Quote from: SiL on Dec 07, 2023, 12:26:34 AMThere's a perfectly valid, consistent explanation given by the films:
Aliens collect traits as they go. Scott suggested it back in the 70s.
So Big Chap is Alien - Jockey - Human.
The Runner is Alien - Jockey - Human - Dog, and you can see the biomechanical details are taking a hit.
Alien Resurrection is awash with human. AvP and AvPR, there'd be no Jockey in the mix either, so they look similar.
Covenant even bares this out with the new Alien being fleshy and largely devoid of biomechanical detailing, as Engineer/Jockey hasn't been added to the mix yet.
Aliens have a basic shape but the detailing is a product of intergenerational trait collection. Each generation builds on the last, they don't reset.
Scott says a lot of things. He is the dude who said that a shredded Alien can completely regenerate from its little bits. Let's ignore that he turned the Space Jockey into a barely tall pale Greek God, but he took the potential of their history and showed us a lame single primitive city as their home civilization in Covenant.
He has never been about consistency and logic. He does what looks cool to him. He drastically changed not only the Space Jockey suit, but also the Derelict design, making it a lot less biomechanical in Prometheus/Covenant than in Alien. There was no great mastermind plan there, he did it just because.
But going with the Alien design implications, that means that through multiple Queens unleashed on Earth for example, we would get in a few generations the design from A:R to be the main/default variant? Disgusting...
And I agree with Xenomrph, I do not find the changes to the creatures in Aliens to be any less biomechanical. And the leg changes in Rez make little sense in going for a more human influence.
I see the potential of the hypothesis, it's interesting, but it does have holes IMO and the implication is pretty bad. I'm sure future series and movies will ignore this route eventually. A really biomechanical Alien will return sooner or later, I'm sure of it.