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feedmyleg posted:idk, maybe one of the later films contradicts this, but based on the lifecycle we see in Alien I've always had the sense that xenos have extremely short lifespans, like insects. The thing was sundowning in the shuttle, or at least going into hibernation. In Aliens maybe they've been around for a few weeks, though? I dunno, they always die violently in the films before they have a chance to grow old. The one in Alien is a day or two old at most, so I don't think it was dying of old age since the creatures in Aliens have been surviving for weeks or months. I don't really seem them as insects, despite having some insectile features. Maybe they just hibernate if there is no one to gently caress with? In Aliens it seemed like they were just chilling out in the hive until human activity woke them up. The facehuggers at least survive in jars with no food and go into Hug-Mode pretty quickly when woken up. The eggs presumably exist for thousands of years but they may have had some weird space tech preserving them. Just think it would be cool in the show if they have Something Else going on if they have basically unlimited bodies, some grosser form of mutation/amalgamation. I always liked the egg-mutation scene in Alien - seeing something like that on a massive scale, with thousands of living human and animal bodies cocooned forming into.... something, moaning and crying in unison stacked up and down the webbing on a skycraper. It would be nice to bring body horror back and more front and center as just getting sliced up by the xenos isn't as terrifying. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 01:42
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Just think it would be cool in the show if they have Something Else going on if they have basically unlimited bodies, some grosser form of mutation/amalgamation. I always liked the egg-mutation scene in Alien - seeing something like that on a massive scale, with thousands of living human and animal bodies cocooned forming into.... something, moaning and crying in unison stacked up and down the webbing on a skycraper. It would be nice to bring body horror back and more front and center as just getting sliced up by the xenos isn't as terrifying. I won’t spoil any of it.
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Dec 5, 2023 01:50
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Can’t believe an overconfident party came in here guns blazing and then found out they were in over their heads
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Dec 5, 2023 02:16
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Honestly I like the idea of just ignoring the loving timeline and doing something cool with aliens. Alien infestation of Earth is at least an idea. Would be cool to see imagery of city-sized nests and go deeper into the hosed up body horror of it. What would they do if given time, space, and bodies? Every other alien infestation we see is a hours/days/weeks old maximum. If they take anything from Prometheus/Covenant I'd want them to take the idea that these things can mutate in alarming ways. I agree, I just like the retro-futurist dirty industrial visual style of the movies a lot so if it's gonna be set on Earth, I think the far future would be a much more interesting setting than only 70 years into the future. It'll never happen of course, but I have Blade Runner in mind when I mention this because the alien would thrive in that kind of environment, making it ideal imo. Neill Blomkamp (who was originally going to make an Alien movie with Sigourney Weaver & Michael Biehn reprising their roles in a sequel to Aliens that ignores Alien 3) went on to make some small films after his Alien project was shut down by Ridley Scott. One of the films shows an alien invasion of Earth (different aliens, though) with Weaver as a character and the hives he created and the accompanying visuals on such a limited budget are really impressive, imo. Worth watching the short movie for a glimpse of what an Alien-infested Earth could look like if handled by someone with similar artistic skill. I think you'll dig this, the hives and megastructures are creepy as hell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjQ2t_yNHQs Mister Speaker posted:Can you elaoborate on the theory that Bishop is responsible for egging the Sulaco? I do find it interesting that despite him proving to be a compassionate droid he's got some latent protocol that causes him to unconsciously bring one aboard, but when would he have had the opportunity? Okay this is just my own personal take but my theory can be summed up with: -When they get to the colony, Bishop is fascinated with the facehugger samples to the point of freaking out one of the marines (Weisz?) who does the whole "You there?" thing while Bishop's admiring it, before going on to say how he thinks they're fascinating creatures. He gave the company talk to reassure Ripley (which was deliberately played insincere imo, the way he says "I'm shocked" is hilarious) but he shares the same admiration for the alien that Ash did. -They sent Bishop off alone to call down the dropship from the Sulaco and then the rest of the movie plays out. Ripley's escaped with Newt and Bishop's still nowhere to be seen and turns up late, just barely making it in time to save them. He claims he cannot harm or allow humans to be harmed by his actions, but I think he has a set agenda much like Ash and taking an egg back to the Sulaco and then coming back to grab Ripley doesn't go against his claimed ethics programming, while also explaining what took him so long. -Then in Alien 3 he tells Ripley the alien was with them the whole time. He's patched into the logs before he says this so could just be running off Sulaco scans but I think this demonstrates that he'd have known at the time and said something if he wasn't supposed to keep it secret. Just going off what happens in Aliens alone is enough for me though, and Lance was brilliantly cast to play a droid that portrays niceties while still being creepy. The franchise nailed droid casting so well with Ash, Bishop & David, shame that Call wasn't so great but A:R already has a stacked cast as it is so it's forgivable, especially given Brad Dourif's character. My theory isn't air-tight and has plenty of ways to explain things away, but I like that it's hinted at enough to be a possibility.
