>>213557368
>people like the xenos as the punching bag
Ehh. See that's the thing.
I like the Xenos as a horror monster in the first film.
As in, something to be genuinely scared by, and it still does get me. It's genuinely freaky - although now moreso for its occult symbolism than the reasons it initially scared me.
Aliens is a good film, but it's not really a horror film.
Kind of by nature, you can't really repeat horror. It's a very old cliche to say part of what makes horror work is the unknown, but it's true, and when your monster becomes known and trivial it's no longer really scary.
It's no longer really "alien".

>cameron made facehuggers actually scary
This I've got to disagree with. The facehugger is terrifying in the first film.
The effects are great in Aliens, making the facehugger more of a creepy crawly spider and more of an action threat
But the whole issue of parasitic symbiosis and the sexual connotations of the facehugger - still horrible. What a great movie creature.