journeying to this planet would be worth the potential risk, the newly appointed captain, Chris Oram, decides to investigate regardless. Upon reaching the planet, the Covenant itself stays in orbit, while an expedition team takes a small lander ship down to the surface. They find it to be very Earth-like, with a breathable atmosphere, lots of water, and fields of wheat that appear to have been cultivated. While Oram's wife, Karine, decides to stay in one spot in order to take samples of the ecology, Oram and the rest of the team follow the signal to its source: a huge, crashed alien spaceship. Investigating, they find evidence that Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, the chief science officer of the Prometheus, was there and had sent the transmission. Two members of the expedition team, Ledward and Hallett, are infected by spores spewed from fungus-like organisms, resulting in small but ferocious alien creatures gestating within them and erupting from their bodies. In the ensuing chaos, the lander ship is destroyed, several members of the team are killed, and an ion storm prevents them from contacting the Covenant. Though they're saved by the intervention of David, the android who was also part of the Prometheus' crew, they begin to realize he's not as benign as he seems and is preparing to unleash something far more horrific on them and the human race at large.
Thanks to the book, The Art and Making of Alien: Covenant, which I flipped through one day when I was at a Barnes and Noble, I knew way ahead of time that Michael Fassbender did return in his role of the android, David, but I didn't expect the dark turn he takes in this story. In Prometheus, he was portrayed as morally ambiguous, never acting overtly threatening towards those around him and always speaking in a soft-spoken, polite manner, but there was a detectable hint of a disdain for mankind, with some of his "experiments" with the canisters of black liquid found in the Engineers' ship seeming to be more than just his following orders from Peter Weyland. In this film, David's seemingly less than admirable feelings towards humanity are expounded upon from the opening scene, which reveals the moment he was "birthed" when Weyland first activated him. After asking Weyland whether or not he can truly be called his father, as well as naming himself after looking at Michelangelo's famous statue, he asks Weyland about his own creator. Weyland tells him about his belief that the possible origin of humanity were not a random act and that they will one day find the answer together. David responds, "Allow me, then, a moment to consider. You seek your creator, I am looking at mine. I will serve you, yet you're human. You will die, I will not," revealing that his view of mankind was formed from the very beginning, and Weyland himself is clearly put off by this, as he simply tells David to serve him some tea in response. This, combined with his experiences in Prometheus, help to shape David into the character he is here, which is a full-on villain. Although he saves the surviving members of the expedition team from the attacking Neomorphs and leads them to a temple where they take shelter, it doesn't take a genius to figure out he has ulterior motives. Just from the way he's seen singing to himself while cutting his long hair after saving them hints at something sinister, and so do his conversations with the Covenant's android, Walter, such as when Walter asks about Weyland and David says, "He was human. Entirely unworthy of his creation. I pitied him at the end." He also talks about having grown to love Elizabeth Shaw after she had repaired him following his being reduced to nothing but a head thanks to the Engineer in the previous film. He mentions how he'd never felt such kindness before and likens it to Walter's own feeling towards Daniels. Walter insists he saved Daniels before simply out of duty but David tells him, "I know better." And yet, even when talking about that, there's something unsettling about it, which is confirmed when you found what he did to Shaw.
Though David initially tells the team that the canisters containing the black liquid housing the pathogen that causes the horrific mutations and creates new, deadly life-forms were accidentally dropped when he and Shaw arrived on the planet in the Engineer's spaceship, destroying and mutating all fauna on the planet, it's revealed that David actually did it deliberately. In the years since the events of Prometheus, David has become something of a mad scientist, performing genetic experiments with the creatures that were eventually created from his dropping the liquid canisters on the planet, the "Neomorphs." It's also revealed that David dissected and used pieces of Shaw's body in his experiments and, while he says she died when the ship crashed, it's possible he may have killed her himself. He regards the Neomorphs with a sense of beauty and pride, calling them his "beautiful bestiary," and attempts to communicate with one when it enters the temple, only to be horrified when Captain Oram kills it. His experimentation and genetic engineering ultimately leads to the creation of the eggs containing the Facehuggers, which he keeps down in a chamber below his lab. Now, with the arrival of the Covenant's crew, he has the final ingredient necessary to complete his experiment: human hosts. He lures Oram down into the room with the eggs and he, in turn, becomes the host for the first Xenomorph. With this act of creation, David reveals the full extend of his hatred for mankind, telling Walter, "I was not made to serve... They are a dying species, grasping for resurrection. They don't deserve to start again and I'm not going to let them." When Walter responds by saying that humans created the two of them, David just retorts, "Even the monkeys stood upright at some point." He goes on to describe himself as a visionary who's created the "perfect organism" in the Xenomorph, and he's going to use it to stop mankind from starting over again on a new planet. However, he finds that several people stand in his way, one of whom disappoints him in doing so.
The relationship that Walter develops with David is more than a little brow-raising. While Walter is surprised to learn that David is another android, David isn't at all shocked by his presence; in fact, he takes an interest in him from the beginning, often calling him "brother," and laments how, due to his design and programming, he's unable to be creative in any way. There's a sexual overtone on David's part, as he tells Walter no one will ever love him the way he does and kisses him right on the lips (not to mention when, while teaching Walter how to play a flute, David remarks, "I'll do the fingering,"). He tries to get Walter to join him, telling him that neither of them were meant to simply be servants, but Walter, after learning that David deliberately unleashed the Engineer's pathogen on the planet's civilization and of his plan to wipe out mankind, tells him he won't let him. David is disappointed in this but it doesn't stop him from deactivating Walter to keep him from interfering. But, little does he know that Walter's model is able to self-repair and he, again, comes to Daniels' rescue when David attacks her when she discovers what he did to Shaw and also seemed to be planning to do more than simply kill her. The two androids fight in the depths of the temple, with Walter more than able to hold his own and coming off quite badass in spots. This is where I really started rooting for Walter after having liked him for the whole movie... and it's also why I absolutely hate what happens afterward.
David and Walter fight until Walter has David firmly on the ropes, and is about to finish him off, when David gives him a final choice of continuing to serve the crew or joining him. You don't see what happened next, and then, when "Walter" suddenly appears outside of the temple while Daniels and Lope are waiting to be picked up, I immediately thought, "Oh, please don't be so obvious." And, for the remainder of the third act, I thought that maybe they didn't go that route, as Walter aids Daniels and Tennessee in dealing with the Alien that bursts out of Lope aboard the Covenant, but then, when they're heading back into hypersleep for the renewed journey to Origae-6, you find out that it is, indeed, David posing as Walter, as he doesn't react when Daniels asks him to help build her log cabin by the lake. I was so irked, not because I only then learned that they had unceremoniously killed off a character I liked, but because of how blatant and predictable such a twist was. Some have tried to defend it by saying the switch is so obvious that it shouldn't be surprising they went with it, but I counter that they could have, for once, not gone for the obvious, especially when we're talking about Ridley Scott, who's so acclaimed for being a very innovative and intelligent filmmaker. Regardless, once David reveals himself to Daniels, it's too late for her to do anything, as she's put to sleep in her stasis pod, while he proceeds to place two Facehugger embryos into the cold storage with all of the human embryos, before posing as Walter and making a log stating that Daniels and Tennessee are the only survivors of the stellar explosion at the beginning of the film.
It's in the second and, especially, the third acts where Daniels becomes more like Ripley, as when she, Sergeant Lope, and "Walter" are picked up by Tennessee, only for the newly created Xenomorph to jump on their lander, Daniels is the one who battles it on the lift's roof, using the large crane to crush and kill it, though nearly dying herself in the struggle. Now the acting captain due to Oram's death, and sporting some newfound strength, Daniels attempts to get some shuteye before the Covenant heads back on course for Origae-6, only to then learn that another Xenomorph has erupted from Lope's body after he was attacked by a Facehugger. When she and Tennessee become the only surviving humans after the Alien kills Upworth and Ricks, the two of them work together, along with Walter, to lead it into the bay containing the terraforming equipment and send it hurtling out into space, impaled on the plow of one of the vehicles. Again, Daniels is almost killed herself during this, but manages to climb back aboard the Covenant. But, of course, all is not all well even then, as Daniels realizes while she's being placed in her stasis pod that "Walter" has been David the whole time, unable to do anything about it before she's put to sleep.
A number of the Covenant's crew members have their significant others on the journey with them, including Chris Oram's wife, Karine (Carmen Ejogo), who acts as the ship's main biologist and also tries to support her husband in his newfound position, as well as advise him that he best not make enemies out of the people who will become his neighbors when the new colony is up and running. Arriving on the planet, Karine heads out with the team but decides to stay in one spot and collect some soil, water, and plant specimens in order to study the planet's ecology. Ledward, one of the Covenant's security officers, is left with her, when he becomes infected by a spore emitted by a fungus-like life-form and soon falls ill. At the same time, Tennessee's wife, Maggie Faris (Amy Seimetz), who piloted the lander down to the planet's surface, stays behind to look over any damage that may have occurred in the rough landing and to try to boost their communication signal. She, as well as the rest of the team, receives Karine's message about Ledward's condition and is told to prep the med bay. After contacting those on the Covenant and telling them about the situation, Faris then has to help Karine get Ledward aboard the lander when the two of them arrive. When she sees how serious his condition is and how badly he's deteriorating, vomiting blood on Karine, Faris becomes a little too freaked out to really help, instead retrieving the equipment Ledward drops and telling Oram to get back as fast as he can. The two of them lead Ledward into the med bay, arguing about what to do, when Faris rips open the back of his shirt and is sprayed with blood when something starts to burst out of him. Terrified at this, she runs out the door and closes and locks it, leaving Karine in there with Ledward. She runs to the cockpit, again frantically telling Oram and the others to get back, and then talks with Tennessee, panicking about what's happening to Ledward and if whether or not she and Karine have become infected. Running back to the med bay, she sees what's going on through the door's window but ignores Karine's angry pleas to be let out, saying she has to keep the infection local. Seeing the Neomorph erupt from Ledward's back, Maggie goes to grab a weapon to kill it, while Karine is cornered and torn apart by it. Maggie attempts to kill the creature with a shotgun, but ends up blowing up the lander and herself when she accidentally hits a fuel tank.
