A step up from Prometheus, but still a couple of steps down from Alien

Rating: 7/10 (11 August 2017)

I was so excited when Ridley Scott decided to return to the Alien franchise, and so disappointed when I watched the pretentious, ponderous, utterly inane Prometheus. So I went into Covenant with a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" attitude. Only this time, I got something closer to what I'd hoped Prometheus would be.
The movie begins as a crew in charge of cryogenically frozen colonists notices a planet, hears a message, and says, "let's check it out, what could go wrong?" Then everything goes excitingly wrong in a flurry of spores, gore, explosions, and freaky mini-Xenomorphs.
This going wrong thing is helped out tremendously by the striking idiocy of almost every character, which is one of the things it has in common with Prometheus. There is a *tremendous* amount of bad decision-making going on in this film, which might be understandable in a movie about teenagers trapped in a cabin with a serial killer but seems jarring in a movie about trained professionals hired to do a difficult and exacting task. It's like no one in this movie has ever been trained for anything, no one follows any protocols, and no one seems to be paying attention.
While this is frustrating, the movie makes up for it with all sorts of excitement and some striking imagery. While the movie has about three or four endings (movies just don't end the way they did when I was a kid), they're all pretty exciting endings.
The movie also boasts the return of Michael Fassbender as David (and another android), and his urbane creepiness is even more entertaining than last time.
While it lacks the economy and unbearable tension of the original Alien, it certainly tries harder than Prometheus to be an Alien movie. In fact, it often seems to be taking a "greatest hits" approach in which you'll say, oh yeah, I remember when that happened in Alien! (The movie also totally ditches the mysteries it was promising to answer in Prometheus, which is a total cheat.)
Apparently they're planning some more of these Alien prequels, but honestly, I wish they'd just bring back Sigourney Weaver and make Alien 5. Still, I enjoyed Covenant enough that I will certainly check out the next one. But I will keep my expectations in check, and prepare myself for more stupid people getting themselves killed as stupidly as possible.