Ridley Scott is the Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Hollywood. Instead of serving those who ostensibly made him powerful, he placed his finger on the scale of Fox's Alien franchise, scuttling (or abetting the scuttling of) Neill Blomkamp's proposed fourth sequel--in order to promote his own wretched and increasingly nonsensical prequel series. Alien: Covenant starts off strong, fleshing out just enough of Prometheus' half-cooked creation themes to downplay the fact that we're watching yet another crew of deep-space dead-meats respond to another beacon on another uncharted, monster-infested planet. Before you can say "I'll be right back", Covenant devolves into the kind of dumb, predictable, and wholly disposable dreck, which, when taken chronologically as part of a larger story, is guaranteed to sour future viewers on further xenomorph exploits before they even get to Alien. We may never know if Blomkamp's vision would have been better. It could not have been worse.
Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #225 to hear Ian and Keeping it Reel's David Fowlie scream (or at least complain) about Alien: Covenant!