'The Classic Alien Won't Appear In Ridley Scott's Prequels At All' -Io9.com

[SM]

They don't need to resdesign the hugger - just do something different with it.  In the first film it was new so they could get away with it doing next to nothing.  In Aliens Cambo spiced it up by animating it more.  The remaining flicks didn't really do anything new.  Well Paulie did his bullet time/ slow mo thing, which would've been okay if bullet time in general hadn't been done to death by that point.

I remember reading something once - possibly an early Resurrection draft, or maybe the AvP novelisation? - where Aliens held a host down, while the hugger slowly crept up the hosts body and then settling on their face.  Something like that could work rather nicely.

[MadassAlex]

Making the 'hugger more deliberate and sensual would be creepy as all hell, my vote's in on that.

[SM]

Maybe even it'd be enough to simply prolong a hugging.  Kinda like Ripley in Aliens - but the hugger actually winning.  The host gritting their teeth and breathing through their nose until the huggers tail chokes them to the point that their beaten.

[MadassAlex]

That'll probably be enough, but the concept of enough is something that the first film did its best to undermine. I think they should take the concept as far as it can go without any silliness.

[SiL]

concept of enough is something that the first film did its best to undermine

No it didn't.

The hugger was enough, the burster was enough, the head-bites were enough. It undermined shit in the 'That'll do, thanks' category.

[MadassAlex]

Same diff, really.

It absolutely destroyed everyone's expectations at the point of release. It broke the 'enough' threshold without hitting the 'silly' wall. 'Cause that's the thing. If the audience says 'Alright, thanks, that's enough', f**k them, edge over the line just a little more. That's what Alien did, and it didn't need gore to do it; they just used ridiculous ideas and creepy creature behaviour.

[SiL]

...what?

When?

In what aspect?

Nothing about the movie stepped over any sort of line. Texas Chainsaw Massacre traipsed over the line into balls-out insanity land; Alien walked firmly along it.

[MadassAlex]

Oral bestial rape culminating in an exploded chest.

If that doesn't cross any lines, I don't know what does.

[SiL]

Oral bestial rape culminating in an exploded chest.

If that doesn't cross any lines, I don't know what does.

No-one ever said 'Ew that's too much'.

The gore was a bit much for people to handle, sure, but they never 'crossed the line'. They couldn't -- That line had never even been drawn. Alien set the precedent.

[MadassAlex]

The precedent in squicky, explosive bestial mouth rape, I presume, 'cause there were sci-fi horrors before Alien.

(And a beachball).

[SiL]

That's what I meant, yes.

Your argument kind'a presumes everyone had come to some kind of agreement that intergalactic mouth-rape was a place you just didn't go, yet nowhere during Alien's production did anyone seem to think it was anything other than a unique way of getting a monster on a space-ship.

[AvatarIII]

i don't really think that the facehugging scene was graphic enough to warrant worries about "going to far". you can more or less have anything happen in a movie as long as you don't see it.

films like the exorcist and demon see came before alien and i'd say they make alien look kind of tame in comparison in the "going too far" stakes.

[MadassAlex]

That's what I meant, yes.

Your argument kind'a presumes everyone had come to some kind of agreement that intergalactic mouth-rape was a place you just didn't go, yet nowhere during Alien's production did anyone seem to think it was anything other than a unique way of getting a monster on a space-ship.

'Cept the horrified audiences.

Which is what it comes down to. Filmmakers - especially filmmakers like Sir Riddles De Scottingtons - are always a step or five ahead of the audience when it comes to conceptualising this kind of thing. What the cast, crew, filmmakers and suits think are ultimately secondary to the audience reaction. And if the stories about Alien's reception are true, then it was clearly crossing lines.

[SiL]

'Cept the horrified audiences.

Again - Gore got to some people, but I never heard people saying 'ohshit face-rape'.

The studio would be the first to say 'Hold on, maybe no.'

Studio never had a problem.

The face-rape was never mentioned as an issue to anyone. No-one ever said it was anything other than a cool idea. Some audience members got put off by the chest bursting and Ash's head being removed, not seeing John Hurt lying on a table with a rubber prop wrapped around his head raping him. It was solely the graphic nature of two sequences that effected most audience members to the point they walked out.

[AvatarIII]

i think the facehugger is better described as chilling rather than horrific.