Reproduction Method Official

[Kimarhi]

Took me three days to get through--but I read all 96 pages.  You guys are really fired up about this!  Couple of points:

A lot of trashing Colin and Greg for the idea, but I think it's important to remember they were the directors, not the writers.  If you're going to blame someone for the alternative impregnation idea, blame Salerno, (or whatever script doctor injected it into the story.)  Now, a lot of you are going to say:  "But they're the DIRECTORS, they could have refused to film it."  Uh, okay--clearly you don't understand the Hollywood process.  This is their first film.  How much creative control are they really going to be able to exercise?  You really think Fox, having greenlit the script as is, are going to roll over for a couple of new guys because they don't like something in the script.  Aside from that, directors define the way shots are staged, how actors deliver lines, how the film is cut together--they don't have much control over the actual script.

And with regards to canon:  
*  We're talking about a predator/alien hybrid.  We haven't seen it before so who's to say what it can and can't do--whether it can morph into a queen or not.  For all we know, male predators undergo parthenogenesis in the absence of a female.  They are reptilian looking, after all.  This is a common phenomenon amongst reptilian creatures.  
*  The new impregnation process, I'll admit, doesn't seem too promising in terms of "cool," but because we're talking about a new creature, it in fact does NOT negate the other options shown in previous films.  Previously, we were talking about aliens hybridized with human DNA...if you can suspend disbelief long enough to accept that there is a hostile alien that bleeds acid and reproduces inside a living human host, you can surmise that this is the way the life-cycle is expressed in that genetic context.

Personally, I think they needed a way to create lots of aliens without resorting to queens, eggs, and facehuggers (probably due to screen-time restraints, rather than budgetary ones) and opted for this method so that they could combine the predalien with the queen to create a multi-purpose "boss."  (Refer to Colin's "it serves the same purpose" comment.)  Now whether they sacrificed the exposition needed to set up the standard life-cycle for non-fans in favor of crap you can see on the WB any night of the week is a topic still up for debate.

I'm not going to get too worked up about this unless it looks like trash.  If it's a fun film, I'm cool with it.  At the end of the day, it's not Alien 5.  If that ever happens, let's pray to God the person who writes it knows what they're doing...

PS:  I LOVE this board!!  The debates get really, really good.  95% intelligent--soooo rare on the internet.

These are good points, but not always completely true.  Scott was a sophmore director with only one flick beforehand and he totally omitted the scene where Dallas and Brett are turning into eggs in the theatrical cut.  Also Scott came up with the idea to paint the alien black to show the creature's accelerated degeneration into death, yet originally the writers had the Alien being civilized creatures that could live for hundreds of years.  Scott took a big hatchet to that.

They do have some (sometimes even more than some) creative control, even though I do agree that Salerno could have as much to do with this as the bros do.

[Kimarhi]

The idea that the Alien would take traits from the host was an idea that the Alien creators thought up.

It was an idea prevelant even in the initial Starbeast scripts (which was the precursor of Alien).  Fincher didn't think that up in Alien 3.

In Aliens, we'd already seen the eggs, and knew they had to come from somewhere.  With Scott leaving out the crew turning into egg scene in the original movie, Cameron was just filling in the blanks. 

Neither director/writing team just came up with stuff out of thin air, both ideas were based on concepts scene in the original movie.  Maybe less so with Aliens, but then again, the Aliens logic made perfect sense. 

Haven't seen what lays the eggs before in the first movie.   Hmmmm.

wells whos to say that the original idea was for the drones to lay the eggs, giger came up with the alien right? well he sure as hell had nothing to do with teh queen because he was completely cut out from aliens, the put is things have been added in before so why get so worked up about this

Wrong.  Dan O' Bannon thought the Alien up.  It was giger that came up with the designs.

Dan O' Bannon and the other writers are thanked every film  for their contribution of the Alien universe to the rest of the series.  Technically aside from the Ripley character, the writers of the original were left out of the sequel too, and Cameron could've done any number of drastic things to the Alien.

Yet the only thing he really changed was the addition of numerous aliens, and the queen.  I feel that Cameron is less at fault than the Strause brothers are because of the simple fact we SEE thousands of eggs in the derelict chamber, and the fact that Scott omitted the egging process scene in the original.

