... the direction was all slow pans and long close ups on the interior. Now it's overfamiliar, we've seen it so many times before.
You've seen good directing too many times? Sorry, but this is exactly what modern horror/action films totally lack; decent directing. They have zero atmosphere, no restraint, cinematography is flaps,
etc. This, and not the alien itself, are what made the movie better than just another SF flick.
Ridley Scott feels that 3 and 4, plus the two Alien Predator movies, have spoiled his classic first movie, so he wants to revisit the franchise to correct those mistakes I think. To do it how it should be done.
But he's not making anything like the first movie. All he's doing is focusing on all the nerdy SF elements which, in my opinion, are ultimately totally unimportant. The xenomorph(s) (the egg discovery scene, etc) in the first movie inspired
awe. Scott is now showing me mouthfucking aliens, huge cartwheeling spacecraft, boring stock characters, caesarean sections by robots, Mike from
Neighbors all old like, and more aliens than I give a fuck about. None of this is important and yet he's filling these films with this crap. This latest effort doesn't look like it's going to be any different...