Warning: Mild Alien Spoilers, no AVP spoilers.
For my $.02, and similar to what I've mentioned on another thread...
Warning: Mild Alien Spoilers, no AVP spoilers.
Alien was a horror film that focused not only on an instinct-driven soulless predator, but also on being betrayed and abandoned by the soulless corporation you serve to death and dismemberment alone in deep space. Ripley is just some lady trying to make it home for her daughter's birthday (though I don't recall this being mentioned yet). Note, at this point, that when asked why the alien didn't have eyes, Giger said that the eyes are the windows to the soul and this monster didn't have one of those.
Aliens was a horror film that focused, again, on corporations leaving people out to dry and how impersonal they get, even when they see the rampant devastation that their actions cause and even when they are also at risk. This particular scenario also highlighted human instinct for survival (Newt) and protection (Ripley) even in a resource-constrained -- marines' APC went boom -- situation, once again a long way from home.
Alien 3 was a kind of bland and visionless rehash of the first two films (strong instincts, no resources, evil overlord corporation) from a studio that had a budget but was fresh out of ideas as the New World Order was taking hold. (Rumors exist of an alternate script featuring Hicks where the aliens were going used as gene-moddable bio-weapon before they rapidly got out of hand and lots of things went boom that some of the scenes -- especially outside the ship -- in Star Trek: First Contact are strikingly reminiscent of.) The one nice feature of Alien 3, despite being an otherwise sad copy film, was that the alien was using the dog's genes as was suggested by the might-have-been script. Whether it was genuine innovation or just hold over from the "dang we wanted this other script" is a question for urban myth debunkers, but it was nice nonetheless.
Alien Resurrection, however, was unforgiveable. The corporation that has been the mainstay of villiany throughout the series is replaced by incompetent military scientists. (Who is the military fighting, anyway?) Ripley, the blue-collar space-freighting mom trying to get home to her daughter has been cloned back into existence over 250 years after that 11th birthday party as some kind of ultra-butt-kicking hybrid. (Why bring her back at all?) The new form of alien introduced in the movie is a strange form of ghastly-cute which looks really nothing like a killing machine (more like an Atropal) and has those windows to the soul Giger said that it wouldn't need. (What, are soulless killing machines on one side and soulless corporations on the other not enough to scare us anymore?) And the action concludes as the ship arrives at Earth with access to all of the plasma cannons, nukes, knives and sharp sticks (love that line!) Earth has to beat up on the few remaining aliens with. It was a space-monster movie, yes, but it wasn't honestly part of the Alien series -- that was false advertising and I'm quite hostile towards that sort of behavior.
Likewise with AVP -- it shouldn't be on earth (Alien -- what, did you think they were talking about illegal aliens? [which is rumored to be an inside joke regarding the casting of Vasquez...]) and certainly not in Ant-freakin'-arctica (given that Predator only shows up in the hottest years in the areas of great strife and conflict). But at least they were kind enough to warn us of this in the trailer so I can avoid it. Bad branding, yes, but not out-and-out false advertising.
Cheers,
::Kaze
