Gavin
MemberTrilobiteApr-13-2012 11:38 AMThe way I look at it is much simple, less complex and easier to understand...
The Drone Xenomorph aboard the Nostromo was alone with no cennection to a Queen, the governing force of a Hive, and the top dog of the Xenomorph heirachy. Therefore The lone Drone cocooned Dallas as a host, but infected Brett with some type of virus that re-constituted his DNA, morphing him into an egg. An egg that would incubate a Royal Facehugger (see Alien 3) that once fully formed would've hatched, using Dallas as the host for a new Queen.
The Xenomorph is perfectly engineered to do two things...
1. To eradicate any indigenous lifeforms while propagating its own kind.
2. To survive.
And to do both effectively the Queen is necessary, therefore the above idea allows the Xenomorph to continue its purpose.
Keefus
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 11:42 AMSnorkelbottom Is definitely Correct on this tbh, it shores up the universe really. lots of posts and ideas have been around this, and i think its best idea to save face for all alien fans :)
Jim100a100
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 11:45 AMpretty sure Dallas has the same kind of egg tansformation going. you can clearly see the "petals" forming below him. Brett's is further along. The queen was an ALIENS concept
Necrofan
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 11:51 AMI always understood it to be James Cameron, in Aliens, that made the direct connection to the Alien with the life cycle of an insect. I think RS imagined something far more foreign, hard to understand and, well alien than just a big insect.
BigDave
MemberDeaconApr-13-2012 11:55 AMCheers for reply...
I guess my point was to see how people view the Evolution of the Xeno in Alien to the ones in Aliens and thus Queen etc, or would they prefer the cycle and idea of the deleted scene and ideas in the Orginal Script.
I am sure Ridley can explore and use the ideas in the orginal script for a new Organism that comes from the base Organism, that would be based around the ideas in the Orginal Script and that may change its host as the Xeno in Alien seemed to do in that deleted scene.
Thus give us a new Creature to xplore and thus not have to sabotage the ideas or hijack the xeno from Alien to make a Moccery to the Aliens Xeno.
Thus he could explain how the Xeno in Alien and thus Aliens came to be, but have the film concentrate on the Space Jockey and the Organisms or Bio Former that eventually leads to the creation of the Xeno and also the other Organisms in this movie that can be explored in a different movie.
Thus how Dinosaurs evolved into Birds could be the Xeno which is covered in Alien etc so no need to do another movie about Birds just show how and where they came from,
while also showing the Dinosaur to also evolve into Reptiles which leaves a new area and franchise that can be explored as in Reptiles.
Thus after this movie... any seqeul i dont think will cover the Space Jockey, Derelict again as per see. It could be the Pilot was the last of his kind.
Any Sequel would go down the route of what the Company does with the information, or Bio Former found on the planet or indeed the Squid Organism if this is not what creates the Xeno.
There are so many posibilities, that they only need to show/solve the Alien link and then never have to go back or touch upon that again unless they make a Alien 5.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
Necrofan
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 11:56 AMI keep going back to Giger's original paintings and drawings that spawned the idea for a screenplay in the first place, in NecromonV...
Spartacus
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 11:59 AM"A Perfect Killing Machine", "All This Thing Does, is Kill, And Make Little Xenomorphs"
[b]~Spoken Like Matt Hooper in Jaws![/b]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/LT.HIGHTIMES/1a1ahooper.jpg[/img]
BigDave
MemberDeaconApr-13-2012 12:01 PM@Necrofan
Thats the point and what i was getting at.
Ridley may have had his own ideas for how he wanted the Alien to Evolve, may had wanted to use some of the orginal script and may have wanted it to be based on the delete scene.
But the movie came out without that scene, without the stuff missing from the Orginal Script.
Cameron came along and did his own thing and from that a LEGEND was born and the most iconic Alien in movies was cemented in History.
