What would the Alien universe look like if there was no main character similar to how Game of Thrones is told?

With Alien: Romulus on its way to theaters (yes, I'm going to see it), I think that it is curious that storytelling has changed so much since that first Alien film so many decades ago. Back then, what George R.R. Martin did in his story (by removing a protagonist in favor of point-of-view characters) was unheard of. Alien and its sequels are very much "old school storytelling." For example, the first four movies in the franchise are pinned on Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). You always knew that Ripley was going to be the main character, and that she was going to survive. Even after they killed her off, they brought her back, because it was probably assumed that there was no Alien series without its star.

But what if they hadn't made this decision? What kinds of possibilities might there have been for the directions that the movies could have made? If after say Aliens we had gotten an Alien 3 that instead followed Newt around, I think that would have been great. There could have been more exploration of people doing things in different parts of the universe rather than just on LV-426 (the doomed planet). This kind of thing could have played very well into Alien's natural storytelling, because Ripley doesn't emerge as the protagonist until the first movie is two-thirds over. She doesn't have a "hero's journey." She survives through luck and tenacity. You get the feeling that had things gone a little differently, it might have been Dallas on that shuttle at the end, or Parker, or maybe even poor Lambert.

Instead what we got was 1) competent professional Ripley, 2) mama-bear Ripley, 3) hardened survivor Ripley, and 4) Whedon-esque Super Ripley. But maybe abandoning the lead was just too much of a progressive idea for studios to do in the era in which Alien emerged. It certainly turned Sigourney Weaver into a household name. Predator 2 is an example of a sci-fi franchise that abandoned its lead, and it got a lot of flack and wasn't as popular because of the lack of Arnold (from the first movie). But it was ahead of its time in this respect, I think.

What I might have wanted was more things like Prometheus that dared to explore the larger universe of Alien. The irony of my statement is that I think I'm going to get just that with Noah Hawley's in-verse series that has just wrapped filming and will be coming out some time in 2025? I believe it is called Alien: Earth. I wonder if there will be a protagonist, or if there (instead) will be point of view characters that we can all kind of root for and latch onto as the greater story progresses. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Leave me a comment below if you do.