Shortly after his activation, David is interviewed by Sir Peter Weyland in a palatial lakeside apartment. David expresses his confusion at having to serve humans, despite being immortal and humans not.
Many years later, the colony spaceship USCSS Covenant is en route to the planet Origae-6, carrying over 2,000 colonists in hypersleep, and 1,140 human embryos. On December 5, 2104, still seven years four months from its destination, the vessel is struck by a neutrino blast from a nearby stellar ignition, causing major damage and starting several fires on board. In response to the crisis, the ship's crew of 15 are awoken from hyper-sleep, but Captain Branson is incinerated inside his cryotube when it fails to open. The surviving crew manages to bring the disaster under control, although 47 colonists and 16 embryos are lost alongside their captain. During one of the repair sessions, Daniels, the wife of Branson, talks to Walter, an improved android model, about a cabin Branson desired to make on the new planet, which Walter keeps to memory.
The Covenant's first officer, the highly religious Chris Oram, assumes command of the mission. While undertaking a spacewalk to conduct exterior repairs, pilot Tennessee picks up a fragmented, distorted transmission via his suit's communications systems. When the message is analyzed on board, the crew are able to discern an unidentified human humming a classic rock song within the image. When they trace the rogue transmission to its source, they find it originated from a nearby planet perfect for human habitation, better even than the predictions for Origae-6. Presented with a seemingly perfect home just a few weeks away and with none of the crew wanting to re-enter hypersleep after witnessing Branson's fate, Oram elects to investigate. Branson's wife Daniels officially protests but is overruled.
Upon reaching the uncharted world, Tennessee, Ricks and Upworth remain aboard the Covenant in orbit while the rest of the crew heads to the surface in a dropship to explore. They discover a verdant world ripe in vegetation but mysteriously devoid of animal life. As they explore, one of the security team, Ledward disturbs some small pods while he smokes, causing several airborne particles to enter his ear unnoticed. Further searching leads the ground team to a crashed Engineer Juggernaut, inside which they find a dog tag belonging to a "Dr. E. Shaw", as well as the source of the transmission they received. The expedition is cut short when Ledward becomes rapidly and violently ill. Karine rushes him back to the dropship, whereupon a Neomorph Bloodburster erupts from his back before attacking and killing Karine. In a desperate attempt to kill the creature, dropship pilot Faris accidentally shoots several flammable tanks aboard the ship, causing an explosion that kills her and destroys the craft; the Neomorph escapes. Outside, Hallett is killed birthing a second Neomorph that explodes from his throat, having also been infected by the pods.
The Neomorphs, already grown exponentially larger, soon return to attack the crew on the ground; Ankor is killed and Walter loses his hand saving Daniels. The armed security team manage to kill one of the creatures, while the second is scared away by a mysterious hooded figure that fires a bright flare. Unable to contact the Covenant due to ionic interference and with the ship unable to breach the planet's powerful atmospheric storms anyway, the crew follow the mysterious figure. He leads them to a nearby ruined city, strewn with the bodies of dead Engineers. Upon reaching a vast temple at its center, the figure reveals himself to be David, a survivor of the USCSS Prometheus incident. He explains that he and Shaw came to the planet ten years previously aboard the Juggernaut; however, the ship's cargo of weaponized black liquid accidentally deployed over the city when they arrived, annihilating its populace and contaminating the planet. The Juggernaut then crashed, killing Shaw and leaving David alone.
David and Walter spend time bonding in the temple. However, David soon becomes disappointed in his successor's lack of capacity for emotion and higher thought — aspects of his own design deemed dangerous and subsequently removed — and disables him. Meanwhile, the surviving Neomorph, now fully-grown, infiltrates the temple and mutilates Rosenthal. David discovers the creature feeding on her corpse and seems to communicate peacefully with it, but Oram bursts in and shoots the Neomorph dead, enraging David. When Oram threatens him, demanding to know the truth about his actions on the planet, David leads him to a laboratory, where he presents his efforts to genetically engineer a superior lifeform from the creatures spawned by the black liquid. He leads Oram onward into a chamber in the lower levels of the temple, where several Eggs of his creation reside. One of the Eggs promptly opens and Oram is subdued by the Facehugger that emerges.
David waits and watches as Oram is later killed by the Chestburster it lays within him. When the remaining security officers go to investigate, Sergeant Lopé is also attacked by a Facehugger, although he is saved when Cole cuts it off of him, badly burning Lopé's face with in the process. Cole is then killed by the fully grown Alien while Lopé flees. Elsewhere in the temple, Daniels confronts David, correctly guessing that Shaw did not perish in the crash. David confirms that he killed Shaw during his experiments before attacking Daniels. She is saved by Walter, who, as a more advanced synthetic than David, is able to self-repair. The two androids engage in a brutal duel as Daniels flees. She and Lopé manage to contact the Covenant and Tennessee launches a rescue in the ship's cargo transporter sled. Daniels, Lopé and Walter make it aboard the small ship, although they are pursued by the Alien. Daniels battles the creature aboard the flying craft, finally crushing it in the vessel's remote crane.
Upon returning to the Covenant, the survivors prepare to re-enter hypersleep. However, Daniels and Tennessee discover Lopé has been killed by a Chestburster. The Alien quickly slaughters Ricks and Upworth as they shower, but Daniels and Tennessee manage to corner the creature in the ship's terraforming equipment bay, finally succeeding in ejecting it into space. As they return to hypersleep, Daniels reminds Walter of the cabin Branson desired to make - when the android cannot recognize this, Daniels realizes too late that it is not Walter who is aboard the ship with her — it is David, who has cut off his own hand and scarred his face to assume Walter's place. She cries out in vain as he activates her hypersleep pod. Now alone aboard the vessel, David enters the hypersleep bay full of colonists, looking upon the hundreds of bodies in stasis, before regurgitating two small solidified Facehugger embryos and placing them into storage next to the human embryos. He records a log as Walter in the end stating that all crew members but Tennessee and Daniels were killed in the neutrino blast at the start of the film.
Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $74,262,031 /31.0%
Foreign: $165,544,038 /69.0%
= Worldwide: $239,806,069
Production Budget: $97 million
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2316204/