It was a logical progression.  People wanted to know where the eggs came from.  Cameron showed them.

Nobody wanted to know about the predalien having protector aliens because there was no evidence of them in previous films.  Nobody looking at the first few movies could be like: "Hmm, wonder where those protector aliens came from?" Because no such thing existed.

The closest thing to it: The one facehugger that infects two host in Alien 3, and you still can't convince everybody that there wasn't two facehuggers in that movie.

how can you say the they queen doesnt have protectors, alien 3? it was never confirmed how eggs were on the saluco any way,

and this is gap filling, aliens arent pokemon they dont just sudden go from something small and simple turn white and evolve into a final state, this is just filling the gap between young alien and fully grown queen, if the queens weve seen are actually fully grown,

How can I say the queen doesn't have protectors?  Because none were shown.  The only ones left in the hive are regular aliens that do what regular aliens do.

alien 3

Only if you believe in the one facehuger two embryo's.  Which you seemed to indicate earlier you didn't.  Not to mention a completely different delivery vehicle than loogy hocking.  Otherwise its just a warrior doing what warriors do.

[TheAncientEnemy]

My biggest problem with a lot of the ideas defending the new reproductive method is the implication that the queen needs some kind of protection and is terribly vulnerable. Even a normal sized drone alien is a pretty fearsome creature so the idea that suddenly the alien queen can't handle herself seems lame. Sure she isn't full-size, but even if she is just as large as a drone she can still hold her own.

So there is a brief period where the queen is all alone and just laying eggs. Why is that a big deal? Is she more vulnerable than she would be if she had a few drones already there to protect her? Yes, of course, but that would be nature. Do queen ants pop out a few soldiers before they tunnel and start laying eggs all alone? No. Do bees or wasps or termites? No. That's nature. If a queen gets taken out somehow at this stage of unusual vulnerability then that's just survival of the fittest doing what it does. If the aliens had it easy 100% of the time then there would never be any hope for anything else, INCLUDING the aliens themselves since they would eventually have no competition for survival and ultimately end up destroying themselves. Part of what makes them INTERESTING and REAL is the fact that they are flawed. They don't go smashing through brick walls and flying like superman.

So Ash says that the alien is a "perfect organism." So what? You guys do realize that the character WANTED to protect the alien, right? If he were to just say "It's pretty scary... but if you shoot it then you can kill it" he wouldn't have really projected the kind of hopelessness he hoped to give the Nostromo crew. Even if that wasn't his motive at the time, people say the same thing about ANY animal they admire. People who study sharks say they are perfect organisms as well. It's all about admiration and not to be taken literally. If you think about it, every organism is a perfect organism. Nothing is as good at being a shark as a shark is.

Anyway, to get back to the queen; I always liked the idea of her hiding somewhere and laying her brood. I think that is a lot creepier and more realistic. The idea that someone or something could just stumble into the queen's little nest and be facehugged before they even realized it. I think it's great. And, like I said, the element of danger TO the alien just makes it better. She could be found out. She could start her nest somewhere very obvious but just in a place no one thought to look. Think of how great it would be if the queen started a nest in a place where she could hear people walking around above her or something.

I'm sure people will argue that this wouldn't be efficient. Well, sometimes nature isn't. Is a trap door spider guaranteed to get prey when he's hungry? No. He has to wait. Do some ant lions starve to death because they built their trap in a bad place? Yes. If nature was 100% efficient it simply wouldn't work and we already know that the aliens are no more efficient than any other parasitic predatory creature.

[Major Alan Schaefer]

Ash was a robot no secret movtive...jsut the facts

[TheAncientEnemy]

Ash was a robot no secret movtive...jsut the facts

Sure. If you ignore the fact that he withheld information from the crew the entire time and was obviously there to protect the alien at all costs. We aren't talking about some Asimov "I AM A ROBOT" thing here. The androids in the alien universe aren't like that. I would have assumed that after having seen Bishop and Call that would be obvious.

No mere robot cracks jokes like Bishop or crosses itself in a chapel like Call.

