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When he explains his plan to Ripley it's clear he hasn't told the company what's going on, so yea they really aren't involved in the situation one way or the other. Of course there's the indirect implication that this is how you thrive and move up in the company, by ruthlessly pursuing lucrative resources on other planets regardless of how many people get killed.
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Jan 12, 2021 00:37
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Yeah I think Alien/Aliens was made in a time when there wasn't this popular sense of a company as a superorganism. The focus was still on "suits" rather than collective emergent evil.
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Jan 12, 2021 00:55
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I think that the idea was that further in the future, the Company finally got some regulation and "wokeness" and chilled out to the point that they weren't even looking for Xenomorphs anymore, but with the capitalistic element there, the Company would always revert back to itself, even if starting at some lowly middle manager.
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Jan 12, 2021 01:00
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alf_pogs posted:can you elaborate on this a bit? i always remember Burke as the "face" of WY in Aliens, and he doesn't come across as a particularly neutral character. profit-driven, sure, but that's just another way of saying "evil" Bishop is the face of the company. As with T2: Judgement Day, it’s easy to forget that the creepy robot turning out to be a ‘good guy’ is a twist. But, where Bob the Terminator is a fairly unambiguous Christ figure, Bishop is basically just the company’s HR representative. He may be friendly, but he’s ultimately not your friend. Cameron devotes a substantial chunk of the narrative to Ripley being 75 years out of date, with antiquated beliefs about robots and the companies they serve. In the time that she was asleep, Wetland-Yutani has rebranded itself as a good, liberal corporation. All the ‘Ash’ models covertly spying on the workers have been tossed out and replaced by these Bishop models that openly monitor the employees. We could say the reason Burke sees Ripley as a potential ally is that his sleazy 1980s conservatism is likewise completely out of date. He’s acting exactly like Ash did, 75 years ago. Bishop is a nice enough guy, but he’s nonetheless serving the interests of the corporation. This is why Fincher chooses him as the face of the antichrist.
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Jan 12, 2021 02:59
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these are great posts and I am excited to rewatch Aliens again
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Jan 12, 2021 03:19
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Bishop does not represent the Company, he is USCM property.
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Jan 12, 2021 03:23
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Xenomrph posted:Bishop does not represent the Company, he is USCM property. But he literally represents the Company in Alien Alien Alien, the third Alien film.
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Jan 12, 2021 03:34
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General Battuta posted:But he literally represents the Company in Alien Alien Alien, the third Alien film. Also Michael Bishop very specifically denotes a distinction between the
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Jan 12, 2021 03:51
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Xenomrph posted:WY making robots in their image (a retcon which the third film makes; ‘Aliens’ does not indicate who manufactured Bishop) does not change what I said - Bishop works for the military and is a military asset, even if he is created by the Company. Being a successful product in the military market is being the face of the company. He's an artificial system created to serve the owners of the WY corporation; in this sense he is ideally a sort of fit-for-purpose microcosm of the corporation itself which can interact directly with customers. You're probably right that the distinction is important. Portraying Bishop as being a military product- as a macrocosm of the military-industrial complex which and obscuring the issue as his being basically being a loyal soldier, is a distinct point from the way other directors and Scott himself have used the android characters. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 03:57
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I must say that as an American in the 21st century I am not convinced that "corporate product in service to the military which is doing a mission to check on the corporate colony" is much different from "corporate agent".
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Jan 12, 2021 03:59
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Hodgepodge posted:Being a successful product in the military market is being the face of the company. He's an artificial system created to serve the owners of the WY corporation; in this sense he is ideally a sort of fit-for-purpose microcosm of the corporation itself which can interact directly with customers. And he isn’t serving the owners of WY, he’s serving the USCM. General Battuta posted:I must say that as an American in the 21st century I am not convinced that "corporate product in service to the military which is doing a mission to check on the corporate colony" is much different from "corporate agent". He’s only a “corporate product” in the sense that a corporation originally made him and sold him to the military. Lockheed Martin makes fighter jets, but they don’t decide where those jets are deployed or what they do - their control over the jets ends when they’re handed over to the military. Likewise, Colt makes M-16s but does not decide who they’re fired at. Also I thought the argument was that it was Burke’s mission to check on the colony, unilateral to the Company? Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 04:08
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Xenomrph posted:Bishop does not represent the Company, he is USCM property. That sounds like some 'expanded universe' thing, because I don't recall anything like that being said in the film. In fact, we hear the opposite: Burke: "It's just common practice. We always have a synthetic on board." Emphasis on the "we". Burke also issues instructions to Bishop that violate 'federal' quarantine laws, and Bishop evidently follows them: Bishop: "Mr. Burke gave instructions that they were to be kept alive in stasis for return to the company labs. He was very specific about it."
