WARNING: Spoilers for Alien: Covenant at CinemaCon are below and continue to blister your original view of the Alien franchise. Read at your own risk.
Ridley Scott has not shied away from spoiling anything and everything he can in regards to Alien: Covenant before its arrival on May 19th. Instead of keeping secrets tightly guarded with tiny hints and talk of “Alien DNA” as he did with Prometheus, Scott and Fox have laid plenty of surprises for folks out in the open thanks to festival appearances and convention panels. SXSW brought plenty of praise and spoils for those looking for answers to the Alien mythos and now CinemaCon is bringing more, dropping footage that bridges the conclusion of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
It’s pretty obvious that Michael Fassbender’s David plays a sinister role in both films, even if his final motivations aren’t entirely clear at this point. What is clear is that there is no redemption for the android, unless you want to count Walter, his updated form on Covenant. He’s bad to the core and judging from the spoilers we’ve seen, it doesn’t go well for any human that comes into contact with him. The latest spoiler deals with him too and expands upon that aspect.
Now please note that everything from here on will be a spoiler.
According to The Wrap, Ridley Scott used his appearance at CinemaCon to spoil Covenant to the point that any worry about Prometheus and its connection would be a moot point. Not only does the spoiler give insight on exactly what planet the Covenant is landing on, but it shows part of what happened after Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and David after they take off from LV223:
It kicks off with one major reveal: the spacecraft that Elizabeth and David boarded at the end of “Prometheus” did indeed make it to its destination. To greet their incoming guests, hundreds of Engineers are seen gathered in the docking area. David, who was nothing but a severed robot head by the end of “Prometheus,” is now fully operational in a complete body, and comes out to observe the crowd from a deck on the ship. It’s then that the ship unspools black bombs that cover the entire civilization in a black ooze that melts their bodies.
“The gods have rejected mankind as cruel, weak and full of greed,” David then says in a voiceover. “They are a dying species, grasping for resurrection. So they are leaving the earth forever.”
He continues, “But their power is an illusion. They don’t deserve to start again, and I’m not going to let them.”
You have to wonder if David is getting a little too much credit in these new films. Not only does he play a big part in that SXSW spoiler, but he’s also essentially wiping out one of the big mysteries from the original Alien film — and creating more questions in the process. There’s still a long way to go before we reach the Nostromo in the series, so many twists and turns can happen before then. No clue what that could be, but you have to feel bad for Elizabeth Shaw at this point. She survives everything in Prometheus, including the birth of Starro from Justice League, only to become what appears to be fodder for a mad robot.
That said, there’s no real guarantee that these spoilers ruin the film or explain everything. They’re being shared for a reason and if Scott feels he has five or six more films in the can, there’s a good chance the film will have much more to share once it is released.
