Lost in the masses

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2018)

For those that might find this review within the multitude of others. First I suppose I should give my thoughts, in what is a very short summary on the previous films to show where I stand, for those that care:
Alien- Classic. Flawless. My favorite film of all time.
Aliens- A worthy follow up, although 57 years in hyper sleep might be a stretch.
Alien 3- I was initially disappointed in the theater. The more I watched it, the more I appreciated it and felt bad for Fincher and what he must have been up against trying to make this impossible film. The assembly cut is considerably better and regained my respect. This should have been the end of the series, just as it was intended to be, with the death of Ripley.
Alien Resurrection- Hated it and still do for so many reasons I wont go into here. In my opinion, the worst of the series, hands down. A truly laughable film.
Prometheus- I sat in my car for 30 minutes after I watched it trying to piece it together. I became more forgiving over multiple viewings, and although I can appreciate that Ridley was trying to do something different and it was a visually stunning film, that doesn't change the fact that the crew were supposed to be the best professionals in their field, made some pretty bone headed basic mistakes. I was also disappointed that the mysterious space jockey was written to be a mere guy in a suit after years and years of imagining what it could be.
Alien Covenant: So finally I'm here at this film. It's hard to review really with so many afterthoughts of Prometheus mixed in and reading so many other reviews and opinions, so I will go off of my initial thoughts as I sat in the theater watching it. Honestly, I was excited. I felt like I was finally watching another Alien film again. I hadn't been this excited since watching Aliens in 86. I liked the fact that there were little throwbacks to the original Alien that they slipped in. Maybe to many in hindsight. I do think that most of the characters were mere cannon fodder, and the shower scene was totally out of place for an Alien movie and belonged more in a Friday the 13th type of movie. I didn't care much for Katherine Waterston as Daniels. The bad haircut and the constant sad deer in the headlights look is just off putting , but that's just a shallow nit-pick if I'm honest. Overall it all seemed to just work.
In the end, I guess we can be critical of this series, or this movie in particular for many reasons. The end goal is to entertain us, and for me, that's exactly what it did. I do have issues with some points, but overall I would say they are few. I think a lot of people are spoiled with movies today and are so easy to dismiss them without taking any time at all to appreciate what must have gone into making a film of this caliber. Dare I say, anyone ranking this below a 5 are among those people.