For me, I always found the first movie much more enjoyable to think about. Like I always read it as this weird movie about men not understanding pregnancy and being fucking terrified by it, but there’s a lot of stuff about the capitalism in there, and I’m sure other readings are possible too.
The second movie kinda removes most of that? Like aside from the beginning with Paul Reiser, it mostly pushes the anti-capitalist stuff into the background in favor of Hoo Rah dumbass space marines, and weird “does James Cameron every really understand his own maybe-not-even-subtext” questions vis-a-vis its relationship to Vietnam movies. It’s up there with Titanic in terms of hopefully accidental or at least horribly misdone messaging.
“…mostly” is never not nearby in my head.