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Jan 12, 2021 04:12
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And then Ripley tells him to stop and he does. The movie establishes that Bishop has been with the squad for some time, prior to the events of the movie.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:14
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It's a fair point, and see my edit. But ultimately, does it matter if he was made by WY or a competitor which would not be meaningfully different? The more useful point is probably that the issue of who built him being obscured tells us something about how Cameron was depicting the military-industrial complex through him, as something Ridley can learn to trust.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:17
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Bishop always seemed like a liason to me - he was handling the USCM on behalf of WY, and having Burke there meant he had a direct supervisor.Xenomrph posted:
Xenomrph posted:Likewise, Colt makes M-16s but does not decide who they’re fired at. i mean ....
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Jan 12, 2021 04:17
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Amarcarts posted:Yeah I think Alien/Aliens was made in a time when there wasn't this popular sense of a company as a superorganism. The focus was still on "suits" rather than collective emergent evil. Also at the time corporations were starting to push the idea more aggressively of the corporation as an infallible god-concept that cannot fail. I forget which movie company was named but in New Media Monopoly I remember it being mentioned how in the early 80s at least one major studio had like an absolute mandate where a corporation could never be portrayed as bad, only individual evil suits like Burke. Alien was like right before that was happening in a big way. In Aliens there's almost like a soft retcon where the company is just the company, and it would be the greatest company ever except for individuals like Burke who are uniquely evil outliers.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:18
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Hodgepodge posted:It's a fair point, and see my edit. But ultimately, does it matter if he was made by WY or a competitor which would not be meaningfully different? The more useful point is probably that the issue of who built him being obscured tells us something about how Cameron was depicting the military-industrial complex through him, as something Ridley can learn to trust. Exactly, I completely agree. Tangentially related, although this is “expanded universe” Alien Isolation does a neat subversion of the “company android” trope - the android Samuels is established as the main Company rep and basically being the Ash analogue for the game’s plot, and then ends up willingly sacrificing himself to further Amanda Ripley’s goal of stopping the Company from getting an Alien well why not posted:Bishop always seemed like a liason to me - he was handling the USCM on behalf of WY, and having Burke there meant he had a direct supervisor. If that’s the case, then Bishop answering to Burke makes Burke the “face” of the company (for Bishop’s purposes). Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 04:22
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Xenomrph posted:And then Ripley tells him to stop and he does. No she doesn't. Ripley says that she wants the specimens destroyed when Bishop is done with them. Bishop says he was instructed to preserve them, then the scene cuts away before we can see what Bishop does. Later, Bishop has gone off to do some other stuff. Bishop never destroys the specimens.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:36
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Well he kinda does - he leaves them to be vaporized by the impending thermonuclear explosion, unaware that Burke might use them for nefarious purposes. He’s kinda got more pressing things to worry about, like getting the drop ship so the characters don’t get vaporized. I can’t tell what your “point” is - either Bishop is the face of the company and is acting nefariously in concert with Burke (making the Company in turn also nefarious), or as the face of the company he’s showing that Burke, Ripley, or whoever can steer him wherever they want, making the Company essentially impotent.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:46
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General Battuta posted:I must say that as an American in the 21st century I am not convinced that "corporate product in service to the military which is doing a mission to check on the corporate colony" is much different from "corporate agent". Especially in a future where the corporation is the one delegating what does and doesn’t require military intervention.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:56
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Xenomrph posted:He’s only a “corporate product” in the sense that a corporation originally made him and sold him to the military. Lockheed Martin makes fighter jets, but they don’t decide where those jets are deployed or what they do - their control over the jets ends when they’re handed over to the military. Likewise, Colt makes M-16s but does not decide who they’re fired at. I don't mean to be snide but there's a reason "military-industrial complex" has become a cliche. Can you really say Halliburton or KBR are just passive contract receivers? That they have no influence on where the US military goes or what it does? Trying to paint the Colonial Marines and their equipment (including artificial persons) as something completely beyond the influence of Weyland-Yutani feels like a stretch to me.
