It came out of bad writing.

We're supposed to accept the facehugger, that was barely on Lope's face as he clearly yelled "get it off me!", somehow implanted Lope with a chestburster

That's what I feared...

David somehow infected the guy with the facehugger he smuggled with him.

That's what I got, too. But the span between infection and fully grown alien warrior was really short.

@jupit said:

That's what I got, too. But the span between infection and fully grown alien warrior was really short.

Yeah. They changed the time frame for that happening. It used to take a day or two. Now its more like an hour or two.

I can only guess that this is a different breed of facehugger that David came up with. Or maybe their explanation is there's a lot of variation in how long it takes. It just happened that every Xenomorph in Alien and Aliens took a lot longer than those in covenant to grow and birth.

Having just watched it, David replaces the skin patch on the injured man's cheek (sorry, I don't even know what his damn name is). We can assume that David has infused that new skin patch with ... something.

Nothing makes sense, of course, because what he "births" is a Xeno, which comes from a facehugger which is nowhere in evidence. What comes out of the "goo" are those other albino ... things ... which, awww fuckit. It doesn't matter. That's where it comes from, but Scott doesn't give a damn if any of it agrees with what he's put forth so far, so why should we care?

They've kind of thrown consistency out the window, haven't they?

I wonder if there are any more of these movies, they'll bother trying to explain things like the differences in time it takes to birth a xenomorph after a facehugger attaches.
In the first three Alien movies, you were looking at a time frame of at least a day. Now its an hour or two at the most, sometimes much faster it seemed.
For some reason I'm still curious about what will happen with these sequels, despite all the wasted potential.

I think David put one of the alien embryos in Lope while he was sedated and recovering from his wounds. it seemed like a decent amount of time had passed and people were settled in (girl making food, other couple getting frisky in the shower). the life cycle was super quick and consistent throughout the movie, so maybe if the face hugger did latch onto Lope for that second he was on him it was enough time to impregnate him if that is the answer, which I agree is kind of flimsy.

They were first generation and directly infused with the pathogen that created rapid mutations and growth. The growth rate slows with each generation of aliens created? Also another thing to wonder is that this is the first true alien form and David clearly now has an entire colony of people to perfect the creature. The alien did seem a bit wild and rabid, in the older movies it was like a wild animal, but was definitely depicted as more cunning.

Truth is a lot of unanswered questions that people were griping about in Prometheus, were answered in covenant. Scott has said that this will answer questions, but also create more unanswered ones. so, like I said somewhere else, hopefully he makes one more so he can wrap this up, but still leave enough mystery for people theorize. The movie has issues, but overall I thought it was a great step in the right direction.

@FlyingSaucersAreReal said:

They've kind of thrown consistency out the window, haven't they?

I wonder if there are any more of these movies, they'll bother trying to explain things like the differences in time it takes to birth a xenomorph after a facehugger attaches.
In the first three Alien movies, you were looking at a time frame of at least a day. Now its an hour or two at the most, sometimes much faster it seemed.
For some reason I'm still curious about what will happen with these sequels, despite all the wasted potential.

They couldn't even be consistent about how the airborne virus works. It spawns a back-burster in one guy and a mouth-burster in another. Scott and his writers weren't concerned at all about consistency, only how to gross out the audience with more than one method of "birth." Look at all the inconsistencies with Oren's burster versus the original...and this is supposed to be a PREQUEL.

This is the essence of what's wrong with the franchise. They've gone from making a B-monster movie seem like an "A" picture with the original movie and they've done a 180 and have fully embraced B-level moviemaking. It's glossy, sure, but all they want is to create a variety of deaths--ala Friday the 13th--to keep their young, attention-deficit deprived viewers entertained for 90 minutes. They've given up doing anything unique or consistent.

@AlienFanatic said:

@FlyingSaucersAreReal said:

They've kind of thrown consistency out the window, haven't they?