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Dec 5, 2023 02:40
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Edit: Oh that's a great point - he could have flown it up even earlier! I think this might crack it!Xenomrph posted:
Bishop could have lied to Ripley about his programming. It's hard to imagine a military command that would be reluctant to use killer robots, even if there's an increased risk of knife play accidents. Bishop also has a fair bit of unaccounted time to himself after he goes through that pipe to hack into the antenna array. The only real hole in the theory I can think of is he absolutely doesn't have time to take the egg from the dropship to the mess hall before the Queen bisects him. This is also the "problem" with the Queen being the culprit; while she could easily produce an egg en route, she also doesn't leave the docking bay. If we include how WY & the Bishops are presented in Alien 3 I think they're the most likely to be responsible, even if it doesn't strictly line up. Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 02:54
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SUNKOS posted:One of the films shows an alien invasion of Earth (different aliens, though) with Weaver as a character and the hives he created and the accompanying visuals on such a limited budget are really impressive, imo. Worth watching the short movie for a glimpse of what an Alien-infested Earth could look like if handled by someone with similar artistic skill. I think you'll dig this, the hives and megastructures are creepy as hell: This is a pro-click for anyone in this thread. I slept on it until this year, and I regret that.
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Dec 5, 2023 03:03
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Blood Boils posted:Bishop could have lied to Ripley about his programming. It's hard to imagine a military command that would be reluctant to use killer robots, even if there's an increased risk of knife play accidents. It’s not just that, having a tiny fine-print corporate disclaimer of “might endanger or kill your own troops due to undisclosed nebulous corporate agendas” seems like a fast-track to getting them all pulled from active service and for the US government to take WY to court and turn them inside-out on a grand scale. Bishop shows a professional curiosity in the facehuggers because he’s an inquisitive individual, and Burke tells him to preserve the dead facehuggers for transit, and then Ripley finds out and says “absolutely not” and he says “you got it” and destroys them as instructed. Burke knows the only way he could get Aliens past the quarantine is if the embryos are inside a host, so if Bishop has the same agenda then he’d know this too - bringing an egg up to the ship where he can’t control it doesn’t make sense, especially since the presence of the empty egg and facehugger would flag the quarantine - the Sulaco’s computer recognizes “non-human presence detected” in the third movie. And if he’s going to bring up an egg in his free time, why only bring one? Why not bring up a whole clutch of them, just to be sure? Bishop in Alien3 shows the same care for Ripley that he did in Aliens, but if his whole true goal was to endanger Ripley by bringing an egg onboard, why lie about it when he’s on death’s door and is asking to be disconnected anyway? Instead he indicates that he (and the Sulaco’s computer) don’t know where the egg came from, just that it was with them all the way. So even when he’s in pieces and asking for death, he still wants to maintain innocence with his friend that he allegedly stabbed in the back? I don’t buy it. It’s a huge left-field heel-turn that I do not think Aliens or Alien3 support. The entire point of Bishop’s character is the secondary character arc for Ripley where she starts out not trusting Bishop at all because of her experience with Ash, only to learn that she can trust him because, guess what, he actually was on the level the entire time (even with the fake out at the end of Bishop not being at the dropship pickup point and Ripley thinking she just got shafted, only for him to show up at the last second). Making him a secret traitor completely undermines that character arc for Ripley and the “twist” that no, really, Bishop wasn’t a duplicitous kill-bot like Ash and that not all androids are bad. I much prefer the blu-ray menu’s explanation, that the Queen plopped out an egg (or two, depending on your preferred cut of the movie) on the way up and the “under the table” is a continuity flub or that the opening credits are basically a disassociated fever dream not meant to be taken 100% literally. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 04:10
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You have a misplaced faith in military brass' level of concern over the well being of their grunts & colonial subjects. The sort of guys deciding these contracts would be like Gorman & Burke. Do we see the samples destroyed? I'm not sure Ripley is ever won over completely; even if she is grateful for Sulaco Bishop she immediately distrusts Fury Bishop, even though their both emphatic, smiling, reasonable etc. They're not really friends, even though they respect one another by the end. But that wouldn't change anything, if the Bishops have the ability to be deceptive or do harm. And the knife play doesn't seem like something a robot with a strict 3 Laws programming would be able to engage in . . nevermind serving with the colonial marines lol "I can never allow through my action or inaction a human being to come to harm. Well yes, I do work for the Space East India Company soldiers aiding their operations . . " Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 07:50
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SUNKOS posted:I agree, I just like the retro-futurist dirty industrial visual style of the movies a lot so if it's gonna be set on Earth, I think the far future would be a much more interesting setting than only 70 years into the future. It'll never happen of course, but I have Blade Runner in mind when I mention this because the alien would thrive in that kind of environment, making it ideal imo. Hey, maybe they could. Don't forget Blade Runner is set in... 2019. Blade Runner 2 is 2049. I don't think a vague '70 years in the future' really means anything limiting on what kind of Earth setting they can include. Toss in some environmental disasters/nuclear wars and we can have basically any futuristic cityscape. The most advanced tech in Blade Runner are the flying cars, the replicants, and the presumable interstellar travel. All the cityscape stuff is pretty much stuff that exists now, with overcrowding, pollution, surveillance, and incessant advertising. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 09:25
