David's Reasoning?

I guess there's no way of knowing for sure until we see the movie, but I hope it is! I would rather see David go on a grief-stricken revenge bender against the Engineers than to do creepy experiments on Shaw as some have speculated. That theory has never sat well with me. IMO, it would totally contradict the seeming affection he showed toward her in "Prometheus." If the Engineers killed Elizabeth, David would have double the reason to hold a grudge against them. 1.) One of them ripped his head off. 2.) They killed Shaw, the only human aboard Prometheus whom David seemed to hold in some regard. We shall see. :)

Can't wait to go see Covenant!

@Strella777 - I was not a big fan of the 'David bombs the Engineers' idea at first, but will be all for it, if he has been pissed off & is totally showing a more human emotional reaction!

Like, "You killed my Daddy & my only friend!!!!!"

HAHA, I can hardly wait!!!

I think it would give his character some emotional depth, even though he is evil and has his own agenda having him exact some form of revenge for Shaw would be awesome. Even Hannibal Lector had a soft spot for Clarice, we were meant to fear him on a primal level but yet he could show effection and pleasantries....now that i think about it David reminds me of Lector, very polite even when he is evil.

The gods have rejected mankind as cruel, weak and full of greed,” David then says in a voiceover. “They are a dying species, grasping for resurrection. So they are leaving the earth forever.”

He continues, “But their power is an illusion. They don’t deserve to start again, and I’m not going to let them.”

There are many things this reported quote from CinemaCon could be

* it could be cut and spliced out of order

* he could be saying this to Walter later in the movie or possibly Shaw in a moment of exposition before he carries out some experiment on her or takes action against the Covenant crew

* Maybe he is telling some information he has learned to Walter or possibly Shaw, maybe he learned something from the ship and this is part of him showing Shaw what happened thousands of years ago.

He could be showing her in flashbacks as he tells her what he has learned. The statement "The gods have rejected mankind as cruel, weak and full of greed,”  he could be talking about what he learned of the Engineers view of humanity.......

“They are a dying species, grasping for resurrection. So they are leaving the earth forever.”He continues, “But their power is an illusion. They don’t deserve to start again, and I’m not going to let them.” Could be his reference to the Engineers and their many visits in the past to Earth, hence the comment leaving the Earth forever, i think the word forever is key here, since humans are not close to leaving the Earth forever even though they are colonizing. I feel that it is possible that when he says they are leaving the Earth forever that he means they meant to wipe it clean as they see it as a failed experiment and will never return. I feel this planet (Paradise is one of the locations in the universe where at least a version of this Engineer species or human hybrid exist. I feel there are further sentences left out in this voice over but i feel he could be possibly talking of the Engineers and their illusion of power. If this is true then this could be part of the conversation with Shaw pre-bombing after they learn background of the Engineer race and their history and intentions.

Its possible but who knows, in less than a month we will find out, what do you all think????

G&DL-

i always struggled to accept the idea that david wud automatically kill shaw or queen her when ever he gets the chance.  their relationship in prometheus seemed to mean something.

also the idea that  david wants mankind gone? i thought this was totally over thought and forced. fair enough, holloway was a dick to him and vickers a little rude but he is a servant !! and surely weyland wud of tested his latest AI before taking him on his ultimate mission. a man of weylands power and intelligence wud allow AI to function this way.

i think the theory that the words are spliced or out of context is more reasonable than david hell bent on destroying mankind.(humans on earth)

fair enough he treats "life" differently, he tricked holloway into seeing what the black goo does regardless of the consequence.  had his own agenda with weyland (father) but now he is free to want to kill earths population? 

he might experiment and design the ultimate killing machine and call it perfection.   he might bomb (or not) a city to see what happens?  but why not just travel to earth and drop it there? at the source before we spread out?

i think david is misunderstood. not hell bent on bombing the earth.

oh no, cos earths last on his list, or this or that....

G&DL: i think your idea might make the most sense.

I think the simplest explanation works best.

What is Shaws Agenda?

To go to the Planet where these Engineers are from and hopefully find out why we was created and why would they then want to destroy us... and maybe who created them (Engineers).

For Shaw to gain these answers, she would be taking a Massive Gamble, and a Huge Assumption when she finds these beings they would be willing to entertain her Questions.

A lot depends on.

Did these beings they would find, know about Earth, did they know about the intended Destruction of Mankind.  If the Answer is yes, then its not going to end well for Shaw.

What is Davids Agenda?

He felt displeased with how Mankind viewed him as simply just a Machine, David feels he is more than a Machine and he feels he is Superior to Mankind.  With his Creator Dead, David feels he can now be Free and not have to be a Servant to Mankind.

David realizes that Mankinds Creators grew displeased with their Creation and intended to destroy it... he witnessed these Creators are not Gods, all the power they had was just Advanced Technology, Tools and Knowledge that without these they are just Mortal Beings.

