A very good, but not great film.

Rating: 7/10 (10 May 2017)

To be honest, I've been disappointed by so many science fiction movies lately that I almost wanted to hate Alien Covenant, and I really wanted to pick it apart. However, while I don't consider Alien Covenant to be the best movie from the Alien franchise thus far, it is easily, in my opinion, the best Alien movie since 1997's Alien Resurrection, and thankfully this film didn't fall into the same terrible clichés which ruined the two most recent Terminator movies.
Although this film has its high moments, it also, unfortunately, misses the mark in a few key areas which caused me to sometimes feel somewhat slightly cheated.
When the Covenant space ships arrives in orbit above the newly discovered Paradise planet, it is implied that this is one of the most Earth-like planets ever encountered by human beings, but there are no really awe inspiring scenes of the pristine planet slipping below the ship in orbit, and there are no scenes of the crew marveling at the planet's much touted natural beauty. I would have expected at least one awe inspiring scene similar to the introduction of the Genesis Cave in Star Trek The Wrath of Khan, but instead we are treated to "Oh this seems to be a very nice place, why don't we see if we can live here instead of that other place we were planning on going?"
The movie also fell a little flat when the crew of the Covenant arrives at David's fortress and finds the surrounding grounds littered with thousands of withered corpses of the Engineer species. No one is upset by the huge display of carnage, and no one from the crew of the Covenant, people whom you would assume would have scientific backgrounds, really seem curios regarding how the thousands of beings outside the walls were seemingly struck down in place so quickly.
There is also the issue with the hapless idiot who once again places his face too near the xenomorph eggs, the scene where the Alien gets blown out the airlock once again, and the scene where the bookish female crew member inexplicably acquires a bad ass attitude and combat skills. However, these are probably all over lookable flaws that people shouldn't get too hung up on. While the character development is much better than what it was in Prometheus, a few of the characters are not fleshed out very well, and it is never really explained why certain crew members of the Covenant star ship know how to handle advanced combat weapons?
However, the film absolutely hits it out of the ball park with the evil sociopath android character named David, and in my opinion the David character is the most powerful character since the original Ellen Ripley character played by Sigourney Weaver! David is not merely an evil Frankenstein's monster who goes about blindly smashing things for no reason, David actually hates mankind, perhaps partially due to the daddy issues which he seems to have with his creator, Peter Weyland, and also perhaps due the to physical damage that he suffered towards the end of the earlier film, Prometheus. David's evilness is almost a more important factor in the story than the Aliens themselves.
Another high positive is the fact that the technology and set designs depicted in Covenant seem to fit right into the same universe as the original Alien movie from 1979, and unlike the horrible Alien Vs. Predator movies, this film actually has the same look and feel of the first two films.
While it is not the greatest science fiction of all times, it is clearly a very good movie by any reasonable measure, and I think that most people will come away feeling satisfied when the final credits roll.