[Major Alan Schaefer]

Ash was an ealrier model, his intentions were to follow orders thats it and thats what he did. Not like he was going to get a raise if he did it. also Bishop was trying to protect the umans that what he did and Call was a rebel robot...so like i said...no secret motive he was following the orders of the company..they had the secrret not Ash

[holdtheline]

So the predalien wasn't trying to kill the predator in this image:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb37/hugol22/AsvP-R/normal_trailerpop67.jpg
She was trying to impragnate him.

That is clearly a headbite attack.

True, and chet fails.
Wolf is really badass, prepared for almost everything.
And i´m glad that the predator this time arround uses his f**king hands and claws.

Agreed.

[TheAncientEnemy]

You can't honestly try to tell me that Ash was all about "just the facts" when he said that the alien can't be killed unless you stopped watching and that point and believe to this day that the alien is invincible.

He was an extention of the company, yes. AS A RESULT OF THIS he had motives that the crew did not know about. They were therefore secret.

If the alien were a PERFECT organism then it wouldn't have failed.

[Luckygreycat]

Thinking about it now it dos sound very gigerish

Perhaps Colin will end up being right.  The creature on the right looks like the alien just puked that maggot looking thing into its mouth.  I keep going back and forth on this one.  Maybe it was always meant to be.

[Major Alan Schaefer]

Peferct in adaptablitly and not having motives or morality not that it was a god, Ash said that because he thought you couldn't kill it without destroyign the ship because all the acid would melt through the hull

[TheAncientEnemy]

Perhaps Colin will end up being right.  The creature on the right looks like the alien just puked that maggot looking thing into its mouth.  I keep going back and forth on this one.

At this point in the Alien saga Giger's paintings aren't going to really shine any light on what's happening. Being an initial artist and art consultant doesn't have much to do with what's taken place since... which I am actually happy about. Giger is an amazing surrealist, but some of his ideas would translate to film in a very silly way.

I doubt many people would disagree that his ideas and design for Alien 3 were... well, I was going to saw "awful," but out of respect I will say "out there."

[Luckygreycat]

This makes me regret this movie being made because where will it stop, where will it end...? If every rookie director from now on, leaves his imprint that clearly disfigures continuity and the FRANCHISE's canon, then we will end up having a complete transvesti of the franchise...

AVP-R and AVP doesnt pain me as much as Resurrection did. The entire approach to that film was a "who gives a crap, its a ridiculous scifi movie. Nobodys gonna care" mentality, and now were supposed to reguard it? IMO hell no. I dont think a director can just come along and do something so egregious as that mess and be taken seriously. Its just counter intuitive imo. Those movies then have to be taken into consideration makign rules for future films? Yeah right. 

I don't consider alien Resurrection part of the franchise.  I just try to pretend it doesn't exist.

[Wildbird]

Okay, 96 pages and all I see is: "they can't", "not in this universe", "he said that in the audio commentary..." and stuff.

1st of all, when Mr. Scott was creating Alien he wasn't thinking of any sequels, he was thinking on some good shit: how this would look, how scary is this shit. Or he and his friend are having a joint and think: "Tail over Lambert's leg - scary as hell, I would shit my pants, yeah, f**king A, I gotta put this down..."

Then there was no mythology, correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole universe got wind up after Aliens, ya know comic books and stuff.
__________________

Aliens are f**king animals, ya know, they can adapt not only because they are perfect, but because it's nature and some simple lizards can change their sex if their mate is dead or gone because it is a f**king instinct to reproduce.
__________________

Stop posting all these things about bad ideas and stuff, if the directors, producers and writers think that this is a good idea, they may be right.

[TheAncientEnemy]

Peferct in adaptablitly and not having motives or morality not that it was a god, Ash said that because he thought you couldn't kill it without destroyign the ship because all the acid would melt through the hull

If that was the case then every animal aside from man would be "perfect" for its lack of morality. As far as motives go, it has just as many as other lifeforms: to survive.

As far as not killing it without ruining the Nostromo, do you think Ash forgot about the airlocks?

Why not just admit that Ash said those words out of admiration and respect for the efficiency of the creature. Surely if there is one thing a robot can appreciate it's efficiency. Saying any creature is "perfect" is not a scientific fact in any way.

[WisePredator]

Why can't Chet just tail rape...?