I used to love the idea of Prometheus, just thinking it could be executed better. Hell I liked Convenant. I still thinkfanedits make these movies watchable.
What I hate is how they distract from the messages of the first three films, and completely rewrite the tone and theme of them into something else. Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 all had a theme of anti-capital, anti-authority, and anti-military. They are effectively, films not about Aliens, the aliens are a backdrop. It's a film about a lived in world, where capitalism has spun out of control, and they're willing to use a life form that can kill everything and commit atrocity to kill their enemies, whoever that may be.
Alien came off the heels of the Vietnam war. Aliens came in the age of Jingoism of Reagan's America. Alien 3 came during the tired exhaustion of the Gulf War.
And you can feel it in all of these films.
With the neoliberal "end of history" rule over all things, that the idea of capitalism can just go on into eternity, that the problems these 3 films addressed have no bearing to the wealthiest in Hollywood, have ironically, stripped what people associate Alien with. Prometheus had a tad of it.
But now it just feels like space opera. There is no tension. People mistake the cosmic horror and Giger-esque aspect of the films being lost as the #1 problem this series faces now. It's actually quite different. You can have a good Alien movie, with the less Giger influenced beast from Alien 3.
You cannot have an Alien movie when you forget the entirety of the tone of these movies and move to "the mysteries" fans are so eager to eat up. It just feels far more reactionary and far less reflective if all there is left to the meat of the series is monsters and gods.