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Blood Boils posted:Edit: Oh that's a great point - he could have flown it up even earlier! I think this might crack it! Not that I'm subscribing to the theory, but Bishop could have flown the dropship up to the Sulaco and back to the planet, dropping the egg off in between. It doesn't seem like it takes them a long time to get up and down from the Sulaco. Maybe he just stashed it quickly with plans to hide it better later, but getting ripped in half by the queen put the kibosh on that. Maybe his ethical programming forced him to return to rescue Ripley + Newt, because they are 100% going to explode if he doesn't. He barely has time to dump the egg before he must go pick them up. Maybe his ethical programming allows him to get the egg because it doesn't cause direct harm. If his plan was to stash it in a freezer or cargo container or something where it couldn't get to anybody, then I could see it being 'ethical' in a robot sense in that he is no longer responsible for it once it flies back to Earth or wherever. In this theory, Bishop does not have the same agenda as Burke. Burke is a company man, but he is betraying the company for personal gain! If Bishop is a truly loyal company-bot, then he can openly announce he has it when he returns to WY space and they can take custody of it, no smuggling necessary. Bishop gets no money from this but as a robot it is meaningless to him, he just does what his bosses want while following his ethical programming. I thought Burke needed to smuggle it because he wants to take 100% credit and get a big profit out of it, so keeping other hands from taking hold of it before he can show it off would help keep a bigger share of the profit. Burke also needed no one to know he was responsible for the disaster, so if he kills off the other survivors he can make up a story in which he is the good guy here. Ultimately I think Bishop is a good guy, and I am not obsessed with continuity between sequels because I don't like the idea of a good work being diminished by a shittier sequel. It would have been relatively easy in Alien 3 to provide some other explanation for why there is an Alien egg on the ship, but they didn't want to bother because the production was rushed and slapdash. Easy solutions they didn't take, without having to change what happens in Aliens: - Egg is stuck inside wherever the Queen hitchhiked on the dropship cargo bay, jammed amongst some supplies and not noticed. It hatches and we get Alien 3. Is it implausible? Not really, I can imagine exhausted traumatized Ripley and Newt just are eager to shower and go the gently caress to bed after all this nonsense instead of scouring every inch of the ship. - Some leftover Queen Slime just starts formulating into an egg on its own, maybe from where her acid blood dripped through the floor. It eventually hatches and we get Alien 3. Is it dumb? Maybe, but so is the egg just being stuck to a random table when neither the queen or bishop could have got there after the reactor blew up. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 09:30
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Xenomrph posted:It’s not just that, having a tiny fine-print corporate disclaimer of “might endanger or kill your own troops due to undisclosed nebulous corporate agendas” seems like a fast-track to getting them all pulled from active service and for the US government to take WY to court and turn them inside-out on a grand scale. You are the expert on all this EU stuff, but I always imagined the Marines to be somewhat in the pocket of WY, or at least heavily influenced by them. I think the point of "undisclosed nebulous corporate agendas" is that they do not in fact, appear in the fine print, and only manifest when the company needs them to. WY sends bots to the marines and they accept them because they do the job, and no one needs to complain about secret "GET ALIENS, CREW EXPENDABLE" orders because the issue has never come up before. Nostromo disappeared, no one publicly knows what happened. It is all offscreen, but I figure Burke was able to influence the mission makeup in some way. If the Marines really believed there were aliens to shoot, you bet your rear end every single commander with a bloodlust would be fighting over each other to get command of the Sulaco. They wouldn't give it to some idiot butterbars. He probably deliberately downplayed poo poo and acted like Ripley was crazy to ensure it was just a skeleton crew sent out to fix a transmitter and suppress some dissent, rather than launch an assault against at least a hundred hostiles. Burke didn't even want his own company overlords to know how culpable he was. Source: Marines in the family, who tell how every single op in The Forever War that had a really good chance at a firefight had senior officers competing to provide high level oversight just so they can be involved. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 09:48
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Xenomrph posted:It’s not just that, having a tiny fine-print corporate disclaimer of “might endanger or kill your own troops due to undisclosed nebulous corporate agendas” seems like a fast-track to getting them all pulled from active service and for the US government to take WY to court and turn them inside-out on a grand scale. I think the movies establish that in this hyper capitalist setting the company doesn't need to add those fine-prints? Alien has your exact scenario with Mother's "Crew expendable" clause which none of them know about when their contracts are brought up during the argument over whether they should investigate the beacon or not. Ripley's reaction upon finding out says it all, and the hearing at the start of Aliens is just a kangaroo court to 'officially' absolve the company of wrongdoing. "Special Order 937? Never heard of it!"  Mr. Grapes! posted:Don't forget Blade Runner is set in... 2019. What is time and how do I stop it  You're right though. I've just been wary since AvP:R is what comes to mind when I think of aliens and a present day or near future setting on Earth.
