Ridley Scott Prometheus: NOT the Alien Prequel Details

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

Anyway, I do rate the film highly for what it is - a great SF action movie. 'Aliens' is only a problem for me when re-watching 'Alien', and I have to struggle to wipe from my mind the familiar-from-earth aspects of the creatures' behaviour patterns - oh, and their complete vulnerability to firearms.

*slams desk*

Hold it right there Colin. The first Alien film clearly established that the creatures were not only vulnerable to firearms, but also to medical cutting equipment and to ball pointed harpoons as well. The first film goes through great lengths to establish that this is a creature that they simply cannot just confront and kill because not only will it's acid kill them if it ever got on them, but also that the acid will eat through the hull and expose the ship to the vacuum of space. The creature was NEVER meant to be invulnerable to firearms in either movie.

So, harpoons that aren't even pointy are ok for disposing of aliens, but Pulse Rifles that fire 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless light armor piercing rounds are not.... Quite a contradiction!

 

[Dave Ward]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

So, harpoons that aren't even pointy are ok for disposing of aliens, but Pulse Rifles that fire 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless light armor piercing rounds are not.... Quite a contradiction!

Yes, the alien is vulnerable to gunfire, but the first movie goes to great lengths to keep the upper hand with the creature, hence the level of suspense is maintained. In Aliens, we see them being gunned down left right and center. that fitted the movie very well but it also takes some of the fear out of the beast, which is one of the reasons they had to bring the alien queen into the movie.

 

[Birdie]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

*slams desk*

Hold it right there Colin. The first Alien film clearly established that the creatures were not only vulnerable to firearms, but also to medical cutting equipment and to ball pointed harpoons as well. The first film goes through great lengths to establish that this is a creature that they simply cannot just confront and kill because not only will it's acid kill them if it ever got on them, but also that the acid will eat through the hull and expose the ship to the vacuum of space. The creature was NEVER meant to be invulnerable to firearms in either movie.

So, harpoons that aren't even pointy are ok for disposing of aliens, but Pulse Rifles that fire 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless light armor piercing rounds are not.... Quite a contradiction!

Wrong. We learn that the creature's skin can be penetrated, that's all.

The damn thing survives a starship engine blast on the end of that harpoon and survives!

Given the short time between chestburster and the big guy, as well as Ash's comments about cell-regeneration, we could easily be looking at the ultimate self repairing machine. This would tie in with Ash's lovenote to the alien in his 'gurgly head' speech, and the nature of the creatures reproductive cycle in the cut scene. A singular organism of pure destruction.

I never liked the giant insects Cameron brought it, especially the whole queen thing, which didn't work for me at all, but Art is right - where would you go with Ridleys alien? Another haunted house movie, probably.

The idea for Aliens was brilliant one to continue the series, but compromised the creature created in the first film. It's a terrific (if bloated) sci-fi combat movie that is showing it's age, whereas Alien is a timeless, classic of scifi.

I fear the prequel, I don't trust Scott's ability any more, and 20th Century Burke, even less.

 

[SSgt Burton]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

The first Alien film clearly established that the creatures were not only vulnerable to firearms...

I don't recall firearms being used at all in ALIEN let alone against the creature. But if your point was that a bullet must be able to penetrate the creature if a "rounded" harpoon is able to, so be it.

So, harpoons that aren't even pointy are ok for disposing of aliens, but Pulse Rifles that fire 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless light armor piercing rounds are not.... Quite a contradiction!

No.

The creature was not "disposed" with the harpoon. It merely caused it to lose its grip on the airlock opening. The next shot showed the creature (which seemed to be doing fine considering it had that nasty "rounded" harpoon still in it... not to mention not being affected by the vacuum of space) attempting to regain access to the ship via the engine.

The creature in ALIEN had to be dispatched by completely blasting it with full thrust from the Narcissus' engines. Even after we see it flying away, it is still pretty much intact. We don't even know if it is dead or not, just that it will no longer be able to harm Ripley.

However the creatures in "Aliens" pop like a spider in a wood fire from a 10mm explosive round.

So an explosive bullet the diameter of a AAA battery can shatter the alien into pieces but the blast from the engine of a spacecraft cannot? Quite a contradiction!


