Quote from: tleilaxu
Everything in Alien is related to humans, from the physiology of the Alien......
Conjuring up a truly unique alien creature would have no audience draw. I agree any fictional beings, most of the time always resemble some familiar Earth bound form because they know an unrecognizeable being gives the audience nothing to relate to.
If an Alien fan were to discipline him/herself to a purely objective view, the xenomorph is really not as unique as some fans carry on. Sure its shell and form is intriguing and even mysterious, but the xeno maintains similar Earth-bound physical traits - humanoid, bipedal, two arms, two legs, human torso, head, and so on. It's so familiar, a real human in a suit was able to portray the xeno. As for its other stages - Chestburter, Facehugger, Egg - all mimicking physical traits of other Earth bound creatures..
Scientists have theorized that if there was evolved life on other worlds, they would look absolutely nothing like human, or any creature of Earth for that matter.
One scientist I watched on a documentary explained that there is only a 3% difference in DNA between humans and squirrels due to us sharing Earth bound genetics. 97% of our DNA is identical to a squirrel, but compare how much we look different from a squirrel. Only a 3% variance resulted in an extreme difference physically.
Now imagine an evolved creature on another world that has, not 90%, not 50%, not even 5%, but zero percent of Earth bound DNA. 100% of its DNA is unique to Earth. I can't even begin to speculate its visual form.