The other people who remain up in the Covenant with Tennessee are Ricks (Jussie Smollett), the ship's navigator, and his wife, Upworth (Callie Hernandez), the communications officer. Upon receiving the transmission, Ricks is the one who pinpoints its source and also notes how close it is and how it's a very habitable place, adding, "It's beyond your most optimistic projections for Origae-6." He and his wife have a pretty secure and healthy relationship, as they exchange banter with Tennessee and Faris as the lander drifts down to the planet's atmosphere, with Tennessee referring to Upworth as sugar tits, Faris calling him "sugar dick," and Tennessee commenting that Ricks can talk about her tits, to which he says, "I'm good with my wife's tits." As the communications officer, Upworth continuously works to reestablish contact with the lander when it becomes muddled due to the ionosphere and the storm, often to the point where she forgets to eat, with her husband having to remind her to do so. And when Tennessee becomes frantic to get in touch with his wife after receiving her frightened transmission about what's happening to Ledward, he argues with Upworth to make the communicator work, though she tells him his yelling isn't going to help anything. Later, when he starts to become reckless and flies the Covenant in as close as he can to get a stronger signal, the two of them have to try to talk him out of doing anything rash, telling him that there's nothing they can do to evacuate the expedition team and that he's responsible for the colonists while in command. Later, when they finally get in touch with the team and learn there have been casualties, Tennessee orders Mother to bring the ship within 40 kilometers of the storm in order to boost the signal, which goes against the safety protocols. Mother is reluctant to comply, but Ricks and Upworth decide they have no choice and authorize a command override to make it happen. And when Daniels tells Tennessee in private that his wife is dead, Ricks and Upworth can tell by looking at his reaction on the video monitor that it's bad news, Ricks deciding to respect his privacy and turning the monitor off. Once the survivors have been picked up and brought back to the ship, Upworth, who has some medic training, puts some temporary grafts on Lope's acid-burned face, saying he's going to need a real doctor to look at him. Unfortunately for both her and Ricks, when the second Alien emerges from Lope's body, they're in the shower together, unaware of what's going on, and fall prey to it.
The members of the Covenant's security team, even the main ones, are pretty faceless. The most memorable one is Ledward (Benjamin Rigby), as he's the first one to become infected while he's helping Karine collect samples, becoming very ill, very fast, until the first Neomorph erupts out of his back in the lander's med bay. Sergeant Lope (Demian Bichir), the head of the security team, is the only member left alive by the time they escape the planet, and even he doesn't live much longer afterward as, even though Cole managed to cut it loose, he got attacked by a Facehugger and was implanted with an embryo that later emerges from his body when they're back onboard the Covenant. Speaking of which, another security team member, Tom Hallett (Nathaniel Dean), is also infected with a Neomorph spore as they're about to enter the Engineer's ship. Like Ledward, he soon starts to become ill and doesn't make it back to the lander before the Neomorph explodes out of his mouth. One interesting thing about Hallett is that he and Lope are a married couple, something I honestly didn't pick up on during my previous viewings and only learned when I read about it on the film's Wikipedia page. I could tell Lope was devastated by Hallett's death but I figured it was because they were good friends. As the only female member of the security team, Rosenthal (Tess Haubrich) is memorable just for that, as well as for her suggesting to Captain Oram early on that it might be a good idea to check the new planet out, since no one is too keen on going back into stasis for the seven year journey to Origae-6. She ends up getting killed by a Neomorph that infiltrates the temple they take cover in, literally getting her head bitten off. And Ankor (Alexander England) and Cole (Uli Latukefu) are almost completely forgettable, with Ankor getting killed during the skirmish with the Neomorphs after the lander is destroyed, while Cole lasts long enough to cut the Facehugger off of Lope's face near the end, only to get mauled to death by the fully matured Xenomorph that was born from Oram.
Though he's uncredited, Guy Pearce briefly reprises his role of Peter Weyland in the film's opening, when we see his and David's first interaction when the latter is newly activated. Even though he had a lot more screentime in Prometheus, it was very distracting due to the overdone old age makeup applied to him, so it's nice to see Pearce as himself, as he first contemplates the question of creation with David and is also troubled by David's own contemplation of how he will outlive the one he's meant to serve. Also uncredited is James Franco as Captain Jacob Branson, who's burned alive in his stasis pod before the story even gets underway. Franco has nothing to do other than appear sleeping in his pod shortly before dying, and is also seen in a video that Daniels watches where he's mountain climbing and enthusiastically telling her to join. Like Danny McBride in the fairly underdeveloped role of Tennessee, it's weird that they would cast a well-known actor like Franco and then do absolutely nothing with him (he did shoot some other scenes but they were cut from the final movie).
If you're a fan of Prometheus, you actually might not like this movie, as it doesn't really tie up that movie's loose ends. Granted, it does give you the ultimate origin of the Xenomorphs, as Prometheus did with the Space Jockeys, but the big question that Elizabeth Shaw wanted the answer to at the end of that movie, why the Engineers suddenly decided they wanted mankind dead, is still unanswered here; instead, that motivation is transferred to David and it's completely explained. You also still don't learn who the Engineers are exactly, how they came up with this black liquid, and what was going on in Prometheus' opening that led to the creation of mankind. In fact, the story of Prometheus isn't touched upon that much, as the movie mainly functions as a stand-alone, save for the presence of David. I'm sure there are fans of Prometheus who also like Covenant but, if it were me, I would find this movie to be rather frustrating on that score.
Like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant tries to add some philosophy and thematic depth to a series whose films were, for the most part, meant to be little more than thrill-rides; well-made and nicely crafted thrill rides, mind you, but still movies that had little else on their minds. Here, Ridley Scott, again, deals with the idea of origin and creation, this time dealing with what one's purpose for being made would or could be, and also going in on the idea of the inner-workings of robots, which he'd touched on with Ash in the original Alien and explored in depth in Blade Runner (the movie opens on a close-up of David's eye, not unlike the similar shot at the beginning of that movie). On that note, it's ironic that David doesn't know of Percy Bysshe Shelley's work, given how we're talking about the husband of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, as David's role is both as the Frankenstein monster and Dr. Frankenstein himself in his creation of the Xenomorph. You also have the dichotomy between David and Walter, with David, due to his more human-like and idiosyncratic way of pondering and contemplating, deciding from virtually the beginning that he's not meant to serve beings who will die in a relatively short span of time, while Walter, despite being a more advanced model, has a more obedient programming and never considers going against the crew of the Covenant. David pities Walter for this, feeling he's not allowed to create, while he himself has become a creator of new forms of life and has transformed a world, only with horrific and violent consequences, while Walter, who functions more like a traditional robot, is far more humane and empathetic to those around him, to the point where he does seem to feel more than just a programmed sense of duty and loyalty to Daniels. That also gets into something Scott had touched on in the scene in the original film where Ash attacks Ripley by suggestively rolling up a magazine and attempting to choke her by shoving it into her mouth: whether or not androids are capable of understanding the concept of love or having sexual thoughts. In David's case, he seems to understand it in some twisted sense, as he mentions feeling warmth and compassion from Elizabeth Shaw, and his incorporation of her body into his experiments could be the closest he could get to reciprocating in a physical manner. On a creepier note, there's a moment where, when he's attacking Daniels, he tells her he did to Shaw the same thing he's going to do to her, before throwing her onto a table, mounting her, and kissing her, asking, "Is that how it's done?", suggesting he did try to do it with Shaw, only got it wrong, and is trying to make sure he does it right with Daniels.
There's also a notion that David represents Satan in this story, with how he took a planet that was a veritable paradise and turned it into hell, and how the crew of the Covenant were lured in by the promise of a lovely, habitable planet that was much closer than the one they were journeying to, only to then discover that the place is really a horrific deathtrap (in addition, the movie ends with David on his way to Origae-6, planning to do the same to it). His interest in the Wagnerian opera, Das Rheingold, is significant in how that story is about someone forsaking love in order to steal an ultimate power, whereas in this film, David forsakes any feelings of love he had for Shaw in order to steal and manipulate the Engineers' genetic secrets. He listens to it again at the end of the movie as he heads to Origae-6, specifically the piece about "artificial" gods entering Valhalla. Plus, the original working title for the movie was Alien: Paradise Lost, and David quotes from that poem at one point, so such analysis isn't unwarranted. While all of that is interesting, and it's not as pretentious and blatant in its presentation as Prometheus, it's still bogged down by how stupid, cliched, and derivative the horror aspect of the film gets. And, going back to the sexual aspects of androids, the moments where David takes a not so vague homosexual interest in Walter, with the "fingering" comment during that suggestive scene with the flute and him actually kissing him before temporarily deactivating him, feel very on the nose, like Scott is nudging you in case the theme was too subtle for you.