The creature in ALIEN was shown to be nearly unstoppable. However had there only been one creature in "Aliens" the movie would have ended the minute the Marines landed.


(Birdie types faster than me. :lol )

Kevin

 

[Jedi2016]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

So an explosive bullet the diameter of a AAA battery can shatter the alien into pieces but the blast from the engine of a spacecraft cannot? Quite a contradiction!

Not really. The engine blast is more just a concussive force than anything else. It's designed to propel, not destroy. The bullets, on the other hand, explode after they've penetrated the exoskeleton. It's the firecracker argument. Open palm? Burn your hand. Closed fist? Lose hand.

 

[SSgt Burton]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

I wouldn't put my hand under the takeoff of the space shuttle.


I keed.


Kevin

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

I don't recall firearms being used at all in ALIEN let alone against the creature. But if your point was that a bullet must be able to penetrate the creature if a "rounded" harpoon is able to, so be it.

Right, because if you can cut into it with a medical device, it's totally logical to assume that firearms would be completely USELESS against it. That's like saying you can fill a balloon with water but you shouldn't assume you can fill it with coke.

The creature was not "disposed" with the harpoon.

Yes it was. Ripley shot the creature with the harpoon and It flew out screaming. Sure, the airlock door caught the harpoon, but it did it's job in helping dispose of the alien.

I think everyone is missing the point I'm trying to make here. Colin said "and their complete vulnerability to firearms." as if that was a problem when in fact that was clearly evident that the Aliens ARE VULNERABLE to firearms and pretty much anything that gets into contact with them if used lethally enough.

In Aliens, we see them being gunned down left right and center. that fitted the movie very well but it also takes some of the fear out of the beast

Yep. Those marines really took the fear out of the aliens when they conquered their nest using their state of the art fire power....Oh, wait. They didn't. They lost more than half their troops in that first encounter, and in the end only one marine survived the whole affair burned and out cold. Clearly having weapons completely diminishes the fear of the aliens!

Wasn't the point of the vulnerability of these creatures supposed to be that you COULD KILL THEM but it was a bad idea since it might kill you in the process? ALIENS upheld that notion to it's fullest degree, and we're upset about it for some reason. Why?

 

[SSgt Burton]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

Yes it was (disposed of). Ripley shot the creature with the harpoon and It flew out screaming. Sure, the airlock door caught the harpoon, but it did it's job in helping dispose of the alien.

If the door had been closed with the alien on the inside that harpoon would not have saved Ripley.


We could do this forever so that was my final reply to this.



Kevin

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

We could do this forever so that was my final reply to this.

The entire point of making a "It could have happened like this" is to make the conversation go on forever, because you can have anything happen differently. I'm making the point that the harpoon was instrumental in the effort to dispose the alien while other users are saying it was not.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

If the door had been closed with the alien on the inside that harpoon would not have saved Ripley.

But the alien wasn't on the inside when the door closed. It was on the outside because Ripley shot it with the Harpoon! So in essence, the harpoon saved Ripley. It didn't kill the alien fully, but it helped make it possible.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

I will not end today on a 666 post!

:angry

 

[Birdie]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

The 'invulnerability' of the Alien in the first movie is ambiguous. When Ripley asks Ash 'How do we kill it?' he responds, 'You can't.'

Does he mean, 'You can't without depressurising the ship' or literally 'It can't be killed'?

At the end of the movie, the creature appears to still be alive, despite taking a rocket engine in the mush.

The firearms question is actually completeley unresolved in Alien. They assume that because they can cut the hugger finger, and it bleeds acid, the Alien adult will be the same.

There is no evidence in the movie that this is even the case. At the end, having just rewatched it, it's unclear whether the harpoon penetrates the alien, or just knocks it out of the hatch.

There is no evidence in the first movie, therefore, to factually support that firearms can physically damage the adult alien. Game over.

 

[Larry Young]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

There is no evidence in the movie that this is even the case. At the end, having just rewatched it, it's unclear whether the harpoon penetrates the alien, or just knocks it out of the hatch.

There is no evidence in the first movie, therefore, to factually support that firearms can physically damage the adult alien. Game over.

