Disappointing, mechanical, soulless.

Rating: 5/10 (4 August 2017)

On his own, this movie deserves a 5. It is watchable, but nothing else.
But this is not an isolated movie. It has the Alien title, so it takes advantage of your expectations,a those expectations are set by the first 2 movies in the series.
You come expecting something at that quality, end get sorely disappointed.
First, the Alien title makes clear what is the interesting thing you are looking for: the alien. The unknown, the discovery, the mystery.
All of that is absent here. It should be named Robot: covenant, because the alien is not at all the point of the movie, but a robot.
The attempt to explain the alien origin destroy all his alieness. It makes it not an alien thing but a human thing, and that's boring.
Even the new aliens presented here are more human looking than in the original. The sentient aliens also are totally human like, which was understandable on early times of cinema, for lack of capacity for special effects, but today it is unforgivable.
On this movie, the alien is a mere, background element. On Alien and Alien II, the aliens were characters. They had plans, they plans conflicted with humans, and they actively ruined human's plans.
That conflict of interests made the movie better.
Nothing of that occurs here. The aliens do exactly what they are expected to do. Well not EVEN that. They do not even do what they are expected to do by the spectator. They do not even do anything. They are not even characters. They do no have any intention. Just appear and disappear at some point, to kill people, and that's all.
It wasted an opportunity to make the movie better an more interesting. If the alien had actually pursued his own plan, conflicting with the major characters.
Also, another sin of this movie, is that it is just a slaughter-fest. Showing people being killed is all the point. Characters do not understand what is going on, and do not do anything but just die. They are mere tools in the plot. Straw man put there to die.
On the original alien movies, characters understood that they faced a menace, and took initiative to actively fight it. That's absent here.
The final effect is that even the main plot of the movie is just a background element. It just happens, and happens predictably, as planned.
Finally, and this alone is a reason to not watch the movie, is that it does not ends. You feel like the movie was cut on the middle, so, if you have curiosity to watch this movie, and do not want to wait for years (not even knowing if it will be canceled), then watch it after thefinal third part movie is made, so you can watch a single movie, and not just half of it.