Ridley can use this movie, to create a new Organism that develops and evolves the way he would have orginally wanted Alien to have carried on, without doing any harm to Alien/Aliens.
All he has to do is give some slight closure on the how, what, when, why and where of the Derelict, Space Jockey, Eggs on LV426 and Alien. And he can close the door on that.
And explore other ideas that most of this movie will be based on.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
Gavin
MemberTrilobiteApr-13-2012 12:16 PMContrary to common belief, Ridley, Dan and Giger are all fans of the Queen Alien.
Ghost Solitare
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 12:24 PMI find both viral DNA recoding, and embryonic reproduction equally hideous in contemplation in the context of the Alien lifecycle. Each has it's own unique and sinister quality. One involves a much further along mechanism for results, but both would obtain the same grisly ends. As Ridley is at the helm of this film. It represents an evolution in his ideals, and the mythology of ALIEN. In the back of my mind I always wanted to know if the Nostromo's Xenomorph was a midpoint in the ultimate evolution of yet an organism we hadn't seen. As it was the first Alien film, discounting the films that followed it and based on ONLY what you saw in Alien, I had no idea what Dallas and Brett were going to morph into. I had always thought that using that much raw material and the available metabolism of the host, you have the basis of the next step in the lifecycle of a rapidly evolving organism. Now before you argue, consider that Prometheus is occurring in a UNIVERSE that exists before Alien. They know absolutely none of the CANON. Ridley is going to show the events leading up to Alien. This film deals with living Engineers, or at least the mechanisms that they use to synthecise their ideals. Imagine what we'll see, faced with a technology that tantalizes in it's possibilities, while being unimaginably LETHAL in it's execution.
ubik333
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 12:56 PMWhile I like Cameron's takes in Aliens with the introdution of the Queen, in my opinion it diminished the nature of the creature from the first film. By definition, 'Alien' means differing in nature to point of incompatibility, so it should not (in my view) share any characteristics of animal biological reproduction and Drawinian procreation process as understood in Earth's animal kingdom.
Hence, why I love the idea created by Dan O'Bannon, Ron Shusett and Giger. They fleshed out a more nightmarish creature and world that would otherwise become just another B-Movie monster. At its core Alien (the film) is supposed to terrify you - and in 1979, many people pissed in their pant while watching in a dark theatre. Considering that there were no internet, no story leaks, no marketing of the kind you get today, and most importantly no film to compare with, so many people went in completely clueless and I saw a lot of them were frazzled with nerves when exiting the theatre. LOL.
Alien DNA
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 1:26 PMHas anyone considered that there may not be a cycle, as in you don't need a queen to end up back at the queen again in a cycle in order for the xeno to survive. Don't get me wrong, I love Aliens and the Queen too, but the pic of Gigers life cycle isn't exactly full circle and doesn't end up back at the egg. However, perhaps what we might see could be these new organisms from the urns (possibly) that start off small and perpetually evolve to survive by whatever means necessary through different hosts, queens for mass egg production, egg morphing etc. Which could come to the point of the xenos that we see in Alien and Aliens as to where we could be seeing the further progression of the original organism. This could also explain all the different additions to the process of their procreation that we've seen in all the movies including the Predalien in AVP if they wanted to keep that canon. Just a thought.
db
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 1:48 PMThere seems to be 2 fundamental schools of thought in this thread:
1. Film Canon
2. Story Elements
Back in the day, when a movie played in a theater and everyone saw the same thing, things were much more simple. Everyone had the same story to work from. Once studios/director's began releasing alternative versions of films on VHS/DVD, everything changed... canon "changed"... as more information was released.
Think of it like science. Most science is in a constant state of flux. Our theories are only as good as the evidence that supports them. Once new evidence is discovered, theories are forced to adapt, change significantly, or vaporize completely (mass extinction, etc.) But, accepted laws of science can survive (gravity, etc.)
