Current Events > I don't like what Alien: Covenant did to the lore *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

The spaceship scene in Alien felt so mysterious. How long has this giant thing been dead for? What happened to this spaceship? It looked ancient but advanced. Who knows how long this has been sitting on a desolate planet for. Then the alien pops out of a guys chest and it adds even more horror. Has this creature wiped out another species a long time ago and we just awakened it through a total freak discovery?

Nah. Turns out a robot man hates humans and made the alien himself. Does that count as being alien now? He also wiped out the Engineers just because he felt like it. The crashed spaceship found by Nostromo probably only crashed a few years before. The galaxy feels a lot smaller. Humans are the link to all of it through David.

The frustrating thing is that I quite like the plot of an android wanting to create something. Just like how he was created. But it just isn't a great fit for Alien. The xenomorph doesn't really feel alien anymore. Just another science experiment.
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Ew, that sounds disappointing
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Trying to add lore to Alien in general is a bad idea. The original film tells you all you need to know; these people are far from earth, they find a thing they don't understand, bad shit starts happening. Trying to explain further than that is not only needless, but detracts significantly from the film's suspense and horror.
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Sigh -_-
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butthole666 posted...

Trying to add lore to Alien in general is a bad idea. The original film tells you all you need to know; these people are far from earth, they find a thing they don't understand, bad shit starts happening. Trying to explain further than that is not only needless, but detracts significantly from the film's suspense and horror.

I agree. The cool thing about space horror is that the possibilities are endless. We can encounter stuff that we'll never truly understand. By making us understand it we're removing a lot of the horror.

It doesn't help that they also explained it by giving it a humanity based origin as well.
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To be fair, the face hugger does seem designed to specifically attach to human sized heads/necks.

Raikuro posted...

To be fair, the face hugger does seem designed to specifically attach to human sized heads/necks.

It would work fine for anything with a mouth and neck right? I suppose it does have an advantage for a human face though yeah.
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I agree.

Some mysteries are better left untampered with. The petrified guy from the first film added so much. It's so far away, so old. It shouldn't be there. But it is and now it's aboard the ship.

It's just better to leave something like that in the dark as to the origin of it.

David just created the modern Xenomorphs and basically just made human related tweaks. In Prometheus, you see a mural of some type of Xenomorph queen from the Engineer ship.

They are trying to build a larger universe and apparently humans were not really created by Engineers and are just a sibling race to humans created by some other higher race.
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DoctorVader posted...

David just created the modern Xenomorphs and basically just made human related tweaks. In Prometheus, you see a mural of some type of Xenomorph queen from the Engineer ship.

They are trying to build a larger universe and apparently humans were not really created by Engineers and are just a sibling race to humans created by some other higher race.

Yah the black goo still has a bit of mystery to it. Obviously interacts with all species differently, so it's obvious from these movies that the traditional "aliens" had to be born from humans, these just show who got sacrificed in the first wave.

And don't we see the engineers "seed" the planet earth and hasten human evolution at the beginning of prometheus? they didn't "create" us, just gifted parts of their dna to the planet to speed things along somehow.
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DoctorVader posted...

David just created the modern Xenomorphs and basically just made human related tweaks. In Prometheus, you see a mural of some type of Xenomorph queen from the Engineer ship.

They are trying to build a larger universe and apparently humans were not really created by Engineers and are just a sibling race to humans created by some other higher race.

It wouldn't really surprise me if this has been retconned or ignored. Nothing David said really pointed to it. It looked like he was messing around with the black goo, some alien wasps and Shaw on the Engineer planet to create the Xenomorph.

Even then if he only created the ones we see in Alien it still gives that same feeling.
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AVP occurred before all of this

Predator 2 occurred before all this.
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Is AVP canon to the Alien continuity? I thought it was meant to be its own thing.

Burgess posted...

AVP occurred before all of this

Predator 2 occurred before all this.

I don't think Ridley cares. Only Alien and Prometheus matter to him. He wasn't involved in the others.
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Darmik posted...

Burgess posted...

AVP occurred before all of this

Predator 2 occurred before all this.

I don't think Ridley cares. Only Alien and Prometheus matter to him. He wasn't involved in the others.

So how'd all the eggs get on that other ship on that other planet.
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prep your butt, Ridley and crew have 3 more prequels they plan on putting out.
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Darmik posted...

Burgess posted...

AVP occurred before all of this

Predator 2 occurred before all this.

I don't think Ridley cares. Only Alien and Prometheus matter to him. He wasn't involved in the others.

Yeah. I was really surprised to read about the Alien Queen being referenced. I thought I read somewhere that he'd never seen Aliens and, as far as he was concerned, the Alien Queen didn't exist.

Burgess posted...

Darmik posted...

Burgess posted...

AVP occurred before all of this

Predator 2 occurred before all this.

I don't think Ridley cares. Only Alien and Prometheus matter to him. He wasn't involved in the others.

So how'd all the eggs get on that other ship on that other planet.

The one in Alien? Probably through David shenanigans if Alien Covenant is anything to go by.
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this sounds like midichlorian levels of lore fuckery

treewojima posted...

this sounds like midichlorian levels of lore fuckery

I'd consider it worse since it's the plot of an entire movie. It was a random throwaway line that's easily ignored in Star Wars.
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Burgess posted...