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Dec 5, 2023 12:52
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Hey, maybe they could. Don't forget Blade Runner is set in... 2019. Blade Runner 2 is 2049. I don't think a vague '70 years in the future' really means anything limiting on what kind of Earth setting they can include. Toss in some environmental disasters/nuclear wars and we can have basically any futuristic cityscape. Weyland-Yutani will finally solve the homeless problem by dumping their tamed xenomorph bioweapons onto those dirty Blade Runner streets. A Disney/Hulu exclusive arriving in 2025!
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Dec 5, 2023 13:29
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I’m kinda laughing that people are getting excited by the idea of “Aliens on the set of Blade Runner.” That’s literally what people were salivating over when the studio put out that incredibly ill-advised Alien 3 teaser (they did not even have a script at this point): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_x9W1xKng Can you imagine seeing this back in the day and then getting Alien 3? I mean sure, if they ignore continuity they could maybe do interesting things with aliens on earth 70 years in the future, but I’m expecting them to bend over backwards to not break continuity which just seems like it will result in a convoluted mess where nothing matters.
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Dec 5, 2023 14:07
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Aren't the AVP movies set on Earth? Not that they couldn't be easily de-caconized, but it just kinda looked like modern day from what I remember of the trailers.
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Dec 5, 2023 14:58
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feedmyleg posted:Aren't the AVP movies set on Earth? Not that they couldn't be easily de-caconized, but it just kinda looked like modern day from what I remember of the trailers. Yes, but most people try to ignore them If this show gives a drat about being canon with those films it’s already lost
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Dec 5, 2023 15:32
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feedmyleg posted:Aren't the AVP movies set on Earth? Not that they couldn't be easily de-caconized, but it just kinda looked like modern day from what I remember of the trailers. According to a franchise consultant that worked on the Alien RPG in 2020, FOX seems to consider anything containing both Aliens and Predators to be a separate, third franchise distinct from those individual franchises, so there's probably never going to be any serious effort to reconcile the AvP movies with the rest of Alien canon. Whether this still holds true now that Disney has bought everything is unknown, obviously.
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Dec 5, 2023 16:41
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Is it dumb? Maybe, but so is the egg just being stuck to a random table I don't think that it was intended to be underneath a table, I imagine they just wanted to convey it was somewhere on the Sulaco and that part of the set having the name was well-suited, with the bonus of it adding to the look of being somewhere high up and out of the way with the design resembling the support beams we see around the cargo bay (e.g. the support beams near the armory). I'm guessing they might not have had much choice with what was left over either, and maybe the dropship wasn't available? Obviously since it was released people have done their research and comparisons to determine that's a table from Aliens but I don't think that they expected people to go to the trouble of figuring out where the egg was. I think with the positioning and angle they wanted the audience to assume that it was positioned somewhere high up? Likely to evoke the memory of the queen descending from the dropship. Eggs are also way too large to stick under one of the tables like that, it would barely fit given their size so either it's a miniature egg with a new type of facehugger that can grow to be large enough to impregnate a human, or it's not actually underneath a table, even though that's the prop that was used for the shot. Unfortunate since it is underneath a table technically, but imo the intention behind the visuals was to make the audience think the egg had been positioned somewhere high up and out of the way since you'd obviously never fit one under a table, especially like that and with so much clearance. One thing I've always thought interesting from the Alien 3 intro (which I'm personally fond of, especially with that phenomenal score) was the brief shot we get of white fabric with red liquid staining it as something pushes up from underneath. It looks very much like it's implying a chestburster is erupting from someone (and the only candidate is Hicks since Ripley survived and Newt's corpse was intact - whereas Hicks was utterly mangled so nobody would be able to tell) which opens up the possibility of Hicks being facehugged while out cold from his injury, and maybe the egg we see is a result of that rather than the queen or Bishop. I think the official explanation for this (pretty sure Xeno will know for sure?) is that the shot was meant to convey fire damage, but it really looks like a chestburster imo. Also, I know the official explanation is also that Hicks survived thanks to that Colonial Marines game but 
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Dec 5, 2023 16:43