I wonder if there are any more of these movies, they'll bother trying to explain things like the differences in time it takes to birth a xenomorph after a facehugger attaches.
In the first three Alien movies, you were looking at a time frame of at least a day. Now its an hour or two at the most, sometimes much faster it seemed.
For some reason I'm still curious about what will happen with these sequels, despite all the wasted potential.

They couldn't even be consistent about how the airborne virus works. It spawns a back-burster in one guy and a mouth-burster in another. Scott and his writers weren't concerned at all about consistency, only how to gross out the audience with more than one method of "birth." Look at all the inconsistencies with Oren's burster versus the original...and this is supposed to be a PREQUEL.

This is the essence of what's wrong with the franchise. They've gone from making a B-monster movie seem like an "A" picture with the original movie and they've done a 180 and have fully embraced B-level moviemaking. It's glossy, sure, but all they want is to create a variety of deaths--ala Friday the 13th--to keep their young, attention-deficit deprived viewers entertained for 90 minutes. They've given up doing anything unique or consistent.

Yes. I didn't hate the movie, but I do expect more from Ridley Scott and this franchise.

This movie was like a glossy B movie. Probably the goriest, nastiest installment of the series, and the Alien movies might be the most gruesome mainstream horror movies ever.

It wasn't bad for what it was, I guess, but like I said, they can and should be doing better.

Why couldn't a chestburster impregnate somebody in seconds?

Crucially, these chestbursters aren't the same ones that we saw in previous films. They are David's creation and he could've made the transition time under a minute. Maybe the ones we saw in Alien(s) weren't acting normally... Maybe they behave less chaotic when they are in specific situations (air/atm pressure) and so the gestation period is longer. It could change their metabolism for all we know.

There never was a rule of how long it could take, so I don't get why you guys can't accept it as it is. In the Alien universe it must explain itself (otherwise it couldn't happen and it contradicts the film). Everyone accepted the Queen Alien in the 2nd movie and then looked for explanations and that is what needs to happen for the chestburster in AC.

@Russ007 said:

Why couldn't a chestburster impregnate somebody in seconds?

Crucially, these chestbursters aren't the same ones that we saw in previous films. They are David's creation and he could've made the transition time under a minute. Maybe the ones we saw in Alien(s) weren't acting normally... Maybe they behave less chaotic when they are in specific situations (air/atm pressure) and so the gestation period is longer. It could change their metabolism for all we know.

There never was a rule of how long it could take, so I don't get why you guys can't accept it as it is. In the Alien universe it must explain itself (otherwise it couldn't happen and it contradicts the film). Everyone accepted the Queen Alien in the 2nd movie and then looked for explanations and that is what needs to happen for the chestburster in AC.

Sorry, Russ, I don't buy it. It's not about rules, it's about sequence. This movie is supposed to be a prequel to Alien, but in Alien the chestburster takes a very, VERY long time to impregnate Kane. So long that we are given multiple sequences not only with the FH attached to Kane's face, but also with a sequence in which Ash is poring over a microscope with the embryo clearly displayed on a monitor behind him. (He quickly shuts it off when Ripley shows up.) There is the depiction of the FH's tube pumping...something...down Kane's esophagus and it's speculated by Ash--the "successor" to both the David and Walter series 'drods--that the FH is involved in keeping the host alive for some reason.

David's FH impregnates Oram in a ridiculously short time. Orem is gone a very brief time, and clearly not long enough for any of the other crew to even notice he's gone. The FH doesn't seem to require nearly as long to finish its cycle. In what universe does David, supposedly obsessed with breeding the "perfect organism" (that stupid callback to Ash's monologue), create a future facehugger that takes LONGER to impregnate and whose offspring, the chestburster, comes out without arms and legs while its antecedent arrives not only fully-formed but emotionally attached to its creator?

