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[Scorpion Soldier]

I remember hearing in an original script that the Alien was supposed to live for like 3 days and then die. It apparently was already dying at the end of Alien.

Considering they were created as weapons, this could be the case. Since the engineers obviously would have no need for them after they did what they were supposed to do. If they ever did set it in stone. Continuity errors in franchises with different directors aren't that uncommon of course.

 

[Flynn77]

Now we have Prometheus you don't need the AvP lore, as far as we are aware they are a weapon created by the engineers, seemingly to wipe out life on a planet. It starts in that goopy crap form that creates those snake like creatures, possibly because they were suitable for that environment. From there the creature evolves as it moves through hosts and at some point the Xenomorph we see Alien was created and seemingly stuck around.

We don't really know how it works, but going from Prometheus as me has that film turned out to be, the engineers were coming to wipe out life on Earth, and they were going to use these creatures to do it.



It left the car alone in Alien, we don't know why, and killed pretty much everything else. In the theatrical release of Alien 3 a facehygger infected the dog and created the Xenomorph, in the proper release it actually infected the Bull and then killed/ate the dog.

Thank god it left the car alone, can you imagine the chaos out on the highway with a xenomorph at the wheel?

 

[Messypandas]

They were invented to rip planets a new arsehole, I always thought they were a kinda synthetic machine so maybe they eat parts of the ship or who the fuck knows. Ressurection they're grown pretty much in a vaccuum.

 

[CorrisD]

Thank god it left the car alone, can you imagine the chaos out on the highway with a xenomorph at the wheel?

This is what I get for doing long posts on my phone.

It was left as a mystery in Alien, it was supposed to a completely unknown 'alien' thing. Parts of it were hinted at in the deleted scene where victims are turned into eggs, it uses some different method of energy absorption to eating.

In Aliens Cameron turned them into mere large bugs that followed existing animal patterns, with the exception of the now completely non-sensical facehugger phase. So the above doesn't apply to Aliens, it's a much bigger plot hole in that film.

If you don't mind me asking, why is the facehugger phase nonsensical?

 

[DeadTrees]

The more impressive feat of handwaving biology is how they can go from breathing nitrogen to breathing oxygen without missing a beat, right from the first movie.

 

[FryHole]

If you don't mind me asking, why is the facehugger phase nonsensical?

Yeah, it still seems to fit ok. Cameron's setup makes it a kind of ant colony with a parasitic stage and, if you'll pardon the stretch, a plant-like sporophyte-gametophyte scenario with eggs laid by the queen and different eggs laid by the facehugger.

Also I assume everyone was put off their dinner by Kane's unfortunate incident, maybe it came back later and hoovered up the leftovers.

 

[D.Lo]

If you're sticking to the strictest canon, i.e. Alien and Aliens are the only things that exist, then we don't know a lot. But the supplementary materials and spinoff series do shed a lot of light on it all.

The strictest cannon would be Alien alone. Aliens was the first chink in the armour, contradiction-wise.

If you don't mind me asking, why is the facehugger phase nonsensical?

Nonsensical from a biology perspective. What possible need is there for facehuggers when you have a queen ant? Just birth live bugs (or eggs that hatch without need of any host).

The existence of the queen is not explained at either, there has to be a queen egg? If so why not make all eggs queen eggs? Did the whole colony come from one facehugger (as implied in the DC) - in which case the first Alien was the queen? So why wasn't the egg in Alien a queen? Just good(ish) luck? And if Xenos can have variety (queen/soldier), why not have variety that doesn't need a host to grow beyond egg/facehugger stage? And how did the Xenos cover the base with 'hive resin'? What possible use did they have for a hive? Why did the hive they created match the design of the spaceship of a completely different species?

Alien created a unique lifecycle for its demon, and originally it was to be shown that it could self-perpetuate by turning some prey into eggs. Aliens slapped a basic bug template onto that which doesn't really fit.

 

[FryHole]

Nonsensical from a biology perspective. What possible need is there for facehuggers when you have a queen ant? Just birth live bugs (or eggs that hatch without need of any host).

It's not nonsensical, we just don't have answers, which isn't the same thing. Hypothetical - facehuggers are long-lived and hardy, can go dormant if necessary, small and versatile, a superior way to spread/re-establish a colony long after a queen has died. Soldiers are like many adult insects, highly active short-lived creatures that do nothing but reproduce (or in this case gather for the queen) before they die off. There's nothing in the films to indicate that's the case, but I think it'd work. Real life parasite stages vary wildly, and they all do what they do because each stage is perfect at doing what is required at that point in the life cycle.

 

[Perkel]

They are a biological weapon. They probably absorb energy from whatever they find in the atmosphere around them or some shit. They are created to be the "perfect" lifeform.

Spoiler

Your guess is as good as mine.

According to Prometheus they are just android fuckup.