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Jan 12, 2021 05:17
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Xenomrph posted:Well he kinda does - he leaves them to be vaporized by the impending thermonuclear explosion, unaware that Burke might use them for nefarious purposes. He’s kinda got more pressing things to worry about, like getting the drop ship so the characters don’t get vaporized. The point, as others have noted earlier, is that Burke and Bishop are the film's corporate Goofus and Gallant (respectively). Burke is initially presented as the good human employee, versus the untrustworthy robot. Ripley is uneasy about Bishop, but goes along with him because of Burke's reassurances. Then we have a twist (that Burke is acting against company policies to enrich himself), followed by another twist (that Bishop is ultimately on Ripley's side against the aliens because of his humanist programming). Bishop is obviously the face of the corporation, because he follows the rules and doesn't violate company policies in a way that ends up costing the corporation a lot of money. Burke is expressly not being a good employee at all; he's doing things that would get him "nailed to the wall" by those in charge. Note that, while he's obediently preparing to ship the specimens to Earth for the company, Bishop is unaware of the 'illegal smuggling' aspect of Burke's plan. Bishop is preparing to get the preserved aliens to Weyland-Yutani's bioweapons division, in any way he legally can. Bishop has apparently worked with these marines before, but he specifically takes orders from Burke - until Burke dies, partway into the film. Bishop doesn't have any sort of rank or anything, he has a good knowledge of Weyland-Yutani's product lines, etc. Burke says that he always brings a robot along, and why would a military robot be programmed to never harm humans? All this points to Bishop being programmed to serve the company - which he does, unfailingly. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 05:17
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Eh, I’m unconvinced. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, sorry.
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Jan 12, 2021 05:23
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Putting together a numbered list was pretty straightforward, because it turns out that there are fewer of these Alien ripoffs than you might expect. That’s good, because most suck badly! I missed out on the Alien-ripoff discussion earlier, but I want to ask: Did any of the movies surprise you in any way, either in actual suspense or in how goofy or shameless the movie was? Do they rip off different aspects of Alien (effects, story, characters, mood, etc.) or were they all pretty similar? Also, have you seen Leviathan? That movie seems like a pretty clear Alien-like.
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Jan 12, 2021 05:28
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Very convenient that Bishop brought the alien queen onto the Sulaco. I smell a rat.
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Jan 12, 2021 05:41
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DorianGravy posted:Also, have you seen Leviathan? That movie seems like a pretty clear Alien-like. Seriously, Leviathan and Lily C.A.T. are obvious contenders for "greatest shameless direct Alien ripoff"
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Jan 12, 2021 05:45
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General Battuta posted:Very convenient that Bishop brought the alien queen onto the Sulaco. I smell a rat. You’d better believe there are endless debates in the fandom over where the eggs in Alien3 came from (and whether Bishop brought them on board).
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Jan 12, 2021 05:54
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are there eggs in the opening scenes of Alien 3? my headcanon always thought it was just a rogue facehugger, which i buy could have clung onto the queen and scuttled away during the ending of Aliens' edit: well blow me down, there it is. this thread has been illuminating once again alf_pogs fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 05:58
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Xenomrph posted:Eh, I’m unconvinced. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, sorry. There's not much to really be convinced about. It's true the the film is murky on this point, but there's little evidence that Bishop's military property outside of the fact that the marines are familiar with his knife trick and he helps load the APC into the dropship. There's then plenty of evidence to the contrary - like the fact that he's taking orders from Burke when the operation is under military jurisdiction: Burke: "I cannot authorize that kind of action. I'm sorry." Ripley: "Well, I believe Corporal Hicks has authority here. ... This operation is under military jurisdiction, and Hicks is next in chain of command." If Bishop is a superintelligent military robot, what are the military things that he does? He doesn't like guns, and they don't even bring him along for the rescue mission into the hive. SidneyIsTheKiller posted:Seriously, Leviathan and Lily C.A.T. are obvious contenders for "greatest shameless direct Alien ripoff" Both have all the right ingredients, but I really dislike how they're edited. Lily-CAT's story is all over the place.
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Jan 12, 2021 06:16
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Bishop isn't even wearing a uniform, just a blue jumpsuit with a sulaco patch on it.
