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I want a movie where an Alien gets to Earth and starts an infestation, but it doesn't cause society to collapse. People just have to deal with killer aliens occasionally attacking their friends and family. Every thing keeps grinding forward the same as before, because eradicating the Aliens is too expensive.
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Sep 2, 2021 07:03
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And when people say don’t look in the egg, people look into the egg to own the libs right
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Sep 2, 2021 07:19
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CelticPredator posted:And when people say don’t look in the egg, people look into the egg to own the libs right My body, my choice (to get facehugged).
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Sep 2, 2021 11:28
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Atrocious Joe posted:I want a movie where an Alien gets to Earth and starts an infestation, but it doesn't cause society to collapse. This is vastly more interesting and basically what SMG is proposing would happen (impossible to eradicate, but also not an existential threat) but we’re just going to get Alien Apocalypse because then they can make a zombie show with xenomorphs
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Sep 2, 2021 15:08
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I’m not so sure, the showrunner has seemed to indicate it’s going to be smaller-scale than that. I’ll try and find some interviews.
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Sep 2, 2021 15:13
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Okay, a lot of assertions here that aren't exactly backed up by the films. You’re mixing up different films again here. In the 1986 movie Aliens, characters note that the hive is hotter than the surrounding areas. This is a reference to, for example, termite behaviour: “termites regulate the temperature of their nests by controlling the flow of air through them. ... Even the shape and orientation of the termite mounds influences their internal temperature”. Again: building a hive takes an enormous amount of effort and resources. The aliens have spent weeks excreting literal tons of resin, which would require them to first consume tons of food. They’re obviously not doing it for fun, like this is a wallpaper they find aesthetically pleasing. They are doing it because it serves a purpose - for the eggs, which are in the centre of the hive, which is at the centre of the movie you’ve been watching. I could go point-by-point again, examining your other odd claims, but that’s unnecessary because your overall thesis is that it’s impossible to ever truly know anything, therefore we really can just imagine whatever. The Queen could have made one trillion eggs per second, out of nothing but air! And that doesn’t require a response. I do concede that it could be revealed, in a deleted scene, in a movie made ten years from now, that the aliens all along had the ability to fly through hyperspace and shoot world-destroying Death Star laser beams out their tails. There’s no evidence of this whatsoever but, if there’s even a 0.1% chance of it happening, we must treat it as an absolute certainty. You wouldn’t eat a bowl of m&ms if one was made of cyanide, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud, etc. So why doesn’t Hudson use his Death Star laser tail to counteract them? I don’t recall seeing Bill Paxton’s bare rear end in the film, so there’s no evidence that Hudson doesn’t have a tail. The tail could even be retractable, or interdimensional. But besides this silliness and weird conservative overtones, it’s also missing that the entire film is about presenting us with these two “sides” and telling us their capabilities, goals, etc. The point is for us to understand the conflict - rough estimates of how many baddies there are, for example. What you (and the Jim guys) are saying is that these movies are genuinely incomprehensible, just total failures at conveying things. I know I’m down on Aliens for being a very dumb movie, but I wouldn’t go that far. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Sep 2, 2021 |
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Sep 2, 2021 16:29
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Xenomrph posted:Thanks for clarifying that, although I think it's a little more nuanced in the Alien's case. Broadly I don't think "older" makes sense here as anything but arbitrary and ultimately non sequitur ad copy for the xenomorph. Words like "ancient" are fun to sprinkle on to things in a certain fantasy or sci fi fictional context to gussy those things up, but especially in this case—where the particulars of the alien's origin are a complete black box—it doesn't make any sense. Ash thinks the alien is a perfect organism, but that doesn't mean it actually is the evolutionary or bioengineering pinnacle of anything in particular, especially since every generation of aliens is necessarily a little bit off from the last because they can't reproduce without input from foreign life. quote:The point is that they hadn't encountered the xenomorph yet, and didn't know if it would have worked. The point of the movies is that the Alien is unlike anything they'd encountered before - the quarantine procedures were not written with specifically Xenomorphs in mind, because humanity had never encountered anything like it before. Imagine if the xenomorph were a little less outlandish, and that instead of turning into a demon Kane was just infected with a deadly space virus, one with a couple days' incubation/asymptomatic