There seem to be two types of “Alien” fans in the world. In one camp, there are people who like the slow, ineffable dread of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” and who appreciate the series as a particularly well-done, atmospheric monster movie. This camp likes to see unstoppable monsters stalking and killing human meat, merely because it is an aggressive, chaos-driven predator. In the other camp, there are people who like the blustering, high-octane action of James Cameron’s 1986 sequel “Aliens.” That film features overconfident marines armed with machine guns who can blast through monsters.
The “Alien” series has been torn between these two concepts ever since, with half of…
