I suppose the one recurring theme that runs through all ALIENS movies is that "bioweapons will blow-back on you". Bioweapons Blowback is the two-word term that sums up the entire franchise most succinctly.

So what you guys are saying is that you've been living & breathing prequel-hate for 15 years, so you're over it. Through the looking glass. Level 10.

Level 1. What's Star Wars?
Level 2. Oh, I've heard of Star Wars. They're cool movies.
Level 3. The OT is great, the prequels suck!
Level 4. Let's discuss endlessly how the prequels suck
Level 5. Let's discuss endlessly how the prequels can be improved
Level 6. Lucas raped my childhood and I'm going to break into Skywalker Ranch and demand reparations and a re-edit
Level 7. Whatever George. Star Wars is now ruined, from the juvenile special editions to the infantile prequels to the cartoons to the whored-out-to-anyone over-commercialization.
Level 8. Burns all Star Wars stuff in a funeral pyre and says an an anguished good bye.
Level 9. The pain is fading, the memory is dim. No longer care if Jar Jar is inserted everywhere into the OT and the next Star Wars movie was a Jar Jar origin story.
10. What's Star Wars?

From the comments on this forum over the years, some people are on various points on this continuum. Perhaps it's analogous to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours idea. You gotta do x amount of hours of grieving before you're out the other side.

The BFG from Doom, if I can't have the Death Star. Location: Manhattan, of course, because everyone loves seeing Manhattan get trashed. So at least while the duke is 'demanding satisfaction', the masses can pull up a chair, break out the popcorn, and be entertained.

Question: Does the popularity of fantasy imply that reality is dull?

During production, it was cool to trash-talk the movie as a certain failure. Too expensive, it'll bankrupt the studio, etc.

Then when it was released, there was genuine admiration and critical respect.

Then it just kept on dominating the box office, month after month. When it got really popular with the masses and repeat viewings by teenage girls, it became cool to trash-talk it again as sign of snobbery. I'm much too sophisticated for this derivative, manipulative, sentimental pulp.

Then trashing the movie became so popular it was cool to praise it for its chutzpah, production values, and sheer audacity.

And so on. It's an insight into the human condition. If everyone loves what you love, then you don't feel a like a cutting edge hipster, so you gotta go do the opposite.

Carl Sagan has been auto-tuned many times, which (sorta kinda) makes him a "musician". There is only one Carl Sagan and he, more than any other, died too soon.

In a few years, you have your genome sequenced as part of a routine medical check-up. The doctor holds an his envelope which reveals the year that you're projected (accurately) to die of old age and whether you're likely to get Alzheimers, etc. Do you open the envelope or throw it in the bin?