Pennywise the Frown posted:

I listened to the second one on the way home yesterday and the only part I really remember is the guy getting eaten by the bugs instantly and his shoulder pads falling to the ground without his body there and his belt buckle being highly polished lol.

Young Freud posted:

My favorite tidbit about this is that the first casualty to Space Meth is John Ratzenberger i.e. Cliff Clavin from Cheers...


Since we were talking how the Marines and W-Y and other corps interact with one another, there's a similar setup with ConAm and the Federal Marshalls, where the Marshalls are the government and, nominally, ConAm is to follow the law, but the reality is that money talks out in the frontier and the Marshalls, much like the Marines, are not supposed to antagonize the corporations in doing whatever the hell they want.

Android Apocalypse posted:

Basic biology makes me surmise that an animal needs nutrient intake of some sort to grow. I figured with things like a mouth & teeth that a xenomorph "eats."

Then again, those tubes out of its back could be some weird energy-collecting thing like how a plant uses leaves to gather sunlight.

Maybe xwnomorphs are mobile plants?

SilvergunSuperman posted:

Has there ever been a good prequel?

Temple of Doom is the best I can come up with, and most people fuckin hate that movie.

Thumposaurus posted:

Watched predator 2 the other night then the next day watched aliens vs predator and AvP:requiem back to back.
Fell asleep during requiem.

Still thinking about them aliens(and predators)

Neo Rasa posted:

I also like the idea of the pipes being like a spider or aphid's spinnerettes and what they use to create the hive stuff/cocoon people for implanting/etc., but I think the "official" way they do that in EU stuff is by just vomiting a ton of goop up.

Neo Rasa posted:

See Terminator 2: Shocking Dark

Neo Rasa posted:

Predator 2 is so loving good.

Pennywise the Frown posted:

Just finished Labyrinth. It's not bad. Much better reading it sober. Not amazing though. A lot of it was predictable but overall it was pretty good.

Pennywise the Frown posted:

BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:

drat I forgot about this. Chet here looks like he wants to sell you a lightly used police interceptor. Only driven to church on Sundays.

BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:

drat I forgot about this. Chet here looks like he wants to sell you a lightly used police interceptor. Only driven to church on Sundays.

WHY BONER NOW posted:

Frost and Dietrick had an adventure involving some kind of space insect that attaches to a host and lays eggs in them, lol. Afterwards Dietrick says "if I ever have to fight those things again, I'm bringing a flamethrower!

WHY BONER NOW posted:

Apropos to the conversation, I've been listening to Aliens: Bug Hunt, an anthology style book with various stories set in the Alien universe. I don't know if it's considered canon or whatever, but there's some background info/answers to questions no one asked. It has a Star Wars EU vibe of "everything and everyone needs a backstory". I haven't experienced much Alien fiction outside the movies, so maybe that's standard. Anyway here's a list of some things in the book:

Bishop being activated for the first time, he is "special"/has emotions, also Hudson taught him the knife trick
Hicks has a tragic story concerning his wife who was another marine
There was some kind of love triangle between Hudson, Dietrick, and some other guy
Frost and Dietrick had an adventure involving some kind of space insect that attaches to a host and lays eggs in them, lol. Afterwards Dietrick says "if I ever have to fight those things again, I'm bringing a flamethrower!
Carter Burke backstory which I have to admit I did find interesting

Regarding how eggs function,
One of the stories is told from the perspective of the xenomorphs, and the eggs are not considered alive, but react to a few different stimuli, such as carbon dioxide being expelled by potential hosts. Furthermore, as far as food is concerned, a queen hocks a loogie into the mouth of a baby queen because she desperately needs nutrition to grow. It also says if alone, a queen will eat anything she can, but in a controlled hive, she will be given special nutrition to help her grow as fast as possible, reaching adult size in less than a week.

There's some outright wacky stuff in the book too like a dude who was experimented upon by a drug company, and when in danger he hulks out. As in, he grown huge, his skin turns red colored, he grows spikes and becomes super strong.

This stuff really isn't my cup of tea so I've been playing the audiobook in the background as I do other things. I'm sure I've missed a ton of details but whatever. I've discovered I prefer Alien content to be more "serious" rather than pulpy

Splicer posted:

The key to a good prequel is restraint. When you're hitting the point of explaining where Han Solo got a blaster from you have badly gone off mark.

