The BIG Aliens rant

[Tomsche]

Don`t get me wrong, I love the movies, and painted up Khurassan`s Xenomorphs for use in whatever 15mm scifi game that needs a colony wiped out...

... but I do have a huge rant for as long as I saw that movie, and now have finally decided to share it with the world of intrawebs

http://tomsche69.blogspot.com/2012/03/theyre-comming-out-of-god-damn-walls.html

[rob_the_robgoblin]

I think this is a serious case of loving something so much, you start to hate it.

At that point, have a cup of tea, chill out and watch the damn movie.  

Very funny analysis though! 

[Tomsche]

I did swap tea for coffee (sorry to all people british or otherwise, but I just can`t get tea through my throat) and did... often... thrice since out of hosipital four weeks ago 

[Bergil]

Maybe they had some immigrants 

[anevilgiraffe]

I believe it was cattle...

Seem to remember from somewhere that Hadley's Hope had a large livestock population for fresh meat... may have been in the novelisation.

for me the huge hole in the film is when they have the discussion about where are all the eggs coming from, when they know full well that the Space Jockey ship was full of eggs as Ripley made a point of saying that earlier in the film. Of course, it's just laying the ground rules for the Queen in the audiences mind, but seems silly...

[Paddy649]

Tomsche - You observe "The remote controlled sentry guns....considering the guns are tracking movement and infrared (again, extended AND the Marines technical manual) it seems hard to believe they only blew apart a dozen or so."

I think you should note the Vulcan Phalanx effect.  This gun was designed to engage incoming missiles and shred them with depleted uranium bullets.  However, once the missile was engaged and destroyed then the remaining bits of missiles were still coming inbound and were valid targets for the gun and also got shot up.  On this basis the remote controlled sentry guns may fire 5-6 rounds at the alien initially and then fire as many rounds at the various bits of alien thet fly off.  So 20+ rounds per alien is plausible. So for 1190 rounds you could count some 60-65 Aliens.

"How did the Queen ever find time to 1. Lay an egg on the Sulaco and 2. even managed to lay an egg without her `eggsac` which she left behind in the hatchery..." 

Yep!  This one stumps me!  The Alien Queen would have to have carried a previously laid surviving egg onto Sulaco - and (off screen) positioned it on or in the escape shuttle in such a way that Ripley didn't notice it.  However, this is not as improbable as the entire premise of Alien 4!

[Marauder]

Awesome blog post.  Thanks for sharing.  Makes me want to watch the movie again!

-Tim

[manatic]

Being a major Aliens fanboy, I really liked your post!

Some possible explanations:

The sentry guns did actually pack 500 rounds each, for a grand total of 2000. Since they're positioned in pairs, it's pretty plausible to think that a lot of the time both of the guns are tracking the same target for massive overkill. The guns seem to roughly have a firing rate of 16 rounds per second, and we can probably assume that a considerable part of those don't hit their target or keep hammering into a fatally injured creature. The guns also seem to be only moving on the horizontal axis, which would mean Xenomorphs on the ceiling or the walls being safe-ish, but possibly still triggering the movement sensors. The sentry guns don't seem to be very sophisticated systems, unlike the smartguns wielded by Vasquez and Drake. Here's the clip on Youtube:

Anyway, even if we assume the guns kill 50-60 of the creatures, we're still left with 59-69 (according to your commendably accurate count) - still plenty enough to create the mass attack through the ceiling. If we assume the whole firefight with grenades and all takes out 20, we're still left with 40-50.

As for the Queen...I think the whole "egg on the Sulaco" was a pretty implausible retconn twist added by Alien 3. If there was an egg, it must've been carried there. IIRC, the process works so that the Xenomorph warriors/drones carry the eggs to wherever they have their prey cocooned.

anevilgiraffe, the exact dialogue is:

Ripley: They grab the colonists, they move them over there and they immobilize them to be hosts for more of these. Which would mean that there would have to be a lot of these parasites, right? One for each colonist. That's over a hundred at least.
Bishop: Yes, that follows.
Ripley: But each one of these things comes from an egg, right? So who's laying these eggs?
Bishop: I'm not sure. It must be something we haven't seen yet.

So knowing about the eggs in the Space Jockey ship doesn't really invalidate the question about who's laying them.

[Silent Invader]

I hadn't thought about it before and now I don't want to!
 

[joe5mc]

Perhaps worth noting that when the Queen is attacking Ripley on the platform, there isn't another Alien in site. Perhaps, mots of the hive HAD been wiped out at that point.  Maybe it was this lack of numbers that set the Queen off after her in the first place.

[Tomsche]

Funny thing is, here they take my post for what it is, some good `tongue in cheeck` ranting to go with some painted 15mm beasties.

At TMP though, it has erupted in a smoldering, waiting to be ignited flamewar about the fact that the Aliens can even exists having acid for blood, including scientific explanations about amino acids in the bloodstream...  

for example

Formic acid is about as strong as acetic acid (vinegar), its first cousin. It is NOWHERE as strong as sulfuric or hudrochloric acids.
It's not going to be eating through any metallic decks.

Parzival, give it up. We are dealing with FAITH here. People are convinced that the Aliens are scientifically plausible (the Manual says so!), and no one with an actual education in Chemistry is going to convince them otherwise.

It's kind of an Ontological belief here. We can conceive of wome pretty weird Bleeped text in scifi, so therefore it must exist. grin

Not to mention that whole Conservation of Mass and Energy business…

To grow, you have to eat. Period.

Some people over there (especially the quotee) really should learn that it is about games, movies, and a hobby 

[anevilgiraffe]

anevilgiraffe, the exact dialogue is:

Ripley: They grab the colonists, they move them over there and they immobilize them to be hosts for more of these. Which would mean that there would have to be a lot of these parasites, right? One for each colonist. That's over a hundred at least.
Bishop: Yes, that follows.
Ripley: But each one of these things comes from an egg, right? So who's laying these eggs?
Bishop: I'm not sure. It must be something we haven't seen yet.

So knowing about the eggs in the Space Jockey ship doesn't really invalidate the question about who's laying them.

IIRC, the process works so that the Xenomorph warriors/drones carry the eggs to wherever they have their prey cocooned.

 

[No Such Agency]

I posted this on Tomsche's blog too 

Do we actually SEE dozens of them liquefied by the sentry guns?  No.  The Xenos are intelligent but "eusocial" animals (like ants or bees) who don't hesitate to sacrifice individuals for the collective, and their experience overrunning the colonists would have taught them that firearms have a limited supply of ammo.  So sending in only a handful of warriors to be shot to bits depleting the sentry guns' ammo wouldn't be remotely out of character for them.  This would leave dozens of warriors alive for the remaining attacks.

[Michka]

Now this is a fun rant.

For my two cents: Don't forget we never get to see more then six Aliens at any one time in the film. That's because there were only six Alien suit available. Given how the creature's design confuses the eye, and some amazing photography from Mr. Cameron, it just looks like dozens and dozens on screen whenever they attack. This doesn't sway the argument one way or the other. I just thought it was an interesting tid-bit. 

[Parriah]

As far as I know, it is never said that the facehuggers planting one in your abdomen is the only way that the Xenomorphs hatch. Maybe they do that to hatch faster, Maybe they take a Lot longer to mature in the eggs without a host. The eggs in the original were in suspended animation till the Nostromo's crew blunders into the death Trap there.   ?? No? I think maybe so.