Lots of interesting opinions in this thread. Here's another one... spoilers ahead, mind you.
Went 10AM today to see the film (unusual for me to go to the theater at all, never mind this early, but I was happy to have an excuse to get together with some friends who I rarely see). Expectations were low, mind you I did enjoy Prometheus overall (despite the usual issues) and appreciated some of the more, uh, prickly things that film did. Covenant was a big turn-off - how do you get Kenny Powers in a sci-fi film and have it be that bad?
Anyway, this film started up well enough and the goings-on of the mining colony were immediately interesting to me. I was very interested to see more of that world, and the fucked up psychology it would bring - besides all the other obvious issues, the whole deal about it always being night. Anyway in the blink of an eye they have already got a space-worthy ship and are heading off to this space station? On the one hand, it all felt extremely hand-wavy how they were able to get that far, on the other I guess I could appreciate "let's just get onto the good stuff.."
For the most part, the characters were pretty thin, disinteresting. Again, I can appreciate that they just wanted to get to the meat of the action and horror stuff, but after that pretty fabulous introduction to this splinter of the aliens world, I would have liked to have a little more reason to connect with these character some, and care about them. They were just pretty thin and with the expectation about how everything would likely play out, it became hard to really care about most of them beyond "well hopefully they will get into some interesting sticky situations and at least meet some gruesome, novel fates." That never really took off for me, it just felt like a bunch of rehash for those of us who've sat through a bunch of these films before. I know this is the same complaint echoed by many in the thread already, still I was kind of surprised that they leaned THIS hard into it at this point. It felt lazy and safe, kind of like the filmmakers were just interested in really going through the paces - a waste of great opportunity. Otherwise, so many shots of the aliens just.. lingering. Hovering just over their prey "I'm gonnnnna gettt you, I'm gonnnna getttt you...." What? These are not the xenomorphs we have been led to expect! They are supposed to be constantly quick, vicious, creepy. I wouldn't have minded if they did this a couple of times, but it happened so often that it started to annoy me. At least if you are going to go this route, have them acting in some way interesting (molting or doing something else gross and disturbing, I dunno, there is so much that could be done). These creatures used to be so horrifying to look at, and now they feel kind of humdrum. I attribute some of this to modern filmmaking and trying to show off hero shots where you can appreciate the design/craftsmanship of the creatures, but this was getting a bit much.
Anyway I could go on but I think I have made my point. Some things I did like, production design was fantastic and I couldn't get enough of the design of the movie. The Alien films usually deliver and this one was absolutely no slouch, and for this alone I was very pleased considering the money I forked over for my ticket. Even here there was a lot more that could have been done to play up the disturbing nature of the Creep/general horror vibe and they went pretty light with all of that (when it could have been incredible!) but even if the sets weren't dressed as "they could have been," at least everything underlying just looked so good. I appreciate the reverence they kept for the 70s retro-future vibe. They'll never go as hard as I wish they would, but you gotta have realistic expectations I suppose - anyway this shit looked groovy. I would love to buy an art book of this film.
Also the "sinking into the planetary rings" bit was a nice wrinkle, kinda dumb and probably fraught with a billion plot holes about how unrealistic that must actually be, but they committed to it and stuck to it and we got some cool visuals out of it. If anything I do wish they went even harder with it but yeah, leave them wanting more, blah blah. Showing the space station slowly getting destroyed in those later shots (after the final battle) was a nice touch.
And that final battle - uh yeah, I guess they had to do something, and I appreciate that they probably had a lot of masters to serve in that case. Again it felt a bit hand-holdy horror "no one ever feels like they are in REAL danger," but for what it was I didn't mind. There were some interesting and disturbing biological dynamics going on and I appreciated what they were hinting at, even though you just KNOW they cut way down what they would have really liked to do. It is 2024, this is a Disney movie, what else are you gonna expect? A Disney R is more like an everyone else PG-13 (from 20 years ago) I guess. Anyway could have been worse, so at least we got what we did.
Last bit to mention, we were just getting into the third act when the screen went black and all the house lights went up, and a voice over the PA told everyone that there was some kind of alarm and we had to all leave the building - fire alarm or something. This was very jarring and my friends and I were not happy, an usher told us that it was likely that they would have to restart the movie and none of us really were interested in sitting through it again to finish it up. VERY fortunately he was wrong, and when we returned to the theater 20min later they restarted the film from the same bit so we missed MAYBE a minute of film, what a relief! For the record, the cinema (Regal) gave us vouchers for a free film, for our troubles. That was appreciated.
Ok so overall - I don't regret seeing the film, I guess I will give it a 6/10. I am not the biggest fan of this franchise but there are bits about it I really appreciate, and as for this entry, it was watchable but hardly necessary. I'd rank it above Covenant and below Prometheus. I think I must have enjoyed Resurrection more than many folks because I'd rank this below that film as well (I barely remember it, that was like 27 years ago or something? Maybe I will actually rewatch it)
Oh and a last-last bit, for any who are still reading - the film felt like it existed kind of as an Alien Showcase, made to hopefully draw newer fans into the franchise. Throwing us older fans a bone by delivering something solid, if underwhelming, but if you have never seen any of the older films and you are a younger viewer, you will probably (and deservedly) think that this is cool as shit. In that regard I will give it respect.