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Jan 12, 2021 06:22
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There's not much to really be convinced about. It's true the the film is murky on this point, but there's little evidence that Bishop's military property outside of the fact that the marines are familiar with his knife trick and he helps load the APC into the dropship. There's then plenty of evidence to the contrary - like the fact that he's taking orders from Burke when the operation is under military jurisdiction: He’s not a combat robot, he’s a support unit. He can drive the APC, call and fly the drop ship in a non-combat capacity, etc. If you’re going strictly off of ‘Aliens’ we don’t even know he’s a Company-made robot, he’s just a robot who has been seconded to the Marines for some time and is fluent in their equipment. Like I said, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
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Jan 12, 2021 06:43
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My worthless, uncorroborated take - Bishop is a company provided, standard hardware used by the marines. Company staff have assumed administrator rights to their hardware (but can't override the fundamental no-killing code). Remember that Aliens came out around the same time as Robocop - another film with an evil corporation (or suits within the company). Robocop is created by the company and is given to the police as a tool to use. They work with Robo day in day out and see him as a team member, but ultimately the corporation have control over him, even down to deep programming to exempt them from being affected by his function ("Directive 4") Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 08:51
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Neo Rasa posted:Also at the time corporations were starting to push the idea more aggressively of the corporation as an infallible god-concept that cannot fail. I forget which movie company was named but in New Media Monopoly I remember it being mentioned how in the early 80s at least one major studio had like an absolute mandate where a corporation could never be portrayed as bad, only individual evil suits like Burke. Alien was like right before that was happening in a big way. In Aliens there's almost like a soft retcon where the company is just the company, and it would be the greatest company ever except for individuals like Burke who are uniquely evil outliers. This is funny because I always assumed that Burke was given tacit approval by W-Y, in a "we're just gonna look over here while you 'check up on things *wink wink* over there'" way. Like, he didn't really go rogue until he actively tried to get people impregnated with xeno embryos, the thing that caused the original encounter in Alien to go sideways, and even then the Company would've happily swept the whole thing under the rug if he'd actually gotten results. I guess getting into Aliens much later in life even though I basically grew up with it as cultural background noise had that effect on me, I'd already gotten that "just a few bad apples" bullshit knocked out.
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Jan 12, 2021 10:24
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McSpanky posted:...I basically grew up with it as cultural background noise had that effect on me, I'd already gotten that "just a few bad apples" bullshit knocked out. Yeah, attitudes have definitely moved on and we just assume corporations are evil entities now. The concept that they might NOT be soulless evil empires seems quaint. I recently caught some very early X-Files episode on TV and the big, shocking twist was "the company knows the food is bad AND THE GOVERNMENT KNOW IT!!" (dun dun DUN!). In 2021 you find yourself thinking "well, yes... and?"
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Jan 12, 2021 12:51
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Eh, I dont see Aliens as off. After a giant crisis, corporations will put on a nice face, hire a bunch of HR to clean up the company, do some nice community work, whatever. But within a decade later, they always start up the rear end in a top hat stuff again and dip right back down into evil (while never quite abandoning the evil their capitalism.is, either). Look at right now, Amazon, JP Morgan, etc. are all visibly making social stands and abandoning Trumpism to look good on the surface, but what they actually are still exists underneath. Between Alien and Aliens, the Company (note that its now a merger with a "foreign" name attached cleaned up their act on the surface, thus the nicer, friendlier, Bishop model that follows Asimov's laws to illustrate it. However, they're still pushing capitalistic "shares" while colonizing and still foster a get ahead at all cost environment, which, again, creates the conflict. Special Edition Newts parents go out and get face hugged because they were looking for shares from the Company, which was pushed by Burke, a member of the Company, who was also looking for advancement. No matter how "nice" you try and get, capitalism always is going to end up destroying people. Alien 3 just drops the "nice" facade and the apparent leader of the company shows up in person to get his share.
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Jan 12, 2021 15:14
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“You don’t see them loving each other over for a goddamn percentage.” The movie makes it pretty clear that Ripley doesn’t trust corporate types, and Burke even pre-empts her by saying “he’s an okay guy” (implying that he recognizes that the general vibe is that most corporate guys aren’t okay guys). Also worth pointing out that the Company was already Weylan(d)-Yutani in ‘Alien’.