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david_a posted:Yes, but most people try to ignore them Officially the AvP stuff, and Predators in general, are not canon in the Alien universe. However Alien/AvP stuff, and Aliens in general, are canon in the Predator universe if I remember right. That said even if they wanted to include the two AvP movies in the Alien canon then it’s not a huge deal because they’re so isolated and everyone dies anyway. The only thing it really changes is the origin of the Weyland Corporation, which isn’t entirely irreconcilable with Prometheus if you’re willing to bend the rules a little. Personally I keep all of it in my head-canon. SUNKOS posted:I think the movies establish that in this hyper capitalist setting the company doesn't need to add those fine-prints? Alien has your exact scenario with Mother's "Crew expendable" clause which none of them know about when their contracts are brought up during the argument over whether they should investigate the beacon or not. Ripley's reaction upon finding out says it all, and the hearing at the start of Aliens is just a kangaroo court to 'officially' absolve the company of wrongdoing. "Special Order 937? Never heard of it!" WY isn’t omnipotent, nor do they control the military - the inquest in ‘Aliens’ wasn’t intended to find if the Company was responsible for anything, the target was squarely on Ripley’s back from the moment it started and was meant to determine if she was responsible for blowing up a spaceship without cause. From what we see Special Order 937 never comes up, or if it does (offscreen) then Ripley isn’t able to prove it existed because Mother is gone. Also for the record the only Company person at the inquest is Burke, everyone else is a government official. Mr. Grapes! posted:You are the expert on all this EU stuff, but I always imagined the Marines to be somewhat in the pocket of WY, or at least heavily influenced by them. I think the point of "undisclosed nebulous corporate agendas" is that they do not in fact, appear in the fine print, and only manifest when the company needs them to. WY sends bots to the marines and they accept them because they do the job, and no one needs to complain about secret "GET ALIENS, CREW EXPENDABLE" orders because the issue has never come up before. Nostromo disappeared, no one publicly knows what happened. According to the Weyland Yutani Report book and the Colonial Marines Technical Manual, Burke’s control only went insofar as picking Gorman for the mission. As for the rest of the makeup of the squad, it depends on how much Burke knew. If the only knowledge he had was “the colony went dark” (something that presumably happens once in a while) then the standard response might legitimately be to send a skeleton crew to investigate - based on how Gorman and the other Marines acted, that seemed to be standard operating procedure. Even with potential invasive lifeforms to shoot, that seemed to be the default (minimal) Marine deployment because the Marines had ample gear to shoot space-hedgehogs chewing on wires or space-wolves eating livestock or something. The thing is that they’d never encountered anything like Xenomorphs before, so they got steamrolled. I’d have to check the Marine module for the newer Alien RPG to see how it handles the relationship between the USCM and WY, but for some reason I think it’s left to the game master’s discretion re: how omnipotent you want the Company to be. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 17:11
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If the new alien movie takes place between Alien and Aliens then I’m assuming the new crew was unknowingly sent by Weyland corp to complete the Special Order 937 job that Ash failed to complete. In other words soft reboot
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Dec 5, 2023 20:39
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Zadok Allen posted:If the new alien movie takes place between Alien and Aliens then I’m assuming the new crew was unknowingly sent by Weyland corp to complete the Special Order 937 job that Ash failed to complete. That’s kind of what WY tries to do in Alien: Isolation with Sevastopol station.
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Dec 5, 2023 20:43
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Xenomrph posted:WY isn’t omnipotent, nor do they control the military One thing I've always thought was a little funny and very topical for the overall themes of the films is how (I know not everyone would agree with this, but imo WY always knew and the Covenant vid of David's transmission to the company telling them about the alien just seals that for me) initially they divert a crew with an agent on board to secure the creature, then they send in marines with the only survivor and then in the third film there's this "Okay fine, send our people this time" sentiment because of course the company has their own military and of course they cut every corner they could until they were on their last chance 
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Dec 5, 2023 20:46
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I reviewed Ripley’s inquest scene, a few notes: https://youtu.be/rkBhLjwuq20?si=z59edxvK7SqKB1Hi It isn’t quite a kangaroo court for reasons Van Leuwen lays out - there’s no real evidence of Ripley’s claim that there was an Alien onboard, and since they’ve never seen anything like an Alien before they don’t believe it’s real (although this isn’t a great reason to ignore her claim - there’s a first time for everything). They acknowledge that she blew up the Nostromo (her own admission) and acknowledge that she might have had some kind of psychotic break that caused her to do it, given that there’s no evidence of an Alien, not to mention they know that people have lived on Lv-426 for decades and never found anything. Ripley does mention that the Nostromo was sent to get an Alien on company orders (without naming Special Order 937 by name), the inquest kind of gloss over it - Ripley doesn’t really have any evidence to back up the claim anyway and given that there’s no evidence of an Alien it kind of doesn’t matter anyway. It goes unstated but although Ripley said the Nostromo homed in on the Derelict’s beacon, and the Narcissus’s flight log corroborates that they landed but not that there was a beacon, which makes me wonder a few things: 1. Did the Nostromo black box in Alien Isolation contain different, more detailed information than the Narcissus’s flight recorder? 