homages to the previous Alien films (SPOILERS)
Ok the whole film is so littered with call backs/tips of the hat/similarities (some probably unintended) to the previous Alien films its almost silly to bother bringing them up but heres some:-
-Mother - Alien
-opening cryopod disaster - Alien 3
-space burial - Alien
-Being diverted from course by transmission signal - Alien
-Nefarious robot obsessed with the alien/attacking crew - Ash/Alien
-Good robot protecting crew - Bishop/Aliens
-Choppy dropship to the planet - Aliens
-newly born neomorphs - Alien 3s newborn
-Davids creation attempts using Shaw - the various clones and xenos using Ripley in Alien Resurrection
-Apocalyptic flashback of an ancient civilisation being wiped out - AvP
-Central character from previous film unceremoniously dispatched offscreen between movies - Alien 3
-Guiding characters around via monitors - Alien/s
-Attempting to guide xeno to a location via closing doors - Alien 3
-Alien vision - Alien 3
-acid facially injured last man with main female (attended to by android) – end of Aliens
-All action powerloader-esque fight with a xeno - end of Aliens
-Blowing surprise stowaway xeno out the airlock ending - end of Alien/s
-Surviving female action heroine - Alien
-back in hypersleep ending - Alien/s
-final transmission - Alien
-Bobbing bird toy on the crew table - Alien
-Goldsmith score - Alien (may have also been some Aliens & A3 riffs too - e.g. birth of the xeno)
-medieval look of the citadel/catacombs/engineers/David/Walters knight like hood & the religion theme - recalled Alien3 (the wheatfield an element from the Vincent Ward version)
http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=59166.0
Also (other SF films):
-opening the film on David's eye - Blade Runner
-opening white room - very Kubrick/2001
-pretty sure certain parts of the score sounded similar to 2001 and 2010, Interstellar, and Horners Trek scores
-'that's the spirit'/nail impale - Blade Runner
-kiss - Blade Runner
-Diverting from programmed course causing all manner of disaster - Sunshine/Interstellar
-citadel/ancient Rome - Gladiator
and then theres all the dark gothic-romantic poetic arty stuff based on high brow classic literature (Milton, Shelley etc), Isle of the Dead. And all the Michelangelo statues stuff, and the usual dark universe Lovecraft stuff