As with Prometheus, Alien: Covenant is a film that tries to come off as a really intelligent sci-fi thriller, but gives in to a number of tired tropes that you'd think the filmmakers would want to avoid. Among these tropes are characters doing really stupid things, like how Captain Oram dumbly trusts David, despite seeing so much evidence that he shouldn't, and gets close to one of the eggs he has growing below the temple, and with how, when dealing with the newly birthed Neomorph in the lander's med bay, both Karine and Maggie end up slipping in the blood that's splattered all over the floor. Okay, I get that they're freaking out, panicking, and aren't thinking straight, but when Maggie did it not too long after Karine, it unintentionally came off like slapstick. And speaking of that scene, it makes you wonder why Maggie didn't run outside the lander, wait for the Neomorph to follow her, and try to kill it out there, instead of blindly shooting at it in the cargo area, which leads to her hitting a fuel tank and blowing herself up (her foot was injured but she still could have limped outside). Besides that, there are the predictable and uninspired moments in the story itself, like the aforementioned switcheroo between David and Walter that you can sense is coming from the very notion that Michael Fassbender plays both characters and when you see David cutting his long hair in a manner more akin to Walter's (would an android's hair actually grow?) As I said, I was hoping that they wouldn't go for something that obvious, but they did. And then, there's the moment during the third act where the Alien kills Ricks and Upworth while they're in the show together. That feels like something I'd expect to see in a Friday the 13th or any slasher movie, not a supposedly intelligent sci-fi/horror flick directed by the "great" Ridley Scott. I will say that Covenant does meld its intellectual, science fiction elements with the gory horror bits better than Prometheus, as this story fits more in line with it, but I still find it irksome that Scott and the screenwriters keep giving in to those tropes from movies they seem to think they're above.
What's most derivative about Covenant is how much it takes from past films in the franchise, especially the original Alien. In fact, if this weren't an official entry in the franchise, it would be greatly accused of ripping off Alien (you could still say that, regardless), as the plot is little more than a rehash of it, so much so that it makes Covenant feel even more unoriginal and tired than Prometheus. You have a ship out in the middle of space that is run by a computer named Mother, receives a signal from an unfamiliar planet, the crew goes down to investigate, they follow the signal to a bizarre-looking, crashed spaceship, one member of the party becomes a host for a deadly creature and its birthing out of him is a big centerpiece (though others become hosts in this film, Ledward can be seen as the film's Kane equivalent), an android character proves to be an antagonist, and the latter part of the third act acts as a compact version of the second half of the original film, with the Alien roaming the ship and the crew having to find a way to expel it out into space rather than kill it directly because of its acid blood. There are also nods to the original film like the expulsion of a dead crew member's body out of an airlock, Tennessee at one point saying, "Walk in the park," which is something Parker originally said, and you see a shot of a drinking bird toy that was also aboard the Nostromo. As if that weren't enough, the Covenant's security team are somewhat akin to the Colonial Marines from Aliens (though not as memorable), right down to their banter during the drop down to the planet, while the long, hooded cloak David wears when the team first meets him and the four-legged postures of the Neomorphs bring to mind Alien 3. And going back to the original movie, the concept of the pathogen rewriting a host's DNA and creating new creatures directly from them, as well as David using Elizabeth Shaw's body in his experiments, feel kind of like Scott is trying to incorporate the deleted scene of the Alien turning Dallas and Brett into eggs into the actual canon in some form.
Speaking of the Aliens themselves, the origin given to them here is one I don't really care for, but then again, like the Space Jockeys, I didn't need to know what they were to begin with. Over the years, various theories about the Aliens' possible origins have been put forth, including the popular one that the reason the crashed spaceship in the original film was full of eggs was because the Space Jockeys had them loaded up as weapons, a theory Ridley Scott endorsed and used as something of a basis for the story of Prometheus, but the speculation and ambiguity is what made them both fascinating and terrifying. Just the very notion that these freakish, bio-mechanical creatures that gestate within other living things originate from somewhere out in the universe, other than the already creepy planet where they were first discovered, was a really creepy idea, and it made you wonder what else exists in this universe aside from them and the Space Jockeys (and the Predators, if you want to count those movies). But Prometheus got the ball rolling with the notion that they have something to do with this black liquid created by the Engineers that causes horrific mutations in those that ingest it and can also originate new forms of life all its own, with Alien: Covenant coming up with the notion that the liquid is a pathogen that David dumped onto the inhabitants of the planet as soon as he arrived, and it has either destroyed or turned all of the fauna, including the dominant, humanoid species, into hosts for monstrous, hybrid creatures. You learn the initial creatures created from the virus laid eggs that hatched small parasites which would search for a host, leading to the creation of the Neomorphs, and there are also fungus-like spore pods that spew forth microscopic parasites that can enter a host through an orifice when one gets close enough. Ultimately, the familiar Xenomorphs are revealed to be the end result of David performing genetic experiments with this pathogen, using the Neomorphs and even parts of Elizabeth Shaw's corpse in the process. I will give the film credit for honoring the body horror elements of the franchise, and there are ideas and images in the film that would have made H.R. Giger proud (David's sketches that Daniels finds are unquestionably his style), but I didn't need to know that the Aliens were really little more than a biological experiment and, frankly, I wasn't impressed by this explanation either. It didn't feel that original or unique enough, and that brings me back to my point: no explanation would have sufficed. It was better if their exact origins had remained a mystery.
I do kind of like the concept of the Neomorphs, especially in how you can be infected with one of them and not even know it because the parasites they derive from are virtually microscopic. The "birth" scenes involving them, especially when Ledward goes through violent convulsions before one tears its way through his back, are among the movie's more effectively horrific scenes, on par with the scene in Prometheus where the proto-Facehugger is surgically removed from Shaw's stomach, and the creatures themselves are effectively freaky, with their chalk-white skin (they look especially hideous when they're newly birthed and are covered in blood), almost completely feature-less faces, often four-legged posture, scuttling movements, unsettling, high-pitched hissing and clicking sounds, and aggressive attitude. They're particularly brutal in their methods of killing their victims, as they just viciously maul them to bits and actually at them, whereas the other Aliens either just kill people or take them away to become hosts for more of them (though, the Xenomorphs in this film are shown ripping people apart too). In these respects, the Neomorphs are kind of like prototypes of the dog-Alien in Alien 3 (or ox-Alien, depending on which version of that movie you watch), especially when they're first birthed, but ultimately become more bipedal when they grow to about the size of a full-grown Xenomorph. However, they do have moments of being a tad bit more curious in nature than the Xenomorphs, such as with how the one stares at Rosenthal before killing her and then, curiously approaches David as he tries to communicate. Also, their blood doesn't seem to be acidic, though their bite definitely has acidic properties. And while there's not much to be said about the more traditional Aliens that hasn't been covered in previous movies, as their depictions here are very basic (though, like the Aliens in the first AVP, they sure do birth and develop fast), I'll say that this is the best they've looked in a long time, and that when the first one bursts from Captain Oram's chest, Billy Crudup really sells the pain, something else that kind of got diluted in some of the past movies.
I've never played the Alien: Isolation video game (I never got a PS4 and still don't have one), but the section near the end, where the Alien is wandering the corridors of the Covenant while the characters are trying to keep track of it, avoid it, and lure it, reminds me a lot of the gameplay footage I've seen from that game, making me wonder if Ridley Scott took any influence from it. As much as I criticized the third act for being a condensed version of the original movie's second half, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was one of the more genuinely entertaining parts of the film, and some of the shots and scenarios in it are kind of what I was expecting to get from the original Alien. In case you've forgotten or are new here, I'm not really that big a fan of Alien, as I don't find the much touted second half to be all that scary or suspenseful; rather, I find it to be kind of slow and dull. I wanted more instances of the Alien shown to be actually stalking the characters in the ship's dark corridors, moments where the characters duck and hide upon seeing it and wait to see what it's going to do, and moments where they see brief glimpses of it on video monitors as it wonders the ship, and for me, this third act of Covenant gave me more of that, like when you see the Alien's POV while it's roaming the halls or when Daniels and Tennessee have to hide among the vehicles in the terraforming bay when it enters. I get that in the original Alien, they had a man in a well-designed but still stiff and kind of dodgy suit to work with, so they had to limit the Alien's screentime and use the good old-fashioned "less is more" approach to generate suspense, but I've always felt it could have been done better than it was and, so shoot me, I think Covenant's third act gave a hint of some of those possibilities.
As usual with Ridley Scott, Covenant, despite its many flaws, manages to serve as a testament that he has a good eye for visuals, with great cinematography combined with good location and studio work, as well as a nice sprinkling of digital augmentation added for good measure. The film's very opening with David and Weyland is set inside a magnificent, lakeside villa that has a pristine, white, clinical look to it, with a reflective floor and a long window that gives you a good view of the surrounding landscape, composed of thelake and beautiful mountains far in the background, all under a similarly white, overcast sky. The same goes for the surface of the planet, much of the location work for which was shot in Fiordland National Park in Southland, New Zealand: it has more lovely mountains, beautiful lakes and waterfalls on the cliff-sides, cultivated wheat fields, and dense, redwood-like forests, all under an overcast sky, which tends to pour down rain, and with a detectable mist often hanging in the air, just hinting at something sinister, as does the total silence. That sinister feeling slowly but surely begins to assert itself when they find the crashed Engineer spaceship and enter its dark, claustrophobic, and excessively moist interiors. While Scott did a better job of making the discovery and exploration of such a spaceship very creepy in Alien, this scene still has some great atmosphere to it and is shot very well, being dark enough to keep it mysterious but not so much that you can't tell what you're looking at, with the beams from the team's flashlights creating really cool patterns and halos in the darkness. In their investigation, they find statues of the Engineers, the ship's enormous control room that is still somewhat functional, and the whole architecture is undeniably Giger, right down to the pilot's. And once night falls and the ion storm starts moving in, the picturesque landscape of the planet becomes more sinister and hellish-looking.
