Why do aliens look different (storywise) ?

[Xenomrph]

Riiiiiiiight,. lets stick to the movies should we?

But Xhan was sticking to the movies.

okay, any theories?

I thought I said one. They don't have a set appearance, and can look different for reasons we don't understand.

[Mr. Domino]

Where did the info in your post come from, Xhan? I haven't heard that mentioned before in any documentaries or anything.

[Xenomrph]

It's not from a documentary (to my recollection), he was offering his own theory to reconcile the different appearances.

[Mr. Domino]

Ok. I figured it was probably speculation but then you mentioned that he was sticking to the movies. Its all good. Although as far as theories go, it really only covers the first two films.

[Xenomrph]

Yeah, that's the problem with any of the theories. You can make up stuff to address any two films on their own, but once you try addressing all of them it starts falling apart.

I meant that he was "sticking to the movies" in the sense that his theory doesn't reference any of the comics or videogames or anything.

[Extroheal]

There is no difference storywise. Each new director changes their basic appearance. Making their heads smooth or ridged or shorter. Giving them plantigrade legs or digitigrade legs. You'll never see the alien design from Alien and the alien design from AVP Requiem in the same movie. You're just supposed to ignore the differences, the same way you're supposed to ignore the fact that the cryotubes in Alien 3 look different from the ones in Aliens.

[Xhan]

Riiiiiiiight,. lets stick to the movies should we?

I only uses movies.

ever.

[SiL]

We could explain the difference the way Ridley Scott did, looks-wise - The Aliens are mixtures of all previous hosts, not just the one the Alien is born from. So the first two films have Jockey + Human Aliens, the A3 creature is Jockey, human, dog, and obviously everything thereafter has no Jockey (Screw you, genetic tampering, that's my excuse).

[Xhan]

Where did the info in your post come from, Xhan? I haven't heard that mentioned before in any documentaries or anything.

It's my own.

Giger Alien is the original --> egg morph.

CamerAlien is a weaponized version with a Mass Production model add in for "aggressive terraforming".

After the weaponized Aliens have whacked the original species, Jockeys move in and wipe them out.. since they can't egg morph, getting rid of the Queen(s), which is (are)are centralized, easy to find and not suited for combat is rather elementary; then mop up the remaining Aliens, and the planet is yours, none the wiser.

[Xhan]

We could explain the difference the way Ridley Scott did, looks-wise - The Aliens are mixtures of all previous hosts, not just the one the Alien is born from. So the first two films have Jockey + Human Aliens, the A3 creature is Jockey, human, dog, and obviously everything thereafter has no Jockey (Screw you, genetic tampering, that's my excuse).

The Progressive Generation theory has been around hella long and has quite a few proponents.

[SiL]

Quite - Didn't Ridley say it back in '78, '79? I know host traits were there from the production period, as Ridley's rationalizing of why the Alien looked like a guy in a suit ("If it came from the cat, it'd look like the cat").

[Xhan]

Something like that, though I can't think of direct quote offhand until mid 80's material.

[Xenomrph]

Quite - Didn't Ridley say it back in '78, '79? I know host traits were there from the production period, as Ridley's rationalizing of why the Alien looked like a guy in a suit ("If it came from the cat, it'd look like the cat").

Well I took that to be more of the "DNA Reflex" idea, like what was shown in 'Alien3'. The idea of Aliens taking genetic material from the host dates back to Ridley Scott quotes regarding 'Alien', yes; James Cameron said something similar (and even used the cat example) for 'Aliens'.
I don't recall either of them saying anything about progressive hosts, though - that the genetic line would carry along from queen to egg to resultant queen to that queen's eggs, across multiple generations.

I guess I don't have a problem with that theory, it just seems a little less than airtight. Like, there's no real way to "prove" it.
There's also some problems with it: the adult Aliens in 'AvP: Requiem' all looked the same, but if this "multiple generations" theory were true then this shouldn't be the case - the ones born via Chet should look different from the handful born via regular facehuggers, because the Chet-spawned ones should have some of Chet's DNA or whatever.

Similarly, the (theoretical) Alien(s) that infested the Hadley's Hope colony prior to the spawning of the Queen should look different from the ones spawned from the Queen's eggs, but there's no way to prove or disprove that this is the case.

[Xhan]

The generational progression would depend on the host as well, the problem with Res is they're hybrids, so considering them a watermark blueprint is pretty suspect, but again a static Alien "template" that the baseline is derived from "fixes" that and provides why they have digitigrade legs, using "base" bits as a backup for untranscribed traits.

[SiL]

I don't recall either of them saying anything about progressive hosts, though - that the genetic line would carry along from queen to egg to resultant queen to that queen's eggs, across multiple generations.

I guarantee you Scott said it.

I shall find you the quote.

the ones born via Chet should look different from the handful born via regular facehuggers, because the Chet-spawned ones should have some of Chet's DNA or whatever.

We could argue they were slightly less retarded

Similarly, the (theoretical) Alien(s) that infested the Hadley's Hope colony prior to the spawning of the Queen should look different from the ones spawned from the Queen's eggs, but there's no way to prove or disprove that this is the case.

They may well have been killed before the marines arrived, hence all the acid damage. We do, after all, see bits of Alien stuck into the hive walls near the end of the film when Ripley's getting Newt (You can see what looks like an Alien back pipe sticking out during a shot of an Alien backing off).

EDIT

Hey-hey, it's a quote! And I was right, it is from 1979!

SCOTT: The thing I was always frustrated about was the absence of sense of smell with the beast.  It's a real element with him, because his odor must have been incredibly powerful.  I wanted a sense of a timeless, slightly decaying creature that, maybe, only has a limited lifespan of, maybe, four days like an insect.  The alien life form lived to reproduce, and in reproducing took on the characteristics of its last inabitant and its new host.

Thus the alien on board the Nostromo had the characteristics of the space jockey on the derelict and Kane.  If the face hugger had hit the cat, it would have been a hybrid of the space jockey and the cat. When Ripley blasts off from the Nostromo with the alien aboard, it's dying, which is why it moves so slowly.  She kills it, but it would have died soon  anyway.  It's like a butterfly.

Delson, James (1979).  'Alien from the inside out'.   Fantastic Films, November 1979.

Reprinted in Kanpp, Laurence F. & Kulas, Andrea F. (2005) Ridley Scott Interviews. University Press of Mississippi.

http://www.alienexperience.com/forum/index.php/topic,2822.0.html