Scott: We are going to make another Alien movie

[SiL]

If you actually read the text it even says in the description that the AvP hands were made "fuller and stronger looking".

[Samhain13]

Yeah but from the pictures I dont see that. I might when I look at the movies again.

[426Buddy]

There's a lot to love in the designs from the first 3 movies. I like the hand designs in Aliens and A3.

While I think the AR design has a sort of cool factor to it, i dislike many many aspects of it. The hands for the creatures from AR through AvPR are just the worst imo.

[SM]

If you actually read the text it even says in the description that the AvP hands were made "fuller and stronger looking".

To be fair, they also say the 'headrest returns' (I assume the dorsal spike) - which it doesn't.

The fingers seem shorter in AvP despite have the same configuration.

[SiL]

It did in the design phase, they just didn't keep it in the actual film (there are photos of the AvP Aliens featuring them in the BTS shots and making of book.)

The hands are the same length, but the hand getting fattened makes the fingers look shorter.

EDIT

My mistake, they did proportionally enlarge the fingers too:



And dorsal spike

[Perfect-Organism]

This is all OT, but if found the aliens head in AC to be too small in relation to his body.  Something was off there for me, and everything else was negligible I found...

[Xenomrph]

Even though the Praetorian caste system, purebreed and crossbreed from AVPE I accepted;

Nothing in AVP:E needs to be accepted because those were just game mechanics, not an actual canon life-cycle/evolution.

Gonna disagree there - I thought the additions in AvP:E were often clever and certainly interesting, and I've got no problem with them being added to "the canon". By your reasoning, you could handwave anything out of any source as "not actual canon" by saying "oh but it's just a movie", "oh the studio mandated that the book include [whatever]", or something similar. The author is dead, and his game mechanics died with him - the behind the scenes "reason" why something is present doesn't change the fact that it's still present.

The head design in Resurrection (and by extension, AvP) ditches the overtly phallic design from the first 3 movies in favor of something more akin to the shape of a cockroach carapace. Does that mean it's wrong, or bad, or needs to be handwaved as "it's a mutant, TRUE Aliens don't look like that!"? I don't think so - maybe Aliens just look like that sometimes.

Because in Resurrection they are mutants. That is not even a handwave, it is literally what they are. The AVP ones have no in-universe explanation, just the lack of budget meaning old suits had to be reused. The Predalien's dreadlocks are molds of the Runner's tail. They recycled a lot.

The thing is, the movie doesn't say the adult Aliens are mutants - it's something people have inferred because the Queen and Ripley were hybrids. You can make a case for them being mutants, certainly (and in all fairness, it's a theory I mostly agree with), but you can make a case that they're just Aliens. If they're mutants, where did the digitigrade legs come from? From the Queen? Why? Why would mixing human DNA suddenly give the adults legs like that?

Beyond that, what useful information is gained by concluding that they're mutants?

Not that it matters, because Aliens don't exist until 100+ years after AvP anyway

A common misconception

Also the canonicity of the Queen facehugger is questionable as it seems the original cut of Alien 3 is canon, not the AC, but a Queen facehugger does feature in Sea of Sorrows which was suppose to be a canon trilogy.

As far as Fox has ever publicly indicated, both versions are "canon".

[The Old One]

Not to be snobbish, but you clearly don't understand how genetics work if you can't fathom the idea that in an artificial recreation of an animal- a trait normally only present in one caste/role would be carried over to multiple or all of them, hence digitigrade legs.

[Xenomrph]

Not to be snobbish, but you clearly don't understand how genetics work if you can't fathom the idea that in an artificial recreation of an animal- a trait normally only present in one caste/role would be carried over to multiple or all of them, hence digitigrade legs.

Perhaps, but it's not like they were recreating the Alien from scratch. They cloned Ripley to get a Queen, and the Queen and Ripley's DNA overlapped to varying degrees with each clone attempt. So the act of cloning... destabilized the Queen's genetic code enough that now she'd pass the genetic information for her digitigrade legs down to the adult Aliens as an unintended byproduct?
I'm not a geneticist, are there real-world examples of things like that happening?

