It's mind-boggling to me that people think Ripley is such a great character in the original Alien. She's not that interesting, Shaw was a far more compelling character.
I like Alien and Aliens, but I don't put them on nearly the same untouchable platform that most do.
Going by the scripture in your signature, I'm guessing you found her character compelling due to her struggle between scientific fact and faith? If that's the case, I can sort of see where you're coming from.
On the other hand, though, like others have said, Ripley is interesting for the simple fact that she's not a complex character facing moral dilemmas and what not. She's just an everyday person thrown into circumstances out of her control, and the more and more the movie progresses, the more we see her character fleshed out and her resourcefulness revealed through the tough situations she has to face. I love characters like that. They're like onions. The more layers that are peeled back, the more we learn about that character.
It's always more interesting to me to see a seemingly simple character become more complex, not through words, but actions. I hate nowadays how most character development is mostly spelled out with exposition through dialogue fed to the audience. Not only is that direct and boring, it doesn't give the audience much room to guess the characters intentions and where they're coming from. If you start right out of the gate knowing nearly everything about a certain character, then what's left to know about them?
And that's another thing why the characters in
Prometheus weren't as interesting in
Alien. The characters in
Prometheus were just that, characters. None of them felt like real people. They always just seemed like actors acting in a movie. They always felt like they were being guided through a narrative, acting out what they were supposed to do and delivering their lines to the audience. Not to mention that the majority of the characters were written like idiots, so it was hard to feel sympathy for any of them when they were killed.
In
Alien, even though they were written a certain way, the individual actors always made the character their own through their own personalities and actions. Sometimes, they would even go off script and do their own thing. Through their various interactions, you really got the sense that these characters have known each other for quite some time, and you forget that there are actors on screen. I think that's what made each of the characters deaths so effective. It almost seemed like you were witnessing the death of a real person who was filmed on camera. It's quite a surreal experience.
I personally disagree with you, but I'm not going to hold it against you.
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