Generic if entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (19 May 2017)

The first four Alien movies worked because of a certain Sigourney Weaver who made Ripley one of the most iconic characters in all of cinema. Their much-touted follow-up, "Prometheus", billed as a kind of prequel, was hardly memorable, despite being directed by Ridley Scott, though it did give us a reasonably memorable character in Michael Fassbender's robot David. Now we have the much anticipated sequel to "Prometheus" and one that gets back to adding the word 'Alien' to the title.
"Alien: Covenant" is certainly better than its predecessor though when it was over I didn't feel as if I had actually seen anything. This is a generic, if entertaining, sci-fi movie that adds nothing to the genre or to the 'Alien' series, at least nothing we haven't seen before; indeed it feels like bits of "Alien" and "Aliens" stitched together. On the plus side, it looks good, has a decent climax and Michael Fassbender, reprising his role of David as well as a new, identical robot called Walter, is outstanding, proving that, whether playing a human or something more mechanical, he remains one of the best actors around.