Alien: Covenant (2017)
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Slaanesh69
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Of course! They are the perfect killing machines. Unfeeling, remorseless. Their very blood damages everything. They are the biological equivalent of the self-replicating AI machines that similar sci-fi have ravaging the universe. They are the borg, they are the Tyranids.
That is why they make such great villains, in small scale encounter movies. It is a win just to escape with your life and burn everything behind you to ash.
But they kinda lose practical application in wider scope prospective entertainment.
The first was a great horror movie. The second was an amazing action/horror movie. The rest kind of degraded into poor versions of the first two combined. Covenant may have been the worst of the lot just because the characters were as, or even more, stupid than the morons in Prometheus.
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OneofOne
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This has been getting worse and worse as the franchise progresses. Now Aliens grow to full size in a few minutes with zero consumption.
Not that they were ever realistic about it, but now they don't even try.
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Slaanesh69
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Oh, and if I remember correctly, part of the horror of the original Alien was embedded in the terror of sexual assault/rape/penetration. I could be wrong but I believe the death scenes had a lot of sexual overtones, with the alien's tail and the small, penis-shaped inner mouth.....the face hugger with it's "dick" thrust down your throat and unable to be removed, and the hatchling BURSTING out of the stomach, also kinda looking like a dick. I think THAT was the only subtle overtone to the movie, not some existential study in our place in evolution.
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Runnen
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A deleted scene in the original film had the Chestburster pillage the Nostromo's food stores before molting to grow to its adult size, and the crew discovering said pillaging shortly before the first attack on a crew member.
Same as the age old question about when a xenomorph is alone, how does it make eggs without a queen (queens were made up for the second film, Ridley Scott hates the hive system but personally I like it)? The first film had another deleted scene where the first two captured crew members are found stuck to a bulkhead with mucus and have been injected with venom from the alien's tail that slowly morphs them into eggs.
Goatface
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the prefect setup would be them to be born with enough energy to grow. like have a pellet of super compressed royal jelly or the like.
Leadsalad
Cis-XYite-Nationalist
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I don't think it's possible to even compress down enough calories to achieve that for the size differential from chest burster to full sized xeno.
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Big Phoenix
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Yeah thats always been one of the absolute worst aspects of the series. Within 2-3 hours you go from bursting out of the chest to full sized Alien. Aliens was probably the most realistic, the Marines dont show up for a period of time until after the colonist had been harvested so it makes sense there are a lot of fully developed Aliens.
Really though when you sit down and think about it a lot of the biology of Aliens are not logical or realistic in anyway, but the first two where so well made in every other facet it didnt really matter. You would die of asphyxiation or heart failure due to the developing chestburster crushing your lungs and heart long before it could burst out of your chest. The whole super acid blood is wholly unrealistic, while there are incredibly corrosive substances like piranha solution theres no universal acid that is incredibly corrosive to every thing.
HR Giger did love him penis inspired demons. I dont think the sexual allusions are the kicker though, its the escalating violence. First you get strangled/roofied, then youre left with a parasite that will violently burst out of your chest and eventually turn into a incredibly efficient predator.
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You guys do realize that these are movies, right? Like, they don't have to follow the actual laws of physics, because it's a fucking movie? The original 2 movies were good because they were simple. First one was a slasher film set in space, the second one was an action movie, set in space. No need to overthink anything.
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Big Phoenix
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Perfectly acceptable if the movie is one off, but once you start making sequels that establish a universe its only natural you start thinking about the connections each addition makes and if they are consistent with each other.
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Homsar
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Tsar Bomba
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If memory serves this was discussed in Starlog Magazine. I believe they had to cut part of Lambert's death out since it was perceived that way.
Man I miss Starlog. Don't know how it would survive today though...
I gave up on this franchise after Aliens. Everything after the second movie is dog shit. Just like everything after ROTJ in the Star Wars universe is dog shit. Sorry, but sometimes you just gotta cut your losses.
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What if they were both silicon and carbon-based lifeforms? Somehow able to utilize both depending upon availability. As a molecular biologist, this makes my head fucking explode, but fuck it, it's scifi! Wheeeeeeee!
Phazael
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In the Earth War comic series and one other it was implied that they were basically super efficient at metabolizing anything. In fact they ended up on earth because there was a thing called "Xeno Zip" that was like a miracle drug the corps wanted them for. Same sources also filled in backstory that they were not actually designed but a very prolific race that reproduced like mad because there was an apex predator in their ecosystem that forced them to basically be like tribbles, eating everything and making more of themselves constantly. In that comic, the builders civilization (who liked like big elephant headed dudes) tried to harness them for the same purpose but got overrun by the xenos when they lost control of them as well and were basically how the xenos got off their home world in the first place. Too bad those stories were not made into moves, because they were way better.