Is the alien as strong as we make it out to be?

[littlesprout]

Just thinking about the aliens opponents and if we give the alien more credit than it has really shown.

Obviously the nostromo crew shouldn't be much of a challenge with a bunch of unarmed blue collared workers.

In Aliens it appears the high volume of aliens is what overwhelms the force of marines, and the marines had very poor tactics. But when they were confronted and could see their targets the marines were killing the aliens left and right. I imagine if they had gone in with a bigger force and not walked right into the nest off the bat they probably would have done more damage.

Alien 3 we have a bunch of prisoners using whatever resources they can scramble up.

Alien: R we have a bunch of scientist and some really poorly trained soldiers/guards.

And it seems to be the reoccurring theme that the alien is excellent at taking out these scientists or barely armed people, but against just a few remaining marines and people they were kinda getting their asses kicked.

We already know the alien thrives at being in dark environments with places it can hide and sneak up on you, but if that's what it relies on, is it really as strong as we give it credit for?

Disclaimer: this was not written from a predator fan

[City Hunter Yautja]

I don't think the films depict the Alien as omnipotent. In Alien a good spear gun works, in Aliens the light armor piercing pulse rifles blow them to bits, in Alien3 there is no real weapons to do them harm, and in Alien Resurrection the weapons work fine on them. The creature comes across invincible if you let the fear of it prevail, and there are reasons to be afraid, if it gets its hands in you, you're done, one way or another. 

[Local Trouble]

Just thinking about the aliens opponents and if we give the alien more credit than it has really shown.

Yes.

Perfect organisms don't need a completely different species to propagate and are susceptible to machine guns.

[PAS Spinelli]

If anything we don't give the Alien enough credit as it's constantly disrespected by every single non movie and non recent game media

[City Hunter Yautja]

If we add the Alien Vs Predator films, they are even less god like.

[PAS Spinelli]

I'm not counting AVP as AVP is part of the disrespect I mentioned

[City Hunter Yautja]

I'm not counting AVP as AVP is part of the disrespect I mentioned

Ah, so no crossovers.

[PAS Spinelli]

The entire premise of the crossovers is downplaying the aliens and making the writers pet predator have a good time killing them while some shoehorned background predator dies to try and make it look like the crossover favors both equally

[City Hunter Yautja]

The entire premise of the crossovers is downplaying the aliens and making the writers pet predator have a good time killing them while some shoehorned background predator dies to try and make it look like the crossover favors both equally

Hmmm, AVP had the first two Preds slayed quickly, Scar gets impregated and killed by The Queen. Oh and the Predalien comes out of Scar and kills a bunch of Preds and Wolf in AVPR. If anything the Aliens did more damage than The Preds overall.

[PAS Spinelli]

The entire premise of the crossovers is downplaying the aliens and making the writers pet predator have a good time killing them while some shoehorned background predator dies to try and make it look like the crossover favors both equally

Hmmm, AVP had the first two Preda slayed quickly, Scar gets impregated and killed by The Queen. Oh and the Predaliwn comes out of Scar and kills a bunch of Preds and Wolf in AVPR. If anything the Aliens did more damage than The Preds overall.

Chopper and the opening scene Predators from AVPR are literally what I just described, they are there to die so the crossover can look more equal, but if you were to cut all of their scenes out nothing would change.
 Also, AVPR is by far the most insulting media towards the Aliens, as in every single fight scene the Aliens will just stand still waiting to die.

[City Hunter Yautja]

The entire premise of the crossovers is downplaying the aliens and making the writers pet predator have a good time killing them while some shoehorned background predator dies to try and make it look like the crossover favors both equally

Hmmm, AVP had the first two Preda slayed quickly, Scar gets impregated and killed by The Queen. Oh and the Predaliwn comes out of Scar and kills a bunch of Preds and Wolf in AVPR. If anything the Aliens did more damage than The Preds overall.

Chopper and the opening scene Predators from AVPR are literally what I just described, they are there to die so the crossover can look more equal, but if you were to cut all of their scenes out nothing would change.
 Also, AVPR is by far the most insulting media towards the Aliens, as in every single fight scene the Aliens will just stand still waiting to die.

I personally love the ambush of National Guard in the rain by the Xenomorphs.

[SiL]

Define "strong".

Physical strength? You try jumping out of molten lead.

A formidable force?

You're still looking for a two foot worm when the thing has already grown into an eight foot, armour plated, acid bleeding monstrosity with impeccable path finding skills.

They're not bullet proof, no. They're useless out in the open.

Which is why they don't go out into the open, they test offences, and they change their attack approaches when they need to.

Like zombies it would be really easy to stop an outbreak if you act early and decisively. But also like zombies once they dig in they're a nightmare to get rid of.

The marines didn't do that well against the Aliens. Confirmed on-screen kills is somewhere around 20. The tracker is full of signals at the end. They're tough sons of bitches.

[Xenomrph]

The entire premise of the crossovers is downplaying the aliens and making the writers pet predator have a good time killing them while some shoehorned background predator dies to try and make it look like the crossover favors both equally

Hmmm, AVP had the first two Preda slayed quickly, Scar gets impregated and killed by The Queen. Oh and the Predaliwn comes out of Scar and kills a bunch of Preds and Wolf in AVPR. If anything the Aliens did more damage than The Preds overall.

Chopper and the opening scene Predators from AVPR are literally what I just described, they are there to die so the crossover can look more equal, but if you were to cut all of their scenes out nothing would change.
 Also, AVPR is by far the most insulting media towards the Aliens, as in every single fight scene the Aliens will just stand still waiting to die.

Independent of how the individual Aliens did against the (experienced, well-equipped) Predator in the movie, the Aliens straight up murder an entire town in about a day to the point that it requires a tactical nuclear strike to contain the threat (and even Wolf is ultimately unable to contain the outbreak). I think the Aliens did okay.

[SiL]

They appear to murder a town of people mostly stuck in their cars in a traffic jam leaving town, it's really not a compliment to their abilities.

[Xenomrph]

I don't remember that at all, but it's also been a good decade since I watched the movie.