2. If so, is the lifeboat’s black box an “abridged” version of the main one that doesn’t include certain data, like voice recordings, ship sensor logs, etc? Sidebar, even if it said the Nostromo homed in on a signal, that signal is long gone: 1. In the ‘Alien’ film novelization and/or the comic book adaptation, Dallas shuts off the beacon when he’s inside the Derelict 2. According to James Cameron, seismic activity between Alien and Aliens damaged the Derelict and shut off the beacon (the Derelict in the director’s cut has visible exterior damage) 3. The player switches it off in Alien Isolation So take your pick I guess. Also worth noting is that the Sulaco’s mission was a government operation, it was not the Company telling the government where to go or what to do. Burke and Ripley were strictly civilian advisors. Edit— in the Aliens script, Ripley suspects the flight recorder had been tampered with Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 21:56
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Either there's an Alien, or Ripley murdered her own crew. They don't put Ripley in prison. e: the actual answer is that Cameron didn't care that much, he wants to tell his story not wrap up loose ends from the last story. Alternatively it's been 57 years and the company execs neither know nor care what their grandparents generation of company execs were doing. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 23:18
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Alchenar posted:Either there's an Alien, or Ripley murdered her own crew. They don't put Ripley in prison. Yeah the inquest specifically says they’re not pursuing criminal charges “at this time”.
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Dec 5, 2023 23:24
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Not that I'm subscribing to the theory, but Bishop could have flown the dropship up to the Sulaco and back to the planet, dropping the egg off in between. It doesn't seem like it takes them a long time to get up and down from the Sulaco. Maybe he just stashed it quickly with plans to hide it better later, but getting ripped in half by the queen put the kibosh on that. Maybe his ethical programming forced him to return to rescue Ripley + Newt, because they are 100% going to explode if he doesn't. He barely has time to dump the egg before he must go pick them up. Bishop being responsible seems to be the simplest explanation that accounts for the most information we have on screen. This is true regardless of how we feel about him (I like him! Not as much as David tho)
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Dec 6, 2023 00:19
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Blood Boils posted:Bishop being responsible seems to be the simplest explanation that accounts for the most information we have on screen. This is true regardless of how we feel about him (I like him! Not as much as David tho) There’s also the problem that Bishop doesn’t have enough time in the timeline to get to the transmitter, call up the Sulaco, fly the dropship down from the Sulaco, get an egg (from where?The only place we know for sure has eggs is the Atmosphere Processor, which is where the Aliens were carting colonists, Newt, and Burke - and is the opposite of where Bishop is. Also worth noting that Bishop doesn’t know this, he wasn’t present when the Marines went down into the hatchery) and fly it up to the Sulaco, carry it around in the Sulaco and place it underneath a table (why there?) and make it back to get Ripley before the place explodes. and it undermines his and Ripley’s dynamic (and the themes related to it). That and his stated Three Laws programming would prevent him from endangering Ripley and co with an egg. There’s a TON of leaps of logic and disassembling the themes of the movie required to conclude that Bishop did it. Like, the alternative is “the Queen plopped one out on the ride up; how it got under the table is a continuity gaffe, just like the cryosleep pods magically changing into the ones from ‘Alien’.” Edit— did a little homework, flight time from the Sulaco to the colony was just under 1 hour, and from the time he departs to crawl through the pipe to the transmitter is T-minus 4 hours until the Atmosphere Processor explodes. https://youtu.be/Z01HoT-Saq8?si=g9PxWMfHQs4D9wKs https://youtu.be/p6fmvXTTM1k?si=mfYN0SW0RqPBmjSW So he has 4 hours to (allegedly) do the following: - crawl through the pipe to the transmitter (40 minutes) - align the transmitter to the Sulaco and use the transmitter to call it (1 hour) - prep the dropship (30 minutes) - fly the dropship to him (50 minutes) - fly to the atmosphere processor and get an egg (which he shouldn’t know about, so add in any time he needs to figure out where eggs are, get one, and bring it back to the dropship) - fly back to the Sulaco (50 minutes) - place the egg somewhere on the Sulaco - fly back down to pick Ripley up (50 minutes) Yeah I’m not buying it that Bishop brought an egg up to the ship lol Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Dec 6, 2023 |
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Dec 6, 2023 01:08