AVP occurred before all of this

AVP isn't canon.

Darmik posted...

The xenomorph doesn't really feel alien anymore. Just another science experiment.

The xenomorph was always theorized to have been a bioweapon that was being stored on the derelict in Alien, so nothing really changes in the larger sense.

Also, the xenomorph that David created in Covenant isn't the same as the one we finally see in Alien/Aliens. It's much more organic (i.e. less biomechanical), less durable, and doesn't have the armored ridges. You can interpret this as a work-in-progress, or you can theorize that he isn't the first entity to create these eggs and this type of facehugger. Perhaps the engineers created a similar type of egg thousands of years ago. Perhaps they did one better and created a queen alien. I mean, this is clearly alluded to in the mural in Prometheus (this appears to have the queen's ridges, eggs, and facehuggers):



Unless Scott is ignoring his own film from 2012, it seems doubtful that the xenomorph's first appearance in the universe started with David. In fact, it may be the case that his version of the xeno is a "flawed" recreation, which would fit with Walter's comments to him when he gets the author of Ozymandias wrong.
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I think Ridley is ignoring the mural. It's not a big thing in that movie. It's an easter egg.

David talks about creation for the entire movie. That's his arc. He wants to create. Resurrecting some bioweapon from a species he wiped out isn't creating anything. The facehugger he designs is exactly the same as the one in the original movies. He has drawings on it over the walls. Any differences with the xenomorph can be explained by the host it used (though to be honest I didn't think the xenomorph in Covenant was supposed to be different)

We can make alternate theories about how he didn't invent them but this is the narrative that Alien Covenant provides us with. Also apparently Ridley himself says David invented them on a podcast apparently. This is the narrative he wants to go with unfortunately.
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Back_Stabbath posted...

And don't we see the engineers "seed" the planet earth and hasten human evolution at the beginning of prometheus? they didn't "create" us, just gifted parts of their dna to the planet to speed things along somehow.

You're right, but I was just going by this

http://www.alien-covenant.com/news/engineers-did-not-create-humanity-or-xenomorph

Darmik posted...

Nothing David said really pointed to it.

Pointed to what? That these Aliens have never exited in some form before David?
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DoctorVader posted...

Pointed to what? That these Aliens have never exited in some form before David?

That he was attempting to bring back something that the Engineers created or bringing back xenomorphs. All of his dialogue was about creation. He wanted to create something just like how he was created. This leads to xenomorphs. Something he considers to be his perfect creation.
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Darmik posted...

Just another science experiment.

I thought it was established way earlier that they were engineered.

Anyway, I was so-so on the lore, but I liked the film enough to ignore that.

Okay so prometheus and covenant just confused me

Wtf are the engineers and what are their purpose?

Okay, the aliens. What are the ones from the prequels and what are the current ones I'm so lost
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I don't think much at all was established about the xenomorph in the movies (expanded universe is a different story obviously). Obviously they worked very well as a bioweapon and that's why Weyland-Yutani wanted it. But they're also a creature and they can't be controlled without dire consequences.

It could have been a bio-weapon. Or maybe that Engineer ship made the same grave mistake that the Nostromo did. I thought the mysteriousness of it was really cool.
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Mark_DeRosa posted...

Wtf are the engineers and what are their purpose?

Red herring.

Mark_DeRosa posted...

Okay, the aliens. What are the ones from the prequels and what are the current ones I'm so lost

The ones from the original series (barring things like the dog aliens) are the same as the human-bred alien from Covenant. All aliens take on characteristics based on what creature they are spawned in. The ones at the beginning of Covenant were different because they were largely comprised of genetic material from the local wildlife. The one that David bred at the end from the captain were the ones from the original because they, too, were made from human corpses.

The Covenant ones (neomorphs right?) are also different because they infest through those spores instead of a facehugger right? They're like the middle link between the ones in Prometheus and the final xenomorph I think.

I'm not sure if they were also genetic experiments from David or just a result of that purge he did to the planet.
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Darmik posted...

The Covenant ones (neomorphs right?) are also different because they infest through those spores instead of a facehugger right? They're like the middle link between the ones in Prometheus and the final xenomorph I think.

Yeah, I assume so. I'm no expert though.

Darmik posted...

I'm not sure if they were also genetic experiments from David or just a result of that purge he did to the planet.

It's not really clear. As a previous user pointed out, Prometheus hinted that they were around before and that David was just experimenting with known fauna. I'm sure we'll get a retcon by the next movie/game/book, though.

Darmik posted...

DoctorVader posted...

Pointed to what? That these Aliens have never exited in some form before David?

That he was attempting to bring back something that the Engineers created or bringing back xenomorphs. All of his dialogue was about creation. He wanted to create something just like how he was created. This leads to xenomorphs. Something he considers to be his perfect creation.

This ignores more than just the mural in Prometheus. Simply injecting the goo led to the creation of a giant facehugger which ended up creating an Engineer based Xenomorph. Or how he got the entire idea by studying the Engineer ship.