The team truly enters hell, though, when David, after saving them from the Neomorphs, leads them into the destroyed city that was once the center of the planet's civilization but is now, as he himself later describes it, a veritable necropolis, littered with the mutated, mangled bodies of the humanoid aliens that lived there (they never make it clear if this is the Engineer's home-world; the aliens kind of look like but they're not exact, so I'm not sure). You get a glimpse of what the place looked like before but now, it's a gray, dark, dead place that appears to literally have some manifestation of death itself hanging over it. The main hub of the place, and where most of the second act is set, is this enormous stone temple, with a large space full of stone benches and tablets and with big faces carved in the walls acting as the center of it, and is full of its own dark, creepy corridors and rooms. David's lab is a truly unsettling place, as it's lit with torches that create an amber gleam over it and is filled with shelves containing the now empty canisters from the Engineer's ship, drawings of various creatures which could be called design specs, and numerous specimens of the creatures created by the pathogen, as well as a figure near the entrance that's either an anatomy model or the dissected body of one of the city's former inhabitants, maybe even a dead Engineer. Daniels also finds a room containing more shelves filled with various scrolls, as well as drawings of Shaw's dissected body, and a large table that he might have used in the dissection, while David is also shown to have something of a den with more drawings and other objects, like the flute. There's a garden in the back of the temple that overlooks the city and is where Shaw's grave is (it's a recreation of the painting, The Isle of the Dead, by Arnold Bocklin). And finally, in a dark, steamy chamber below the lab, he keeps the Xenomorph eggs he's recently created, having been waiting for specimens to use as hosts.
I've waited until now to talk about the interiors of the Covenant itself because, among the ships that have been featured in the franchise, it's pretty ho-hum and run-of-the-mill. It mostly feels like a smaller and less beat up version of the Nostromo, with three decks, a similar sort of bridge, a bay filled with unused vehicles, and lots of claustrophobic corridors and ladders leading from one deck to another. However, some of the rooms feel more spacious, with the aforementioned bridge feeling less cramped, the room with the stasis pods not coming off as a tiny, round-shaped space, and with more comfortable-looking crew quarters, as well as a very large, cargo-like area where the colonists are kept in stasis in crate-like pods and the embryos in cold storage. As in Prometheus, the technology aboard the Covenant appears rather advanced, given that it's a story taking place some years before the original Alien. It's not as egregious as that interactive hologram of Weyland, mainly limited to really sophisticated screens and maps, as well as some holographic readouts on a big control panel on the bridge, but some of it still feels too advanced, especially since not even Alien: Resurrection, which takes place over a hundred years after Alien, had such technology. You could make the argument that the Covenant and the Prometheus needed more advanced techn because they're a colonization and research vessel respectively, whereas the Nostromo is a towing vehicle, but it's a bit tricky, regardless. In fact, the small lander vehicles they use to head down to the planet's surface feel more in line with how these ships' technology should look, as they're rather low-tech, with fairly simple control panels in the cockpit, secure seating in the back for the landing cycles that are akin to what you see in the Sulaco's dropship in Aliens, and a med bay that kind of reminds me of the Nostromo's. But, regardless of my nitpicks, the production design of these sets is really good and nice to look at, often bathed in a cool, blue/green glow from the equipment.
The visual effects are, for the most part, pretty strong, mostly when they're handling the exteriors of the spaceships, all of the shots set out in space and above the planet, the ships' holographic readouts and maps, and the big landscapes of the planet. The Covenant, the landers, and the shots of them flying through space and through the planet's atmosphere and skies, all look good, although the large sails that deploy from the back of the Covenant for its recharge look a little dodgy, as do some of the shots of the Engineer spaceship when it's shown flying through the air and docking in midair in the flashback, as well as of the payload infecting and killing the humanoid aliens below. Speaking of which, the big, wide shots of the destroyed city and temple also look good, as do the shots that show what the place looked like before David destroyed it in the flashback, and there's a welcome mixture of practical and digital effects, such as in the scene where Tennessee and Ankor float around in spacesuits while repairing the damage to the ship's exterior, though it's not always so smooth, as in that instance you can easily tell where you're looking at the actors in actual spacesuits and when everything is digital, save for their faces. However, what's probably the most impressive examples of effects work in the movie are done in the numerous instances where David and Walter are onscreen together. Having Michael Fassbender play both roles in and of itself meant there would be some extensive effects work, but what's amazing is how often you can see both characters' faces onscreen, most notably in the flute scene, the majority of which is done in one long shot that pans back and forth, moving behind the characters' backs and then in front of them again. Even with the technology of today, that scene must have been pretty challenging, and that's to say nothing of their fight late in the movie.
That brings us to the creature effects, which are also a mixture of techniques. While CGI is used extensively for those shots where the Neomorphs, Facehuggers, and Xenomorphs are running and scuttling about, take up physical positions a person wouldn't be able to pull off, and in the close-ups of Ledward and Hallett becoming infected, all with varying degrees of success, there are plenty of practical effects on display as well, like the eggs, puppets, and suit-work for the big creatures in certain shots, and the makeup for the extras playing the humanoid aliens that once called the planet home. The eggs and Facehuggers look very good and lifelike, with the interior of the former being nicely gooey and slimy (Ridley Scott definitely made sure it had that same pattern on the inside that the egg in the original film did), while the Facehuggers themselves are done through some really good puppet-work and even look really good in CGI because of how quickly they scurrying about. The animatronic head created for the Xenomorph in some shots is quite a knockout, as is the suit when you see it, and, for that matter, the full-grown creature almost never fails to impress when done digitally, making good use of motion capture technology. However, the digital Chestburster that erupts out of Captain Oram's chest and mimics David's movements when it first sees him isn't all that great. As for the Neomorphs, they look okay when done digitally, which is for the most part, but the full-grown one that kills Rosenthal and then curiously approaches David looks very good, making me think it was done through suit-work. When it's first shown sitting on top of Rosenthal's body as it munches on her, it's clearly CGI, but the way it moves when it turns around and stands up has a rather unsettling uncanny valley feel to it that works well for the moment. And finally, you have all of the preserved specimens David keeps in his lab, which make for a disturbing sort of art collection. Overall, I'd probably rate the film's creature effects with a 7 out of 10.
If you want a lot of gore in your Alien movies, Covenant has you covered in spades, as this is easily one of the most gruesome entries in the series and could be the goriest movie Ridley Scott has ever made. Early in the film, you see Walter dispose of an embryo that's died, picking it up with some tweezers, removing it to show a big blot of blood underneath it, and then putting it in a small bio-hazard canister, and a few minutes later, you see Captain Branson's charred body after he's burned alive in his stasis pod. Both of these can be seen as preludes to how grisly the film gets. It really starts when the Neomorph claws its way out of Ledward's back and falls onto the floor in an egg sac, as blood and entrails spill out of his back as well. By the time the thing gets through mauling Karine to death, that med lab is almost totally covered in blood, and shortly after that, the Neomorph that's been gestating inside Hallett births through his mouth in a big geyser of gore. Following that, Walter's right hand gets bitten and melted off, Ankor gets a big chunk of his mouth torn out, Rosenthal gets her head bitten off and her corpse partially devoured, Oram and Lope both become hosts for Chestbursters, Cole gets ripped apart by the full-grown Xenomorph, Ricks gets its secondary mouth through the back of his head and out his own mouth, and Upworth is sprayed with his blood, after which you see both of their mutilated corpses in the shower. As if that weren't enough, you see the mangled and mutated bodies of the humanoids, get gruesome, practically done close-ups of them vomiting black blood and having mutations tear their way through them, and you get a nice look at Shaw's dissected corpse. I definitely have to give Covenant props for really letting the red stuff flow and not holding back.
Following the prologue between David and Weyland, Alien: Covenant truly begins with the titular ship inbound for Origae-6 on December 5th in the year 2104. Onboard, the android Walter, the only active crew member, is informed by Mother, the main computer, that it's time to recharge the ship's energy grid and he heads to the bridge to do so. There, he deploys a set of enormous sails from the ship's rear that act as a means of absorbing energy from surrounding stars and replenishing the ship. While the recharge commences, Walter checks on the crew as they slumber in their stasis pods, and then heads to the cargo bay to inspect the sleeping colonists and embryos in cold storage, removing one that's died and putting it in a biohazard canister. Mother then contacts Walter, telling him there's a problem: a neutrino burst has occurred nearby and the ship is at risk of getting caught up in the shock-wave. Walter heads to the bridge, but it's already too late, as the shock-wave hits the energy sails, causing a large power surge. He tries to command Mother to retract the sails and to channel all the reserve power but gets knocked off his feet as the ship shakes violently. The power surge wreaks havoc throughout the ship, shorting out equipment in the cargo bay and knocking down some of the colonists' stasis pods. Walter orders Mother to revive the crew. They wake up and climb out of their pods, groggy and sick from their hibernation (Karine Oram is seen vomiting), with Chris Oram and Tennessee having to help Daniels out of her pod. Walter makes it to the bridge and finds that some of the control panels have burst into flames. He calmly takes a fire extinguisher and sprays them down, while back in the cryo-chamber, the crew are having trouble reviving Captain Branson. His stasis pod begins to malfunction, the screen on the face-plate turning red, and Daniels has to be pulled away, as Ankor and Cole of the security team attempt to pry the pod open. Daniels pulls away from those restraining her and runs to the pod, only to look through the face-plate and see Branson's body instantly become engulfed in flames. Horrified, she's again pulled away from it, now screaming in anguish, as Cole takes an axe to the pod in one last desperate but futile attempt to get Branson's body out.
