Without wanting to get into a pointless slanging match about Aliens, I'd just say that there is a lot of implied stuff in Alien that could have made for a very interesting second story without it being a clone-like rehash. It might have been action, or it might have been horror and suspense, either could have worked. But to me Aliens always felt like it was taking the easy route, dismissing some of the more interesting ideas (that were known, even if cut from Alien) and so becoming part of that 80's bandwagon of action movies. Of it's type it is undoubtedly one of the landmark movies of that era but I personally find it too 'safe'. It's not really the tone of the film that bothers me, it does have a build up and atmosphere, but ultimately it seems to me to fashion the alien creatures into a characterless threat, there's no sense of inherent sadism or horror in them as there was before. As an action film Aliens does everything it can possibly do in retelling the story on a plural level, but ultimately there's not that much to it. Two things really hold sway in the film; hardware (guns predominantly) and the mother/child analogy. Both of which make me cringe a bit personally. It sets out its stall and it closes the story, but all the most interesting threads from Alien are largely ignored. In their place is pretty much the structure and denouement of the original film for 80's action sensibilities.
It works, it's perfectly serviceable, it can't be criticised for incompetence and I wouldn't have the arrogance to tell people who like it that they are wrong, but yeah, my problem is that it feels too safe.
In the intervening years between 79 and 86 when thoughts of where this story could go occasionally occupied my thoughts, I must admit I never saw Ripley as an essential element. She was a survivor by chance, so I think that perhaps a big part of my problem with the sequels is Ripley. Her inclusion in Aliens follows reasonable logic, as it does for Alien 3, but I think the whole franchise is bogged down in her character.
It's one of the reasons I remain excited by Prometheus. Potentially it could be everything that the sequels aren't. A whole different take on the Alien universe that has a grander scale than humans vs 'xenos'. It'll be interesting to see whether (assuming the connections are strong) Ridley takes any elements at all from the sequels, or simply ignores them in favour of setting up the back story to events before the Nostromo. I think it's possible to do that without destroying continuity (AVP aside).
