Prometheus was definitely a disappointment, so I've put off watching Covenant because everyone always says it's worse than Prometheus. I finally watched it tonight, and I thought it was a hell of a lot better. It's actually a good Alien movie imo.
Spoilers beware:
I enjoyed the synthetic, and I think they did a good job with both of them. I liked most of the crew, especially the lead actress. That relieved smile at the end was too cute. The actual aliens were bad ass too. The fight with the two "kids" was crazy. It's awesome to finally see aliens do crazy animal attacks. Especially loved the 360 tail attacks. The "it respected me" scene was cool too, that's such a great idea. They were relentless with their attacks and they just kept coming back.
I know people harp on what's Dr Shaw being killed between movies, but I think it works fine. Really shows you how evil David's become. I could have done without the obvious twist at the end, but whatever. Movies gotta movie, I guess.
I don't know what I'm missing. Do people dismiss the movie without seeing it or something?
I've only seen them both once. Though after seeing Romulus, I'm going to go back and watch all the movies again. I'm a pretty big fan of the rest of the movies to varying degrees. My thoughts were that outside of the Alien universe they could be OK scifi movies. But as part of the Alien lore, I felt they were poorly told, felt rushed, and didn't feel consistent with the others. Having the xenomorphs designed felt like a cheap shot. The alien in the first one was scary as hell because it evolved as a perfect hunter. All it did was eat and breed, and neither of those things were less than nightmarish. It felt like Scott was trying to tell a bigger story than the series needed and really got away from O'Bannon's vision (the same can be said about 3 and 4. I'd still argue that they felt like the same universe though)
Like I say though, I've only seen them once, and it's been a while.
It was almost as good as the first two. It was so fun, scary, and familiar. There were a handful of fan service things (shots, lines, props....) that felt like actual fan service and not nostalgia boner bullshit.
Prometheus clearly wasn't intended to be an Alien film, and the studio told Scott to make it one or the film wouldn't get made.
Even leading up to its release, Scott was reluctant to call it an "Alien" movie, opting to say it and "Alien" were very loosely related, while the studio was all-in calling it an "Alien" prequel.