Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerMar-19-2012 7:27 PMThe Engineers are parasitic, sentient beings, bent on galactic domination, who have perfected biomechanics and nanotechnology. The xenos were engineered by them as a self replicating ground force that is practically unstoppable. The engineers are so aware of the deadly nature of this weapon that they take elaborate steps to ensure that the egg chamber is difficult to access and that the eggs remain in a perpetual stasis. The collision with the prometheus causes the stasis system to malfunction enough to hatch a facehugger which impregnates the pilot. The pilot attempts to use the ship's technology to remove the embryo, but he is too late and the chestbuster is born lethally, but the engineer kills it with his aborting mechanism before it expires. Shaw manages to transmit a warning after the ordeal with the engineers and xenomorph, but the company encrypts and corrupts it after they reroute Nostromo, so they can sell it as a distress call because they want to cultivate this weapon themselves. They are simply ignorant of the built in kill swtch that died with the Engineer.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
20thcenturybuick
MemberOvomorphMar-19-2012 9:16 PMxenos are telepathically controlled beasts that the jockeys used to rule humanity
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerMar-19-2012 9:36 PMNot impossible, they seem more like a force to annihilate any indigenous species that MIGHT be a threat, though. Too dangerous to keep around after they have served their purpose.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
EGR101
MemberOvomorphMar-19-2012 10:05 PMAlso, Xenos are probably have a very short lifespan. They birth, they breed and they die. So they could attack a whole city turn every citizen into eggs and die off one by one. Everything is turned into the next batch of parasite and there is no mess left behind. It's an ingenious plan. Those eggs that Kane found at LV-426 originated from the civilizations they had infiltrated, invaded, destroyed, cocooned, harvested. Hence the script name ALIEN HARVEST.
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerMar-19-2012 10:29 PMThat makes a lot of sense, but requires us to completely ignore the second movie. Even if they are short lived, a kill switch or induced stasis would be a necessary precaution due to their naked aggression and capacity for violence and slaughter. But the most classic downfall of a superior force is a lack of vigilance or catastrophic equipment failure.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!
Mekja-Tek
MemberOvomorphMar-20-2012 12:42 AMI've never been a real fan of your highness. The second movie, wether Fox wants to admit or not, has limited the concept of the ALIEN universe. I have have read over time, when script came cross the table to bring ack to its roots and move beyond the queen, the execs quickly shot it down.
It's a good action thriller, but the queen is my least like aspect of this movie. the sequels spent too much time focussing on the queen, and ignored any other possibilities. I feel with PROMETHEUS, Ridley may have been forced by Fox to compromise and insert some queen alien aspect to this script. For me the queen has been a ridiculous tyrannosaur of a joke in the series. But hey, that's my problem. I just have to accept it and move on. :/
I know there are many here that prefer ALIENS over ALIEN.
So proto queen here we come!
Agent Texx
MemberOvomorphMar-20-2012 1:07 AMI tend to agree with mekja-tek. Aliens took an "Alien" organism and life cycle and reduced it to little more than a terrestrial insect caste system. In other words, it removed the shock and awe of something "Alien" and made the xeno a giant killer bug.
From what I had read and understood of Cameron's motivations behind Aliens, he didn't really want to make a sequel, he wanted to make Avatar, but needed this project to help him earn his directing chops to do as he pleased. I have lost respect for the movie as I became an adult and understood what he ended up doing to the story to (1) make it his own and (2) make his vision of Avatar fit into the movie Aliens.
It did help to base a wonderful mythology, but it also alienated the original story materials that, while left on the cutting room floor, was a much more interesting life form than what Cameron created to make his sequel.
shardy
MemberOvomorphMar-20-2012 1:16 AM@Mekja-Tek: i think the "queen / hive direction pretty much killed what
could have been something truly alien, and turned it into a "bug hunt", i get
that a LOT of folks hold "Aliens" and the mythos it attempted to put forth in
the highest regards but for me, it was a dumbed down version of ALIEN
my sentiment regarding "Aliens" and my disdain for it on these boards is
at the point of blatant redundancy. i did read / hear Ridley Scott himself say
that the ONLY film he recognizes in the "franchise" is 'Aliens", personally -
i will respectfully disagree
also, "Makja-Tek" is your screen name taken from the lettering
on the robotic arms in Bjork's "All Is Full Of Love" music video...?
just curious...
JC
MemberOvomorphMar-20-2012 2:02 AMMaybe they explore what Scott said about the Alien in the first movie. "It had no culture, no teaching, so it did not know how to act". It was one of a kind, had no guidance. The original mythology suggested that the Alien would be born violent, grow up violent, but then be taught by "parents" and become an intelligent sentient creature. Maybe the Alien IS the child form of a Space Jockey. As far as the queen from Aliens, it could still fit into the mythos. If a Tyrannosaur were cloned today, who would teach it how to hunt, eat, mate? If a queen alien is born in the wild, although they supposedly have the capacity for high intelligence, it would still be a wild, savage creature.
b5historyman
MemberOvomorphMar-20-2012 2:45 AMlets be honest here, Aliens was just a shoot em up rewrite of the Vietnam war that turned the perfect organism into canon fodder. The Queen was an invention of Cameron's ripped off from Giger's Alien 4 illustration. There is even an interview I recall where he ridicules the Brett/egg transformation true Alien reproductive cycle.
JC
MemberOvomorphMar-20-2012 6:34 AMI liked Aliens. The evolution of the queen would be in line with what Prometheus is suggesting - that this organism adapts and changes to it's surroundings and circumstances. What really sucked was the direction that it went in [i]after[/i] Aliens. It could have gone to Earth and touched off a Gigerian apocalyptic nightmare. It could have had the Space Jockeys coming in to collect their "children". We could have seen even more bizarre forms of the creature. But instead, a half-ass Madonna video director got ahold of it and we ended up with "a bunch of lifers who found God at the ass-end of the universe".
Myrddin365
MemberFacehuggerMar-20-2012 2:57 PMThe original life cycle makes them a perfect weaponized race because one all the hosts died out, there would just be eggs left to collect for the next conquest. The wall relief from the trailer clearly depicts the queen form head, though. I think it can be inferred that both life cycles are possible, but the Queen is more efficient once a foothold is established. All the films that followed Aliens were awful and I would reject as canon if I were Ridley.
Safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good!