Well... yeah. Aliens did well for a lot of reasons, one of them being that it set itself apart from the original by taking a slightly different tone and direction. In Alien, everyone dies and almost none of the supporting cast do anything memorable. In Aliens, we have Hicks, Bishop, Vasquez, and Newt, and everyone remembers them. Granted, Vasquez is mostly known for dying, and Newt pretty much just hid and looked scared the whole time, but they still made us feel like we knew them. When Hicks wanted to nuke and bail, we were right there with him. Later we found ourselves wondering, what is the measure of an android? I think that's the deeper stuff that people have been hoping for, because we don't have to have a Patrick Stewart speech to touch on something deeper than rawr pew pew.
Yeah, mystery in the right places really helps a lot of stories, it keeps things moving and what's imagined is usually better than anything concrete. Going back later and trying to tell stories that never really needed to be told is risky at best, and it definitely tends to spiral out of control as people realize that it kind of sucks and the writers try to compensate by giving us even more detail and exposition that really isn't important. Any monkey with a keyboard can write stories in an existing universe though, it's cheap and it's quick, and there is always a market for that.
Right (about the characters). That has basically nothing to do with the Alien universe though and they could have that in pretty much any and every story they want to. Trying to add more into a universe actually forces them to pigeonhole the characters more, and hence why we get the throwaway characters in Prometheus. No need to try to flesh out a universe that was intentionally not fleshed out more than necessary.
You did? I could see that with Blade Runner, but Alien/s? Really? They don't really touch on that aspect much at all, and nothing about the universe seems setup to delve into that in a meaningful way. Other than Ripley being wary of Bishop in the 2nd one due to how the android in the first reacted (which isn't anything meaningful about androids themselves really, and it even goes out of its way to do an explanation, that holds up). Bishop isn't especially loved, nor is he hated. He's treated marginally different from the humans (meaning there doesn't seem to be some weird taboo about androids in that universe, so what interesting depth would be there I'm not sure), and that was more or less just to serve as a macguffin, as we don't need to see his perilous journey at the end, and yet it sucked when he died, but it wasn't a big deal really. In the first one, it was merely serving as physical presence for the corporate greed aspect (he was programmed to do the things he did by the corporation for their gain, implicitly keeping the human crew in the dark) and to offer the unique visual that would only make sense with a non-human (him still talking after being beheaded), and still serve as a plot device (instead of them finding the information out of the computer, he literally says it).
Did Prometheus even really touch on the whole android thing much? In that one prologue thing for the new one it hints at it, but it doesn't seem to fit the movie at all so it just adds to my bafflement about what they're actually trying to do or why people seem to be asking for more of it. It's baffling that they're trying to do that in the scope of the Alien setup. It should've been a completely different setup and have zero ties. I don't know what Ridley Scott was thinking, other than he clearly wanted to make more Alien movies, but felt it was too tarnished at the time, so he slapped on a bunch of mediocre creationist backstory to try and differentiate it. Actually, it more seems like this is Ridley Scott wanting to remake Alien using modern tools, and that's what fans actually want as well. That's how the new movie comes off to me from the trailers I've seen of it.
Exactly. Only, this isn't cheap or quick. So what the hell is this? Granted I think it seems like every big franchise is doing it (Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, Jurassic ___). And yet, people go "yeah I know it's not great, but..." which is usually followed by "well you can't top the original, but they wanted to do something new" as a defense for paying to see this crap, and acting like it's good at first but then when basically any critical analysis is done on it you realize how mediocre if not outright bad it was (it's not nitpicking, there's glaring reasons that aren't even technical nitpicking, but major plot/story/character stuff that the new ones just fail at in comparison; it's why even as it grows more and more ridiculous in the scientific realism aspect, Jurassic Park still holds up).
So then I just wonder, why not just do something new and leave the original? Explain some new world. Fuck, even come up with alternate universes to explain similarities but explicitly say "this doesn't affect the original" and then they'd have more freedom. At least that would do more than this pretentious bullshit of it delving into deeper stuff, when it is more shallow than the originals even if it tosses in some newer terms/concepts that have developed since then.
On the helmet lights. Every director does:
Cameron:
JJ Abrams
They do it because in reality you can't see the guys face without it due to reflections and visors:
So the audience would be confused most of the scene.
I mean most people think this is Neil Armstrong.
