Utterly awful. Critics are dead wrong.

Rating: 4/10 (4 August 2017)

A great Alien film hasn't be released since Aliens in 1989. This does not break the streak. How can a film franchise continue to release so many duds and continue? If you consider Aliens vs Predator junk films, the H.R. Giger monster has shown up too many times for me to count.
Movies need characters, driving motivation, story and production values.
Characters: They are bland. They also make hilarously bad decisions that even a layman viewer knows is unscientific, or contrary to safety protocols. The android character reminded me of an evil Data from Star Trek. I've seen the AI goes evil plot so many times. I just felt that David was derivative.
Driving Motivation: All the stress was self-imposed. I like it better when a character's plight comes from bad luck, not from being stupid. The screenwriters are to blame. They should've been forced to that planet, not chosen it. They should've been suspicious of an alien world and strange deserted civilization, not gone in unprotected. (Which caused all their problems.) If they had been clever, but still suffered bad fortune, it's a much more interesting.
Story: The android with the God complex is simply too boring, but I agree that they didn't just want to make an "escape from the monsters" movie. I wish they would've had to divert because the ship was about to fall apart. That would've been a lot like "Passengers" but it would've put more macro urgency into the story. It was just a monster movie. And embarrassing because after all this time, a human-designed android is what created Aliens. Really? That's the worst idea since Midichlorians in the Phantom Menace.
Production Values: It was big, lush and full of wide vistas. It was a "haunted house" vibe on an alien world. Very well done. The aliens weren't very convincing, they always seems CGI and rubbery-fake. The Covenant ship was better done in Passengers. I was amazed at how well they did split screen with a single actor playing both roles. Bravo. Music was banal, though there were moments that reminded me of James Horner scores, especially Aliens and Predator. But overall, I wouldn't want the soundtrack. The movie dragged in the talky David sequences. But I found the gigantic expanse of dead alien city to be straight out of 1970s fantasy paintings. Super creepy.
Overall, this is a lousy, lousy movie. Corporate greed and a director who lost his way decades ago. This is what happens when you run out of ideas. This is like Elton John trying to write a new song. His time was in the 1970s. I don't want to hear a modern, new Elton John song. And I guess I don't want to see anymore Ridley Scott movies. Give this a pass. It's as bad as Prometheus.