To be fair I suppose you could use the same logic to address why the backs of the Aliens' heads are no longer phallic - the underside is flat and ridged, like the Queen. Likewise the tip of the Resurrection Alien's tail is more like the Queen than like the Aliens from the first two. Framing it that way, I can kinda get behind the idea.

Of course this all goes out the window if one incorporates AvP (and yes, I recognize that you don't), or any other source that has digitigrade legs for human-born Aliens (Alien: Isolation, some of the comics).

[The Old One]

It doesn't go out the window, it just can or cannot be logically explained on a case by case basis.

Alien Isolation, Labyrinth and Paradise Lost; both have digitrade legs as a stylistic choice with no discernible explanation.
Alien Resurrection however by the very nature of it's ambiguous genetic process is open to interpretation.

[Xenomrph]

I think that's a reasonable assessment.

[The Cruentus]

Even though the Praetorian caste system, purebreed and crossbreed from AVPE I accepted;

Nothing in AVP:E needs to be accepted because those were just game mechanics, not an actual canon life-cycle/evolution.

Gonna disagree there - I thought the additions in AvP:E were often clever and certainly interesting, and I've got no problem with them being added to "the canon". By your reasoning, you could handwave anything out of any source as "not actual canon" by saying "oh but it's just a movie", "oh the studio mandated that the book include [whatever]", or something similar. The author is dead, and his game mechanics died with him - the behind the scenes "reason" why something is present doesn't change the fact that it's still present.

Feel free to disagree but I never said they weren't clever or interesting.  I just said they were game mechanics, which is true. Extinction is a strategy game and such games have "roles" that need filling, so necessitates adding and making up castes/classes to fill those roles. Game mechanics are usually not canon because its nothing to do with story or lore, its a mechanic, and since a film and canon comics contradicted the mechanics in that game, specifically the purebreed/transbeed thing, its said and done. However said film can't really count anymore since Covenant and Prometheus erased that continuity. Unless you count Alien 3 as well.

The reasoning is not the same, because "its a just a movie" is not the same as saying its game mechanics. A movie tells a story which may or may not be canon but its a story nonetheless, game mechanics is seperate from storytelling hence the term "gameplay and story segregation", and they are designed with the player and gameplay in mind, not the lore. It' is not a bad thing, games with class systems often do this, as its a way to make unique roles with unique abilities. Sometimes its not even strategy or multiplayer games that get this, its a single player story driven games that have lore altering mechanics for the sake of gameplay as well. Isolation springs to mind. The Alien is not invincible as we know it can be killed, but the game makes it so because the game is a run and hide type of horror and it needs a threat that you cannot face.

[Xenomrph]

Game mechanics are usually not canon because its nothing to do with story or lore,

It's worth pointing out that AvP:E has a bestiary section where it literally goes out of its way to take gameplay mechanics and translate them into story/lore.

[SM]

Sometimes its not even strategy or multiplayer games that get this, its a single player story driven games that have lore altering mechanics for the sake of gameplay as well. Isolation springs to mind. The Alien is not invincible as we know it can be killed, but the game makes it so because the game is a run and hide type of horror and it needs a threat that you cannot face.

Same with shooting dozens of Aliens in the Sulaco hangar - the bottom of the ship - with no effect on the hull.

[The Cruentus]

Game mechanics are usually not canon because its nothing to do with story or lore,

It's worth pointing out that AvP:E has a bestiary section where it literally goes out of its way to take gameplay mechanics and translate them into story/lore.

Yes and I was grateful for that, as they took something that is needed to fill a role and gave it some information. Unlike A:CM where the castes come out of nowhere and there really is nothing to explain them.

Sometimes its not even strategy or multiplayer games that get this, its a single player story driven games that have lore altering mechanics for the sake of gameplay as well. Isolation springs to mind. The Alien is not invincible as we know it can be killed, but the game makes it so because the game is a run and hide type of horror and it needs a threat that you cannot face.

Same with shooting dozens of Aliens in the Sulaco hangar - the bottom of the ship - with no effect on the hull.

And the legendary guns that either should not be in the places they were found or were destroyed. Hick's shotgun for example.