Well, don't be like that. I've just cued it up, and at 1:51:51 the harpoon is very clearly shown to penetrate the alien's torso. Big ol' splash of acid blood, and everything. And at 1:51:54, after the gun is pulled out of Ripley's hand and the airlock door closes on it, you can clearly see the cable swinging with the alien on the end of it. So, there you go: a pressurized gas gun can throw a metal barb hard enough at close quarters to snag on an alien's rib cage.

So the game's still on, for the people who like to play this one. :lol

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

Colin,

Your ideas about Alien are incredibly intriguing and are making me look at that film very differently. However, based on what you are saying and what draws you to Alien, wouldn't it be almost entirely impossible to do a second movie? Any additional footage is bound to provide additional information and additional information means less mystique. The only way to make a second movie and maintain the mystique would be to add additional information that is purposefully confusing and I think we would reject that immediately. Just out of curiosity, how do you envision a second film that wouldn't ultimately damage the first?

It would be very difficult, I agree! I'll go away and have a think, lol... but it's like 2001, you know? Artistically speaking, there should never have been a sequel to that either...

 

[Colin Droidmilk]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

On the gun thing, I'm talking about the emphasis Scott puts on its unstoppability, let's call it that. Scott makes every effort to play down hopes that weapons could despatch it, especially after Ash's depressing analysis of its structural strength. When Ash says, 'You can't' in answer to the question of whether it can be killed, it is Scott crushing your morale; if that's his purpose the last he thing he wants in your head is an image of the alien getting its head blown off by a rifle. At that moment in Ash's speech, hopes that it can be killed at all are deliberately crushed in the mind of the audience. And it's that despair which is part of the film's strength. Scott does not want you to imagine any scenario in which the alien's acidblood defence would be useless to it. Cameron on the other hand immediately reveals that if you stand 20 feet back and have a rifle, you'd be completely safe from the thing.

The harpoon penetrated the alien but it didn't come close to mortally wounding it as far as we can see. Yes, the alien may have been vulnerable to a pulse rifle etc. but the point is we didn't know it in the first film - and were better off not knowing.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

The difference between the first one and the second one is that in ALIEN they were up in space, whereas they were down on the ground in ALIENS. THAT right there alters the acid blood damage from the beast. When you are on the ground you don't have to worry about the alien blood going all the way through the ship, punching holes in the hull. THAT was the strength of the beast in the first one, as you could use weapons to kill it, but you'd be risking you die too from decompression.

It says nothing at all about the creature not being able to be killed in the first one. Only that you'd be ****ing stupid to try, as you'd likely kill yourself in the process.

Also, the Alien queen was completely unnecessary in ALIENS as Ripley mentioned in the beginning that Kane found thousands of eggs. So, going from thousands of eggs in the Derelict to asking the question "But who's laying the eggs" later in the film always feels a bit... weird.

 

[SSgt Burton]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

*sigh*


Everybody talks about how dangerous the alien's acid blood is.

The blood of the facehugger ate through nearly three decks of the Nostromo and threatened to breech the hull. That's some pretty fearsome stuff! And if showing it eating through the decks wasn't enough, O'Bannon threw in some dialogue about how it resembles what must be the most powerful acid in the universe known to man.

However the blood of the adult alien in "ALIEN" was not shown. But it can be inferred that the blood is still as dangerous as the facehuggers (or is it?).

In "Aliens" we are presented with large "holes" in the colony going through several levels of floors (all made of metal) created by the alien's acid blood.


However...

The aliens are blasted left right and center splashing gallons of their "acid" blood all over the place. This is all happening in the "dangerous primary heat exchangers" part of the atmosphere processor. Yet none of the "super-duper acid blood" affects any sensitive parts of this highly dangerous area (this is the same place that one stray bullet round could cause a nuclear explosion).

Drake gets a face full of acid- he is killed but only seems to be horribly disfigured by the acid. Shouldn't it have completely dissolved his head?

The APC runs over an alien crushing it, splashing blood all over the tires. The tires are unaffected (must have been Pirellis).

And finally...

Hudson's arm is splashed with acid.

They wrap a bandage around it. He's fine a scene or two later.

Shouldn't it have fallen off? :rolleyes


This is merely another example of the creature being watered down in the sequel.

The only (and I mean "only") arguement here is that it is the facehugger's blood that is extremely dangerous. The adult's blood is still acidic, but not as powerful.



