Quote from: Jonjamess on Jun 13, 2023, 02:39:38 PMQuote from: oduodu on Jun 13, 2023, 02:22:36 PM"hey ripley what happened to the other 6 people ? why were some of them not on the lifeboat with you? where were they when the engines detonated?
so you either killed or disabled all of them for no good reason. "
The company accepts that the ship detonated and the other crew were killed. Wether or not they accept Ripley's explanation that they were killed by an acid bleeding Alien or by a self destruction are two completely different things.
It's explained clearly in the movie, they think she has psychological issues and PTSD because of whatever happened not because they think she went nuts and murdered the crew and then blew up the ship.
Accidents must happen to vessels in deep space all the time. Surviving crew members (if any) must be confused, traumatised, have issues dealing with these incidents on a regular basis. People under stress (they've watched their entire crew die perhaps legitimately through a malfunction aboard the vessel or an explosion or whatever) tend to have a tenancy through no fault of their own to fabricate a story to deal with it. Perhaps they thought she couldn't deal with whatever legitimately went wrong and blames herself, so she's made up a story about a space monster! She was under psychiatric evaluation at the time after all so they would have been receiving reports from her doctor to substantiate their reasoning for not believing her.
They company agrees that the ship set down on LV-426. They are simply saying that they don't believe Ripley is talking sense from the trauma of whatever has happened and so they don't believe her Alien story. Again this is backed up by the fact they have had a colony on LV-426 for 20 years with no incident. Had they not had a colony there then perhaps they would have gone and investigated before accusing Ripley of not being of sound mind!
On a slightly unrelated note but I feel slightly related to the current discussion, I've just had a similar incident with an Alien fan on an Aliens Facebook group!
This fan is telling everyone that Ridley Scott owns the Alien franchise, Ridley Scott helps with the creation of the video games especially Aliens Colonial Marines! I'm not even joking.
So when I corrected him and explained Ridley does not remotely own the franchise and that 20th Century Studios and now Disney in fact own it I was met with complete denial and non sensical argumenting. I was told of course Ridley owns it otherwise how did he manage to cancel Alien 5! I was told Aliens Colonial Marines the video game is canon because Ridley worked on it and he says so! I mean if anyone was gonna work on that game it would be Cameron not Ridley!
My point is there's no point trying with some people. Once they have a believe in their head and it fits with their agenda it's impossible to use logic or even hard facts to change their mind.
The problem isn't whether or not they accepted the fact that the ship was blown up but who would pay for it (42 million in "adjusted dollars" without the payload) and who would be responsible for the death of the remaining crew members.
The motive is pointless because even if they found Ripley guilty, she wouldn't have the means to pay for the losses. That's why the best that they could do was conclude that Ripley "acted with questionable judgment". The problem is that what started all that involved them landing on the rock, and that was initiated by the computer changing course because of a distress beacon. For some weird reason, and for a computer that's supposed to be so advanced that it could operate and maintain the ship while the crew was in hibernation, only the flight recorder data was sent to the lifeboat, and it referred only to the location of the landing site. That's actually good enough, but for another weird reason Ripley chooses not to raise that even if it's the only thing that will support her story.
In addition, putting Ripley on a leash that way also makes no sense because when backed against a corner, an embattled animal will strike back, which means Ripley might start talking to other people about what happened, and both company and government would have more difficulty investigating the find. Also, the double cartoonish view of a Burke acting alone because a profit-driven company focusing on monetizing and weaponizing finds doesn't care sounds ridiculous. What makes more sense is that both Burke and company/government are calculating, and that's very much shown across the movies.
The acknowledgment by the company that they did land on the rock actually strengthens her case because the next point to that would be the landing location, and from there her story could be validated. The claim that the company didn't care is nonsense also because as they pointed out they even had an "analysis team" which went over the lifeboat "centimeter by centimeter," which implies that although they want to show Ripley that they don't care about her story they actually do, and if Ripley had remembered what she read about the special order, she'd realize it, too.
If we follow your argument that she's suffering from PTSD, then it's possible that she didn't do that because she was acting with questionable judgment even in defending herself, which explains why she sounded crazy during the hearing and kept repeating her story even though she had no evidence to prove it. However, it's very likely her views of the company monetizing and weaponizing remained, which might be one of the reasons why she decided to join Burke.
About van Leuwen's claim that there are no aliens on the rock because the colony had been there and didn't see anything, the argument is nonsense, and I think even Ripley could have easily seen the same, because one can argue that the colonists had not happened to investigate that particular site. But I think she couldn't because she was shocked upon hearing about the colony, which gave van Leuwen enough time to slink away. LOL.
In addition, as Burke demonstrated, it's wasn't difficult to find out if there was an alien ship on the rock, as it turns out the colonists included wildcatters (which should be the case as the company was engaged in both terraforming and mining) who would be interested in discovering such in exchange for a "full share," just like, ironically, the Nostromo crew.
Thus, we have a movie where the company behaves the same way throughout and manipulates people in various ways. We have the Nostromo crew, the Jordens, and Burke working for their "full share" or percentages, for resources owned by a government that works closely with a company, and that includes Marines that work for the same government. We have an Ash and a Bishop that work for human beings but also for the company. We have a Burke and a Gorman that work alone only for those who love cartoons but are part of large corporations (W-Y for one and the military for the other) which have not only "analysis teams" and groups going on "bug hunts" using "state-of-the-art firepower" to deal with special "situations" but also top brass in boards of inquiry eager to get information from the same blue-collar workers about finds but manipulate them in the process.
That's why the OP refers to the Reagan era, with a military industrial complex driving neoconservatism and a government working to deregulate to the advantage of corporations which drives neoliberalism. And then add to that gung-ho Marines metaphorically going against "alien" VC and getting their "assed kicked" in the process.
Quote from: Jonjamess on Jun 13, 2023, 03:04:30 PMQuote from: Local Trouble on Jun 13, 2023, 02:46:19 PMQuote from: Jonjamess on Jun 13, 2023, 02:39:38 PMIt's explained clearly in the movie, they think she has psychological issues and PTSD because of whatever happened not because they think she went nuts and murdered the crew and then blew up the ship.
That's a good point. I just suggested it to our AI friend and this is what it said:
Yes, it's entirely possible that the panel at the inquest may have considered Ripley's account as a distorted memory or psychological reaction to the trauma of being the sole survivor, rather than a deliberate act of deception or wrongdoing on her part. This is a common interpretation in cases where the survivor's account of events is considered too outlandish or implausible to be true.
Drawing a parallel with Yann Martel's "Life of Pi," it's possible the panel could have thought that Ripley's story about the alien creatures was a fantastical interpretation of the more mundane, albeit tragic, events that led to the demise of the Nostromo's crew.
This perspective might explain why they allowed Ripley to go free, instead of imprisoning her for allegedly killing her crew. They might have deemed her mentally unfit and in need of psychological help rather than criminal punishment.
However, we should remember that this is speculation and the film leaves much of the inquest's reasoning and decision-making process up to interpretation. The key point is that they did not fully believe Ripley's account of an alien creature causing the disaster.
That's what I meant, an AI came up with that?
They could have done anything they wanted, but there's still the landing location info. Unfortunately, Ripley didn't take advantage of that point, although it would have probably been futile because anyone who barged into the alien ship would have been infected, and the ones would could immediately investigate the site are the colonists.
