Alien Covenant (2017)

Alien: Covenant is a 2017 science fiction horror film directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by John Logan and Dante Harper, from a story by Michael Green and Jack Paglen. A joint American and British production, the film is a sequel to Prometheus (2012) and is the second installment in the Alien prequel series and the sixth installment overall in the Alien film series, as well as the third directed by Scott. The film features returning star Michael Fassbender and Katherine Waterston, with Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, and Demián Bichir in supporting roles. It follows the crew of a colony ship that lands on an uncharted planet and makes a terrifying discovery.

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Business magnate Peter Weyland speaks with his newly activated android, who chooses the name “David” after observing Michelangelo’s statue. Weyland states that one day they will search for mankind’s creator together. David comments on his own unlimited lifespan as compared to Weyland’s, which unsettles Weyland.

In 2104, eleven years after the Prometheus expedition, the colonization ship Covenant is seven years from reaching planet Origae-6, with 2,000 colonists in stasis and 1,140 human embryos in cold storage. The ship is monitored by Walter, an advanced android model that physically resembles David. When a shockwave damages the ship, Walter reanimates his 14-human crewmates, themselves couples and colonists. Ship’s captain Jake Branson dies when his stasis pod malfunctions. While repairing the ship, the crew picks up a transmission of a human voice from a nearby planet, which appears eminently more habitable than Origae-6. Despite the protests of Daniels, Branson’s widow, that this new “perfect” planet is too good to be true, newly-promoted captain Chris Oram decides that they will check the new planet.

With pilot Tennessee Faris maintaining Covenant in orbit, his wife Maggie flies a small lander to the Earth-like planet’s surface, where an expedition team tracks the transmission’s signal to a crashed alien ship. Crewmates Ledward and Hallett are infected by spores from fungus-like organisms. Oram’s wife Karine helps the increasingly ill Ledward back to the lander, where Maggie quarantines them inside the med-bay. A small pale alien creature (neomorph) bursts from Ledward’s back, killing him, and then mauls Karine to death. Maggie returns and attempts to kill the creature with a shotgun, but triggers an explosion which kills her and destroys the lander. Nearby in the fields, another neomorph bursts from Hallett’s mouth, killing him.

The neomorphs attack the remaining crew, killing crew member Ankor. The crew manages to kill one before David, who survived the Prometheus mission, appears and scares off the neomorphs. He leads the crew to a temple in a city full of dead humanoids. David tells them that upon his and fellow Prometheus survivor Elizabeth Shaw’s arrival at the planet, their ship accidentally released a virus which annihilated all fauna on the planet, and that Shaw perished when the ship crashed.

Attempts to radio the Covenant are stymied by ion storms. When the remaining neomorph infiltrates the temple and kills crew member Rosenthal, David tries to communicate with the creature, and is horrified when Oram kills it. Oram questions David, who reveals that the Aliens are a result of his releasing and experimenting with the pathogen to produce new lifeforms. He manipulates Oram into being attacked by a Facehugger Alien. A new form of Alien later erupts from Oram’s chest, killing him.

As the others search for Oram and Rosenthal, Walter finds Shaw’s dissected corpse, used by David as material for his evolving creature designs. David states that humanity is a dying and unworthy species, and his designed creature is a “perfect organism” set to eradicate them. When Walter disagrees, David disables him, then threatens Daniels. Walter’s advanced systems self-repair, and he attacks David while Daniels escapes. Crewmate Cole quickly cuts another facehugger off security chief Carl Lope, leaving Lope with acid burns on his face. The now fully grown xenomorph kills Cole, while Lope escapes and meets up with Daniels. Tennessee arrives in another lander to extract Daniels, Lope, and Walter, who says David has “expired”. They kill the attacking xenomorph and return to Covenant.

The next morning, Daniels and Tennessee find out that another xenomorph burst from Lope’s chest, killing him, and is loose on the Covenant. It matures, and kills crew members Ricks and his wife Upworth. Final crew members Tennessee and Daniels lure the creature into Covenant’s terraforming bay and kill it.

Covenant resumes its voyage to Origae-6. As Walter helps Daniels into stasis, she realizes that Walter is in fact David, but is unable to escape her pod before falling asleep. David regurgitates two facehugger embryos and places them in cold storage with the human embryos. He poses as Walter to record a log stating that all crewmembers except Daniels and Tennessee were killed by the solar flare incident at the beginning of the film and that the ship is still on course for Origae-6.

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