Ridley is turning into George Lucas

Rating: 3/10 (5 October 2017)

Sigh... Where to begin? There's so much to talk about.
A third of the way through Alien Covenant it occurred to me that Ridley Scott has insulted fans of both the Alien mythology and the recent Prometheus mythology. The director has clearly lost his nerve and instead of continuing what he started in Prometheus, completely wipes everything in the previous film with a new film. Unfortunately this "new" film is also not so new. Alien covenant is literally a "greatest hits" album of the previous Alien films where every action sequence, character, plot etc is a rehash of the original Alien. Dare I say... it is the Terminator Genisys of Alien films. It's almost like Scott threw out his original plan for a trilogy and settled on compressing the whole arrival of the Alien species into 2 hours. The movie does not take it's time and instead rushes through everything in the hope of satisfying viewers with a glimpse of the Alien (Xenomorph) in the end of the film... and unfortunately wrecking the Alien mythology in the process.
While I agree Prometheus was not a good film, the new characters, the origins of the Engineers and the fate of the survivors had me gripped and wanting more. I wanted to know more about the journey of the survivors of the Prometheus. Alien covenant kills of its survivors including the fascinating Elizabeth Shaw character (played by the talented Noomi Rapace), and shoehorns a new group with no back story or introduction.
The CGI is also worse than I'd expected from a Ridley Scott film, and was bad enough to take me out of the film. CGI of the aliens (xenomorphs and Neomorphs) looked fake and game-like. The story and plot have holes large enough to fit the whole planet of LV233 in it and the intelligence of characters are dumbed down dramatically so that they could be killed off easily and quickly.
The movie lacked the eeriness and psychology of the original Alien and suspense of Cameron's Aliens. I really feel that Ridley Scott has been given enough with the Alien franchise and should hand it off to someone with a better vision and a sensible touch. Like George Lucas, he's rehashing the old films and bulldozing his way through the canon in the hope of forcing his jigsaw piece with the original Alien.
For the general public, this is an entertaining, mindless, gory flick. For film enthusiasts, sci-fi fans, Alien and Prometheus fans... this is a huge letdown and frustration. Such a disappointment.