Another analogy is the "reader of the book" vs. "the viewer of the film". We all accept that a film adaption of a story is going to be significantly different than the written word. We seem to have little or no trouble with this concept, yet when it comes to accepting different versions of a film we tend to become either confused or territorial.
If we approach this challenge logically, we would probably say: "That which came first, is canon." (Meaning ALIEN from 1979). In it, Ridley Scott made the decision to show no cocooning/transforming egg scenes. In 1986, James Cameron was within his rights to create a queen to lay them, therefore justifying their existence. Remember, your average movie go-er, didn't know about those deleted scenes. Does that make the queen canon? Yes... except for those nagging deleted egg scenes added to the original ALIEN and then later, accepted as canon.
So, both are canon? Yes. If the ALIEN is truly a superior life form, why wouldn't it ensure its continued existence with more than one way to reproduce? Snork is correct. (Something has to lay/make the damn eggs, right?)
If a drone is all there is... it can create a royal egg by manipulating the DNA directly from a victim species. Once the royal facehugger (A3 canon?) hatches, it then needs another cocooned victim to play host to the eventual queen.
I believe there is a raised mural we've already seen in Prometheus that looks like a xeno. Can you interpret it as having the unmistakable frill of a queen above/around it? Is this Scott giving a nod to his old friend Cameron? If so, it truly is canon now.
PS.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Definitive answer: the egg.
Dinosaurs laid eggs long before dinosaurs evolved into chickens!
darthmongo
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 2:28 PMEveryone talks about the original Alien lifecycle as DNA recoding/morphing of the host to turn them into eggs/facehuggers. I always thought of it as more of a fungus that used the victim as "food" to grow and become the egg, from which the facehugger developed inside.
I also never bought into the whole "the alien takes on the characteristics of the host" part of the lifecycle, either (brought up in Alien 3 with the dog or cow, depending on which version you watch). The host is simply used as an incubator - that's all. All egg depositing and fertilization is done by the facehugger. There is no "assimilation of DNA characteristics".
I seem to remember something from the Alien novel where Ash is talking about how the alien used Kane as a host similar to how some wasps use spiders on Earth. Can't remember exactly how he phrased it (don't recall the line in the movie at all, either), but I was just trying to Google it and found this article that kind of explains it and made me wonder if this behavior will be brought into play with Prometheus.
[url=http://2012forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=637]Parasitic Wasp and Alien Larva[/url]
Alien DNA
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 2:47 PMAlien 3 is canon yes? So then you have a dog/ox host and an alien who clearly took on the characteristics of it's host.
In Alien after Brett dies/is abducted Parker goes on about how big the Alien is now, "like a human" I believe he says, to which Ash comments "Kane's Son", which isn't exactly the same as above but would at the very least imply taking on host attributes.
As far as Dallas being a host for the Brett egg, why would he ask to be killed if he was simply a host and not impregnated with a chestburster yet. Newt was to be a host and was saved at the last minute, completely coherent and not in the same state that Ripley found Dallas. Wouldn't this imply that something else was going on with him?
ubik333
MemberOvomorphApr-13-2012 4:42 PMMy problem with Cameron's Aliens Queen is that it made the creature too "normal", almost too close to Earth animal in characteristics especially with regards to its procreation drive. This just made Alien a completely different kind of monster from the one that Scott & co., created in 1979 - in that period of time I knew enough biology to appreciate the film-makers' creativity.
In Earth's evolutionary history the dominant lifeform which lend to complexity is usllay multi-celluar (eukaryote) while the single-cell (archaea) which probably shared common ancestors with eukaryote, went on a separate evolutionary path and they could be found in places like hot springs and deep oceans. Now, considering if with right conditions archaea could have developed complexity, it would reproduce asexually (fission) instead of the commonly known meiosis (cell division) and a complex, large archaea-based creature would probably be "alien" in Earthly term. Giger's alien life-cycle is a bit like that, at least in my mind.