carrier period Ash overrides Ripley's quarantine and brings him in, they keep him under observation for a while, then they let him out. At breakfast, he vomits up blood and then keels over and dies from some kind of internal hemorrhage. A few days later, this happens to everyone else who was at the table because they made the mistake of breathing the same air as Kane in an enclosed space. No scurrying around or biting people necessary! This, like the actual alien, would have been soundly defeated by basic respect of the quarantine procedures which Ripley knew well but wasn't around to enforce. And the existence of that quarantine protocol tells its own story: it means that, in this era, human space explorers actually do know that space is unpredictably dangerous and can't just be waltzed through willy-nilly. (If we take the prequels into account, it might literally be a history of botched space missions like those that have led to tighter protocols in Alien's time!) Really, the fact that W-Y puts a clause in everyone's contract that they're to drop everything and investigate mysterious signals tells us that humanity's probably already encountered stuff that is weird, dangerous, but extremely valuable before and therefore has protocols for future encounters. Whether or not there was any conspiracy in the first movie, it's indisputable that something like the alien is understood to be a big get such that it merits all this legal and computerized infrastructure that makes its acquisition as likely as possible. quote:I can appreciate your clarification of the word "hubris" and I concede that I wasn't entirely precise in my usage of it, but I think it's a little more nuanced. Humans in 'Alien' (and especially 'Aliens') take space travel for granted, using space truckers and establishing colonies. Even encountering extraterrestrial lifeforms seems to be mundane - the characters don't treat their detour as the paradigm shattering event that "first contact" would be. They aren't scared to go into space, it's just a job. But then they find evidence of an intelligent, ancient, spacefaring civilization and poo poo Gets Real. I really don't think so. Like, if I look both ways, see no cars in either direction, start to cross the street, and then get my head blown off by an unseen sniper, I'm not really guilty of hubris or otherwise the protagonist of a story about overestimating one's capabilities and failing to account for the dangers of the unknown. With the right kind of plotting and presentation we certainly could turn a story about a kraken attack into a story about hubris, like by having the vessel that gets attacked a Titanic-style "we've built the biggest and best ship ever, nothing can go wrong" deal, have the ship captain repeatedly boast that not even Poseidon himself could make this sea voyage go awry, etc. But by default, no, not at all. This is why it's important that the people in Alien are working stiffs who are being taken advantage of, while the people in Prometheus are arrogant blowhards who, frankly, had it coming. quote:I agree to a point, Like yeah 'Prometheus' has a conspiracy that goes TO THE TOP like you're saying, but that just takes 'Alien's scenario and dials it up, like I said. It's 'Alien', but more. If there is anything that could be called a conspiracy in Alien, it probably goes something like this: some W-Y logistician or executive notices that the Nostromo has plotted a course through heretofore unexplored regions of space, knows that valuable xenotech or xenobiology has been found in virgin territory before, and so replaces the human science officer with an android "science officer" at the last minute to make sure the human crew don't forget or ignore that one clause in their contracts. Possibly it's a group of executives who talk this over among themselves and decide to do it. Even if this fails, like the paperwork just couldn't get done in time and despite everyone's best efforts Ash remains mothballed in some closet somewhere while a completely flesh-and-blood clue flew off to deliver that refinery, it's entirely possible that Alien proceeds almost exactly as written; Mother automatically stops and reroutes the ship as soon as she detects a signal, the totally normal science officer has a think and is like "Hmm, why would Mother... oh yeah, poo poo. Guys I think we're on the hook here." Maybe they or some other crew member is even sentimental enough to overrule Ripley regarding quarantine protocols! That is to say, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy at all and if there is one it's basically a matter of some nudging and corner-cutting, because everything going on is about the maximization of profit and ultimately an emergent consequence of Weyland-Yutani's existing as a private corporation at all. Meanwhile, Weyland-Yutani does not actually need Weyland himself to become immortal. A corporation is bigger than any constituent member, even if that member is the CEO or on the Board or whatever. Capital is immortal; who cares if any people die? So Weyland is actually loving around irresponsibly where his company is concerned, grasping for personal advantage even at enormous cost to company resources. This actually makes him very similar to Burke, who is also greedily seeking personal advantage rather than rationally and abstemiously pursuing the maximization of W-Y profits in general. quote:"Weird, ancient, unfathomable" are big Lovecraftian tropes. Dan O'Bannon specifically cited Lovecraft as a heavy influence when writing 'Alien'. The Lovecraft appears in the aesthetics rather than the narrative, is what I'm saying. Lovecraft stories mostly weren't about actual, physical monsters who stalked and killed you!