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Jan 12, 2021 16:26
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Xenomrph posted:“You don’t see them loving each other over for a goddamn percentage.” I dont remember it being named or explicitly shown in the movie, offhand.
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Jan 12, 2021 16:39
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Darko posted:I dont remember it being named or explicitly shown in the movie, offhand. It’s on the computer monitors and elsewhere.  Ron Cobb came up with the name when designing the logos, insignia, and crew patches for ‘Alien’ https://alienfilmspedia.fandom.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 17:40
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:Bishop isn't even wearing a uniform, just a blue jumpsuit with a sulaco patch on it. Xenomrph posted:He’s not a combat robot, he’s a support unit. He can drive the APC, call and fly the drop ship in a non-combat capacity, etc. My own answer for this is that in Aliens' time Bishop and droids like him aren't assigned to a crew of marines or on a specific mission, but rather are assigned to/sold with whatever ship they're on. So every ship has a droid that wanders around/maintains stuff while folks are in hypser sleep, knows the workings of the ship/how all the stuff talks to each other so it can accompany the crew to handle or consult on technical stuff, and most importantly, be kind of a consultant on what would be best for the company. That last part is filled in by Burke being on the mission at all which is why Bishop answers to him in the end with keeping the samples around and doesn't bring it up til asked instead of approaching Gorman or Hicks to be like "I learned everything I can learn about these here I would recommend bringing them back to WY on earth for further study and will report that as my evaluation, what do you want to do?" It doesn't seem weird at first but as you see what Bishop can do vs. Burke's plan it makes it seem like normally Burke wouldn't even remotely be on a mission like this and kind of wormed his way in by pulling strings/saying hey I recommend sending Ripley as a consultant due to her experiences huh weird I'm the one working with Ripley the most we're like best buds I should go too. Also this gives the nice side effect of Bishop is a little more sullen throughout the movie and sarcastic, someone like Burke being around has brought out a more human side to the archetypal tech support robot more organically than we see in most 80s flicks with a sass-droid. McSpanky posted:This is funny because I always assumed that Burke was given tacit approval by W-Y, in a "we're just gonna look over here while you 'check up on things *wink wink* over there'" way. Like, he didn't really go rogue until he actively tried to get people impregnated with xeno embryos, the thing that caused the original encounter in Alien to go sideways, and even then the Company would've happily swept the whole thing under the rug if he'd actually gotten results. I guess getting into Aliens much later in life even though I basically grew up with it as cultural background noise had that effect on me, I'd already gotten that "just a few bad apples" bullshit knocked out. Oh yeah plus even back then I could totally see Burke's badness in W-Y's eyes not being his actions, but that he got caught. "The real crime is that this was reported!" mindset. Seeing it when it was pretty new as a kid, and a lot of 80s entertainment, I definitely had the thought back then that corporations were these things that just existed no matter what, if we could just fire the assholes in them they'd be awesome. Today it's more of a given that corporations/capitalism breed and encourage assholes like that in the first place.
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Jan 12, 2021 18:10
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You can't trust EU canon because Bishop is apparently referred to as an Executive Officer (XO), which would mean he's second in command under the Commanding Officer (CO). However, XO and CO aren't ranks; they're designations given to ranked officers in a particular situation. Lt. Gorman is the platoon commander but his rank is, obviously, Lieutenant - and a platoon commander doesn't even technically count as a CO. Even if Gorman were CO under future-rules, the marines' 'actual' XO would be Sgt. Apone - if anybody. So what is Bishop? Although the film obviously doesn't give an accurate depiction of marine corps organization (Gorman 'should be' leading three times as many people), Bishop doesn't fit into any situation. He's in this, like, ambiguous quasi-military role at best.* If we're to use Alien as context, it could be argued that Bishop is acting as an agent of the Sulaco's unnamed OS. And, under this logic, it could be argued that the "Commanding Officer" would be the Sulaco itself. (Either that, or the Sulaco has an authority that bypasses rank altogether.) But we can't rely on Alien for information. Aliens is its own film, and there's no depiction or mention of ship AIs in this film at all. So, folks are right to observe that Bishop is acting in this bizarre, murky territory where it's unclear who he's actually working for - but that he seems to align most closely to the company. *Bishop wears dogtags in the film, but they aren't actually visible at any point. The props apparently list him as either "EOA" or "ECA", per Cameron's script - but neither of those is an actual rank. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 21:04
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