David had a interest in these beings and their Superior Technology,  He Feels he is more Superior to Humans and may view Humans as a Flawed Species and agree with maybe the view the Engineers had.  He finds out those Engineers are Mortal too and also Barbaric.

He was awe struck when he met the Engineer, until he got his Head Ripped off... thus Rendering any Ambitions of being Free to explore the Galaxy and Experience new Things MUTE!

Now David is back together, he would be aware how Dangerous the Engineers are, and yet he would be interested in what Great Powers and Technology they have, Why they would have created Mankind.

David is aware however... The potential Reception he could get, he is not as Naive as Shaw..  Shaw wants her Answers even if this means Death to her, all she has left now is to know WHY

David no doubt feels he should become a free Sentient Creation and has many more experiences and knowledge he would like to gain, he has ambitions and does not want to be Headless Corpse Again.

So David who knows how to use their Technology and can read their Writings etc... knows he has TWO possible Outcomes.

1) These beings welcome them with open arms, they inform Shaw of her Answers, they become interested in David and will teach David things and hopefully take David and Shaw on board.

2) They will react Hostile in the same way the Engineer did on LV-223.

David knows that option 1 is a Assumption... and option 2 is a likely outcome and he knows that should he Destroy the Engineers, he can get some of Shaws Answers from the Ruins of their Cities and also it will leave behind a Treasure Trove of Information and Technology that David can gain more knowledge from.

BOTTOM LINE.....

With these beings out of the Way, and David able to explore there records and technology, then David will now be as GOD

big dave - great way of putting that.  i particularly agree with the david becomes (as) god part.  even becoming worshipped by his creators, effectively spinning everything on its head and coming out on top. now that sounds like david.

he now sits above mankind - his creator (weyland)

above engineers and any other beings after gaining all of this knowledge (hall of heads)

i feel that much of her answers may be gleaned by David and his understanding of their language and he does this from the ship. As BigDave mentioned David also knows that a second "close encounter" with Engineers to get Shaw's answers would be folly as he would likely lose his head again and they would just kill Shaw,

thus i feel that he learns enough from the ship to give Shaw the highlights, and the quoted speech from CinemaCon could likely be David talking to Shaw before the bombing.

After BigDave illustrated above David sees the Engineers as mortals just with advanced technology and tools and knowledge but without these they are mortals. Perhaps this is in line with the once sentence quote from CinemaCon "their power is an illusion"

I feel there is a good possibility that some of Shaws answers are discovered on the trip from the juggernaut and David's understanding of their language and tech.

Along the way he or possibly they decide to bomb the engineers. While docked with the scorpion shaped ship the juggernaut releases its payload...the scorpion either through its docking position or through defensive measures crashes the juggernaut David and Shaw are on. She is either incapacitated or dies during this and David is stranded and left to discover far darker things and information from the Engineer society and the "hall of heads".

I dont see him as wanting to wipe out mankind and kill life on Earth. I feel he is somewhat of a sociopath even though he is a robot. I feel he sees the covenant crew and humans as inferior and he uses the ones he runs across as tools to make discoveries and further his understanding and experiments, in a similar perhaps more extreme case to what he did with Holloway in Prometheus....with a tragic and horrific outcome   no doubt.

Humans to him are inferior and just instruments to further his experiments and understanding. even with this bordering on evil there is still a chance he will be the Lector to Shaw's Clarice and favor/protect her in some way. Maybe he through his experiments keeps her alive even though its not in the normal sense, but he sees it as a favor to her even though it may be an atrocity.

Wow ..... great read all!

I knew you guys would expound on this & make it truly thought-provoking!!

Thanks!!

 I think it's far fetched to think an android has thoughts of destroying it's makers and RS is not like that. My take on this is it's all very close to home. (One of the most stupid things about Prometheus is that nobody every thought to send word home about what was going on). So during the voyage to the engineer planet David having being repaired by Shaw makes contact with Weyland and relays all about his cargo and it's potential. Weyland then instruct him to 'try it out' which he does on Shaw then on the planets inhabitants.  Weyland now know where this planet is because they are in contact with David who requests some hosts be sent for dinner and to test his theories of evolution. So just like Alien, Weyland sends the covenant crew unknowingly there to check it out. To make sure this happens they sabotage the captains cryotube and install an imposter. The covenant is then re-routed secretly, whether Walter is the impostor or not cant tell. The big question for me is how this ends. Someone or something must survive because weyland know a lot about the zeno and it's potential in Alien?? Anyway Daniels scarifies herself and the zeno to save the colonists and sets the ship on a course back to earth. Hence Weyland has to do it all again with the Nostomo crew. Hopefully I'm completely wrong and they'll come up with some original ending like Shaw appears as an Alien with a conscience destroys David and saves Daniels!!!

The Engineers are Created like mankind is created for a Function. They have fulfilled their function. David read everything in that TEMPLE, NOT WAR PALACE. They in their ignorance, never once consulted David, yet the Engineer Understood what Weyland Said. The Engineers fulfilled their duty, created their God, the MURAL, AWAITED ITS HOLY RETURN. 