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Sep 2, 2021 20:15
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Ferrinus posted:Imagine if the xenomorph were a little less outlandish, and that instead of turning into a demon Kane was just infected with a deadly space virus, one with a couple days' incubation/asymptomatic carrier period Ash overrides Ripley's quarantine and brings him in, they keep him under observation for a while, then they let him out. At breakfast, he vomits up blood and then keels over and dies from some kind of internal hemorrhage. A few days later, this happens to everyone else who was at the table because they made the mistake of breathing the same air as Kane in an enclosed space. No scurrying around or biting people necessary! This reminds me of the Italian Alien knockoff Contamination because the way it works is there's eggs, when people are near them they pulstate and, eventually the pop open and...just blast some goo onto people. But then if the goo is on you then a little later you....explode. There's no alien reproductive cycle, the eggs just make people explode, it rules lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6bMP8sF1GA
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Sep 2, 2021 23:58
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That sort of reminds me of a point someone made in the other (better) Alien thread in GBS, about Prometheus and (even moreso) Covenant. The black goo, and later the airborne spores from those weird plants that these scientists can't help but stick their faces into... These are easily much more effective ways of propagating a parasitic organism. So why is the much more vulnerable xenomorph obsessively developed by David and seen as the 'perfect organism''? I could tell you it's because Prometheus and Covenant are bad movies but that doesn't seem like a popular take ITT.
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Sep 3, 2021 01:35
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Thankfully no it’s not a popular take.
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Sep 3, 2021 01:37
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Just a few quibbles, mostly for the sake of interesting speculation:Ferrinus posted:Really, the fact that W-Y puts a clause in everyone's contract that they're to drop everything and investigate mysterious signals tells us that humanity's probably already encountered stuff that is weird, dangerous, but extremely valuable before and therefore has protocols for future encounters. Whether or not there was any conspiracy in the first movie, it's indisputable that something like the alien is understood to be a big get such that it merits all this legal and computerized infrastructure that makes its acquisition as likely as possible. The standard part of the protocol is just an obligation to investigate any signal that might potentially be "of intelligent origin." This is just an appropriate rewording of a standard obligation to investigate anything that might potentially be a distress signal, eg, at sea. It's the secretive Special Order that deal with this not being a human signal. Although I suspect the signal could be paraphrased as "This is not a place of honour..." quote:The Lovecraft appears in the aesthetics rather than the narrative, is what I'm saying. Lovecraft stories mostly weren't about actual, physical monsters who stalked and killed you! This is, of course, true of the archetypical Lovecraftian monster, but in the actual stories Cthulhu chases the protagonists and gets beaten by being rammed by a boat because his horoscope wasn't good. "Today is a good day to wake up briefly and form an exciting and temporary relationship between your head and a primitive marine vessel." Alien draws a lot on the Shoggoths, in that the Xenomorph appears to be the creation of whatever civilization is represented by or also created the Space Jockey. For those unfamiliar or a bit rusty on their At the Mountains of Madness, the Shoggoths were protoplasmic biomechanical servitors of the Elder Things who slowly gained a degree of intelligence as their creators forgot the technologies which created and controlled them. Eventually they kill most of the Elder Things, but we see them stalking and killing the ones woken up by the Expedition as well as the protagonists. There's also a connection with The Haunter of the Dark, which is ultimately a non-Newtownian but still physical thing which stalks Blake once he makes himself vulnerable by looking into the Shining Trapezohedron. It's still effectively mostly a spiritual/demonic entity thematically though. More importantly, though, the Shoggoth connection is more interesting. All this talk about the Xenomorphs building their hives has got me thinking about what their actual purpose might be. Everyone assumes they're a weapon, but the nests they build look a lot like the buildings and ships used by the Engineers. We see that to give them life, the Engineers sacrifice themselves. We know the Engineers create by sacrificing their own lives. Ultimately, it doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that Xenomorphs are engineered to purpose workers whose creation ethically and perhaps in some practical sense requires the death/transformation of an Engineer to create. Maybe they're intelligent and friendly if created/raised right, or maybe they just barf up additions to structures based on carefully cultivated impulses.
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Sep 3, 2021 01:39
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Right, if the xenomorphs are intelligent, social creatures, we've only seen ones raised either in isolation or, at the very least, with inadequate parenting, given the queen in Aliens had no maternal experience of her own to model her behavior on. David's strain seems to be a bunch of absolute fuckers, but whatever it is the Engineers were working with might have been different.
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Sep 3, 2021 01:57
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I think David's strain tentatively begin to trust him, but are dissuaded by the religious dude shooting at one, and they come to associate him with humans.
