The simple reason why subsequent instalments in this franchise fail to matchthe original concept is actually right there in the title:
ALIEN
That is to say: Unknown, strange, not within your experience or understanding.
From this, the horror, and terror is born, and is it's essence... how the film acts on your imagination. Tapping to that same primitive psychology that anyone who has walked through the woods on a pitch black moonless night has experienced, where the darkness is so thick it presses close in on your very eyeballs... devoid of information, the human mind begins to cast shapes into this unknown, to account for what may be there, as part of our basic survival kit...
...imagining the worst, gives a better chance of surviving.
Using that in film, can therefore evoke the terror in the audience.
...That is, unless you make more movies, each one, explaining a little more of, and showing a little more of the Alien and that which is alien about it (backstory and so on).
Doesn't it stand to reason then, that the more you familiarise the audience with it, the less alien it becomes, horrible though the creature may still be?
To mind mind, the creature only serves to illustrate the meaning of that word and explore the concept it concerns.
Rated 10/10Once seen, never forgotten! It's hard to picture it now but the film's (oft-imitated) genius was to show the monster in gradual reveal, so that we saw only a very little of it at the start and then more and more, until the denouement, when HR Giger's awesome creation could be seen in full. Stunning piece of film-making! :happy: