AVP-R proves a few things.
1) John Davis needs slapping with a huge fish and banned from having any involvement with any further film with the word's Alein and Predator in them.
2) Leave casting to someone that actually knows a half decent actor when they walk through the door ( John Davis are you reading? ). As has been mentioned elsewhere, the brothers Strause should just have gone the whole hog and made the humans cgi.Or cardboard cutouts for that matter.
3) Shane Salerno - goto no1. Then lock yourself in a box on a desert island somewhere. Please
4) Find a decent director(s) if you want to make a half decent movie. Scott, Cameron and Fincher are all damn good directors and have all made some superb films since their Alien involvement. Not sure about Junet but then all I'm gonna say is 'the newborn'.For that he gets beaten around the head with a bag of onions. Sod it,he needs a slap with a huge kipper and all. Obviously someone at Fox was good at spotting directors with talent for these films. Find him and hire him again. Leading onto....
5) Don't hire talentless fanboy special effects blokes to direct. Especially when they've got a chubby on for one creature at the expense of the other. As this movie has shown they are in over their heads when it comes to directing something that is even slightly above bargain bin material. As soon as those two stood there like the perverbial Beavis and Butthead giggling because they facehug a little kid then you knew it was doomed. Trying to fill in the gaps, lack of suspence and talent by going down the over the top teen slasher flick gore route makes a mockery of the style and class some of these films were once renowned for.
6) Repeatedly cupping Jim Cameron's nuts with showers of praise, in film homages and the like doesn't guarentee a film will actually be any good. Case proven.
7) Find a decent composer ( which I think Bryan Tyler is ) then get him to compose something new and original. Throwing someone the soundtracks from the previous films and getting the composer to hash them all together doesn't cut it. James Horner, Alan Silverstri, John Frizzell, Jerry Goldsmith and Elliot Goldenthal all called. They want their soundtracks back.
8 Setting a film in a 'real world' time frame and environment means that you actually have to try and make it realistic and plausable. If you can't get the basics right in a real world environment, then set it in space so nobody will notice the bloody huge plot holes you've stupidly created. I doubt Neil Armstrong will see it anyway so make up what you want. Maybe Alien's can scramble cell phone and landline transmissions and setup roadblocks or something.At least for people trying to get out anyway. 'Ah the National Guard are here, wave em past, the boys in town will sort em ...hissssss'
9) Dumbing down a creature that in it's time was downright scary, creepy, intelligent, vicious and often single minded to something that's a weak retarded punchbag for the director's own amusement is a sure fire way to win over half your intended target audience.Even Anderson got that bit right.
10) When the money shot of an Alien movie is a drawn out shot of some birds arse while shes getting her kit off then things really are grim. Or was this just another nod to previous films, this one being to Ripley on the Narcissus? Either way, I'm shallow and wasn't looking at the clock, but it's been done before. Like the music and a lot of other things in this film. ' Get to da chopper' . Oh dear.
As for the Alien Legacy. I think Bones from Star Trek summed it up:
'It's dead Jim'
Chris