It's absolute nonsense from start to finish and wholly inconsistent with the film it's trying to set up. Scott created all kinds of issues in Prometheus that he tasked his writers with retconning to fit the Alien storyline. The hamfisted way in which the writers crafted A:C is evident from the first frame to the last. Now, they have an even more impossible task for any sequels to explain why none--absolutely NONE--of the Alien's attributes line up an where a descendant is less developed, slower, bulkier, and takes longer to gestate.

Ridiculous.

P.S. I think only the poorest screenwriters need to stop a film, as they did with A:C, for a character monologue to bring us up to speed with what's occurred. It required enormous time for David to explain his motivation and what he did with both the Engineers and Shaw. If another film is made, how much more time will these weak-ass writers require to explain the changes they needed to to make to fit the Alien and Space Jockey into all the crappy backstories Scott jammed into Prometheus and Covenant?

@mechajutaro said:

They couldn't even be consistent about how the airborne virus works.

And that's what makes fiction and fantasy terrific; consistency or lack thereof doesn't diminish an enjoyable story.

Some of us expect more from our fiction.

@AlienFanatic said:

@Russ007 said:

Why couldn't a chestburster impregnate somebody in seconds?

Crucially, these chestbursters aren't the same ones that we saw in previous films. They are David's creation and he could've made the transition time under a minute. Maybe the ones we saw in Alien(s) weren't acting normally... Maybe they behave less chaotic when they are in specific situations (air/atm pressure) and so the gestation period is longer. It could change their metabolism for all we know.

There never was a rule of how long it could take, so I don't get why you guys can't accept it as it is. In the Alien universe it must explain itself (otherwise it couldn't happen and it contradicts the film). Everyone accepted the Queen Alien in the 2nd movie and then looked for explanations and that is what needs to happen for the chestburster in AC.

Sorry, Russ, I don't buy it. It's not about rules, it's about sequence. This movie is supposed to be a prequel to Alien, but in Alien the chestburster takes a very, VERY long time to impregnate Kane. So long that we are given multiple sequences not only with the FH attached to Kane's face, but also with a sequence in which Ash is poring over a microscope with the embryo clearly displayed on a monitor behind him. (He quickly shuts it off when Ripley shows up.) There is the depiction of the FH's tube pumping...something...down Kane's esophagus and it's speculated by Ash--the "successor" to both the David and Walter series 'drods--that the FH is involved in keeping the host alive for some reason.

David's FH impregnates Oram in a ridiculously short time. Orem is gone a very brief time, and clearly not long enough for any of the other crew to even notice he's gone. The FH doesn't seem to require nearly as long to finish its cycle. In what universe does David, supposedly obsessed with breeding the "perfect organism" (that stupid callback to Ash's monologue), create a future facehugger that takes LONGER to impregnate and whose offspring, the chestburster, comes out without arms and legs while its antecedent arrives not only fully-formed but emotionally attached to its creator?

It's absolute nonsense from start to finish and wholly inconsistent with the film it's trying to set up. Scott created all kinds of issues in Prometheus that he tasked his writers with retconning to fit the Alien storyline. The hamfisted way in which the writers crafted A:C is evident from the first frame to the last. Now, they have an even more impossible task for any sequels to explain why none--absolutely NONE--of the Alien's attributes line up an where a descendant is less developed, slower, bulkier, and takes longer to gestate.

Ridiculous.

P.S. I think only the poorest screenwriters need to stop a film, as they did with A:C, for a character monologue to bring us up to speed with what's occurred. It required enormous time for David to explain his motivation and what he did with both the Engineers and Shaw. If another film is made, how much more time will these weak-ass writers require to explain the changes they needed to to make to fit the Alien and Space Jockey into all the crappy backstories Scott jammed into Prometheus and Covenant?

right. The bio weapons in the prequels are pretty clearly superior to what we see in the later movies. The black goo, the airborne black goo in Covenent.

You could invent some rationale I suppose for it, but it'd have to be pretty implausible.

@FlyingSaucersAreReal said:

... it'd have to be pretty implausible.

You mean like everything else they've been doing, especially Scott?