At the end of A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PART 2 I said I would next discuss "non-distinct replacements," but a better term would be "non-differentiated replacements."
In Part 2 I mentioned two examples of differentiated replacements from comic books: the forties hero The Black Owl and the Marvel villain The Molecule Man. I paid particular attention to the latter, noting that even though the first and second versions of The Molecule Man had no personal names in their debuts, and barely any personal history, they are nevertheless differentiated in that the reader assumes that they are living human beings with distinct backgrounds. Such differentiations are harder to make, though, with respect to non-human entities, because their non-human nature confers an aura of otherness that obscures differentiation.
The most visible example of such a non-differentiated replacement is that of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. The first monster to go by this name perished at the end of his debut film, presumably because his creators had no idea that he was going to be bigger and more sequel-worthy than any other giant monster from any country. When the 1954 GODZILLA scored big, Toho Studios quickly followed up with GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. Instead of finding some way to reconstitute the dissolved body of the original King, the producers simply had another "Godzilla-saurus" emerge from the bowels of the Earth, and for the remainder of the original series, this pinch-hitter became, to all intents and purposes, the only Godzilla whose adventures anyone followed, even though hardcore viewers were entirely aware that the first rough beast had long passed on. A much later film purported to revive the first Godzilla, but for a couple of decades, no one cared about the debut creature.
Aliens are even more susceptible to becoming non-differentiated characters. The Martians of H.G. Wells, the archetypal alien invaders, are not differentiated from one another in either the original novel or in latter-day creations like Marvel's KILLRAVEN serial. Thus if Killraven fights a horde of Martians in New York, and then travels down to Tallahassee to fight a separate horde, both sets of Martians are essentially coterminous. The same principle applies from the ETs from the ALIEN film franchise, even though there are some morphological differences between particular representatives of the species, such as the male warrior from the first film and the Alien Queen from the second.
The ETs of the PREDATOR series have the potential to be more individualized, though the hunters in the first and second films are not significantly differentiated from one another. I recall one comic-book story which made a minor attempt to distinguish two Predators within the context of that story, making one a "hero" and the other a "villain." But from what I can judge, the Predators' appeal lies in the fact that they're cookie-cutter menaces, whose raison d'etre stays the same regardless of any particular movie, even when played off against another "swarm" type of ET in the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR films.
Other examples include the various sharks in the JAWS franchise, at least two loosely related "killer bee" movies, and assorted fantasy-creatures like Al Capp's Shmoos.
Of course, it's not impossible for one film to coast on another's rep, using the name of a somewhat-established monster but substituting a beast of a different origin. The producers of the 2000 DTV film PYTHON in 2000 came out with another giant snake film, BOA, in 2002. Then the filmmakers engineered what looked like a crossover of the two serpentine beasties in 2004's BOA VS. PYTHON. However, though the Python used was essentially coterminous with the one from the 2000 film, the script provided a distinct version of a modern-day Boa that had no functional relation to the prehistoric giant from the 2002 film.
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