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Xenomrph posted:There’s also the problem that Bishop doesn’t have enough time in the timeline to get to the transmitter, call up the Sulaco, fly the dropship down from the Sulaco, get an egg (from where?The only place we know for sure has eggs is the Atmosphere Processor, which is where the Aliens were carting colonists, Newt, and Burke - and is the opposite of where Bishop is. Also worth noting that Bishop doesn’t know this, he wasn’t present when the Marines went down into the hatchery) and fly it up to the Sulaco, carry it around in the Sulaco and place it underneath a table (why there?) and make it back to get Ripley before the place explodes. It's been awhile but I don't think the Marines reach the hatchery either, they get attacked in the nursery after triggering the drones. Ripley is the first non captive human to witness the Queen in her egg laying majesty. But we can surmise that the eggs aren't all in that one basket - it's unlikely that the 2 living facehuggers in the medbay were recovered from people cocooned in the heavily guarded nest, and Hicks picks up a dead one with his shotgun somewhere outside the nursery (can't recall exactly where/when). Seems probable that the aliens disperse some amount of the eggs around, like traps, at least until the hive is fully established. Bishop could have found one placed by the pipe exit. Convenient! He almost certainly has enough time, those dropships are pretty fast. Like I said, Sulaco Bishop probably has the capacity for deception, like Ash, Call, Fury Bishop  and the other WY androids we see (they need to fit in with human employees after all). Even if he really has the 3 law programming, we know he can definitely override it in order to play the finger game and to facilitate a colonial combat unit that has experience using conventional and nuclear weapons(!). If military personnel tells you they are incapable of causing or allowing harm, they're lying to you (and possibly themselves).I don't see how this theory undermines any themes, if anything it compliments the horror. It makes Ripley & Bishop's relationship more interesting, not less. Edit: I'll check out the vids but you've already added unnecessary steps . .
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Dec 6, 2023 03:28
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Blood Boils posted:It's been awhile but I don't think the Marines reach the hatchery either, they get attacked in the nursery after triggering the drones. Ripley is the first non captive human to witness the Queen in her egg laying majesty. But we can surmise that the eggs aren't all in that one basket - it's unlikely that the 2 living facehuggers in the medbay were recovered from people cocooned in the heavily guarded nest, and Hicks picks up a dead one with his shotgun somewhere outside the nursery (can't recall exactly where/when). Seems probable that the aliens disperse some amount of the eggs around, like traps, at least until the hive is fully established. The finger game is a testament to Bishop’s skill - he’s incapable of harming Hudson, and he does not do so because he’s in control. That’s the point of the scene. The Bishop at the end of Alien3 was a human. I mapped out the timeline of how Bishop’s transit would play out, he doesn’t have the 2 hours to spare just for flying up and back to the Sulaco unnecessarily, let alone finding an egg or placing it on the Sulaco. Based on the sequence of events in the clips I posted, Bishop is just barely landing the dropship as Ripley and Hicks come out (with, in his words, 26 minutes left on the clock). For your scenario to play out, Bishop needs to fly up and back (which we already know he doesn’t have time to do), land, get off, and then fake it at the terminal and fly the dropship around a little more until Ripley and Hicks show up (while his back is turned and he doesn’t know they’re there, naturally). It undermines the character arc of Ripley learning to trust an Android (with the added twist that the Android is in fact trustworthy) if he’s just going to stab her in the back. The 2 live facehuggers were likely recovered from early, recoverable victims before the Aliens were entrenched and their numbers were in the dozens while the colonists’ numbers were dwindling - the humans had time to get the facehuggers off their victims (even if they died in the process) and document the entire thing, the poo poo likely hadn’t hit the fan yet. The Aliens could have scattered eggs around, but we have no evidence of it - the only eggs we see are in the atmosphere processor near the primary heat exchangers (the hatchery where the Aliens hatch out of their hosts, or you can call it the nursery, whatever same thing) or in the bowels of the facility (the Queen’s chambers), where it’s warmest. I didn’t add any unnecessary steps - the ones with time durations are sourced directly from dialogue, and the ones without (find an egg, fly it up, place it, fly back) are necessary for Bishop to put the egg under the table in the mess hall. He barely has enough time to complete the necessary steps the movie describes with only a half hour to spare, flying up and back (2 hours) and finding an egg and placing it on the Sulaco are off the table.
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Dec 6, 2023 04:12
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The egg rolled under a table in the break area next to the hangar during the fight with the Queen. Same kind of table as in the mess hall. Very Rube Goldbergian. Ate up a lot of the budget for Alien 3 before it was cut for time, thank God we at least got the Assembly Cut eventually.
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Dec 6, 2023 05:20
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We see on screen every step Bishop takes in the process of bringing the dropship down. He's at the unlink tower and talking to Hicks right before they go rescue Ripley and Newt from the facehuggers. From that it's like what 20 min from rescuing them to the OPs ambush and getting to the drop ship. No way Bishop found an egg and made an almost 2 hour round trip.