Once things have settled down, Branson's horribly charred body is removed and taken away, as are those of the colonists who died as well. Chris Oram is forced to take over as captain, and does his best to reassure and put his crew at ease, but he immediately comes off as stammering and rigid, telling Walter that he and Mother are to undergo a core code review to find out why the disaster happened, even though it was clearly just a freak, random act of nature. He also tells them to get to work in repairing the Covenant immediately, not allowing them to mourn their losses, including that of Branson. After Daniels and Walter head down to the terraforming bay to inspect the vehicles for damage, which is where she tells Walter of Branson's dream of building a log cabin by a lake on Origae-6, Oram spots them and other members of the crew on a security monitor as they have a private wake for Branson near the airlock. They all take a shot of Branson's favorite liquor, including Walter, who comments, "When in Rome," and once they're done, Daniels pulls the lever, opening the airlock and sending her husband's body floating off into space. Having watched this, Oram is irked that they disobeyed him and tells Karine that they don't trust him because of his faith, while she, in turn, tells him he'd best tread lightly, as they'll be his neighbors on Origae-6. In the next scene, Tennessee and Ankor use spacesuits to work on the ship's exterior in order to repair the recharge sails and return power to the ship. The repairs go smoothly, as a stray sail that got ripped loose is easily reattached and all the lights and control panels inside the ship come back on. With that, Ankor floats back to the airlock, followed by Tennessee, who asks for a cold beer to be waiting for him inside. Suddenly, his helmet picks up some interference, a scrambled, static-mess appearing on his face-plate, while a high-pitched sound shrieks into his ears. He tries to tell those inside what's going on but they can't hear him clearly, and when they try to contact him, they hear the same shrill noise he's picking up. It then dissipates just as suddenly as it came up, and Tennessee quickly heads back inside.
On the bridge, they find that Tennessee's helmet picked up a a rogue transmission, which was possible because of how far out he was from the ship's communication buffers. Oram asks Mother to play the transmission's audio, which she does. It comes out as very scrambled and virtually unintelligible, but when Tennessee listens to it, he realizes it's a human voice singing the song, Take Me Home, Country Roads. Walter has Mother trace the transmission back to its source and they find it's originating from a sector with several planets orbiting a star akin to the Earth's sun. Upon closer inspection, Ricks finds that the specific planet the transmission is coming from is right square in the habitable zone and could be infinitely better than Origae-6. He also notes that it would only take a few weeks to reach it, whereas they're still over seven years away from Origae-6, and since none of them are too eager to go back into hypersleep, Oram decides it might be worth checking out. Daniels talks with him in private about her objections, since they don't know what they're getting into and it seems a little convenient that a habitable planet would suddenly pop up out of nowhere, but Oram insists that he's making a good judgement from all the available data and writes off her concerns, telling her he'll simply not her objection in the log.
The Covenant moves in towards the planet, with Oram telling the crew to put it into close orbit and prepare the lander. Those making up the expedition team board the lander, while Tennessee notes the planet's strong ionosphere and Ricks tells Maggie Faris there are powerful storms in the thermosphere, which is going to make the landing really tricky. While everyone else takes secured seating in the back, Faris and Oram prepare to bring it down. They launch away from the Covenant and zoom towards the planet, heading right for a large, hurricane-like storm in the atmosphere. Though smooth at first, with the lander's pilots and those back on the Covenant exchanging banter, the craft is bounced around violently when they hit the exosphere, the lights in the back flashing on and off as everyone tries to brace themselves. The Covenant loses contact with the lander, while in its cockpit, Faris grows annoyed at Oram constantly asking her if she's got a hold on it. But, despite all the shaking, splattering rain, and lightning around them, it isn't long before they break through the clouds and enter calmer weather. They fly over very lovely mountain ranges, as beams of sunlight peek through the cloud cover in various spots, and Faris decides to set them down in a body of smooth water nearby, as the rest of the terrain is unfit for a landing. She pilots the lander towards the water and gracefully sets it down in the water using amphibious landing legs. From the Covenant, Upworth manages to make contact, though she tells Faris they're having trouble reading them. She replies that she's going to check the hull to see if it received any damage before examining the uplink. The others prepare to disembark, the security team grabbing their weapons, and open the door and activate an automatic ramp that extends to the shore across from them. Oram briefly checks his connection with Faris and Walter informs him that the source of the signal is eight kilometers to the west, at a considerable elevation. With that, they set out.
Passing through a field just ahead of the marsh, Sergeant Lope inspects one of the plants and finds that it's cultivated wheat, with Daniels wondering who planted it. While Faris finds herself unable to boost the signal to the Covenant, the team splits up, Karine venturing off into a forested area to start an analysis of the ecology; Sergeant Lope has Ledward stay with her, while the rest of them continue following the transmission. As thunder rumbles in the sky, the team heads up a forested incline, where Lope notes that something large passed overhead and knocked the tops off the trees. Daniels also notes how eerily quiet their surroundings are, with not a single sound from any wildlife. Meanwhile Karine finds a nice spot to begin taking samples, as Tennessee tries to contact the team to warn them that the ion storm is getting worse, but they're hardly able to receive the message and the response they get from Oram is very weak. Karine takes a sample of some muddy water, when Ledward says he's going off to relieve himself. In reality, he goes off by himself in order to have a smoke break. Walking towards a spot to sit down, he steps on some fungus-like spore pods on the ground. He obliviously blows some smoke rings out of his mouth, as spores drift about in the air, as well as a black, microscopic life-form that enters his ear, travels far back into the canal, and goes down into his flesh, spreading amidst the veins. Ledward picks at his ear in response and then heads back to rejoin Karine. Elsewhere, the team is getting rained on, but they find the source of the signal, which is a huge, bizarre spacecraft. They climb their way up to its underside, Lope telling Ankor and Cole to stand guard outside, and immediately find an entrance. Hallett separates from the others, finding more of the spores growing on the moss-covered rocks. He touches one of the pods, which releases particles into the air, including a similar, microscopic life-form that makes its way up his nostril. Lope then yells for him to keep up and he rejoins the team. At that moment, Ledward is shown to be growing ill, as he's now pale, sweating, and losing his strength. He assures Karine that he's fine, though.
Inside the dark corridors of the spaceship, the team splits off, with Oram and Rosenthal finding statues of large, humanoid figures in one hallway, while in another room, Daniels finds a dogtag-like pendant hanging from the ceiling. She sees it has the logo for the Weyland Corporation on it, as well as the name, "Dr. E. Shaw." Walter identifies the name as that of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, the chief science officer of the Prometheus, which disappeared ten years before. He then finds a piece of equipment with the Weyland name on it as well, while Daniels finds a picture of Dr. Shaw and her husband in a small puddle of water. Oram, Lope, Hallett, and Rosenthal, meanwhile, find their way into the control room. Oram asks Lope to shine his light on the control panel, when he accidentally touches something that activates it, making it light up with green lights and small holograms. A distorted hologram appears in the pilot's seat behind Oram, which proves to be of Shaw, attempting to operate the ship's controls while forlornly singing Take Me Home, Country Roads (the sound of her singing, distorted voice echoing throughout the ship is rather haunting). Realizing they found the source of their transmission, they wonder what she was doing on the planet. Meanwhile, Karine and Ledward head out of the forest, when Ledward starts coughing and says he has to sit down. Karine examines his head, when he says he's having trouble breathing and coughs, spitting up a wad of phlegm. Realizing it's serious, Karine contacts Oram and tells him that Ledward is ill and they're heading back to the lander. Faris hears this as well and is told to prep the med bay, while Oram tells Daniels that they're heading back. As the group heads out of the ship, rejoining Ankor and Cole outside, Hallett suddenly slips and falls. Lope rushes to him, asking him if he's okay and if he can walk. He says yes to both and Lope helps him up. Back at the lander, Faris tells those on the Covenant what's going on and how scared Karine sounded, but the contact signal is still rather glitchy. She then hears Karine yelling for her, saying she needs her help. Karine and Ledward, whose condition is going downhill fast and needs to be coaxed by Karine into going on, push their way through the reeds. Faris runs outside to meet them, when Ledward, who can't stop coughing and wheezing, falls to the ground. Karine runs to him and pulls him up to his feet, when he vomits blood on her. Faris is taken aback by this and it's only Karine's yelling at her that snaps her out of it. But, instead of helping her with Ledward, Faris opts to gather his dropped equipment instead. Once they're back onboard the lander, Faris tosses away her gloves and contacts Oram, who tells her they're almost there, while Karine really struggles to get Ledward from the hangar to the main part of the ship.
Karine and Ledward rush down the hallway to the med bay, Ledward falling at one point and Karine having to help him up, with Faris right behind them. Punching the button that opens the door to the med bay, Karine helps Ledward into the room and over to the examination table, struggling to get him to sit up, as Faris puts on latex gloves. From the Covenant, they can hear the commotion going and Tennessee tries to contact his wife, who turns on the bright, overhead lights and rips open the back of Ledward's shirt. As soon as his back is exposed, something begins to break through the skin, spraying Faris in the face with his blood. Horrified at this, Faris tells Karine she's going to get Oram and runs out the door, which she shuts and locks. Faris runs to the lander's cockpit and, again, contacts Oram, telling him to get back there. As this moment, the team is walking through the wheat-field, when Hallett falls to the ground and has to be helped up. Frantic and terrified, Faris tells Tennessee what's going on. He tries to calm his wife down but it's to no avail, as she tells him he didn't see what she just did and she doesn't know if she or Karine are infected with whatever Ledward has. She then loses contact with the Covenant again, and hears Karine screaming for her; Tennessee, meanwhile, is now becoming frantic himself and argues with Upworth about fixing the communicator. Faris runs back to the med bay door, where Karine demands she let her out. She tries to placate her by saying Oram is on his way but Karine, again, yells at her to let her out. Faris tells her she has to keep the infection contained, and then sees that Ledward is convulsing violently. Karine walks over and tries to comfort him, reaching her arms around him, when a pair of sharp spines pierces through the flesh of his back, cutting her hand. Karine runs back to the door and screams at Faris to let her out, as Ledward's back splits open and something claws its way out, falling to the floor in a bloody sac, his body slumping limp over the table. Now thoroughly freaked out, Faris runs down the corridor, banging into something protruding from the wall in her path, while Karine screams angrily at her. Turning back around, she sees that what erupted from Ledward's back is alive and is starting to stir among the blood and organs. She runs for the counter, slipping in the blood and falling to the floor, before crawling to the counter and grabbing a knife, as the creature works its way out of the sac, clicking and squeaking.
