A movie that doesn't know what it wants to be

Rating: 4/10 (27 May 2017)

The Alien franchise has been rough ever since the first two films. At first I was excited that Ridley Scott was returning to direct but unfortunately his modern attempts haven't been that great. Alien: Covenant has interesting ideas but it doesn't know what to do with them and it almost feels like the story is being made up as it goes along.
Now I'm not asking for a complete remake of Alien or Aliens, I just want a good movie. And Covenant does have concepts to differentiate itself from the first two films but the execution is rather poor. And I think this is because Scott doesn't know if he should've made a proper Alien film or instead a Prometheus sequel and what we get is a weird mix of the two.
The thing is, do we really need to know how the xenomorph was created? It is a very iconic creature but it's certainly not as religiously important as Covenant is making it out to be. Hell, all you have to do is have some guns or open the door on your damn spaceship and you can fight them off. There's so much philosophical and religious context behind creating the xeno that I can't help but roll my eyes at every instance of symbolism.
And don't mistake the philosophical implications as making this movie "intelligent." Covenant aligns very closely with your typical slasher film with how the characters behave, but the filmmakers think they can throw in some religious crap to make the movie seem smarter. It's not even subtle and a fifth grader could pick up on the implications. This movie is dumb no matter how hard it tries to seem intelligent.
I think if the movie wasn't about the xenomorph it would've been for the better. An android playing God on an alien planet is an interesting idea, as are the engineers and questions like "who created us?" and all that. But the movie doesn't want to explore that too much because we have to have time for the dopey final chase at the end of the movie (which was so by the numbers that it wasn't even thrilling).
Plenty has been said on the stupidity of the characters and they are indeed a driving force behind many of the bad things that take place. But if you can view this as just a typical slasher film then there are some enjoyable moments. The first people becoming infected is very intense and gory, despite the fact that the situations could've been avoidable.
But the film slows down once the crew goes to David's base. There's not much interrogation and the crew seems OK with all that just happened. David really lucked out running into people who trust him so easily.
And this nonchalant attitude of the crew is what gets everyone killed! It's not time for flute lessons and washing your face! You're on a hostile planet with a lot of freaky stuff going on... BE MORE CAUTIOUS YOU IDIOTS.
And this trend is probably going to happen with the future films. At this point I don't even care how these movies connect to the original. Right now they seem to be going on a path that will only get more convoluted and silly, and it's actually making the xenomorph and space jockey from the original less interesting.