I am in the camp that Ripley didn't NEED to be in every single freaking Aliens sequel, and that it stretched credibility. The Aliens were cool enough to exist in a movie without her getting drawn back into it movie after movie.
I really thought they should have brought in new heroes to fight the Aliens in all the sequels after "Aliens"- (like Kurt Russell!)
And that's not to say Ripley's story should have been over. She just didn't need to encounter the Aliens again. I thought she then should have spun off into her own series, RIPLEY, and they could have had her encounter new creatures or have different sci fi adventures, like being stuck on a world during a Bladerunner-esque android uprising or something and trying to survive. Hell, they could have even had her fight the Predators!
I am definitely in the camp of hating Alien 3 for killing off Hicks, Bishop, and Newt. That and killing her off. For the reasons mentioned above I thought it was stretching it to bring her back for a third time anyways, even without everyone dying in it. I just thought it was an insult. Aliens was the end of the official series for me.
It is interesting to hear how similar some thoughts to sequels are to my fanboy vision of my direct sequel to Aliens I've always had, ignoring Alien 3 & 4, called the Ripley Chronicles. If it were up to me, it would star Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop, and time has passed so it accounts for their age. It doesn't have the Aliens in it.
Newt has grown up. Ripley raised her. She is in her thirties. She has been secretly obsessed with discovering where the Aliens that destroyed her family came from. No one has ever seen them before or since. For story purposes, the derelict alien space vessel on Acheron had been blown up by the colonists once the Alien infestation was first starting (to no avail).
On a far off world, a mining probe finds the remnants of an alien city.
Seeing images of it back in the core system, Newt, an archaeologist in her early thirties, becomes obsessed with it and wants to go out there. She fights hard and gets to assemble a team to go. She picks a crew of archaeologists and Bishop (who is like her right-hand-man on the expedition, and the two know more than they are letting on).
Newt (with Bishop) tells Mom Ripley (and her "Uncle" Hicks) that she is shipping off on assignment and may be gone years. Ripley, unmarried, offers to be the missions pilot to keep her "family" together. Archaeological digs can take years. Colonies get built up around places like that. This way they can be together. Newt tries to talk Ripley out of it, but offering no good reason why not, is forced to take her as their pilot. Hearing Bishop is also going with, Hicks is suspicious of what Newt is up to and signs on too, in his mind as "security", and watching out for his extended "family".
The archaeological find turns out to be a long dead base of the "Jockey" pilot creatures from Alien. That race also has never been seen before--- or since. Now she has found the remains of some! Maybe here she can find answers.
The alien Jockey creatures seemed to have been collecting dangerous alien organisms, and this place is loaded with lots of other species (including Predators) being kept in stasis. Why? This is the first half of the movie.
That's the main plot as I ever thought it out. I really liked it. A few different directions can happen here. Ultimately, new nasty creatures gets loose and it's a survival tale.
There is also a morality play going on here because Newt needing financing to fund this expedition, so she needed to go to a corporation. This one uses humanoid animal mutates as slaves/laborers, which doesn't sit well with our heroes, or Bishop. the rest of the Corporation lackeys treat them like crap. When the poo hits the fan the creatures help Ripleys team, but let their corporation masters die horribly.
The end was kinda dark. Bishop learns the Jockey race was actually seeding systems with these species that would one day support life. Getting to the center of this base is actually an intelligence test. By getting to the center, they will have proven the human race has indeed grown very dangerous and needs to be exterminated. A signal is sent out from the base to the stars.
Elsewhere: On a jungle world with a human colony, a hidden bunker is activated. Stasis chambers open up. A new type of alien species wakes up and is released onto the world, ravaging the humans.
On another world, the same thing happens with another species. And another. On this one ALIENS are released.
On Ripleys base, all the various alien life chambers are opened to kill them. The archaeologists have many excavating power loaders suits for extreme environments. they use them. All the creatures released at once, they attack the most dangerous things in the base: each other. There should be some predators released in there too.
Like I said, scary how similar these older ideas are to official abandoned ones I never knew about. Sorry this was long winded. I thought how cool it was to try this as a photo story, and then was like "there's NO WAY IN HELL! I could ever do it!" Shrug.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. My use of the term "Aliens sequels" meaning sequels where she is actually battling our beloved inner-jaw snapping aliens ad-nauseum.
