Neomorph

The Neomorph was an alien creature created from the black liquid that David dropped on the Engineer homeworld.

Two Neomorphs are encountered by the crew of the colony ship, the USCSS Covenant, when they land on a then-unknown planet to answer David’s distress signal. The Neomorphs appear in 2017’s Alien Covenant.

Characteristics

The Neomorphs were created after David dropped the pathogen on Planet 4, which then mutated the ecosystem. This caused fungal-like egg sacks to grow on the ground, which emit spores when disturbed. These spores then travel into a host through whatever orifice they can find.

Once inside, they enter the bloodstream and a Bloodburster gestates inside the host. Once grown, it claws its way out of its host. After a short time, the Bloodburster grows into a juvenile Neomorph and then into a fully-grown adult Neomorph.

The Neomorph’s life cycle is similar to a Xenomorph’s, except that the Bloodburster grows wherever it can and emerges from there rather than just the chest cavity with the Chestburster. Unlike a Chestburster from a human host, the Bloodburster is born with arms and legs and can easily defend itself.

The Bloodburster and Neomorphs are white-grey in colour. The creatures begin walking on four legs, but eventually, an adult Neomorph is bipedal. An adult Neomorph lacks the biomechanical features of a Xenomorph, its head becomes more elongated with a circular mouth when closed. It doesn’t have an extendable inner jaw, but its gums can stick out, which have sets of spiky teeth.

Neomorphs are animalistic and ferocious as soon as they are born and seem to be more focused on just killing anything in the vicinity. They are extremely fast and manic, whereas a Xenomorph is more intelligent, slower and cunning. The Bloodburster that came from Ledward immediately attacked Karine and Faris, while the one that emerged from Hallett disappeared into the grass until it matured.

Then, both of them blindly attacked the security team in the wheat field despite being overwhelmed with gunfire. The adult Neomorph did manage to sneak up on Rosie, however. It didn’t kill her right away, it seemed to study her with curiosity. The Neomorph also didn’t kill David, perhaps knowing that David was an android.

Despite its ferocity, the Neomorph can easily be killed with gunfire. They bleed a yellow substance when shot, although this doesn’t appear to be acidic like a Xenomorph.

The Neomorph was shown to be eating a human being, most likely to replenish its energy. Xenomorphs have only been seen doing this on a few occasions.

Life Cycle

Egg Sack

This is the first stage of the life cycle of a Neomorph. When David dropped the pathogen onto Planet 4, it mutated the flora on there.  The Egg Sacks are about the same size of a bird’s egg and are able to sense the proximity of potential hosts. When a host gets too close, the sack emits a cloud of microscopic spores (Motes) into the air.

Motes

Motes are microscopic, dust-like spores released from a disturbed egg sack. They are able to group together when in the air and invade a host’s body through whatever orifice they can find. In this case, they invaded the hosts via the ear canal and nostrils. Once inside, the Motes insert a feeding tube into the host’s skin and inject eggs into the host’s body. The gestation process then begins.

Bloodburster

Once the Motes enter the bloodstream, a creature starts gestating inside a host. The host’s health deteriorates rapidly and once the Bloodburster is grown, it violently tears its way out of a host. It can use its sharp claws and pointed head as a way of escaping its confinement. In terms of appearance, the Bloodburster is a small white four-legged creature. Unlike a Chestburster which is fairly defenceless and finds safety until it grows into an adult Xenomorph, the Bloodburster is more than capable of defending itself and attacks anything it can.

The Bloodburster that emerged from Ledward already had spikes on its back when it emerged from his back, while the one that came out of Hallett didn’t initially have them. This suggests that the spikes could develop during gestation if the Bloodburster is in an unusual position. It can develop these spikes early on to help it break free from its host.

Juvenile Neomorph

The Bloodburster grows into a juvenile Neomorph in a matter of hours. White in colour, with a pointed head, it still runs on four legs, possesses sharp claws and a long tail. In the wheat field, the two juvenile Neomorphs were of different sizes, to signify that their births were a few minutes apart and were still growing. These Neomorphs were still just as frantic and animalistic as the Bloodburster stage.

Adult Neomorph

Eventually, the juvenile Neomorph would grow into an adult Neomorph, reaching a height of over 2 metres. Its head grows into something more elongated and it walks on two legs. It can still crawl on surfaces on all fours if it needs to. It has a small circular mouth when closed but possesses a double-jointed jaw and a long tail which it can use to attack. The adult Neomorph does not seem to be anywhere near as manic as the previous stages, often taking its time with kills.

Story

After David had dropped the pathogen on Planet 4, killing all the Engineers, the pathogen mutated the flora on the planet. The Neomorphs were one of the species to emerge from the mutation. The fungal-like egg sacks had infected the indigenous life and Neomorphs emerged from them. Inside David’s laboratory beneath the Engineer temple, David had specimens of the various stages of the Neomorph life cycle. Over the next ten years, David performed experiments to create the perfect organism – the Xenomorph.

