It doesn't make them anymore adaptable, and the SOLE reason it exists seems to be because the Strause brothers believe somehow this some kind of 4chanesque retarded homage to the original movie. It isn't. And as to the above. I do believe that Cameron did exactly that, turned the Alien from an ALIEN to giant disposable space ant.
*Insert bong noises here*
"You know Ripley is like this super empowered figure of emerging feminiity, you know like totally girl power and stuff"
SSSSSSSF
"yeah, okay and?"
SSSSSSF
"Well, you know since I'm writing ALIEN II, we should like adress that, and stuff"
SSSSSSSF
"Like how, man?"
SSSSSSSF
"Well ummm like there should be like, a counterpart dude, you know like antitheseusueses.. antithethcheese..."
"antithesis?"
"YA MAN THAT THING Like totally antiRipley man, like a ... female ALIEN, that is like just as fierce and all bitchy and stuff. ya know like godzilla versus king kong."
SSSSSSSF
"So get this see, It'll be like a Queen ALIEN that rules all the other aliens and then Ripley'll be like NO WAY and then ummm... they fight and stuff."
SSSSSSSF
"James, you're a f**king genius"
"I know man, I know HEY QUIT BOGARTING THE BONG MAN"
That's pretty much what Aliens was. You can take any other creature and stick it the place of the Aliens and guess what, it works. The aliens have nothing to do with the movie. The movie is about motherhood and Viet Nam in space, and how much of Robert Heinlein can I plagiarize and not get caught.
And that's pretty much what we see here.
Every indication is that the Brothers simply threw in gratuitous refernces to earlier movies when they should have been working their asses off to come up an original scenario with original characters, that kept the defining basics intact instead of putting a penis on ripley and saying it's a totally new character with none of the hallmarks that made Ripley endearing in the first place and saying it's new and uncharted path for the story when every damn line of dialogue references a line of dialogue from the previous movies.
I'm sure just as Aliens did all the fanboys will eat it up, and I'm sure just as with Aliens the fans with loudest yells and biggest e-opinions will be those who yell about the cool guns and explosions and Hudson's awesome lines; the same fans who quite simply missed the point that the military (USA! USA! USA!) got its ass kicked.
It's hilarious to see all this talk of "expanding" the franchise and seeing all these awesome new things, while being completely oblivious to the fact that is THESE things which are killing the franchise and making it more and more stupid.
All you have to do is look around at other franchises and see the what happens when you lose sight of what made it awesome in the first place.
Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel characters. It's righ in front of you.
You know why Marvel movies make so much at at a time when the comic character titles themelves are losing sales year after year?
Because they go back to the beginning. They keep to the bare essentials because they have to tell what could be ten years of story in 2 hours. and suprise, suprise they make craploads of money. and as we can clearly see from Spider-Man and X-Men III, when you start to f**k with makes the characters accessible in the first place with gimmicks and flash.... people lose interest. and you lose money.
I haven't heard a SINGLE plot element or line of dialogue that means ANYTHING in the greater scheme of either of these creatures. It's all flash and what looks cool. Dark Horse did that for years and have no where near the numbers they started out with to show for it.
Take the hint.
