So in this relationship, what you brought to the table was an asset (access to a market) that was relatively easy and cheap to imitate or otherwise substitute for the manufacturer. No matter how you negotiated, you held the short straw from the very beginning. This is also why I don't think your example is a useful point of reference for the Alaris/EK alliance, since the assets on both sides appear to be more complementary, valuable and to a large extent partnership-specific. More importantly, the interests of both partners closely align on crucial points. It's a proper alliance, in contrast with the distributorship you were part of.
In the remainder of your post, you appear to assume that there's opportunistic behavior on either side of the Alaris/EK alliance. We have yet to see firm evidence of this, and it's in fact quite likely this doesn't happen since one partner offering junk film and the other party doing a crap job distributing it would harm both partners' business. The assumption that either party is screwing over the other is one that's commonly made in overly simplistic economics and traces back to basic assumptions about economic actors, such as that they're inherently opportunistic and that they're rational actors (and a host of other assumptions). Time and again, research and practice have shown that these assumptions are often not accurate. Moreover, the reduction of vast and complex entities like these two firms into atomic economic actors and then applying simplistic (and often erroneous) assumptions to them just doesn't make sense. This extends btw to the shareholders of companies, especially in those cases where a company is not publicly traded (and even if it is, not all shareholders are out for short-term gains at the cost of long-term profitability).
Another assumption you appear to make is that the alliance lacks a form of flexibility that would somehow be beneficial to both partners, and by extension for consumers. The problem with reasoning of this kind is that it's equally abstract and if you work out the details, it's just as easily can flip in the opposite direction: i.e. that the partnership is better capable (through its combination of complementary assets etc.) to respond to market dynamics. One particularly strong argument for this view is in the very existence of the alliance in the first place. Apparently, there's a very strong perceived benefit on both sides of the deal to keep it this way.
The conceivable argument that the legal framework between both parties would be the only knot that ties them together, in practice doesn't hold any water. Look at any number of alliances where either party decided to bail out, and you'll find that substantial legal measures were taken to make exactly this very unattractive - and yet, it happens. It's very similar to the situation where you were left in the dust by the building automation manufacturer: even if you had negotiated a better deal, as long as you didn't bring any more valuable bargaining chips to the table, in the end the power imbalance would have played out in their favor. If you run into a long-standing alliance, it always turns out there are strong and lasting ties that keep the parties together, and these ties invariably trace back to things that are both valuable and difficult to imitate or substitute.
Perhaps the above starts to explain my earlier somewhat exasperated responses to your suggestions - and I apologize for the antagonistic formulation of those. I have some difficulty going along in the too shallow assumptions that are being made by you and also others in trying to 'understand' why Kodak film (in particular color film) isn't cheaper than it is. There are very good reasons for this, and opportunistic behavior, price gouging, imbecile management etc. etc. are not the first ones that come to mind.