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Sep 3, 2021 02:08
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Mister Speaker posted:That sort of reminds me of a point someone made in the other (better) Alien thread in GBS, about Prometheus and (even moreso) Covenant. The black goo, and later the airborne spores from those weird plants that these scientists can't help but stick their faces into... These are easily much more effective ways of propagating a parasitic organism. So why is the much more vulnerable xenomorph obsessively developed by David and seen as the 'perfect organism''? Facehuggers deserve life too. Also those movies rule
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Sep 3, 2021 02:16
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I think facehuggers are kinda cute
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Sep 3, 2021 02:19
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Hodgepodge posted:The standard part of the protocol is just an obligation to investigate any signal that might potentially be "of intelligent origin." This is just an appropriate rewording of a standard obligation to investigate anything that might potentially be a distress signal, eg, at sea. It's the secretive Special Order that deal with this not being a human signal. Although I suspect the signal could be paraphrased as "This is not a place of honour..." "Of intelligent origin" (as opposed to "of human origin") immediately leaves it open to being about extraterrestrial life, and that Mother's immediate response to detecting an alien, small-a, signal is to determine that samples must be brought back at all costs means it's already a basic part of corporate heuristics that extraterrestrial lifeforms or even just artifacts are extremely valuable. Xenomorphs are thematically shoggoths, but while that's a possible way to take Alien it hits you right between the eyes in Prometheus. I actually don't think xenomorphs, queen-led or otherwise, are themselves any kind of on-purpose terraforming machine. I don't think the Engineers ever wanted to get xenomorphs, but in fact were aware but very scared of the possibility, hence their extremely poor reaction to us. The actual hive-building queen is David's doing, probably directly using the body of Daniels from Covenant.
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Sep 3, 2021 02:24
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I took David more as continuing Weyland's work in making a new and improved humanity than conducting a general quest for the perfect parasite.
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Sep 3, 2021 02:28
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Ferrinus posted:"Of intelligent origin" (as opposed to "of human origin") immediately leaves it open to being about extraterrestrial life, and that Mother's immediate response to detecting an alien, small-a, signal is to determine that samples must be brought back at all costs means it's already a basic part of corporate heuristics that extraterrestrial lifeforms or even just artifacts are extremely valuable. It is phrased in that way, although in context the crew seem to interpret this as mostly meaning "you can't ignore what might be a distress signal." It's true that the other meaning is there, and points towards the Special Order lurking just underneath the routine safety regulations. I think the Xenomorph is a wild, untamed version of something that, under the right conditions, might also be used as a template for purpose-built organisms. They're definitely absolutely terrified of the creature lurking underneath (and perhaps this is a hint that elements such as self-sacrifice are ultimately performative gestures which do not change the master/slave dynamic) as well as the technology used to create them. e: In this context, while I understand people's disappointment with the Engineer on an imaginative level, it makes a lot of sense for the Engineers to be giant white supermen who love/hate/fear/depend on dehumanized black servants. It's also an element of Prometheus' satire of the whole Ancient Aliens thing as well. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 02:33
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I think the dichotomy between untamed, sacrificial life-generation and deliberate manipulation is built right into Engineer society and visible in the contrast between the robed sacrifice at the beginning of the movie and the creepy architecture and exosuits at the end of the movie. The weapons complex that the humans spend all movie exploring and even just the plain suit that the one remaining Engineer is wearing all partake of the ribbed, chitinous aesthetic of the xenomorphs themselves, and you can imagine the Engineers manipulating the black goo in order to culture this xenomorphesque biotechnology, as carefully as possible so as to make sure they never end up birthing any actual self-directed xenomorphs. The uneducated dupes that form the bulk of Engineer society are told about the nobility of sacrifice and just allowing life to grow on its own in all its splendor etc, when in fact the Engineers' gods, who are simply in-the-know Engineers themselves, are doing their damndest to carefully control and exploit the process of reproduction rather than just letting it rip. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 02:40
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Mister Speaker posted:That sort of reminds me of a point someone made in the other (better) Alien thread in GBS, about Prometheus and (even moreso) Covenant. The black goo, and later the airborne spores from those weird plants that these scientists can't help but stick their faces into... These are easily much more effective ways of propagating a parasitic organism. So why is the much more vulnerable xenomorph obsessively developed by David and seen as the 'perfect organism''? IIRC David never talks about the "perfect organism", that's Ash, a different character. David likely created those neomorph spores as well as the face hugger egg, nothing implies he's beholden to a single process of creation. Plus obviously his goal isn't to propagate a virus as optimally as possible - he just wants to experiment and refine his offspring. Like he's gonna have to get creative to grow those 2 embryos he brought on board the Covenant in a way he hadn't before, he doesn't have any goo with him! Scientist and soldiers irl constantly stick their faces where they shouldn't, that's one of the more realistic things in these movies
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Sep 3, 2021 03:14
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I always hate when Alien talk goes in this direction because it makes me wish Scott was still doing that third movie.
