
EDIT: I couldnt find a better LV426 to work on btw...
The Aliens do not need a Queen to start a brood. Even though this was explained later on and after the fact, it still manages to tie everything together quite nicely. In Alien there was a cut scene where two of the crewmembers Dallas and Brett where taken captive by the lone Alien warrior. Brett was slowly being turned into an egg, while the other was to end up a host for the new face hugger. Which one could argue could be a Queen? In the absence of the alien queen, the alien can also cocoon it's prey, so he can eat it later. Much like the space jockey fossilized in the alien ship. They should have left this in because it explains the Aliens reproductive cycle. The Xenomorphs ability to "rapidly evolve" remains one of their greatest assets for survival. The aliens can also place their victims in a biomass which slowly transform it's prey into a Alien. The mistake your making Enjay is including all the awful ideas surrounding AVP. Giger's art is truly dark and fantastic, the Egyptian styled imagery that would later be woven into the fabric of the universe is a clever idea. However without that much of the story falls apart completely. Is AVP really supposed to take place before Alien? Proving that humans knew about the existence of the Alien race long before Ripley ever came across them? In Aliens it seems the company may have knew about the Xenomorph presence, but unless it could be explained definitively I don't believe it should be attempted.Enjay wrote:I'm sure then that you have read the original idea behind the aliens; that they were a much more sentient race with their own reproduction pyramid-like temples (with hieroglyphs/writing etc on the walls) and complicated reproduction process. The human crew were originally to have found one of these temples, broken the seal (similar to breaking through the groovy laser-through-dry-ice effect in then actual movie) and this would have awoken the reproduction process. Inside the temple would have been a sacrificial altar table (with blood channels etc) and hieroglyphs depicting the aliens impregnating hosts and showing the reproduction process. The point being that their reproduction was complicated and difficult, relying on a host, and therefore their culture was built around the reproduction process.Tragos wrote:I'm very much a purist when it comes to Aliens, anything to do with Predator does not belong within the same universe. Dark Horse should have never gave FOX the idea, now it seems though as the two are merged like conjoined twins.
The idea was primarily dropped because to have the astronauts discover and investigate the alien reproduction temple would have meant a lot of time (and money) spent with very little action and not moving the plot along much at all. So, the egg room was added to the space-jockey ship and the rest was simply deleted - also allowing the reduction of the aliens to a much simpler "hive mind with a queen" type of species in later movies. The only bit of evidence from the original idea that made it into the movie was near the end. Despite having been a fast, ruthless, unbeatable killing machine for nearly the entire movie, when Ripley meets the alien near the end and flushes it into space, it is a tired, docile creature that puts up almost no resistance. Why? Because it had completed its reproduction process (the captain had been impregnated) and its job was now done (note, no alien queen involved, no hive mentality etc etc).
So, anyway, yeah, I agree. The alien skull in Predator 2 was an acceptable cameo and in-joke (IMO) but the whole "OMG you can't have aliens without predators" thing pisses me off, especially as this once complex idea of a reasonably advanced civilisation was reduced to them being little more than captive dumb pets and ravening almost mindless beasts: the playthings of the Predators in AvP. As a general rule, I dislike crossover stories of this kind anyway. They always boil down to geek fanboy wank-fests of "OMG Who would win X or Y" (and, of course, the question is never even fully answered anyway) and most of the time the art style, story lines etc etc clash horribly.
Another thing about the early Alien ideas that I liked (as a by the way), and it was something that always confused me from the films, was the appearance of the alien ship/biology. It always confused me that the space jockey clearly had the same basic "biomechanical" biology/technology as the aliens yet was supposed to be a separate species, alien to the planet, that had been infected by the aliens. Then I found out the the original idea was to use three artists: one for the human technology; one for the aliens; one for the infected alien ship. There were even initial designs for the infected ship and its crew (apparently it looked a bit like a giant space lobster and IIRC the crew were dwarf-like). However, for reasons that I forget (lack of artist availability?, lack of time?, lack of money?, not wanting a giant space lobster crewed by dwarfs?) Giger ended up doing both the aliens and the infected ship, thereby confusing the hell out of me for many years.
No no, not at all. I wasn't drawing on anything to do with AVP. I was quoting (or rather paraphrasing from memory) a book that I used to have. I last read it about 15, maybe 20 years ago and the book was published before even Aliens was made, waaaay before AvP.Tragos wrote:The mistake your making Enjay is including all the awful ideas surrounding AVP. Giger's art is truly dark and fantastic, the Egyptian styled imagery that would later be woven into the fabric of the universe is a clever idea. However without that much of the story falls apart completely...
Making even sadder that whatever forces conspired against it prevented it happening.Tragos wrote:The original script for Aliens 3 was fantastic. It featured both HICKS and NEWT very much alive and in an active role in Aliens 3.
I have always wondered what the Alien franchise would have been like if either Ripley had not survived the first movie or (more likely) they simply didn't bring Sigourney Weaver back for the second movie. IMO, that has always been a... dubious decision that seemed to tie the fate of the aliens and the stories inexorably to that of Ripley. The moves ceased to centre on the Aliens and humanity's interaction with them and became Ripley's story. Now, Weaver is a fine actress and the character is strong but, ultimately, I don't really care that much about Ripley. She served her purpose in movie 1 and it was a bit false to bring her back in movie 2. The movies didn't need to revolve around her and I wonder if things may have worked out better if they hadn't. I guess we'll never know.Tragos wrote:They chose instead to focus the story on Ripley.
True, true.Tragos wrote:Aliens 3 could have been better than the first two, but instead we end up with a C+ movie with provides more questions than answers.
Spoiler:Actually the fact that the ceiling alien can instantly traverse any ceiling regardless of height should be fixed . A maximum height difference of 128 units should work well. Also, I'm not sure about this, but I think he can still claw the player even when on a very high ceiling (It seems to happen in the egg chamber on map e3m1.)