Kevin

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

There is no evidence in the movie that this is even the case. At the end, having just rewatched it, it's unclear whether the harpoon penetrates the alien, or just knocks it out of the hatch.

Well, you can answer that if you just watch the movie. The whole point of a harpoon is to ensure that the cable from the hook stays attached to something on the user's side. In Ripley's case, the cable was still attached to the actual harpoon, which is why Ripley let it go after she hit the alien with it so it wouldn't come back via the cable. Unfortunately the airlock closed abruptly before the gun cleared it and the alien got propelled back towards the shuttle. Since you can clearly see the Alien with it's arms wide open and not holding on to anything, the cable is still embedded inside of it. Hence the harpoon freaking penetrated the creatures skin!

So, if a harpoon can penetrate this creatures skin, it's safe to say that you can penetrate it with explosive bullets being propelled at a much faster speed by a Pulse Rifle.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

Also, the Alien queen was completely unnecessary in ALIENS as Ripley mentioned in the beginning that Kane found thousands of eggs. So, going from thousands of eggs in the Derelict to asking the question "But who's laying the eggs" later in the film always feels a bit... weird.

:unsure Here we go again.

First, the only known eggs that Ripley knew about were on the derelict ship that was so far away that not even the colonists know about it when they were colonizing the planet. I highly doubt that all the colonists went all the way to the derelict ship to see what happened and got face hugged as a result.

However, when Ripley notices that there are now eggs in the actual colony (which look way to be too big for a simple alien drone to lay), she obviously got curious.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Re: Ridley Scott: Alien Prequel Details

*sigh*


Everybody talks about how dangerous the alien's acid blood is.

The blood of the facehugger ate through nearly three decks of the Nostromo and threatened to breech the hull. That's some pretty fearsome stuff! And if showing it eating through the decks wasn't enough, O'Bannon threw in some dialogue about how it resembles what must be the most powerful acid in the universe known to man.

However the blood of the adult alien in "ALIEN" was not shown. But it can be inferred that the blood is still as dangerous as the facehuggers (or is it?).

In "Aliens" we are presented with large "holes" in the colony going through several levels of floors (all made of metal) created by the alien's acid blood.


However...

The aliens are blasted left right and center splashing gallons of their "acid" blood all over the place. This is all happening in the "dangerous primary heat exchangers" part of the atmosphere processor. Yet none of the "super-duper acid blood" affects any sensitive parts of this highly dangerous area (this is the same place that one stray bullet round could cause a nuclear explosion).

Drake gets a face full of acid- he is killed but only seems to be horribly disfigured by the acid. Shouldn't it have completely dissolved his head?

The APC runs over an alien crushing it, splashing blood all over the tires. The tires are unaffected (must have been Pirellis).

And finally...

Hudson's arm is splashed with acid.

They wrap a bandage around it. He's fine a scene or two later.

Shouldn't it have fallen off? :rolleyes


This is merely another example of the creature being watered down in the sequel.

The only (and I mean "only") arguement here is that it is the facehugger's blood that is extremely dangerous. The adult's blood is still acidic, but not as powerful.



Kevin

It didn't melt the harpoon that was shot into the alien at the end of the first movie. So... that right there states that the full grown creatures didn't have as strong acidic blood as the huggers.

Here we go again.

First, the only known eggs that Ripley knew about were on the derelict ship that was so far away that not even the colonists know about it when they were colonizing the planet. I highly doubt that all the colonists went all the way to the derelict ship to see what happened and got face hugged as a result.

However, when Ripley notices that there are now eggs in the actual colony (which look way to be too big for a simple alien drone to lay), she obviously got curious.

And here we go again. Once the first got infected and an alien popped out... it could easily have taken round-about trips to the derelict and put eggs at the processing station and then started snatching one after another to bring to the eggs. No need for a queen, when there already were thousands of eggs... AND... the blast radius at the end wouldn't have hit the Derelict. So, they are essentially still there... so the sequels doesn't really make much sense... the fourth in particular. Unless there's a lot of untold history happening in those 200 years that resulted in the destruction of the Derelict in that time, as it clearly wasn't destroyed by the end of the second movie.

But sure. They needed something spectacular for the end of the second movie, so we got the queen. Saying this, I still thoroughly enjoy ALIENS and watch it regularly. I just cringe a bit every time they make the switch and start introducing the queen.