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 03:22
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Ferrinus posted:I think the dichotomy between untamed, sacrificial life-generation and deliberate manipulation is built right into Engineer society and visible in the contrast between the robed sacrifice at the beginning of the movie and the creepy architecture and exosuits at the end of the movie. The weapons complex that the humans spend all movie exploring and even just the plain suit that the one remaining Engineer is wearing all partake of the ribbed, chitinous aesthetic of the xenomorphs themselves, and you can imagine the Engineers manipulating the black goo in order to culture this xenomorphesque biotechnology, as carefully as possible so as to make sure they never end up birthing any actual self-directed xenomorphs. For sure; ultimately what is clear is that there is an unstable process of exploitation of (re)productive forces and an ideology which justifies this exploitation with self-sacrificial imagery. This is most immediately a Christian feminist critique of Christianity and its relationship with femininity, but also of the relationship between capitalism and its similarly exploitative predecessors and its workers/slaves. Reading the story in terms of one of its big influences, At the Mountains of Madness, is fun in terms of imagining what the Xenomorphs might be outside of how we think of them. The core ideas are pretty apparent, though.
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Sep 3, 2021 03:24
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You’re mixing up different films again here. I'm not mixing up films. I'm talking about Aliens as a species. These Aliens appear in multiple films. Are we only talking about Aliens 1986? That itself is an interesting question, for anyone here: Is the TV show going to assume all the Alien movies 'happened'? Or is it going to be aiming for Disney-style fanservice and it'll double down on kind of remaking Aliens and ignoring the rest of the franchise? As for all the talk about eggs, and termite behavior: Aliens aren't termites. Sure, they may enjoy it hot. Maybe it's even better hot. But it doesn't seem to stop them, and it doesn't seem to take them very long to produce eggs and a hive. It's not really clever or interesting to trot out Death Stars and Hudson's rear end when I'm only ever referencing stuff we see in the movies, or have to come up with speculation as to how Aliens do X or Y. Like, sure, okay, the Queen can lay only 15 eggs a day, AND they need a specific temperature to function AND they need a lot of food AND they need a lot of time to make a Nest. But this is wrong, because the films contradict this. - Eggs hatch in wildly different circumstances and temperatures, in and out of hives. You get to see this in every Alien film! But sure, reference the DeLorean or something. - If they need so much Twinkies to survive, how do facehuggers just chill in jars of water for weeks/months? They seem perfectly fine when Burke lets them out. - The outbreak in Alien Resurrection happens in a matter of hours - they specifically mention this in the film. - In those hours, a handful of Aliens manage to hunt down people and also build more than one nest. There is one centered around the Queen. There is also another one they encounter just after the flooded area that is packed full of eggs. If they really need lots of heat it is certainly an odd choice to build one in a room full of coolant. - The Aliens have been shown specifically NOT to have eaten the human bodies, because the characters walk into a room full of all the chestbursted victims who are intact except for the obvious. Clearly the Aliens either Don't Eat In A Traditional Sense or are capable of digesting stuff other than their own kills. If I was you, I'd probably spew out some paragraphs accusing you of inventing scenes where Ash and Gediman and the rest make jambalaya for the baby aliens and then accuse you of being ridiculous for inventing a jambalaya scene that I in fact invented. Am I doing it right? It is interesting that your interpretation of my view is that 'everything is completely incomprehensible, and also vote Trump' rather than the repeatedly stated 'We do not fully understand the Alien's capabilities, but it can certainly grow and breed at an inexplicable rate'. If Aliens is the only valid film to you of the 8 that they've made, then we're drifting into Star Wars territory canon debates and no thanks. You're kind of boring when you're more interested in just using hyperbole and spewing off on tangents and imagining my politics based on my enjoyment of watching space soldiers shoot horrid critters. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 03:38
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Sir Kodiak posted:Right, if the xenomorphs are intelligent, social creatures, we've only seen ones raised either in isolation or, at the very least, with inadequate parenting, given the queen in Aliens had no maternal experience of her own to model her behavior on. Yeah the Queen seemed able to form primitive communication with Ripley. Maybe David's Aliens were a little friendlier to him because he reacted to them so calmly, or the less charitable view is that he is a robot and until they learn otherwise they don't think of him as a threat/breeding stock. It seems to be a prevailing view that obsessing over the Alien like Weyland Yutani is dumb, because it would be a bad bioweapon. I kind of agree. But I think all their investment in getting one would actually be supremely profitable, even discounting weaponry. Like, for the sake of argument, let's assume the Alien is totally harmless to humans and will only propagate on a sedated cow or something. It would still be really profitable and interesting to the public at large, and the scientific community. Like if some Mars probe in real life brought back an actual living example of clearly intelligent life, there would be money to be made, even if you couldn't turn it into some weapon. Just think of the movie rights, the plushies, the universities throwing money at you to get time with it, the linguists, etc. It seems that in the Alien universe they haven't encountered any real intelligent life so just getting your hands on a real live Alien would be really profitable and amazingly interesting to legions of people who just want to know about aliens.