It's Buzz Aldrin. (You can see Neil in the reflection on his face)
So it's a necessary evil
Sorry for the hatchet edit, wanted to remove the images.
Yes, I know every director does and it's fucking stupid. I get they want people to see the physical manifestation of how the characters are feeling, but there's other ways they can do that. I'd actually even argue that having the character in darkness would perfectly characterize them in the situations they use that visual cue in. Plus it'd at least offer some semblance of sense to Abrams using lens flares and glare out the ass by showing how bright outward lights would create havoc in being able to see a strange environment, making it even more tense and spooky. Plus all the "it got in his suit and now he's infected" stuff can have even more suspenseful as they can reasonably keep it in doubt, in this case literal shadow, until they can do the "OMG the eyes turned!!!" reveals.
I can think of one time in the movie when there was a suspension of disbelief and that was when the people were looking at the snake thing and it got in their suits. Every other time, it was plausible what they did. When it was reported that the red sphere found a life sign 1 click west of them, they responded by saying they were going to head east, away from the thing. Exactly what I would have done. When they found the black goo on the floor, they instinctively jumped away from it instead of stepping in it and playing in it. When the lady had the growth in her belly, she had it cut out immediately, didn't try to see if she could carry it to term or try to communicate with it. She's like, nope, get it the hell out of me. When her husband/boyfriend got infected, the commander burned the body outside instead of letting it come on the ship like most would have. All very plausible scenarios, not like regular sci-fi or horror shows where you literally scream at the screen because they are doing something stupid.
I get tired of the same old "oh, look, another alien that can melt metal and do whatever the hell lit wants" scene. They've had what, 4 or 5 alien movies? It's been played out. I wanted something new and the whole story for this was fresh and new for the alien universe. Very entertaining as a whole and left the franchise open to see if the ship the scientist lady took off with can find the engineers/architects, whatever she called them and find some answers.
I'd have to rewatch it to do a better analysis of the specific stupid things, but there was a lot of it that made little to no sense. I honestly can't be bothered to, and there's been more than enough analysis of all the stupid stuff. Yes that was blatantly stupid and is a prime example of how the movie went out of its way to establish characters a certain way, then had them act in the complete opposite way to justify some scene. Oh, let's not forget they go on this mission only to actually find out what they're doing just before getting there? Only for that to be some ploy to hide the real reason. Why even bother with that garbage about them finding out just before getting there?
Weren't they there to find life? I can't remember the exact setup, but usually there were several layers that make things stupid, not simply the immediate actions. Meaning, that they'd establish something beforehand, and then do something that doesn't make sense with that, then they would have something that makes sense, and then have it followed by another thing that didn't. Like when they burned the guy, I think they had already established that would be protocol, but they had the whole aspect of how he got it, and they knew there was the potential for others to be infected as well, but then didn't really do jack shit about it, until she took things into her own hands to remove it (not getting why you said "bring it to term or communicate with it" as pretty sure that wasn't even remotely an option as it was trying to pop out of her stomach; plus she has to fight off people to do that, and then doesn't do anything about the creature). Only instead of really addressing them, they basically just added some new stupid thing (wasn't it shortly after her removing the thing that she finds out about Weyland actually being there?).
Ok, sure, I'm in agreement there (thus I can't understand Alien 3 and the rest; although AvP made for a fun game premise). Uh, how was this movie any different? Alien that melts metal (or in this case glass), can do just about whatever it wants (there's the cobra, then the squid baby from whatever material he transmitted to her sexually, that transforms into a giant squid thing in a short period so that it can jam it's CGI penis down the bodybuilding albino humanoid that seems to be the same as the one from 500 million years ago that seeded human life and now wants to kill them). The things you hate about the Alien stuff was all in this movie only worse, along with a bunch of outright junk exposition. How was it fresh and new? It was pretty similar (science, space jockeys, weird corporate motivation behind it all, alien stuff!) to the other ones, just more nonsensical and more pretentious. And set in a far less interesting location.
Wait, so you're deliberately wanting a not Alien/s movie, set in the Alien universe? What sense does that make? Also, why do you want that from the Alien universe? I'll say it again, you deliberately say you don't want the aliens, but you want all this other stuff from the universe setup specifically to make that specific alien work? Do you not see how bizarre and nonsensical that is?