That’s not quite the whole story, though. At least half of Alien: Covenant is disappointingly familiar: the last 10 or 15 minutes effectively condense the entire first film into one rushed action set-piece. But there is a section just before that which is strange and haunting enough to justify the enterprise. I won’t give away what else the characters find on the verdant planet, but this mystical interlude revolves around an android, Walter, played with spine-tingling inscrutability by Michael Fassbender. An upgraded version of the robot he played in Prometheus, Walter is forced to consider what he owes to the people who manufactured him. There is a lot of student-y pretentiousness to his musings on Shelley and Wagner, Paradise Lost and Frankenstein, but there is a lot of eeriness, madness and grandeur, too. More importantly, this is the one part of Alien: Covenant that doesn’t let us predict exactly what’s going to happen next.

One question it raises, though, is: what’s all this stuff doing in an Alien film? It’s clear that Scott is no longer inspired by long-headed, scaly-tailed beasties; the characters who fascinate him are the philosophical replicants who were in his second science-fiction classic, Blade Runner. Indeed, the central portion of Alien: Covenant is so redolent of Blade Runner in its themes, as well as in its solemn tone and shadowy interiors, that you may wonder why Scott didn’t just make a sequel to that, rather than leaving the job to Denis Villeneuve, whose Blade Runner 2049 is released in October. If he’d kept his focus on artificially intelligent humanoids, the resulting film might have had the sense of purpose which Alien: Covenant lacks. Instead, he has engineered a misshapen hybrid: a tired Alien episode with an intriguing Blade Runner episode lodged in the middle.

★★★☆☆

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.