Yeah, I'm on the "capital 'A' Alien didn't need to be in the movie" band wagon too. One of my criticisms of Prometheus was that it never managed to establish a coherent alien villain. The various manifestations of the black goo were just too random (Fifield and the trilobite) or pointless (the deacon) that they never embody any role greater than generic threat.
Cut to Covenant and the spore pods > back bursters > neomorphs actually establish an interesting, primitive analog for the more refined lifecycle we finally see play out in various was from Alien to Alien 3. As earlier incarnations it doesn't even bother me that they're mindlessly vicious to the point of being suicidal. As manifestations of the black goo they're still settling into a niche in the environment.
What really irks me, though, is that Ridley admitted to having his mind changed in response to Alien: Isolation, but somehow managed to completely miss the point of what made "the beast" scary again in that game. It was clever, calculating, and always in control of its environment, like the apex predator it is. Instead, what we got in the finished film are two constantly hissing, shrieking cheetahs that race around at break-neck speed all the time, both of which die mindlessly leaping toward something. So remind me again why we ditched the neomorphs, which I would have had no problem acting in such a capacity, just to diminish the alien even further?
It's the failure to deliver on its obvious potential that really bugs me about the film.