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Sep 3, 2021 03:58
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Sir Kodiak posted:I took David more as continuing Weyland's work in making a new and improved humanity than conducting a general quest for the perfect parasite. That's correct: David's goal is to 'uplift' humanity to a state of psychological perfection. He pretty much states this outright. Atrocious Joe posted:I want a movie where an Alien gets to Earth and starts an infestation, but it doesn't cause society to collapse. If we’re basing this on Aliens, then it’s not tough to see how it goes down. You’ve got a society of man-sized monsters spontaneously building a large structure inside a major population centre - spending months running around, stealing assloads of food and randomly killing people. Even if they mostly come out at night - mostly - people are gonna notice that poo poo. And, y’know, the aliens are not going to have enough knowledge to identify the good hiding spots. They’ll set up camp in some abandoned strip mall or something - without knowing it’s two blocks from a military base. Whoops! Now the queen’s dead, again. Unavoidably, this is going to end up somewhere between a Starship Troopers and District 9 scenario. The aliens are hosed.
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Sep 3, 2021 04:00
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Since the show with the aliens on Earth is being developed by Noah Hawley I think we can expect something more bizarre than just them hiving it up and picking small-town citizens off one by one. If I had my way I'd base the show off of the old neon Kenner toy line. Kinda like how AVP: Requiem had this weird toy aesthetic for the Predator.
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Sep 3, 2021 05:10
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Mr. Grapes! posted:It is interesting that your interpretation of my view is that 'everything is completely incomprehensible, and also vote Trump' rather than the repeatedly stated What you’ve written is, unfortunately, hyper-political. You have become so political that even simple counting has become highly contentious. I estimate 50-100 eggs in the hive at the end of the film Aliens, based on what we’re shown. Instead of producing a better estimate, you are only asserting that you cannot ‘fully understand’ anything. To show that your response is silly, I provided a new estimate of one trillion eggs. You have dismissed that as hyperbole - which is good. It shows that you do understand what an estimate is, and that some estimates are better than others. The unavoidable conclusion is that you are pretending not to understand things in order to preserve “[your] enjoyment of watching space soldiers shoot horrid critters.” Although that’s sad, the more troubling issue is that no such film exists. There is no movie where Colonial Marines get ‘eggmorphed’ and fight ‘predaliens’ or any of that stuff. There is no movie where the alien queen has an infinite ammo cheat. You’ve imagined it all.
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Sep 3, 2021 05:20
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Ferrinus posted:Imagine if the xenomorph were a little less outlandish, and that instead of turning into a demon Kane was just infected with a deadly space virus, one with a couple days' incubation/asymptomatic carrier period Ash overrides Ripley's quarantine and brings him in, they keep him under observation for a while, then they let him out. At breakfast, he vomits up blood and then keels over and dies from some kind of internal hemorrhage. A few days later, this happens to everyone else who was at the table because they made the mistake of breathing the same air as Kane in an enclosed space. No scurrying around or biting people necessary! Ferrinus posted:Really, the fact that W-Y puts a clause in everyone's contract that they're to drop everything and investigate mysterious signals tells us that humanity's probably already encountered stuff that is weird, dangerous, but extremely valuable before and therefore has protocols for future encounters. Whether or not there was any conspiracy in the first movie, it's indisputable that something like the alien is understood to be a big get such that it merits all this legal and computerized infrastructure that makes its acquisition as likely as possible. Ferrinus posted:I really don't think so. Like, if I look both ways, see no cars in either direction, start to cross the street, and then get my head blown off by an unseen sniper, I'm not really guilty of hubris or otherwise the protagonist of a story about overestimating one's capabilities and failing to account for the dangers of the unknown. With the right kind of plotting and presentation we certainly could turn a story about a kraken attack into a story about hubris, like by having the vessel that gets attacked a Titanic-style "we've built the biggest and best ship ever, nothing can go wrong" deal, have the ship captain repeatedly boast that not even Poseidon himself could make this sea voyage go awry, etc. But by default, no, not at all.  Ferrinus posted:The Lovecraft appears in the aesthetics rather than the narrative, is what I'm saying. Mr. Grapes! posted:That itself is an interesting question, for anyone here: Is the TV show going to assume all the Alien movies 'happened'? Or is it going to be aiming for Disney-style fanservice and it'll double down on kind of remaking Aliens and ignoring the rest of the franchise? Mr. Grapes! posted:Like, sure, okay, the Queen can lay only 15 eggs a day, AND they need a specific temperature to function AND they need a lot of food AND they need a lot of time to make a Nest. The Alien doesn't necessarily "need to eat", it's an impossible creature and that's on purpose. It gestates inside a living host incredibly rapidly (within, like, minutes in Alien Covenant), grows to full size incredibly rapidly and without any apparent intake of anything, bleeds an acid that has different effects and potencies on different materials depending on the scene it's in, can cling to walls when it's bigger than it should be able to, all kinds of wacky poo poo. Mr. Grapes! posted:It seems to be a prevailing view that obsessing over the Alien like Weyland Yutani is dumb, because it would be a bad bioweapon. I kind of agree. But I think all their investment in getting one would actually be supremely profitable, even discounting weaponry. Lord Krangdar posted:Kinda like how AVP: Requiem had this weird toy aesthetic for the Predator.