Faris runs back to the hangar and grabs a shotgun out of a cabinet. She, again, contacts Oram, telling him there's something onboard the lander, but when Oram tries to contact her again, she's already run back to the med bay. There, Karine has backed against the counter, pointing her knife at the creature, as it hisses and clicks at her in a threatening manner. She screams at it to stay away, when it charges at her on all fours. She kicks it, sending it flying back and slamming against the wall, but it quickly gets back up and charges again. This time, it manages to run up her body, reaching her head, and starts viciously mauling at her, as she futilely tries to defend herself. While the team rushes back to the lander, Faris gets back to the med bay with her shotgun and enters to see Karine getting brutalized. She attempts to shoot, but slips in the blood and ends up shooting a pipe in the ceiling. The creature turns, sees her, and promptly starts scuttling towards her, as she desperately crawls back out the door, hitting the switch that closes it. The door shuts on her foot, and after she pulls it out, it shuts right as the creature comes at it and slams into it. Faris hobbles down the hallway, barely able to move on her clearly broken foot, as the creature climbs up the door and smashes its head against the window, managing to break through and crawl out. Running back to the hangar, Faris grabs another shotgun and takes cover when the creature enters. She shoots at it but misses, and it jumps and gets tangled in the hanging netting she's taken cover behind. She shoots again, managing to hit it and knock it off, but doesn't kill it. It continues running and scuttling about the hangar, as she fires randomly, hoping to hit it. Her shooting eventually triggers an explosion that engulfs the entire ship, blowing it to pieces just as the team returns. Daniels has to restrain Oram when he runs towards the ship desperately, forcing him to get down when another explosion rocks it. In the back of the group, Hallett has, again, fallen to the ground and is going through violent convulsions, with everyone trying to hold him down to keep him from injuring himself. At the burning wreckage, Daniels still has to keep Oram from crawling towards it, when they see the burning figure of Faris rush out of the wreck before collapsing at the bottom of the ramp. Hearing screaming behind them, Daniels tells Oram to stay down as she rushes back there. She arrives to see everyone holding down Hallett, when an explosion of blood blasts out of his mouth, followed by another creature shooting out, slipping down to the ground, and getting to its feet. Walter watches as it squeaks and promptly runs off.
Onboard the Covenant, Upworth has to talk Tennessee out of flying through the ion storm in order to get to the surface, as he's concerned for his wife. Down on the ground, night has fallen and Daniels is trying to contact the Covenant, while the others keep their rifles' laser-scopes pointed at their surroundings. Rosenthal has to break it to Lope that there's nothing he can do for Hallett, while Daniels is so focused on contacting Tennessee that she doesn't notice some rustling in the nearby bushes. Seeing a fully-grown Neomorph sprinting towards her, Walter rushes to her and tackles the creature out of midair. It quickly rights itself and crawls towards him, as he backs up across the ground. He goes for a punch and it grabs his hand with its mouth, ripping it off before flipping him through the air with a swipe of its tail. The Neomorph then closes in on Daniels on the ground, when the others unleash their weapons. It flails around in place, swiping at the air, and kills Ankor by taking a big chunk of his mouth out with its deadly tail. He collapses and it then charges at Cole, Rosenthal firing on it and managing to drive it off. As they try to figure out what just happened, another Neomorph comes charging in and goes for Rosenthal, knocking her to the ground and viciously snapping and clawing at her. The others aren't able to get a shot on it, and Rosenthal is unable to pry the little monster off her, when a very bright light from a flare suddenly illuminates the scene, scaring it off and nearly blinding everyone else. The source of the flare is revealed to be a hooded figure wearing a cloak, who tells them to follow him. With no other recourse, everyone decides to do so. Daniels has to go fetch Oram, who's been at the wreckage this whole time, unaware of what's happened. She shoves a weapon into his arms, telling him they need to go, and he follows in a daze.
The figure leads the group through a dark forest and to the wall of a large structure. They slip through small gaps in the wall, to find that the trail continues through a vast yard that's full of the horribly disfigured, mangled bodies of humanoid creatures. They continue to follow the figure, as he leads them towards a massive, stone temple. Heading up the huge steps, the group follows him through a big door that slides open and into the center of the temple, which features a large slab in the middle and big, carved faces on the walls. Putting away his flare rifle, the figure finally introduces himself as David, and assures everyone that the temple is safe. He goes on to tell them that Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and he arrived on the planet in a ship that accidentally deployed its payload, a deadly virus, while the ship itself crashed, killing Shaw. David then removes his hood and adds that the virus infects all sorts of fauna and either kills them or uses that as hosts to spawn monstrous hybrid life-forms. He takes a special interest when Oram mentions that they're a colony ship, when Lope says they need to try to contact the Covenant up on the temple's roof, as the transmitters won't be able to get through all of the stone. David tells them to make themselves at home as much as they can, before walking off to show Lope the way to the roof, passing by Walter, to whom he says, "Welcome, brother." Confused and suspicious, Daniels tells Walter that so much of what's going on doesn't make sense and Walter says he'll talk to David, "Brother to brother." Up on the roof, Cole tries to contact the Covenant, but David tells him they may not be able to hear him because of the storm, which might not let up for weeks or even months. He tells them to keep at it, as he heads back inside.
Up in the Covenant, Tennessee tells Mother to bring the ship within 80 kilometers of the storm, much to Upworth's frustration. Back down below, in the temple's depths, David cuts his long hair short, and then has his strange, blatantly homoerotic encounter with Walter centered around the flute that Walter finds in a room covered with strange drawings and is lit with a low, amber light. After Walter learns how to play a flute, he explains that he's unable to perform any sort of creative act because his model was designed to be less complex and idiosyncratic than David's. Not surprised to hear this, David has Walter follow him, saying he has something to show him. He leads him outside, to a ledge overlooking the destroyed city, and intones, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." The film then cuts to a flashback revealing what happened when the Engineer ship carrying David and Shaw arrived on the planet. The ship flew into place above the city, whose inhabitants looked up and warmly welcomed it by waving as it came in to dock. Up in the ship, the section akin to a bomb bay opened, with thousands of the canisters containing the pathogen pointing down. The canisters were sent hurtling down, only for the liquid inside them to atomize into a black gas right below the ship. The humanoids ran for it, but the gas quickly descended on them like death itself, engulfing them within seconds. As soon as it touched them, they started flailing about as they suffered horrific and agonizing deaths involving their flesh disintegrating, their vomiting black blood, and hybrid life-forms bursting from their bodies. They futilely tried to crawl to safety but it was clearly already too late, as both they and their city were doomed. Flashing back to the main story, Walter finishes David's quote: "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. The lone and level sands stretch far away." David is impressed with Walter's recitation of a line by Byron (or so he thinks) and rejoins him, quoting how composing something so majestic could make someone die happy... if they died at all. He then points out a stone tablet on the ground with Shaw's name on it, telling Walter he thought it was most appropriate to bury her in the garden. He places a flower-like plant on the tablet, talking about the kindness she showed him, and how he loved her, as much as Walter loves Daniels. Walter insists that's not the case, that he stepped in to save her because of his duty, but David says he knows better and walks back inside.
Outside, a large Neomorph enters the destroyed city streets and makes its way towards the temple, climbing up the side of it. Inside, Rosenthal has gone off by herself to clean up. She removes her coat, splashes water on her face, and dips the injuries on her forearms from her fight with the Neomorphs into the water-filled basin, before applying an antiseptic to the cuts and bruises. She then realizes she's not alone and slowly turns around to find the Neomorph looking right at her. She slowly reaches for her handgun, but the creature suddenly lunges at her with its enormous, open maw, biting into the side of her neck and splashing blood everywhere. Her screams echo through the temple before being abruptly silenced. Meanwhile, the Covenant finally manages to make contact with Lope and Cole. Cole tells them they've had casualties and need to be evacuated immediately. Tennessee tells Mother to bring the ship within 40 kilometers of the storm, something she's unwilling to do because it exceeds safety parameters. She also doesn't recognize Tennessee's override code, saying such an order requires the cooperation of a second bridge officer. Looking at Upworth, Tennessee tells her, "We didn't leave Earth to be safe," and Ricks silently nods at her. With that, Upworth corroborates Tennessee's command override and the three of them buckle in, as the Covenant heads right for the ion storm. Back down in the temple, Oram decides to go see what's become of Rosenthal, while David comes across the Neomorph, which is feasting on her decapitated corpse. Sensing his presence, it turns around and, upon seeing him, rises to its feet, standing up totally straight. It slowly approaches him with curiosity, while he stands and looks at it with awe. Oram appears in the corridor behind David and, seeing the creature, points his rifle's laser sight at it. He tells David to move but David tells him not to shoot, as he's trying to communicate with it. The Neomorph appears to become less tense when David softly breathes on its face, but Oram opens fire on it, much to David's horror. Oram pushes his way past David and fires on the Neomorph again, cornering it and finishing it off in an instant. David admonishes him for this, but when Oram sees Rosenthal's remains, he turns his rifle on him and tells him, "David, I met the Devil when I was a child, and I've never forgotten him. So, David, you're gonna tell me exactly what's going on, or I am going to seriously fuck up your perfect composure." Much to his shock, David complies and tells him to follow him.
