Explain Alien Covenant to me!

[Morrus]

We don't know if xenomorphs have been around that whole time or not.

But I thought it was clear that David was doing experimental bioengineering and created the xenomorphs (eventually after a whole string of 'specimens') in that cave of his? He said he'd created the 'perfect organism'.

 

[Epic Meepo]

But I thought it was clear that David was doing experimental bioengineering and created the xenomorphs (eventually after a whole string of 'specimens') in that cave of his? He said he'd created the 'perfect organism'.

David's lying about creating the Xenomorphs. Alien Vs. Predator establishes that human-incubated Xenomorphs predate David by thousands of years. All David did was fiddle around with stolen alien tech until he discovered what it could do, but he wants to believe that's an act of creation.

That fits with the theme established in the opening scene of Covenant. Weyland creates David in an effort to prove he's a godlike father figure (which he isn't), but he refuses to acknowledge David as his son. So David spends the rest of the movie desperately trying to prove he, too, is a godlike father figure worthy of respect (which he isn't).

 

[Morrus]

David's lying about creating the Xenomorphs.

Really? I struggle to get on board with that as an explanation.

Alien Vs. Predator establishes that human-incubated Xenomorphs predate David by thousands of years.

That was always my assumption.

However, there is a canon issue—Eidkey Scott only considers his movies canon. He doesn’t even consider Aliens to be canon—no Queen. He didn’t write Covenant with AvP in mind.

The problem, it seems, is that we have films being made by different directors who don’t agree with each other on what’s canon and what’s not.

And so Covenant and AvP contradict each other. We can make up our own head canon to say David was just lying, but I don’t personally find that satisfying.

 

[MGibster]

I feel like if the xenomorphs are that recent, it kinda diminishes them. Maybe that's just me.

I'm with you on this. One of the things I really love about Alien is that very little is explained to the audience. Was the alien signal from LV-426 a distress call or a warning to stay away? Who is the Space Jockey and why was he transporting those eggs? Why did the Company send a bunch of space truckers instead of skilled scientist? How much did the Company know before it diverted our space truckers to LV-426? Is the xenomorph an engineered lifeform or did it evolve somewhere?

Alien manages to give us a tense, compelling story without even trying to answer those questions. These movies lately are all trying to answer questions we don't really need answered. We don't need to know where the aliens came from. That's not what made the first two such good movies.

 

[Deset Gled]

But I thought it was clear that David was doing experimental bioengineering and created the xenomorphs (eventually after a whole string of 'specimens') in that cave of his? He said he'd created the 'perfect organism'.

David's lying about creating the Xenomorphs.

My understanding (and this could be wrong) is that David created a kind of xenomorph, but not the xenomorph from the original trilogy. FWIW, wikipedia calls the alien in Covenant a "Praetomorph".

I don't think David is lying. I just think the movie doesn't do a great job of making this distinction very clear. The script and art of Covenant makes a lot of references to the original Alien, which doesn't help. But the actual xenomorph in Covenant has a number of features that make it unique. Again, like the Space Jockey size issue, it's not immediately clear on a first watch if these changes are intentional or just a lack of continuity. But I choose to believe in both cases that all the aliens are different.

 

[Rabulias]

David's lying about creating the Xenomorphs. Alien Vs. Predator establishes that human-incubated Xenomorphs predate David by thousands of years.

Until they bring time travel into the Alien franchise...

 

[Nikosandros]

Until they bring time travel into the Alien franchise...

They could bring in the TVA or the Jedi. It's all Disney, after all.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They could bring in the TVA or the Jedi. It's all Disney, after all.

Or Doctor Who.

It was the wyrrn all along.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So we watched this again this weekend and it’s way better than I remember. It’s not the first two films, but it’s decent.

But quality aside…. I’m still confused!

Is the implication that David created the xenomorphs a few years before the first Alien film? He bioengineered them when alive on the dead Engineer planet? From earlier proto-Xenos created via the black goo?

And if so how did the Engineer ship in the first film have xenomorph eggs on it?

I’m sure I’m just missing something obvious but I just can’t get the xeno timeline right in my head.

It's kind of a mess.

Not only were there proto-eggs on the ship in Prometheus, there's a huge mural of a xenomorph queen on the wall of that chamber the Prometheus crew explored.

So, at best, David nudged the black goo down a path it was already inclined to travel down and he mistakenly (?) thought he had accomplished something bigger than he had.

Basically, Scott was so excited by his new shiny toy, David, that he tried to retcon not just the original movies but even his own prequel. Fortunately, what we saw in Prometheus mostly cancels out the "big reveal" here.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I do think we are supposed to assume that Weyland-Yutani learned about the existence of the xenos from David.

In Alien: Romulus, we are explicitly told how Weyland-Yutani learned about the xenomorph that the Nostromo encountered. They may have known about them before that (in the non-AVP fork of the timeline) but there's no evidence to believe that at the moment.