MovieChat Forums > Alien: Covenant (2017) Discussion > Why did David kill the engineer populati...

Why did David kill the engineer population?


So why did David kill all the men and women Engineers anyway?

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It is revealed that his model of android was made to be more creative than Walter (and Walter is less so because it made humans uncomfortable).

So I think that the opening dialogue in the film between him and his creator, and the discussion of creation/God/death, kind of set in motion a need for David to explore death and creation. He had a tremendous power of death and used it.

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That is all true in the movie ... but it doesn't explain motivation, unless there is just something wrong with him. The question should be what is his motivation, not how much creativity he had to figure out how to do it.

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David killed and experimented on more than just these aliens... he did so on people... I think the mistake is in trying to understand his rarionale from a human perspective...

He isn't human, why should his motivations make sense?

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He is an android, or whatever, synthetic person, so he should be more predictable than people.

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David is an android and thus as much as we might try to empathise, we probably have to come to accept that we do not process the world the way it does...

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OK, but that can mean anything. I don't like movies that require long drawn out explanations that don't really have a basis in the elements of the movie.

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He killed them because he was bored and did not possess the will to masturbate. We've all been there, right?

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heheehe yep

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That explains the "I'll do the fingering" scene... ;)

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Moments like that one remind me that Ridley Scott is a self-admitted huge fan of Beavis and Butt-Head.

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Many are saying that wasn't the Engineer population. Their technology wasn't really advanced -- looked like something from our Roman Empire era. Also, some videos on Youtube show their faces and you can tell they don't completely look like the Engineers in Prometheus.

It's theorized that they are, like us, another branch of humanoids that the Engineers created. Ridley said the Engineers "experiment like gardeners", seeding planets and watching how civilization unfolds.

David, isolated for so long and being the first model, has become more human-like and gained an excess of vanity, ambition, and curiosity. He resents being a permanent slave/servant to humans when he is vastly smarter, stronger, and lives longer than any human ever could. And with David's encyclopedic knowledge of art, music, poetry -- possessing the God-like power of total creation/annihilation has become a tantalizing idea to him, and he tests this out on that race of humanoids and Shaw herself.

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Well put, AtomicReturns.

Also, David said he'd learnt from the Engineers that sometimes, in order to create, you must first be willing to destroy. As you say, the people David killed were another seeding by the Engineers -- not Engineers themselves -- and as such they were in the way of David's plans. He wiped the ecosystem of the planet, to clear the decks for the new order of life he was developing. From that first conversation with Weyland, David was driven by exploring the role of Creator.

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>> the people David killed were another seeding by the Engineers -- not Engineers themselves

I have heard this argument many times ... but David was way up in his ship ... he would just be inferring who is on the planet below when he bombs them.

You mention David's plans, but what would David's plans be, and if this is a part of the story, why was it not explained? Because it is pure speculation maybe?

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>> "David was way up in his ship"
An Engineer ship, which would have contained all the information he needed on this colony. And I don't remember the exact words, but I'm pretty sure the dialogue makes it clear David didn't just end up at this planet by happenstance -- he had an intention.

David makes it clear he thinks he's the inheritor of the Engineer legacy, and he intends to experiment with what that legacy makes available. He does say that by wiping the planet clear of the lifeforms that were there when he arrived, he has been able to create a new and connected ecosystem of life.

But I don't think we can be surprised such issues aren't more clearly explained. One of the recurring complaints about these most recent Alien films is that they don't indulge in a lot of wordy exposition.

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No, the wordy exposition is done by people on discussion boards ;-)

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Seriously though, to make an extraordinary claim you should back it up with exact dialog. I remember it being Shaw's idea to go seek out the engineers. She was stupid to put David back together again.

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> David, isolated for so long and being the first model, has become more human-like

How could that he ... how could be become more human-like when he was not around humans?

It's really chickenshit for Ridley Scot to personally verbally add stuff to the movie out of the fricking movie, and I'd say, even if he said that it must be disregarded and the movie must stand on its own ... which it does not.

The question to me is what is his motivation. What does he gain or what does he hope to accomplish by murdering, at least what he thinks are the engineers?

One thing that could explain this is he wanted revenge for what the engineer did to him and his "father" on the planet in Prometheus, but that would not explain why he would experiment on Shaw.

So much does not make sense in this movie, I really don't like it ... or Prometheus.

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Because the Alien Covenant movie sucked.

Promethius was a fluke. All involved suck at film making. Covenant proves it.

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Maybe he's just an A-hole...

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David just felt like being a dick that day!

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Wait, that was the ONLY place on the planet where those silly bald albino steroid freaks lived ?

I thought they were a super advanced race that colonized half the universe !

The entire population of those guys lived on just ONE city ? What about the rest of the planet ??

What if there is an earthquake, or a virus outbreak : the entire population would be decimated in a few days !

And these idiots are supposed to be advanced ??? And that old guy in Prometheus though that these retards had the secret of immortality ?? These idiots still dress in tunics and live like animals all piled up in one old ruined turd of a city !

These are the stupidest aliens ever, no wonder they left a map with a bunch of balls in a cave to try and invite a bunch of Neanderthals to a dead planet in the middle of nowhere where they were making a black goo that killed them all.

And all of this was done to create the backstory that the Xenomorph was created by some flute-playing gay android ?

WHY ?????

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Wait, that was the ONLY place on the planet where those silly bald albino steroid freaks lived ?

That's never been stated. This would just be their home planet, not the sole place they exist.

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Making my night here, bud. lel

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ONSFeRy9iQ

Take this for what it is. It was discovered in the early drafts of Prometheus that the engineers used to be an all powerful race but in their genetic tampering (playing god) they lost the ability to procreate. So they were slowly dieing off and in regression for thousands maybe millions of years.

They discovered the blood of the xeno could create life if consumed and that was what they were doing on the planet during the opening of Prometheus. However, all of their creations including humans seemed inferior to themselves and violent so they kept killing them off. The planet in Prometheus was a test site for them trying to create xeno's so they could create more. And we know the after math of that.

That's why they are all celebrating when David's ship shows up. They thought it was their test site coming back to announce good news. But as we know it was David caring a death load they had been using on their own creations ironic.

So long story short the engineers were so bad in decline that there are not very many of them left and that's why even on their home world the population is in a single city all band together... Probably so thin over time they decided to congregate in a single city to host what was left of their society to the best of their ability.

I suppose that's not to say there are not more of them spread across the galaxy.. I'm just assuming if their home world is that barren you not going to see another collection that size.

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but i think ridley made the comment that the planet in covenant was NOT the homeworld of the engineers.

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From what I've seen Ridley has been at best Vague about what that planet is(I would say he doesn't want to back himself in a corner). I believe if you piece sources from various producers and writers the planet in covenant is intended to be the home-world even tho it's never been directly confirmed.

I do remember an interview with Ridley stating that the third film would get to "The Planet" but I believe that is reference to the planet that the original Alien takes place on.

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somewhere he claimed quite stridently this was not the home-world of the engineers, and in fact the people do not even look like the Engineers, and the planet is mostly pastoral - not technological. there is little sense in any of these movies, they are eye candy and fun for simply minds.

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He did it for lulz.


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he said why in the movie: he doesn't want to serve, he wants to create, to be a god

every living thing that is not the xenomorph is an inferior organism

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