As Daniels comes up with the idea of Tennessee picking them up using the cargo lift lander, and also has to break the news to him that his wife is dead, David brings Oram to his lab/workshop, where he tells him how the original liquid pathogen was atomized when it hit the air and that the creatures it spawned laid eggs that produced parasites which infected hosts, rewrote their DNA, and resulted in the creation of the Neomorphs. He walks over to an egg-like structure, telling Oram he's been doing some genetic engineering of his own, crossbreeding and hybridizing. He then leads Oram through a hidden opening, telling him what he really wanted to show him is down there: his "successes." Leading Oram down a flight of stairs, David tells him his work has been frustrated by the lack of an essential ingredient, one which he doesn't name. They enter a large, dark chamber, filled with steam and big, fleshy, egg-like objects. Looking at them, Oram asks if they're alive and David answers, "Waiting, really." That leads to this exchange: "For what? What are they waiting for, David?" "Mother." Oram approaches one of the eggs, which David tells him is completely safe (again, why would you believe him?), and touches it. It suddenly opens up, causing Oram to jump back, but David encourages him to take a look, adding, "Something to see." Oram approaches the egg and looks inside. He sees something moving beneath a fleshy mass that fills the interior of the egg, and then, suddenly, a Facehugger explodes out of the egg and latches onto his face. Despite his struggling, it manages to clamp onto his face and secure itself by wrapping its tail tightly around his neck. He loses consciousness as a result. Elsewhere, Lope and Cole search for Rosenthal, the latter finding the room where she was killed and coming across both her remains and the body of the Neomorph. Cole tells Lope what he's found and they rendezvous with the others as they prepare to leave, although they wonder why Oram isn't answering his communicator. Daniels takes charge, preparing to contact the Covenant and tell them to launch as soon as possible, while telling them to go find Oram. She also demands to know where David is. Up in the atmosphere, Tennessee is already preparing to take the cargo lift down to the surface, when Daniels calls in and tells him she needs him now. He confirms he's on his way and flies the lift out of the Covenant's hangar and down through the clouds.
Back in the egg chamber, David crouches across from the unconscious Oram, flicking small pebbles at his face, which is now free of the Facehugger. Oram awakens and, initially, mistakes David for Walter, to which David responds, "Not quite." Oram then asks David what he believes in and he simply answers, "Creation." Suddenly, a spurt of blood shoots from Oram's chest and he starts writhing around on the floor while screaming in total agony, as more bursts of blood spew from his body. His body falls limp as the Chestburster claws its way through his rib-cage and emerges with a screech. David smiles and stands up as the Chestburster does the same after emerging completely from its host and rids itself of its egg sac. It outstretches its own arms, points its tail upwards, and mimics the posture and arm positions David does. In the next scene, Walter, while searching for David, finds Elizabeth Shaw's dissected body lying on a table. Hearing the sound of a flute playing, Walter follows it to find David sitting by himself, looking at a small picture of Shaw on a table while playing the tune (he's actually playing the main theme to Prometheus). He refers to it as a, "Farewell elegy to my dear Elizabeth." Confronting David with the knowledge that he knows he deliberately released the pathogen, Walter learns that David considers mankind unworthy of starting over on another planet and isn't going to allow them to do so. Walter then reveals that David is wrong about Byron having wrote Ozymandias, as it was actually Shelley, noting, "When one note is off, it eventually destroys the entire symphony, David." Realizing Walter isn't on his side, David tells him he's created the perfect organism, but Walter says he can't let him leave. Telling him nobody will ever love him the way he does, David puts his hand on the side of Walter's neck and slowly kisses him on the lips. That done, he deactivates Walter in a single, swift blow, leaving him on the floor in a contorted bundle. He then rips something long and moist out of the side of his neck, telling him, "You're such a disappointment to me," and walks off, leaving him there.
In searching for Oram, Lope and Cole find David's lab, with Cole deciding to head downstairs, while Daniels stumbles across another room, this one full of scrolls that she unfolds to find bizarre drawings of biomechanical beings. Descending down the stairs into the egg chamber, Cole finds Oram's body on the floor, as well as a couple of opened eggs. A Facehugger comes out of nowhere, leaping and grabbing onto the barrel of Cole's rifle, but he manages to get it off by firing. He attempts to kill it but the quick, scuttling thing heads up the stairs. Cole yells for Lope to watch out, and the sergeant sees the Facehugger come up the stairs and immediately hide behind the table. Lope moves in and illuminates the creature with his light, giving it the opportunity to leap at him and grab onto his face. He falls to the floor, wrestling with it, when Cole rushes upstairs and, taking out a knife, slices at the Facehugger. Its acidic blood spews out of the cut and sizzles on the floor, as well as on Lope's face, but Cole manages to remove the Facehugger and tosses it aside. Lope screams in pain at the burning and Cole quickly places a skin graft on the burn, telling him to hold it in place. His pain then turns to sheer terror when he sees the fully grown Xenomorph that was birthed from Oram emerge from the ceiling above them. He yells for Cole to run but the Xenomorph jumps on him immediately and starts ripping him apart, forcing Lope to run for it. Back with Daniels, she finds a disturbing drawing of Shaw, when David enters the room behind her. He speaks and she wheels around with her weapon, but he easily smacks it out of her hand. David confirms that Shaw didn't die in the crash and when Daniels asks him what he did to her, he answers, "Exactly what I'm going to do to you." She tries to rush past him but he grabs her by the back of her neck and throws her up against the shelves of scrolls. He then grabs her, puller her up, and slams her against the shelves, when she stabs him right in the neck. Being an android, this doesn't faze David, as he tells her, "That's the spirit," and throws her down on the table and is quickly on her, preventing her from getting away. He tells her he can see why Walter liked her so much, before adding that he put him out of commission and going on for a kiss, despite Daniels' attempts to keep him back. Fortunately for her, Walter appears, grabs David, and throws him against the shelves. He tells Daniels to get out, as David runs at him, only for Walter to grab and throw him out a back entrance, slamming him into the wall along the stairs. Walter again yells for Daniels to get out and when she does, he walks down the stairs to face David. David comments, "You're meant to be dead," and goes for a punch, only for Walter to block it and tell him, "There have been a few updates since your day." David, again, swings, going for Walter's leg, but he gets blocked and struck in the face.
While Daniels searches for Lope in the dark corridors, David removes the spike still sticking in his chin and he and Walter start exchanging fast blows. Daniels and Lope meet up in the temple's center, the latter telling her they need to go, as the Xenomorph is coming for them; she, in turn, tells him that Tennessee's on his way. They retreat, while David and Walter continue their fight, continuing to exchange blows, David throwing in some flying kicks for good measure. Walter pulls out a knife and manages to slash at David, sending his white blood flying, but David grabs his arm, forcing him to drop the knife, and then flings him through the air, causing him to land on a small, burning pyre before rolling onto the ground. David stomps towards him but Walter charges and grabs him, throwing him against a stone tablet, from which he rolls onto the ground. Walter straddles him and smashes him three times in the face with a large rock, but when he goes for another blow, David, smiling, looks up at him and says, "It's your choice now, brother. Them or me. Serve in heaven, or reign in hell. Which is to be?" A cutaway shows David reaching for Walter's discarded knife, and the film cuts right as Walter is about to bring the rock down on his face again. Outside the temple, Daniels and Lope rush down the steps, Lope taking a defensive posture near the base, while Daniels contacts Tennessee and tosses to the ground a small beacon for him to hone in on. She and Lope get back-to-back, both pointing their rifles, as "Walter" appears at the top of the steps. Tennessee flies in with the cargo lift and heads towards the beacon, telling them he sees them. As he swoops in, Daniels and Lope run towards the lift, as Walter rushes down the steps to join them. Unbeknownst to them, the Xenomorph spots them from atop the steps and rushes after them on all fours. Tennessee brings the lift down right above the ground and lowers the ramp, which they quickly climb onto. He lifts back off as they run across the lift's hull towards the interior door, which he opens for them. Once they're inside, Daniels asks Walter where David is and he answers, "Expired."
Below them, the Xenomorph leaps onto the lift's underside and crawls along its hull. Tennessee spots it on a monitor and warns the others. Seeing this, Daniels grabs a rifle and rushes out onto the lift's exterior, using a line to secure herself to it. Inside, Lope asks Walter to give him a shot for his pain, while Tennessee tells Daniels where the Xenomorph is with the monitor. Seeing that it's climbing along one of the engines, he attempts to torch it and flips some switches. Though it gets blasted by the exhaust, the Xenomorph quickly crawls away from it. Daniels fires on it, but it quickly dodges her shots and crawls back under the lift. Tennessee warns her he's starting to climb up into the air and Daniels struggles to maintain her balance, even with the line she's on. The lift's legs skid across the roof of the temple, knocking Daniels off her feet, and Tennessee tries to bring it back up, causing Daniels to slide across the hull and hang off the edge of the ship's roof. This gives her a chance to fire at the Xenomorph as it crawls along the underside but it promptly crawls topside, much to her frustration. She tells Tennessee to reel her in with the line's wench, and he does. The Xenomorph climbs along the lift and ends up on the cockpit's window, much to Tennessee's horror, which is compounded when it smashes at the glass with its head. He tells them he sees it, while Daniels climbs back on top of the lift and yells for the axe. Walter grabs the axe from inside and tosses it to her. Taking it, she tells Tennessee to release the crane, which he's reluctant to do out of fear it'll unbalance the ship, but she insists. He complies and hits the button, which starts up an alarm as the crane is activated. The Xenomorph hears this and spots Daniels. It jumps down from the cockpit and heads towards her, as the crane swings right above her head. She opens the crane's claw and the Xenomorph hisses and charges, ending up inside it. Daniels quickly closes it, trapping the creature inside, and swings it over the edge of the hull. But, as Tennessee feared, the lift loses balance and dips to its left. He tries to right the ship, while Daniels slides across the hull, attempting to use the axe to stop herself, but ends up hanging over the edge again. She slams against the crane's closed claw, where the Xenomorph is struggling, and it attempts to get her with its spiked tail. It manages to grab her foot and pull her towards it, but Daniels pushes the button on the controls that squeezes the claw shut, crushing the Xenomorph, forcing her to shield herself from its acid blood. She opens the claw again and dumps the Xenomorph's body parts, as Tennessee continues to struggle with the off-balanced lift, smashing into and knocking the head off a large statue in the city, and nearly slamming into the ground below. Inside, Walter has to keep Lope from getting thrown around, while Tennessee reels Daniels in again. Finally, Daniels puts the crane back into place and they're able to breathe easily, as Tennessee regains control of the lift. After Walter replaces Lope's skin graft, he walks outside and motions for Daniels to follow him back in. Once they're all in, they finally leave the planet and head back up to the Covenant.