MANKIND COULD BIRTH THE BLACK DENO FROM THE THE BLACK GOO

DAVID STOPPED ALL THEIR PLANS.... HES UPSET THE BALANCE OF NATURE.Now let's see what the little Sickens has Set in Motion.

Incurious what's he up to now the Arcturians are Dead

Ps, I'm also certain, the Ultramorph from the Mural defrosted and was aboard the Juggernaut. Shaw also had millions of Sperm within her. Look at how the Engineer kept staring at her. He knew.

Maybe the filmmakers are playing us: perhaps they're deliberately painting one plot with all these spoilers, but in actual fact it's out of context, and the reality in the film is completely different.

What do I mean by this? Well for example, David may well be dropping food parcels rather than goo-filled ampules, and actually the engies attacked him.

Yes, probably a bit far-fetched but I do wish we are being tricked because it would mean we can 'have our cake and eat it' -- in other words, we get to speculate with all the spoilers, and yet still enjoy the film because it's nothing like what we expect.

Well, maybe we HAVE been looking at it all wrong. Maybe David is the good guy?

Obviously the captain of the ship doesn't last long, leaving Billy Crudup to be the new captain. Maybe this is foul play? Maybe David justifies killing this guy because he is immoral?

In scenes with younger Weyland and David, David wears white, and Weyland wears black.

Walter may not be the "people person", and David the "selfish one". Maybe David is the independent thinker, and Walter is for "the corporation" (like Ash!). Maybe Walter helps Crudup kill Franco? 

David has had some time to get to know a compassionate woman who is motherly, in contrast to a wicked father with visions of godliness. Holloway kept calling him a "boy". For David, he only ever had a father. His father required no woman to make David. Funny how we see no women amongst Engineers (so far) either?

I think the Engineers killed off women, which makes Shaw and David a superhero team meant to wipe out the mother-killing race that esteemed to kill off "their creators" (women). Would totally justify wiping out a race that has tainted life in such a way ... to remove women.

My theory is (based mostly on the poem that David qoutes before bombing the city) that for whatever reason, whether something happened to shaw in hyper sleep, or it was just what he learned during the journey, david comes to the conclusion that the engineers must be wiped out before they destroy humanity.

They land at the city, and david correctly deduces that the city is not full of engineers, but rather another "pet project" of theirs that they care more for than humans and still visit regularly.  He then bombs them, knowing that eventually the engineers will return to investigate, giving him his opportunity to eradicate them. In the meantime, he has plenty of time to experiment and prepare his defenses for the fight to come, via the black goo, neomorphs, protomorph, etc........

I believe that he has all of the best intentions, thanks to his ever expanding human like emotions, mostly due to his time being shown compassion by shaw.......

Just my theory, and i still dont have a clue what happens to shaw, except that i feel like the big reveal at the end of covenant will be daniels finding shaw still alive but in a pretty wild state.......cue end credits and we bite our fingernails for another few years while ridley makes the next installment.......

Thoughts?

The story from the poem (as i understand it) is that qoute that david says was left as a message in the middle of a desolate wasteland, as a warning to those mighty that may want to challenge the power of the one who left the message. This to me plays into the theory that david bombs the city to send a message to the engineers. I also am wondering if the beacon that the covenant picks up was from david to the engineers to draw them into his trap....

I think whatever it is, he did indeed find out something about them that made him realise that they are worse than human beings. He then decide they deserve to be punished. 

Wow, a huge wealth of great theories you folks have crafted, I loved reading them all.

mine is fairly simple by comparison.

David has spent many years studying the engineers after he's put  Shaw into cryo sleep, before which he has come to admire her a lot, the first human to show him care and consideration, so he wants to help her realise her dreams of meeting her creators, and having learned of their ways and what would impress those on the engineer homeworld and how to do it, he sends a transmission to their planet informing them of his and Shaw's imminent arrival, perhaps he's sold them on the notion that he is a creation of one of their creations, (the one that pulled his head off might not have been aware) so they're very keen to meet him in case their plans for annihilating life on earth were too hasty.

unfortunately for Shaw, they are only interested in David, so upon meeting her, they are not impressed with her at all, and kill her; the only person that ever showed David love, so David decides that unlike how shaw was to him - a loving creator who rebuilt him - the engineers are cruel unloving creators who don't deserve to whimsically punish their creations, so he covers their entire capital city with black goo.

I think, that he believes he is the best form of evolution and is upset that he was made and/or subservient to his creators.  I think he initially has hope for the Engineers - in one of the trailers he states something to the effect that he hopes they are not as bad as humans.  He probably learns something that makes him feel that they are worse and he should be the top of the evolutionary food-chain. 

I am hoping we will get to understand why David did what he did, because that is what I am most interested in knowing.  Unfortunately, it does not look likely in this installment.  My quest for these answers is beginning to feel like it has disappeared behind another Lindeloff smoke cloud?