What was expected to be one of the years best movies turned out to be one of worst. Having been a fan of Prometheus, I was looking forward to a continuation of that story, which despite flaws was amongst the better sci-fi film contributions we've had recently. There was lot's of scope in Prometheus and a sense it could go anywhere it wanted it to...especially within the Alien film universe. However, Covenant does away with that and we get what feels like a stand-alone story and a generic one. Without spoiling the plot, it ties up the Prometheus conclusion very quickly within the opening 20 minutes....and what follows is a very by the numbers storyline (you're counting the numbers) primarilly focused on David (Michael Fassbender) the synthetic from the first film. Fassbender is on top form and provides one of the films few strengths. This focus on David dominates the first hour of the film, and then after providing scope for the character it quickly goes off the edge of a cliff and trancends into a generic slap- dash last half. Both undermining the character development it's created and further moving away from Prometheus. The last half provides some sub- par special effects, some bad dialogue and a re-run of set pieces evocative of Alien and Aliens that just don't work.
Before Covenant was released it went through many script re-writes and I think this shows in the film. Especially between the first and second half. One part of the film is fairly fluid during David's scenes, and the other, feels like it's from another movie.
Overall, Covenant feels like history repeating itself in relation to Aliens and Alien 3, one film provided a vision of a franchise, the other did away with it (although it did away with it well).