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Dec 6, 2023 05:51
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Xenomrph posted:
I agree Bishop is a good guy but just to go with the theory - isn't all that dialogue about the timing coming from Bishop himself? So if he is trying to smuggle eggs then he can just lie about how long it takes to do everything, leaving him some egg smuggling time in the middle.
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Dec 6, 2023 05:54
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I agree Bishop is a good guy but just to go with the theory - isn't all that dialogue about the timing coming from Bishop himself? So if he is trying to smuggle eggs then he can just lie about how long it takes to do everything, leaving him some egg smuggling time in the middle. The problem is he can’t lie about the flight time (the biggest factor) since everyone lived it on the way down from the Sulaco. That and as pointed out in the post above yours, we see Bishop’s actions every step of the way, up to and including him landing the dropship (from the ground) just before Ripley and Hicks show up.
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Dec 6, 2023 06:19
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Bishop nicks his own finger doing the knife game, think about what that means in terms of capabilities But again again (this can't keep being ignored if we're going to dismiss this theory!) the more salient thing that casts doubt on his 3 law programming is that he is part of a veteran military combat unit that pacifies colonies
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Dec 6, 2023 23:18
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Blood Boils posted:Bishop nicks his own finger doing the knife game, think about what that means in terms of capabilities
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Dec 7, 2023 00:30
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I’m not gonna read everything from the last 2 1/2 years but god drat did I need Xenomrph vs SuperMechaGodzilla debate in my life. I mean, together your names are 1/2 Greek and you might as well be some Platonic stdh.txt (more formally known as a “dialogue”) for all I care. Please keep it up.
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Dec 7, 2023 01:02
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Apollodorus posted:I’m not gonna read everything from the last 2 1/2 years but god drat did I need Xenomrph vs SuperMechaGodzilla debate in my life. Not happening lmao, that poo poo got this thread gassed
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Dec 7, 2023 01:53
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Xenomrph posted:Edit— did a little homework, flight time from the Sulaco to the colony was just under 1 hour, and from the time he departs to crawl through the pipe to the transmitter is T-minus 4 hours until the Atmosphere Processor explodes. And we see that when he gets to the transmitter it takes about 10 seconds to align after connecting and have the already prepped dropship in motion and ready to launch, with the dropship nearly over the airlock and ready to depart the Sulaco approximately 25 seconds later. So if we combine that with the initial dropship launch from earlier, he's got a pretty good chunk of time to do something after the dropship arrives, and two and a half hours before the place goes boom. This is being overly anal about something which is just my own goofy little theory though, I just think it's plausible is all and to me the most likely way that the egg got on the Sulaco. As for where the egg came from? Bishop was going gaga for those facehuggers in the lab and I imagine there was probably some eggs that had been contained somewhere as well, we do see eggs outside the queen's chamber and the marines haven't swept anywhere close to the entire colony before poo poo hits the fan. At the end of the day though I just like that imo it's a possibility that (also imo) we can't definitively conclude one way or the other, which I think is cool! I mean Ripley leaves an injured Hicks alone with Bishop and we see (imo again) a chestburster at the start of Alien 3 which is erupting from him, which opens up the possibility that Hicks got hugged, Bishop was quiet about it and the egg came from whatever hatched from Hicks. Hell, we don't actually see Burke die so, y'know...  CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:The egg rolled under a table in the break area next to the hangar during the fight with the Queen. Same kind of table as in the mess hall. Very Rube Goldbergian. Ate up a lot of the budget for Alien 3 before it was cut for time, thank God we at least got the Assembly Cut eventually. Either ways it's one small egg! Oh my god, what if there was a second, smaller queen...
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Dec 7, 2023 03:49
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SUNKOS posted:At the end of the day though I just like that imo it's a possibility that (also imo) we can't definitively conclude one way or the other, which I think is cool! I mean Ripley leaves an injured Hicks alone with Bishop and we see (imo again) a chestburster at the start of Alien 3 which is erupting from him, which opens up the possibility that Hicks got hugged, Bishop was quiet about it and the egg came from whatever hatched from Hicks. You’re not entirely wrong about someone else getting facehugged though - the original concept was that Newt was the one that got facehugged but somehow the embryo sensed when she was drowning and slithered out of her mouth and down Ripley’s throat. It doesn’t make a lot of sense lol quote:Hell, we don't actually see Burke die so, y'know... https://youtu.be/9AbWOL7muys?si=9IsksqFuD-Uu-BEq
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Dec 7, 2023 04:00
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Xenomrph posted:We hear warping metal as the blood stain spreads, I took it to mean it’s the safety girder impaling him. The alien is biomechanical, what we hear is merely the embryo stiffening for eruption  See what I mean? We don't see him die  ...but we do know he's carrying
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Dec 7, 2023 04:17
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