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Sep 3, 2021 05:35
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Xenomrph posted:Saying "what if the Alien was more realistic, and was therefore easily defeated by basic quarantine procedures" doesn't really seem to lead to "and therefore the Alien would be defeated by basic quarantine procedures". No, the point is that the invisible virus I'm positing here is actually harder to defeat than the alien. In my example, for instance, everyone at breakfast is immediately and inextricably doomed. No crew member survives, the ghost ship Nostromo reaches its destination, Mother and Ash get their way presuming whatever W-Y cleanup team comes in wearing biohazard gear, etc. There's only one way to be safe from the death virus: don't let it on the ship. And "don't let it on the ship" is also 100% effective against the actual alien. You leave Kane on LV-426 and you win. Or, hell, you let him on but transport him under an airtight tarp of some kind and never let him out of a sealed observation cell.
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Sep 3, 2021 07:04
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Ferrinus posted:And "don't let it on the ship" is also 100% effective against the actual alien. You leave Kane on LV-426 and you win. Or, hell, you let him on but transport him under an airtight tarp of some kind and never let him out of a sealed observation cell. A better example of “lock the Alien out” is the assembly cut of Alien3, where they lock it in one of the quinitricetalyne storage vaults (a room with only 1 exit and very thick walls). Even then, it ends up being exceedingly dangerous and gets a bunch of people killed, and the Alien gets let loose anyway because of course it does or there’d be no movie.
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Sep 3, 2021 07:37
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You seem to be blurring the lines between "the scriptwriter would contrive some means to get the alien into play despite preventative measures, in order to raise the stakes" and "the alien actually, diegetically, has the ability to overcome preventative measures". I'm talking about the second thing. The Nostromo's already in the air by the time the chestburster comes out, so if Kane were left for dead on the basis that his decontamination was impossible to confirm then the alien would have have no landing legs or whatever to scramble onto. Technically, the quarantine protocol Ripley mentions calls for "twenty four hours for decontamination", and it's not really clear if you're allowed to claim that someone has been "decontaminated" even after the alien spider has fallen off their face or what sort of scanning equipment or whatever would normally have been brought to bear to decontaminate someone exposed to an alien parasite. It's possible that some combination of inadequate scanning instruments, wishful thinking on the humans' parts, and time lag between facehugging, facehugger death, and chestbursting mean that a 24 hour quarantine protocol fails to keep the alien out (while, say, a 48 hour one does). But, like, "we could all die" are Ripley's exact words. She immediately grasps the stakes and is only prevented from acting on them by outside forces.
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Sep 3, 2021 08:18
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Ferrinus posted:You seem to be blurring the lines between "the scriptwriter would contrive some means to get the alien into play despite preventative measures, in order to raise the stakes" and "the alien actually, diegetically, has the ability to overcome preventative measures". I'm talking about the second thing. Going back to Aliens, there are multiple contrivances necessary for the film’s scenario to take place: the town needs to be literally a 2-3 weeks’ journey from any help. It needs to be fairly small. They can’t have any decent vehicles. Multiple people have to actively avoid calling 911 before the transmitter goes down, etc. The alien attack is prevented in the first place if Weyland-Yutani and/or the government simply check the coordinates Ripley gave them. Then they would “quickly make a major security situation out of it”. So, in that film, there are also quarantine laws that the characters are violating - but in Aliens, it’s totally unnecessary. We don’t hear anything about contractural clauses forcing the miners into this ship. If we’re talking Extended Cut, Newt’s parents head in there to die purely voluntarily.