When the USCSS Covenant answered David’s distress signal, they landed on the planet. As they explored, two members of the security team – Ledward and Hallett were infected with spores from egg sacks. The spores entered Ledward through his ear and Hallett through his nose. Both of them started to feel unwell and Ledward was taken back to the dropship where he started to convulse. Karine was treating him when Faris locked her inside due to quarantine procedures.

The Bloodburster burst out of Ledward’s back and began mauling Karine. Faris unlocked the door and tried to shoot it, but slipped. She ran back out, closing the door. The Bloodburster just smashed the glass in the door and escaped into the dropship. Faris grabbed another weapon and tried to shoot it. She accidentally shot some fuel canisters, causing the dropship to explode. Karine and Faris were killed in the explosion, but the Bloodburster escaped.

Hallett collapsed and began convulsing. Another Bloodburster came out of his mouth and escaped. The survivors were left in the wheat field. A short time afterwards, the creatures had grown much bigger and were now juvenile Neomorphs. They attacked the remaining survivors. Walter saves Daniel as one of them leaps towards her and the Neomorph bites his hand in the process. Members of the security team fire at it as it approaches Daniels. It strikes Ankor in the face with its tail, killing him. It runs off, but Rosie manages to shoot it numerous times and it is presumably killed.

The second juvenile Neomorph appears and pounces on Rosie and begins mauling her. David arrives and fires a flare into the sky, which scares it away. David leads the survivors to his temple. The final Neomorph has grown into a full adult and enters the temple. It finds Rosie alone and bites her head off. David discovers the Neomorph feeding on her body. David attempts to communicate with the creature, but Oram appears and shoots the creature dead, much to David’s dismay.

Behind-The-Scenes

From the start, it was decided that the creatures in Alien: Covenant would be mostly digital effects but Ridley Scott also wanted to have something on set for the actors to interact with. This started with the idea of reference puppets but later transformed into full creature suits. Moving Picture Company were initially hired to create the creature designs. This was then taken over by Conor O’Sullivan at Creatures Inc. and Adam Johansen at Odd Studio.

The two companies joined together and became Odd Creatures for the film. O’Sullivan said he was initially told that everything had been designed and that nobody would be in physical suits. Things changed in November 2015 when he saw over 100 designs for the creatures going back to the production of Prometheus. A producer then asked him if his company wanted to be the creature designers. By January 2016, Ridley Scott decided that he wanted creature suits.

The airborne spores from the mutated ecosystem were animated by Luma Pictures. The initial ideas for the effect were dandelion seeds, a jellyfish and in terms of movement, the murmuration of flocking of starlings. Luma’s concept artist Nicolas Pierquin went through a design process and designed a model, rigged it up, went through animation, and that became the method for the movement. Ridley Scott wanted the animation to convey the idea that the spores are a creature.

There are multiple stages of the Neomorph life cycle. The designers started with the adult Neomorph and worked their way backwards. The design of the Neomorph goes back to 2012’s Prometheus. In the early days of what became Prometheus, writer Jon Spaihts had written a few early drafts for an Alien prequel called Alien: Engineers. There were multiple variants of the Xenomorph in his script, with one specifically called the Holloway Alien, also known as the Beluga Xenomorph.

Concept artist Carlos Huante was tasked with coming up with the design of the creature. The Xenomorph and many of the Alien influences were scrapped for Prometheus, but Huante’s old designs formed the basis of the Neomorphs in Alien: Covenant. Concept artists Carlos Huante, Colin Shulver, Rob Bliss and Stephane Lavallois all did their versions of the Neomorph in Alien: Covenant.

In the new designs for Alien: Covenant, the Neomorph still had a similar extendable jaw like the goblin shark. Huante did some designs that resembled the goblin shark directly, giving the Neomorph a shark-like head. The designs then circled back to the original vision for the creature. Ridley Scott said the creature should be humanoid, ghostly white, with a protruding back of the head. The face would be smooth with no eyes. Spikes would also be on its back.

The Neomorph’s colour scheme was designed by Damian Martin. It had different areas of texture, with dry skin and waxy skin with sweat. Its skin would be softer on the outside than a Xenomorph so as the creature is crouching, the skin would have wrinkles and would move over muscles. When it’s in a standing position on two legs, the skin would smooth out and toughen. The Neomorph’s mouth was designed like the goblin shark’s, with a hinging inner jaw full of sharp fangs that would stay connected to the face by flexible gums.

For the other stages of the Neomorph’s life cycle, the team worked backwards. Four different animation rigs were created – a baby, a toddler, a teen and an adult. The baby and toddler had special controls to animate the length and shape of the joints so that transformation could be done in a non-uniform way. For example, with it growing quickly, one limb could expand before the other.

Odd Creatures created a Ledward dummy that would burst open. From there, puppeteers could push a baby Neomorph rod puppet whose skin was cast in transparent silicone. The puppet included a retractable jaw. Once the scene had been filmed, MPC created a digital double of Ledward and the Neomorph. Cloth simulations were used to manipulate the amniotic sac model. MPC created a keyframe-animated CG version of the Neomorph, complete with translucent skin and bone and muscle layers.

