What exactly is wrong overall with the Alien series of films, and why don't the directors and writers seem to be able to
...do the world's greatest movie monster any justice these days?
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/efe9mo/what_exactly_is_wrong_overall_with_the_alien/
Alien [1979]: Obviously a masterpiece of a film, and I think that the tense pacing and sparse use of the alien is what made it all so very effective. Unfortunately, the people who created and worked on this film seem to have been a 'capturing lightning in a bottle' situation, and was a dream team that would be almost impossible to replicate on any new film. From H.R. Giger's masterful nightmare creations to Ridley Scott's powerfully atmospheric and claustrophobic direction, the perfect cast, and even the writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, everyone was a the absolute top of their game on this singular cinematic achievement.share
Aliens [1986]: This is a great film, and please understand that it will always hold a place in my heart, but James Cameron tampered with and altered the formula of what made the original Alien so powerful and resonant, and I think that the series paid for this ever since. Alien is a tense and suspenseful horror movie, and Aliens is an outright blockbuster action film that reduces the titular creature to mere cannon fodder. To alter the DNA of the original monster so much in order to create something more original from the first film seems to have confused the overall tone of the series from this point forward.
Alien 3 [1992]: As many fans of Alien already know, this is where everything completely fell apart for the franchise, but why? Other than studio interference and lack of a working script something else was going on here as well. Alien 3 seems to have wanted to bridge the gap between the feel of the first two films: it wanted the creature to be a singular and more frightening creature again, but also tried to instill a sense of action by making the alien a speed-based predator, which definitely didn't work out quite well. This film is also where it becomes apparent that directors and creative teams are now only interested in creating a new vision for the creature every time, which only has the effect of reducing its effectiveness even further.
Alien Resurrection [1997]: Although it has a few fans, this travesty of a film is where the Alien franchise ran completely off the rails. This is what happens when the first three films of a series vary so wildly in tone that no one even knows what to do with the Alien any more; unfortunately, here is where tone-deaf satire was attempted and pretty much reduced the series to being a joke and killed interest. Why can't directors and creative teams simply pay homage to the first film and respect the tone and pacing of it? A smaller or even lower budget Alien film with practical effects and a focused story on believable characters could easily make a worthwhile film in the series, and it baffles me as to why this isn't attempted or even considered.
Prometheus [2012]: And all that could have been... here, we see Ridley Scott come back to set things right again, the original director of the masterpiece of Alien, and what does he do? He subverts nearly every expectation possible and does much to ruin the original mystery of the creature, and even strip-mines and retcons the fossilized space jockey that was originally transporting the alien in the first place. But why? These are answers to questions that no one was asking or even wanted answered, and part of the dark and timeless allure of the alien was in not knowing its origins or exactly what it was. The alien is most effective and unsettling when it is alien, not vivisected to the point of having no mystery. To retcon the original space jockey, which was originally created as an elephantine-in-appearance hyper-advanced unknown alien species, into the planet-seeding 'space jockey', was ultimately a mildly-interesting diversion. All of this is bad enough, but to not even have the alien itself show up is ultimately a disappointing betrayal to fans.
Alien Covenant [2017]: If Prometheus was mildly interesting with the questions that it raised, Alien Covenant is the point where all hope for the franchise is practically lost. This is a movie that tries to do so much and go in so many directions that of course it fails at nearly everything. It tries to be a horror movie, but fails because it then tries to go in the direction of action. It tries to return to being an Alien movie, but fails because they show the creature on the outside of a ship running around in broad daylight, where it is the least possibly effective it could be in scaring anyone. Part of this lackluster entry in the franchise might not be Ridley Scott's fault, because the rumor has it that he wanted to make 'Prometheus 2' and go to the 'paradise' home world of the Engineers, but 20th Century Fox wanted a movie that focused on the alien instead. Ridley obviously wasn't interested, so Alien Covenant is what we got instead.