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Sep 3, 2021 13:09
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Ferrinus posted:You seem to be blurring the lines between "the scriptwriter would contrive some means to get the alien into play despite preventative measures, in order to raise the stakes" and "the alien actually, diegetically, has the ability to overcome preventative measures". Here’s the great Stan Lee explaining it: https://youtu.be/L4_zFYnnn2Y The Alien RPG, a medium where the players literally have free reign to try and act out their Tactical Realism fantasies, has to abide by it too. poo poo, they just released a Colonial Marines supplement where the players have access to tanks and strike fighters and sniper rifles and all kinds of stuff. But the Game Master exists, specifically to derail the players’ carefully concocted plans and get them killed, because that’s compelling and interesting storytelling. Ferrinus posted:I'm talking about the second thing. The Nostromo's already in the air by the time the chestburster comes out, so if Kane were left for dead on the basis that his decontamination was impossible to confirm then the alien would have have no landing legs or whatever to scramble onto. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 15:44
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What type of music do people in the Alien setting listen to? Like in Alien what is the popular music of the time? 57 years later in Aliens like what do folks listen to?
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Sep 3, 2021 16:07
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Neo Rasa posted:57 years later in Aliens like what do folks listen to?
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Sep 3, 2021 16:13
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More Fun Facts: The Aliens extended cut gives us a different timeline, where it actually takes the aliens well over three weeks to build the hive and lay the approximately 200 eggs (from first contact to the events of the film). This is because it’s said to take two weeks for the colonists to get a response from Earth: one week for Earth to receive a question, and one week for Earth to send the answer.* It would consequently take over a week for anyone to notice the town going silent, then seventeen days or more for the marines to get there. Dialogue indicates as many as 21 days for the marines to arrive: “You had three weeks on your back, Frost.” So we’re talking at least 24 days of aliens running around, but probably closer to a month or more. And that means the aliens are even less efficient than in my previous estimates. 200 eggs in 24 days is only eight eggs per day - which is still a lot to produce, but not nearly enough to quickly convert tens of thousands of people. These numbers are still somewhat the case in the theatrical cut, as Ripley says “this little girl survived longer than [17 days], with no weapons and no training”. I’ve been using 17 days as a hard minimum, but the colony has possibly been overrun months earlier for all we know. Between the Nostromo inquests (when Burke learns of the derelict coordinates) and the marines’ departure for the planet, Ripley has already become a well-trained dockworker, and apparently undergone a few monthly psychiatric evaluations: “I can drive that loader; I have a Class 2 rating.” “I've had my psych evaluation this month.” *(This is all bad news for Jimspiracy-Canon because, if Jim is on Earth, it would take a minimum of two weeks for him to send Ash onto the Nostromo. In that time, Jim could have sent a properly-equipped ship directly from Earth and arrived two weeks earlier. So much for Jim rushing to do everything extremely fast!) SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 16:19
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Come to think of it, the appropriate comparison to the Xenomorph would actually be the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park, which when I saw the film in theater as a kid, I was convinced would be a threat if they escaped to the mainland.
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Sep 3, 2021 16:41
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For anyone interested in the timelines of the Alien movies in very granular detail, this is a good site: https://alientimeline.wordpress.com He even cites his sources from the movies on where he gets his numbers. It’s a really long-standing site that’s been around for decades and is incredibly well-researched by a guy who is so thorough and well-trusted that he’s been hired by Fox as their “fact checker” on multiple occasions, and Fox has told other authors to abide by it as if it’s “official”. I’m generally loathe to link it because the author is a bit of a douche and I try not to give his site traffic when I can avoid it, but it is a good resource and the author knows his poo poo. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Sep 3, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 16:53
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FTL technology must have improved a lot in the 57 years between Alien and Aliens, because Lambert says it's 10 months to Earth from the planetoid, while later travel times have come down enough to be measured in days, not even weeks. Sure, the Sulaco is a warship and isn't towing millions of tons of payload, but it's still a fair old speed boost. (The Nostromo was doing about 46c, which isn't bad for an old tugboat. The state-of-the-art Prometheus took over twice as long to cover the same distance, so there'd been FTL advances in that time gap too.)
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Sep 3, 2021 17:21
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FTL tech definitely improves from Alien to Aliens/Alien3 to Resurrection. In resurrection they’re moving *really* fast, they go from Pluto to Earth in 3 hours.
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Sep 3, 2021 17:27
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