For the Hallet Bloodburster, a dummy of the actor was created and puppeteered from beneath by creature design supervisor Conor O’Sullivan. Prosthetics supervisor Rob Trenton moved the baby Neomorph through the dummy’s mouth. The Neomorph emerged in a slime-filled sac, made from hot-melt vinyl, created by Damian Martin.

For all stages of the Neomorph, Spanish actor and contortionist Javier Botet performed the motion capture for the digital version while Goran D. Kleut wore the practical Neomorph suit. Adam Johansen sculpted many maquettes and full-scale heads, while Colin Shulver did digital designs of the body in Zbrush. Conor O’Sullivan was then compositing the elements together in Photoshop until Ridley Scott was happy.

Having a practical suit allowed the team to get lighting references and have something for the actors to work with. The suit was moulded in foam latex and painted with rubber cement. Odd Creatures also built a detailed Neomorph head with a retractable jaw mechanism for the close-up shots.

After filming, the suit and heads were replaced by MPC with a digital Neomorph. The Neomorph digital model was sculpted by Federico Scarbini, Andrej Szasz and Damien Guimoneau. The Neomorphs were extremely fast creatures, so the team studied monkeys, baboons and praying mantis. The adult Neomorph was designed to be very flexible and double-jointed so it could get into difficult poses. Ridley Scott was inspired by Alessandro Bavari’s Metachaos film and invited him to work on the film, to help create poses for the creature.

Deleted Scenes

There are two deleted scenes, including the Neomorphs, that we know of.

Rosenthal’s Death
Rosie’s death was slightly different in the test screenings. The Neomorph slowly rises behind Rosenthal, similar to the way the Alien rises in front of Lambert in Alien – and instead of instantly killing her, there’s a pause where Rosenthal swears at the Neomorph before reaching for her weapon.

Xenomorph vs Neomorph Fight
The novelization of Alien: Covenant featured a brief fight sequence between the Neomorph and the Xenomorph that didn’t make it into the film. It starts similarly to the scene as reported in the testing screenings, with Daniels and Lope trying to shoot both creatures as they appear to run towards the characters. However, both Daniels and Lope run out of ammo and begin to retreat towards the descending loader platform and the Neomorph attacks the Xenomorph.  Both creatures attack each other, trying to claw at each other and stab each other with their tails.

In the end, the Xenomorph “disembowels” the Neomorph and then follows Daniels and Lope to the loader. In the October 2016 test screening, the fight scene was completely absent, but there was still a brief sequence featuring both the Xenomorph and the Neomorph. While Daniels and Lope are outside the Citadel, waiting for Tennessee to come down with the loading platform, the second Neomorph appears and charges them. At the same time, the Xenomorph appears out of the entrance to the Citadel and starts to run towards them from the opposite direction.

Running for the shuttle, back to back, Daniels and Lope fire in opposite directions at the Alien and the Neomorph. The Xenomorph evades Lope’s shots, but Daniels is able to eventually take down the Neomorph.

Other Media

Alien: Covenant Novelization (2017)

Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelization for the film in 2017. There are a few differences regarding the Neomorphs in the book.

• The Egg Sacks are much smaller in the book and look more like mould than fungus-like flora.
• The Bloodburster from Ledward grows incredibly quickly. It becomes noticeably bigger from attacking Karine to trying to attack Faris.
• The Bloodburster that emerges from Hallett is bipedal from birth rather than quadrupedal.
• The Neomorph doesn’t bite Walter’s hand off, although it does try.
• The Neomorphs attack the survivors in the wheat field at the same time and neither of them dies in this battle.
• The Neomorphs follow David and the group into the city. Lope and Rosie open fire on them, causing them to retreat. They do return when the group enter the Citadel and they manage to seal the door before they can reach them.
• The Neomorphs enter the temple through a secret entrance rather than scaling it.
• The Neomorph throws Rosie against a wall, breaking her back and paralysing her. It slowly approaches her and kills her when she’s on the floor with its jaws.
• After Lope and Daniels escape the temple and await the cargo lift, a surviving Neomorph returns and charges at them. The Praetomorph then appears and the two fight. The Praetomorph disembowels the Neomorph.

Trivia

• The method of how hosts are infected via airborne spores is similar to William Gibson’s early script for Alien 3. A Xenomorph is able to release airborne spores that rewrite the host’s DNA and transform the infected into a Xenomorph. You can read more about the connections to these scripts in this article: Genetic Memory – Influencing the Neomorphs.
• The way the Bloooburster emerges from the host with arms and legs is similar to the Runner Alien in 1992’s Alien 3.
• There’s a bonus feature on the Alien: Covenant Blu-ray called Advent which shows David performing experiments with Neomorph parts and the black liquid to make Xenomorph eggs.

Merchandise

NECA released the Neomorph as a figure in 2017, but there are some differences between the figure and the movie version. NECA had been provided with Colin Shulver’s concept art for the creature, so there were some differences in the final version. The NECA figure had two long spikes on its back and different teeth. The spikes were absent in the film version and its teeth were more spikey.

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