Jay_Zombie posted:

I agree with this 100%.
Some things are better left to the imagination.
I don't give a single care about "Space Jockeys", Xeno origins, evolutionary precursors to the Alien/Aliens style Xenos or any of that. I for one, am totally fine with just leaving it at, "No one knows where they came from, how long they've been around, precisely how they work, or exactly where they all are. All we know is that they are out there, they are lethal, and they're just waiting for fresh meat to stumble upon them." That's all the background I need, and it also nods to the fact that despite the fact that man has figured out how to travel between planets, and solar systems, and beyond, we still have no idea what horrors lurk in the unknown. Similar to how even in 2021, we're still finding new forms of life in the depths of the ocean, just on a much grander scale. You could think that Xenomorphs are at the top of the galactic food chain, so to speak, but it's equally plausible that there's something even more unimaginably horrible and deadly above them. And even with all our knowledge, technology and other advancements, we are still comparatively frail, weak, vulnerable and helpless.

Sunswipe posted:

Jesus, did they do that in Solo? I thought it was bad enough when the marketing was all "Learn how Han Solo got his name!" A question I don't think anyone had ever thought to ask, and if they did would probably have answered with "I guess Mr and Mrs Solo liked the name 'Han.'"

quote:

I think the xenos having evolved somewhere is a far more terrifying thought. What sort of ecosystem would produce something like that? What sort of defenses have the other species on that planet developed? What if xenomorphs aren't the top of the food chain on that planet? These all seem to me to lead to far more interesting film possibilities than Ridley Scott's half-assed ruminations on gods.

Sunswipe posted:

Jesus, did they do that in Solo? I thought it was bad enough when the marketing was all "Learn how Han Solo got his name!" A question I don't think anyone had ever thought to ask, and if they did would probably have answered with "I guess Mr and Mrs Solo liked the name 'Han.'"

Sunswipe posted:

I think the xenos having evolved somewhere is a far more terrifying thought. What sort of ecosystem would produce something like that? What sort of defenses have the other species on that planet developed? What if xenomorphs aren't the top of the food chain on that planet? These all seem to me to lead to far more interesting film possibilities than Ridley Scott's half-assed ruminations on gods.

Robert Facepalmer posted:

That is my go-to complaint about that movie. EVERYgoddamnTHING we know about the backstory is explained in like three days or whatever (other than him enlisting and getting the surname Solo). After a whirlwind like that no wonder dude was so burnt-out and jaded. The OG trilogy definitely have an Uncle Rico 'watch me throw this football over that mountain' vibe to him now.

MrMojok posted:

I recently got most of the Alien Omnibus novelizations (not the comics):

Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1
- Earth Hive
- Nightmare Asylum
- The Female War

Aliens Omnibus: Volume 2
- Genocide
- Alien Harvest

Aliens Omnibus: Volume 3
- Rogue
- Labyrinth

Aliens Omnibus: Volume 4
- Music of the Spears
- Berserker

Aliens Omnibus: Volume 6
- Cauldron
- Steel Egg

Aliens Omnibus: Volume 7
- Criminal Enterprise
- No Exit

I'd already read all of the ones in Vol.1 a while back, so I started in with Genocide. Which had a couple of moments, but was not great. I think i will skip up to Labyrinth next.

I've read most of this stuff in comic book form in years past, I just wanted to check out the novelizations, because I had recently read the Cold Forge, and Out of the Shadows/Sea of Sorrow/River of Pain

Xenomrph posted:

Compare and contrast that to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indy gets literally every character trait and iconic piece of equipment over the course of like 15 minutes during the opening of the movie.

MrMojok posted:

@xenomrph, you have any suggestions here? Have you read any of these?

Sunswipe posted:

Jesus, did they do that in Solo? I thought it was bad enough when the marketing was all "Learn how Han Solo got his name!" A question I don't think anyone had ever thought to ask, and if they did would probably have answered with "I guess Mr and Mrs Solo liked the name 'Han.'"

Splicer posted:

Wait until you hear about how you take parsecs off the kessel run! (It's a shortcut through some badlands with a monster in it)

Xenomrph posted:

To be fair that’s how he did it in the old expanded universe stuff, and the way the movie did it was entertaining and looked cool so I’m willing to give it a pass on the Rule of Cool.

Splicer posted:

.

Mister Speaker posted:

Good post, thanks.

