Ignore the criticism and watch it open-mindedly. It has a potential to be a great trilogy!

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2017)

I'm a long time fan of the Alien Franchise since I laid my eyes on the first Alien movie when I was a kid. And it's safe to say that I still am after watching Covenant. Sure, it was not a perfect movie and had a lot of 'off notes', but I don't think they destroyed the symphony. I'll try to explain why.
Let's start with the general criticism about Covenant and other Alien movies which are not named 'Aliens'. After reading thousands of reviews and talking about them, I'm pretty convinced that most of the Alien fans are instead fans of Cameron's film (they love the first one out of respect) and are always expecting more of an action/horror flick rather than science-fiction. Don't get me wrong, I love Aliens, A LOT, it was a fantastic movie and one of my all time favorite films. But so were Alien (79), and other installments of Alien, excluding AvPs. Because they are all unbelievably original and brave enough to not follow the Hollywood way and to add new perspectives instead of more explosions with each film.
While being flawed for obvious reasons (dumb scientists, lack of Giger etc.), both Prometheus and Covenant added tons of deep layers to the saga and provoked more thoughts while revealing the mysteries. It may be true that they've failed to reach the extremely high bar of quality action/horror scenes of the original series, but they don't pretend to do so. Because they prefer to concentrate on other aspects such as philosophical side of science-fiction and in that terms they are doing a fantastic job!
If you see them as standalone films or from the human crew's singular point of view, they will most certainly disappoint you, because they don't spend enough time and effort to make you care much about the other characters. (And the dumb mistakes of the scientists are probably included on purpose to underline the flaws of homo sapiens.) But if you accept them as puzzles pieces of the whole and manage to look from a grander perspective, you'll find thought provoking, poetic and inspiring elements of creation, existentialism, discovery and science.
And in my opinion that's more than enough to give it a shot (and credits) and wait for the last part the trilogy to see if it will materialize the great potential it has to connect all dots in a poetic way.
P.S.: In a sense they are very similar to Ridley Scott's other beloved work Blade Runner, and as its story to be expanded soon in theaters again, I have a feeling that the theory that says Alien and B.R. take place in the same universe might be true and their story arcs might connect soon, which of course would add many more great layers to each other's story arc if it's done correctly.