Ridley Scott continues his tales of terrifying intergalactic ventures in the 2017 sci-fi horror “Alien: Covenant.” Scott’s commitment to space travel films is his true legacy, which manifests through his “Alien” franchise. “Alien: Covenant” is the sixth movie in the series.
It is a sequel to “Prometheus” (2012), the prequel series to “Alien.” Much like this film, the “Alien” series encounters foreign species that bring challenging circumstances to human beings where a fight for survival is a prominent theme. It is set eleven years after the Prometheus mission and shows the origin of the deadly xenomorphs, the aliens who mean to annihilate human existence.
The movie revolves around the colonization ship Covenant, which is on a mission to reach the planet Origae-6. On their way, the team receives mysterious signals from a nearby planet and finds uncanny similarities with Earth, unaware of the fact that evil awaits them. The cast, which stars Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, and Billy Crudup, gives an excellent performance overall.
Though the film could not generate big numbers at the box office, it was critically acclaimed for its plot and visual effects. The use of 3D cameras made the movie’s cinematic experience impeccable. Moreover, the scientific elements and futuristic settings successfully lay out thought-provoking questions about faith and human existence while maintaining the true spellbinding charm of the “Alien” movies.
Although the film was critically acclaimed, fans and critics collectively felt that it had many gray areas. Elizabeth Shaw, the main survivor of Prometheus, is killed in the movie, which does not make much sense. The newly introduced characters do not add anything new to the plot, which is carried by two main leads. The effort is not significantly glorious but does pave the way for new movies in the series.
Alien: Covenant (2017) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
An Extraordinary Invention
In the film’s opening scene, a business tycoon named Peter Weyland stands in a luxurious apartment with a newly built android. The android looks like an ordinary human and chooses to call himself “David.” Peter gives David a few instructions, which he carries out perfectly and exhibits remarkable intelligence. He also asks him to identify the painting and asks him to play a particular tune on the piano, which he impressively does. While conversing, Peter mentions the question of finding his creator and that Peter seeks to do it with David. David also mentions that he will outlive Peter, knowing his worth.
The “Covenant” Spaceship
Traveling through space in 2104 AD, a spaceship named “Covenant” is seven years away from the planet Origae-6. The ship carries 2000 colonists in stasis and 1,140 stored embryos. An android named Walter roams around the advanced ship, giving instructions to the virtual assistant while monitoring it. Suddenly, a neutrino burst damages the ship, and Walter revives the crew members resting in a glass stasis to deal with the emergency. During the nuisance, they lose their captain due to the stasis malfunction. After dealing with the crisis at hand, they bid farewell to the deceased by throwing his body away in space and drinking to his name.
As they resume their journey, their ship receives an unexpected signal coming from a nearby planet. The sound of a woman singing a lullaby makes the crew curious about what might be there. The ship’s new captain, Christopher Oram, decides to land and investigate the planet. A crew member, Daniels, pleads with Oram not to step down into an unknown territory as the planet may not be as perfect as it seems. But Oram does not budge and suggests that he is open to any discovery the universe has to offer, sidetracking from his mission.
The Planet of Your Nightmares
As the Covenant reaches the planet, everyone sees the stunning picturesque views it has to offer. Pilot Tennessee and his wife Faris carefully land the spaceship on the planet’s surface, and an expedition team scatters throughout the land. They find wheat and many other similarities the planet has with Earth that point to the possibility of giving it a “habitable” status. They decide to split up into pairs and end up finding the source of the voice signal they received, finding it is the voice of Elizabeth Shaw, a mission Prometheus survivor. Meanwhile, Ledward and Hallett get sick as some spores from the soil enter their bodies and cause infection.
Ledward struggles to stand, and Karine takes him to Faris so that she can care for him in the Med-Bay. Faris locks the room, trapping Ledward and Karine so that they stay in quarantine and the infection doesn’t spread, ignoring Karine’s unwillingness. An alien emerges out of Ledward’s body, leaving him dead and killing Karine. Faris fails to kill the neomorph as well and dies. Hallett also dies when a neomorph comes out of his mouth and attacks the other crew members, killing Ankor. They kill one out of two neomorphs before David emerges out of nowhere and scares the other alien away. He tells them to follow him and leads them to a safer place.