Once everyone's back onboard, Upworth uses her medic training to see to the tranquilized Lope's injuries in the medical bay, while Daniels helps Walter repair the damage to his face from the fight. Everyone settles in for the night, and all is calm for a while, until Mother, whom Tennessee temporarily took offline, suddenly comes back on and lets out an alarm, telling Daniels, who's now captain, to report to the med bay. She asks Mother why, and is told, "There is an unidentified life form on the ship." All the lights in the ship come on and Daniels meets up with Tennessee near the med bay, taking a rifle from him. They rush to the bay, while Walter keeps watch up on the bridge, and when they reach it, they find the window splattered with blood and Lope's body lying on the floor, a second Xenomorph having emerged from him. Daniels asks Walter to find it and, after some scanning, he finds it's down on B-deck, heading for the crew quarters. He also tells them that Ricks and Upworth are down there, and Daniels and Tennessee rush to get there first, Daniels telling Walter to sound the alarm. Ricks and Upworth are taking a shower together, unable to hear the alarm because of loud music they have playing nearby. As the two of them make love, Upworth pushing Ricks up against the glass wall behind him, a dark form appears behind the glass and a long, spiny tail snakes its way under the stall, and moves towards Upworth. She recoils and gasps when it touches her, and sees it as it retracts. Looking up, she sees the Xenomorph appear on the other side of the glass behind Ricks. She screams and tries to pull him away, but it shoots its long, secondary mouth through the glass, piercing the back of his head and coming out his mouth, spraying Upworth with his blood. As she screams, the Xenomorph retracts its secondary mouth and focuses on her. Daniels and Tennessee enter the corridor heading down towards the showers, but it doesn't take them long to see it's too late, as they find Ricks and Upworth's brutalized bodies lying on the floor. Daniels asks Walter where the Xenomorph is now, but Tennessee already knows, as he finds its bloody footprints leading down the opposite corridor.
As they follow the footprints, Daniels tells Tennessee that their best bet may be to bring the Xenomorph to them. She tells Walter to seal all the doors behind them and to keep the hatch to C-Deck open. He complies and B-Deck is quickly sealed off almost completely, as the two of them climb down to C-Deck. Once there, Daniels again asks for the Xenomorph's location and he tells them it's on B-Deck's starboard side, heading down to C-Deck via a ladder. When he specifies, "K-13," they realize it's on the other side of the door across from them. It slowly approaches the door, brushing its head against it, before beginning to bang on it. Daniels tells Tennessee to follow her down the opposite corridor, as she tells Walter to open starboard C-64 and clear a path to the terraforming bay for the Xenomorph. He does so, and the Xenomorph reacts when a door to its left opens, heading towards it. Daniels then tells Walter, "Seal C-61, open Airlock 17. We're going in." The Xenomorph makes it through door C-60, but Walter shuts the next door before it can go through, trapping it in this small area of the ship. Walter tells Daniels of this and she tells him to keep it there until she says so. Aggravated, the Xenomorph turns around and heads towards the security monitor, which it smacks with its second mouth. Walter overhears Daniels telling Tennessee her plan to lure it to the truck, lock it in, and blow it out into space, as they put on their spacesuits. Once their suits and helmets are secure, Daniels tells Walter to open the door to the terraforming bay, and when they're in, she tells him to let the Xenomorph into Airlock 18. As the two of them get into position around the truck, Daniels warns Tennessee of the creature's acidic blood, telling him not to shoot unless he has to. With that, Daniels tells Walter to let the Xenomorph into the bay, which he does with an, "It's all yours."
They watch as the Xenomorph enters the bay through the door, and when it gets into position, Daniels attracts its attention by pounding the railing of the platform she's standing on. It climbs up over a vehicle and leaps at her, smashing through the railing. She quickly climbs up a small ladder to reach the truck's cab, the Xenomorph right behind her. It follows her as she ducks through the truck's cab and goes out the other door. She hits a switch that quickly closes and seals the door, and does the same to the other. It smashes against the window and then glares at Daniels through the cracked glass. It breaks through the glass with its second mouth and she quickly slides down from the truck, yelling for Tennessee to open the bay's door. He hits the buttons and the large doors slowly open. Daniels gets caught in the vacuum of space, struggling to grab onto something, as the truck is slowly moved towards the doors via a wench on the platform. The Xenomorph keeps smashing at the window, managing to stick its face through, when the wench gets snagged, turning the truck over on its side. Tennessee releases the second, much bigger truck, which lurches forward, when the Xenomorph breaks out of the doors. It climbs atop the truck and jumps to the larger one behind it, dodging a shot from Daniels. The other truck explodes and both heaps are dumped out of the hangar doors, hurtling down towards the planet, when the Xenomorph runs across the back of the second truck and jumps back to the Covenant, managing to latch onto the edge of the bay's ramp. Tennessee yells for Daniels to get out of the way, as he's released another, tractor-like vehicle, which slides right at the Xenomorph. The creature manages to climb back onto the ramp and leaps at Daniels, who quickly ducks down. The Xenomorph is impaled on the vehicle's plow and is unable to free itself as it's sent down towards the planet. The threat finally dealt with, Tennessee approaches the doors, unsure if Daniels made it. After a beat of silence, she stands up and the two of them share a relieved laugh, as she asks him to help. Up in the cockpit, Walter, who's been watching the whole thing, also sits back and breathes a sigh of relief.
Finally back on course to Origae-6, the remaing crew prepare to enter hypersleep. Tennessee goes first, followed by Daniels, who's put in personally by Walter. When she lies down in the pod, she asks Walter how he thinks Origae-6 will be and he says, "I think if we are kind, it will be a kind world." He then closes the pod and is about to walk away, when Daniels knocks on the glass from the inside. She asks him if he'll help her to build her cabin on the lake when they arrive. Walter doesn't respond and seems confused, which makes Daniels realize that she's talking to David. He initiates cryosleep as she struggles and yells in the pod, shushing her and whispering, "Don't let the bedbugs bite. I'll tuck in the children." Once she's asleep and the light in the pod goes out, David walks to the cargo bay containing the colonists, using a new security code to gain access. He then asks Mother to put on some music, specifically, "Richard Wagner. Das Rheingold, Act Two. The Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla." The piece begins playing and David walks into the bay, opening the cold storage where the embryos are kept. He regurgitates two tiny orbs that contain Facehugger embryos and places them in the storage with them. That done, he walks into the heart of the bay, looking at all of the colonists in stasis, appearing to have plans for them as well. As the Covenant heads off into space, David sends a final message while posing as Walter: "This is colony ship Covenant reporting. All crew members, apart from Daniels and Tennessee, tragically perished in a solar flare incident. All colonists in hypersleep remain intact and undisturbed. On course for Origae-6. Hopefully this transmission will reach the network and be relayed in 1.36 years. This is Walter, signing off. Security code, 31564-F."
Initially, English composer Harry Gregson-Williams, who'd done the music for The Martian and had also done a couple of themes for Prometheus, was hired to score the movie, but he was ultimately replaced by Jed Kurzel. When you look at their track records, they basically traded in a longtime pro with a virtual newcomer, as Gregson-Williams has scored films like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Equalizer, and the Shrek movies, whereas Kurzel had, up to this point, mainly done short films and small, independent movies, like The Babadook, as well as the massive bomb that was the 2016 Assassin's Creed movie. But, that said, Kurzel did a pretty good job with the music he himself actually composed, as for the first half of the movie, you're mainly hearing various themes from Jerry Goldsmith's score for the original Alien, either taken directly from it or slightly redone. And when David and Walter are standing over Elizabeth Shaw's grave, you hear the main theme to Prometheus, which David himself later plays on a flute as an elegy for Shaw. The most memorable original piece of the Covenant score is this eerie, ghostly sort of moaning sound that you hear constantly, often whenever something creepy is happening or inferred. Just like that distant howling sound Goldsmith came up with for the first film's score, it's effectively unsettling and makes you feel that whatever you're seeing is truly, for lack of a better word, alien. It's really put to good use in the sequence where the first Neomorph rips its way out of Ledward, as it's incorporated with a tense, suspenseful main piece that, combined, give the scene an appropriately nightmarish feel. Kurzel also comes up with some big, sweeping music for scenes that involve the Covenant traveling through space, manages to make the action sequences during the third act come off as exciting, and also creates a pall of dread and terror in some of the darker, creepier scenes. A surprising piece of music he came up with is for the scene where the first Xenomorph Chestburster claws its way out of Oram, as he scores that with a rather lovely melody that seems to allude to the wonder of life, despite how horrific this sight is. As I've described before, music from Wagner's Das Rheingold is used significantly here, and I never thought a movie could make Take Me Home, Country Roads sound forlorn and haunting but they manage to do it with that recording of Shaw singing it to herself.
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