10 Horror Movie Villains Who Became Smarter In The Sequel

Cinema may have seen some devious cyborgs over the years, but Michael Fassbender's David contentiously represents the gold standard for such a concept.

David was literally designed from head-to-toe to be a walking fountain of knowledge and assistance to his human counterparts. For context, in 2012's reboot of the Alien franchise, Prometheus, he is revealed to be so technologically advanced that he can communicate with the Engineers - the previously uncontacted creators of humanity - through an amalgamation of ancient languages, although this unfortunately doesn't save him from an impromptu decapitation at their hands.

You would have thought that having your head ripped off would put a stop to one's devious schemes. However, 2017's sequel Alien: Covenant revealed that the surviving David had somehow still managed to overpower Elizabeth Shaw, using her body in his twisted experiments as he engineered the Xenomorphs to wipe out humanity. Let that sink in, David somehow went from a decapitated head to the greatest threat to mankind in the space of a sequel.

Overpowering his more technologically advanced doppelgänger Walter and staging the most devious Trojan Horse operation imaginable in order to execute his masterplan, was just the icing on a particularly Machiavellian cake. Percy Shelley summarized the unbridled horror at David's titanic intellect exceedingly well in the sequel's oft-quoted poem Ozymandius.

"Look upon his works ye mighty, and despair" indeed.