The Temple of the Dead
The crew reaches a temple where there are many dead humanoids. There, David explains to them that he and Dr. Shaw ended up on the planet when their spaceship crashed, taking Shaw’s life. Their ship released a pathogen that killed all fauna on the planet. Soon enough, the neomorphs attack the temple and kill Rosenthal. Oram and David stick together, and David tells Oram not to hurt the neomorphs as they trust him.
Nonetheless, Oram ends up killing one of them, and David gets mad. He takes him to his chamber, showing him sketches of the neomorphs and other suspicious items. David tells him that it was he who released the pathogens so that he could experiment with more life forms. He shows him stored eggs and tells Oram to trust him and get close to them. As he does, a face-hugger kills him immediately.
The Narrow Escape
Walter looks for the missing crew mates and finds Shaw’s dissected corpse that David had used for creating new organisms. He confronts David, and David explains to him that he is making the ‘perfect species’ that won’t have the imperfections that human beings have. Walter disagrees with him, and David beheads him. He tracks down Daniels and attempts to kill her, but Walter suddenly appears. He engages with David so that Daniels can escape.
Meanwhile, Lope, a crew member, gets attacked by another face-hugger, but Cole takes it off of him, becoming its victim and dying on the spot. Lope gets a terrible scar on his cheek from the face hugger, but he still escapes. He meets with Daniels and Walter, who tells them that David has expired. All of them get on the ship with Tennessee, kill the attacking xenomorph, and fly away.
Alien: Covenant (2017) Movie Ending Explained:
Who Survives the Killer Xenomorphs?
In the spaceship, Lope’s cheek infection gives birth to another xenomorph who breaks out. Daniels and Tennessee try to want Faris and Upworth, but they cannot hear the warning as they’re in the shower having sex. The alien kills the two of them, only to be found by Daniels and Tennessee, who trap it and eject it into space. Finally, Tennessee and Daniels get back in the stasis, ready to sleep, when Daniels realizes that Walter is David, who is disguised as Walter.
She protests inside her stasis, but David leaves her to sleep. He then puts two face-hugger embryos into the cold storage with other human embryos. He pretends to be Walter again and reports that only Tennessee and Daniel survived the previous neutrino burst accident. Covenant is set back on its track to planet Origea-6.
What Is David’s Big Plan?
When the movie begins, David reveals that he is different from his creator as he will never die. This shows his obsession with immortality. He sees it as a weakness that human beings have. To fix it, he experiments with deadly life forms. By tricking everyone, he is now on the spaceship that is en route to planet Origea-6, where he stores alien embryos. It means that he intends to grow another community of xenomorphs who can destroy human beings. He may use the crew mates to dissect or generate new aliens from their bodies.
Alien: Covenant (2017) Movie Themes Analysed:
Playing God
It is quite evident that tampering with the rules of nature will have ruinous outcomes. In the first scene of the movie, Peter tells David that it is a mystery who created life. Being an android, David lacks spiritual beliefs and emotions. He logically assumes that the higher power is technology and tries to create a better organism that can outdo humans. However, this leads him astray, and he ends up becoming a mass murderer. He removes all fauna from a planet, which signifies his corruption.
Good vs Evil
Binary oppositions are perfectly portrayed by the androids David and Walter. Two of them are highly intelligent and technologically advanced robots, but their moral compasses are completely opposite. These are the foil characters who show how similarly constructed AI models reason differently, much like human beings who are all capable of good and evil, yet some are morally higher than others. Where Walter puts his duty first, David is obsessed with destroying life. One values humanity, and the other cares about devastation.
Humanity vs. Technology
Ridley Scott did a terrific job of showcasing the horrors of technology. David’s hubris, deadly aliens, and the infectious environment resulting from technically failed experiments show how advancements have their setbacks. Nonetheless, humanity cannot be created and thus ranks above everything. It is because of Walter that Daniels survives. Even though he is not human, his empathetic nature reveals that humanity is the key to survival and existence.
Colonization
From the earliest of times, human beings have always been intrigued by the idea of colonizing a new planet. The mere notion of discovering a place that supports life as Earth does has resulted in multiple expeditions. In the quest to find a suitable planet like Earth, the Covenant ship loses a lot. The film reflects the argument about whether it is worth risking one’s life to find the unknown. In the movie, all the active crew members die except two. The rest of the colonists are in the hands of an evil android. Thus, it captures the drawbacks of taking uncalculated risks for colonization.
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