 

[Escape Goat]

silicon based lifeforms

 

[JB1981]

How was batman able to climb that bridge and paint on a flammable bat? We've never seen him climb a bridge before. We've never seen him be able to paint with flammable material. Did he just use a magical gasoline painter? I mean c'mon!

Haha! I loved how many people had an issue with that scene. As if the movie should have wasted its time showing batman going thru the effort of all that

 

[JackAubrey]

It's not nonsensical, we just don't have answers, which isn't the same thing. Hypothetical - facehuggers are long-lived and hardy, can go dormant if necessary, small and versatile, a superior way to spread/re-establish a colony long after a queen has died. Soldiers are like many adult insects, highly active short-lived creatures that do nothing but reproduce (or in this case gather for the queen) before they die off. There's nothing in the films to indicate that's the case, but I think it'd work. Real life parasite stages vary wildly, and they all do what they do because each stage is perfect at doing what is required at that point in the life cycle.

I assume that queens are expensive for colonies to make. So facehuggers/single-eggs are a better way of beginning colonies. Once the alien colonies have reached a certain size - whether that's related to food or implantation hosts - then a queen can be grown. Something similar does happen in some insect species doesn't it?

 

[sazzy]

Ok im watching Prometheus right now and near the end; what I don't get is how did the abortion octupus get so big?

It just managed to grow on air!?

 

[Hindle]

Pot noodles.

 

[sixteen-bit]

The eat Fear

 

[cheststrongwell]

The eat Fear

And crumbs.

 

[NekoFever]

The more impressive feat of handwaving biology is how they can go from breathing nitrogen to breathing oxygen without missing a beat, right from the first movie.

The adult alien was only ever in an oxygenated environment, and they pick up characteristics from the host (i.e. a human). The facehugger was from a nitrogen-rich environment but could go dormant once it was attached to Kane and died immediately after implantation anyway.

That's assuming they even need to breathe like we do.

 

[NEO0MJ]

It's not nonsensical, we just don't have answers, which isn't the same thing. Hypothetical - facehuggers are long-lived and hardy, can go dormant if necessary, small and versatile, a superior way to spread/re-establish a colony long after a queen has died. Soldiers are like many adult insects, highly active short-lived creatures that do nothing but reproduce (or in this case gather for the queen) before they die off. There's nothing in the films to indicate that's the case, but I think it'd work. Real life parasite stages vary wildly, and they all do what they do because each stage is perfect at doing what is required at that point in the life cycle.

Not to mention, Face-Huggers are used to create aliens well suited to whatever planet they are on. Not much use if the alien was limited in what form of planets it can invade.

 

[Protein]

Maybe they feed on their "creep" like the Zerg do in Starcraft.

 

[FryHole]

I assume that queens are expensive for colonies to make. So facehuggers/single-eggs are a better way of beginning colonies. Once the alien colonies have reached a certain size - whether that's related to food or implantation hosts - then a queen can be grown. Something similar does happen in some insect species doesn't it?

Off the top of my head I'm not sure - I think new bee, ant and termite colonies are established by a reproductive female/group, although they might delay production of new reproductives until the colony is well established, focusing before then on producing workers (which is quite cool in itself, bumble bees do this).

 

[dionysus]

The black goop evolves as needed for plot reasons. Sometimes it makes a queen cause you need to up the ante from the previous movie, sometimes it makes a kraken from a human egg and placenta for vagina/feminity symbolism, sometimes it makes a snake/lamprey which makes a tentacle human with a lot of warts cause that is the inevitable fate of potheads.

Why try to apply science to absurdity?

 

[Wag]

 

[GAMEPROFF]

Wasnt it etablished in the deleted scenes of Alien, that if a single xenomorph is in a enviroment alone, it starts creating a hive and later becoming a Queen?

Also saw this in many semi-canononical games and comics.

 

[nOoblet16]

What do they eat you ask?

Scientific theories and logic.

 

[y2dvd]

I wanna see these things wreck havoc on sea creatures. Imagine a giant octopus xenomorph or a blue whale xenomorph or some shit.

 

[FryHole]

I wanna see these things wreck havoc on sea creatures. Imagine a giant octopus xenomorph or a blue whale xenomorph or some shit.

Close enough?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin_shark

 

[MickeyPhree]

In the original script and novel for alien, the chestnuts yet did indeed get into the pantry and ate a bunch of shit in there.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Up until Alien 3, you never saw a xenomorph eat anything. You saw them murder people, but until Alien 3, the idea that they actually eat people was never spelled out. Kill people, use them as incubators, sure.

I always thought it was creepier that they didn't eat at all. They don't need to.

 

[Burt]

Black goo has the superpower to repurpose matter from its most basic elements into whatever form it was engineered/designed to. Aliens get their nutrition from anything they ingest being completely broken down turned into a usable energy source within their body because they have a black goo stomach, and the hive secretions are created in a similar way but processed through a different organ.

Spoiler

Lies