I don't think a direct sequel is gonna ignore the last movie like that. There's tons of prequels and sequels planned so we'll see where they're really heading.
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The mural doesn't necessarily show a Xenomorph. Both the Deacon and Neomorphs have the same features as the mural, basic humanoid shape, elongated head. Everyone just assumed it was because until that point nothing else similar had been seen, now we've seen at least 2 creatures from the goo that match the mural enough that it could be any of them.

Plus, it feels even dumber if David spent 10 years modifying creatures he found to create the ultimate weapon, just to find out later that exact weapon had already existed from thousands of years ago. I think it's more likely that some engineer on the Prometheus planet got infected, birthed some neomorph thing, they carved the mural as a warning, then got wiped out somehow. Feels much more fitting with the new direction the films seem to be steering towards. I don't like it either, but it makes the mist sense.
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DoctorVader posted...

Darmik posted...

DoctorVader posted...

Pointed to what? That these Aliens have never exited in some form before David?

That he was attempting to bring back something that the Engineers created or bringing back xenomorphs. All of his dialogue was about creation. He wanted to create something just like how he was created. This leads to xenomorphs. Something he considers to be his perfect creation.

This ignores more than just the mural in Prometheus. Simply injecting the goo led to the creation of a giant facehugger which ended up creating an Engineer based Xenomorph. Or how he got the entire idea by studying the Engineer ship.

I don't think a direct sequel is gonna ignore the last movie like that. There's tons of prequels and sequels planned so we'll see where they're really heading.

Is that ignoring anything? It's not the facehugger/xenomorph that David creates which isn't the one in the original movies. That's the one people actually care about.
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what I took of it was that david was merely one of many cooks that followed a recipe. doesn't really change the original
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These prequel movies are going to tie in directly to the beginning of Alien though. What's the point of showing him creating the Xenomorphs and deciding to perfect them, if they're just going to scrap that idea and have it go back to his it originally was? Besides, wasn't it already confirmed that David is the one who eventually creates the ones we see in Aluen? Or am I imagining that?
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Mark_DeRosa posted...

Okay so prometheus and covenant just confused me

Wtf are the engineers and what are their purpose?

Okay, the aliens. What are the ones from the prequels and what are the current ones I'm so lost

Engineers are destroyers. They sic the black goo (stuff that makes the different types of Aliens) on different species and commit genocide. 1 Engineer went off the reservation and killed himself on earth so that his dna could create human beings.
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BillyKidd posted...

Engineers are destroyers

Are they? If Ridley's non-film comments are to be taken as canon they created humans, sent an engineer down to check on us and we crucified him, which is why they want to destroy their creation.
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ASithLord7 posted...

BillyKidd posted...

Engineers are destroyers

Are they? If Ridley's non-film comments are to be taken as canon they created humans, sent an engineer down to check on us and we crucified him, which is why they want to destroy their creation.

That sounds ridiculously stupid lol. Hope he just disregards that completely.
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tag

This will all be explained with time travel.
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ASithLord7 posted...

BillyKidd posted...

Engineers are destroyers

Are they? If Ridley's non-film comments are to be taken as canon they created humans, sent an engineer down to check on us and we crucified him, which is why they want to destroy their creation.

Problem is, there isn't a definitive answer on if there are 2 sects of Engineers. Because canon-wise, 1 Engineer rebelled against the others and committed suicide, turning himself into the DNA that would create humans.They then went on to ignore humans until they got annoyed by humans and sent Jesus to Earth to straighten us out. While we have these "God" and "Jesus" Engineers as examples of good guys, we've also seen the Engineers dropping the black goo onto civilizations eradicating them. It's a crapshoot and we don't know how many are on which side if there even is one.
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KogaSteelfang posted...

The mural doesn't necessarily show a Xenomorph. Both the Deacon and Neomorphs have the same features as the mural, basic humanoid shape, elongated head. Everyone just assumed it was because until that point nothing else similar had been seen, now we've seen at least 2 creatures from the goo that match the mural enough that it could be any of them.

Plus, it feels even dumber if David spent 10 years modifying creatures he found to create the ultimate weapon, just to find out later that exact weapon had already existed from thousands of years ago. I think it's more likely that some engineer on the Prometheus planet got infected, birthed some neomorph thing, they carved the mural as a warning, then got wiped out somehow. Feels much more fitting with the new direction the films seem to be steering towards. I don't like it either, but it makes the mist sense.

The mural also shows facehuggers. Here is a better look at it:


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Wasn't there a Facehugger in Prometheus? I haven't seen that movie in a while.

But again I don't really think that mural matters much to Ridley at this point. It's not like he planned the plot to Covenant while directing Prometheus.
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Darmik posted...

Wasn't there a Facehugger in Prometheus?

I don't remember there being a face hugger.
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iron jojo posted...

Darmik posted...

Wasn't there a Facehugger in Prometheus?

I don't remember there being a face hugger.

Not like a normal one. Something similar to one? I think it was bigger. Maybe I'm thinking of the trilobite. But there's no reason that should be on the mural.
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I only remember the lamprey looking thing and the squid looking thing that Shaw took out of herself.
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