Alien: Covenant - Possible Answers To Its 10 Biggest Questions
In space, no one can hear you scream for answers.
Alien: Covenant is like that annoying friend who insists on answering a question with another question.
Ridley Scott’s 2012 Alien prequel Prometheus left its follow-up with roughly 2,352 unresolved queries to address, and while loose ends were tied up, fans left theatres scratching their heads even harder than before.
Apparently we need at least three films to explain how and why a ‘Space Jockey’ on a ship full of Ovomorphs sent that warning signal the Nostromo detected, but the gap-bridging process has felt like one wild Xenomorph chase after another.
Almost everything in Prometheus that wasn’t a plot hole is an unresolved issue that Covenant left dangling, though the latest sequel did pose bigger questions, like why would you put Danny McBride and James Franco in charge of a colonisation mission?
But at least we know where the Xenomorphs came from now… or do we? No doubt Scott has few more surprises up his sleeve before the two timelines collide.
In the absence of full enlightenment, we can only speculate vociferously and cry out in frustration at being kept in the dark - it’s a pity no one can hear you scream in space.
10. Why Did The Engineers Want To Destroy Mankind?
If there was one question on everyone’s lips at the end of Prometheus… it’s why in god’s name did Millburn think petting that nightmarish cobra alien was a good idea?
But if there were two, the second no doubt concerns the Engineers’ motives for attempting to wipe out their own creation, humanity.
Possible Answers: There are many schools of thought on this but most tend to agree that either mankind failed to live up to its creators’ lofty expectations, or were viewed as enough of a threat to deserve a generous helping of DNA-altering pathogen.
Considering the inventions humanity has dreamed up in the Alien universe, from weapons of mass destruction to robots with Frankenstein complexes, wouldn’t the Engineers have good reason to view us with a sense of foreboding?
And given their fate at the hands of David in Covenant, our creators had good reason to perceive humanity’s pursuit of technological advancement as a threat, but there are other possible explanations for their actions.
The scene in which a dying Peter Weyland attempts to request more life from the surviving Engineer may be telling, particularly the god-like being’s reaction to David. He looks outraged by what he sees before him.
Could the Engineers have a parasitic wasp in their bonnet over mankind’s attempts to play god by creating synthetics? Or had they pre-empted how dangerous David and his mechanical cohorts really are and formulated a plan to take them out, along with their creators, before they lay waste to the entire universe?
These are but a few of many theories surrounding the Engineers’ reasons for attempting to end human life, and we haven’t even got to the idea that Christ was an Engineer who failed to steer mankind onto a righteous path.