WRT Alien3 and the addition of the 'Queen facehugger', is that in both cuts of the film? I remember seeing it and noting that it was distinct and enormous (I think I even had the toy), and you raise an excellent point about its uniqueness and recognizability taking away tension from the universe. Of course, if it's not in both cuts you can sort of pick and choose your own headcanon, as we are all wont to do. I read in some of the EU stuff, can't remember where exactly, that a drone left alone long enough can transform itself into a Queen. And of course, before "what's laying all the eggs" was even asked, we had a deleted scene from Alien wherein Dallas and someone else were found by Ripley, grotesquely being turned into new eggs.

But this begs a new question I hadn't considered in a while, related earlier to our thread's musings on the alien's life cycle. Where did the Queen on LV426 come from? Had it been there since the events of Alien or earlier, laying a clutch of eggs and then hibernating until its brood began to grow? Or was it born from a lucky colonist?

Mister Speaker posted:

Good post, thanks.

WRT Alien3 and the addition of the 'Queen facehugger', is that in both cuts of the film? I remember seeing it and noting that it was distinct and enormous (I think I even had the toy), and you raise an excellent point about its uniqueness and recognizability taking away tension from the universe.

Mister Speaker posted:

Of course, if it's not in both cuts you can sort of pick and choose your own headcanon, as we are all wont to do. I read in some of the EU stuff, can't remember where exactly, that a drone left alone long enough can transform itself into a Queen.

Mister Speaker posted:

And of course, before "what's laying all the eggs" was even asked, we had a deleted scene from Alien wherein Dallas and someone else were found by Ripley, grotesquely being turned into new eggs.

But this begs a new question I hadn't considered in a while, related earlier to our thread's musings on the alien's life cycle. Where did the Queen on LV426 come from? Had it been there since the events of Alien or earlier, laying a clutch of eggs and then hibernating until its brood began to grow? Or was it born from a lucky colonist?

Neo Rasa posted:

I like how the Alien RPG handles this a lot by just saying all of this stuff happens and is part of the lifecycle and it's a weird alien creature that comes from millions year old black goo interacting with lifeforms of course it makes no sense to understanding of how poo poo works.

The way the RPG does it is like, a xenomorph like the one in Alien is born, it doesn't perceive or hear from a queen -> Start catching whatever it finds and turning them into eggs -> Keep doing that until a "queen facehugger" implants something -> That thing is now priority 1, start puking up goop to build a hive around it to keep it safe. They account for the behavior by saying how this strain of alien is technically more built to function as a hive with a queen on a genetic programming level which is why weird poo poo can go down with their behavior as seen in Alien if they're alone.

I have to recommend that book for anyone that's into Alien stuff even if they have no interest in playing the game, they do a great job of not actually revealing much about the engineers/etc. but still having a way for every type of creature and lifecycle we've seen in the movies to be a thing.

They even take into account the one in a zillion scenario of if someone who has been implanted by a facehugger then also gets exposed to the goo before it pops out and the result is that the goo and the embryo are compatible enough that instead of the embryo growing, the goo starts reshaping the person's guts/skeleton into a kinda sorta xenomorph form causing the person to completely pop out of their human skin and everything, the end result is like older idea for the xenomorph in Alien where its exoskeleton is transparent and you can see a human skull under it and stuff


Most importantly though the Covenant spores are in the game but like if you're wearing a suit or in any kind of sealed vehicle they don't effect you, and while they aggressively seek out stuff they die relatively fast if they float around without finding anything for too long - Even for a game meant to be very deadly like the Alien RPG the Covenant spores in the movie were too strong lol

Splicer posted:

Wait until you hear about how you take parsecs off the kessel run! (It's a shortcut near a black hole with a monster in it) (also it was actually 13 parsecs lol). Also the galactic smuggler with his own ship apparently stays on tatooine for like 10 years before luke rents his ship

Sydney Bottocks posted:

Prequels are at best pointless because they tell us the story of people whose fate we already know and events of which we already know the outcome; and at worst actively damage the character or story they're telling the origin of. Or does anyone still think Vader's a menacing figure, after discovering that he turned to the Dark Side because he was an easily duped moron who got pissed off about not getting a promotion at work because of his anger issues, and who had the hots for an older woman he'd first met as a kid and who he subsequently creeped on and badgered until she finally gave in?