Question: I have a question regarding some of the slang used in the film. During the briefing just before the marines go down to the planet, Hudson asks, "Is this going to be a stand-up fight or another bug-hunt?" And what does Gorman mean when he says they think xenomorphs are involved? People say xenomorph is a fancy term for the species of aliens in this film series, however, it's made clear that at the beginning of the movie this is an unknown species, so that term couldn't refer specifically to them.
Answer: It wasn't exactly an "unknown" species. "The Company," the commercial operation funding everything, knew the alien creatures existed and had wanted them as bio-weapons since the first film. It's unclear what Gorman knew but likely little more than his troops. Burke knew about the creatures and his purpose was to collect one, the same as Ash in the original "Alien." The term "xenomorph" is a general term that could be applied to any extraterrestrial non-humanoid species. Hudson is asking if they're hunting a non-sentient being.
Yeah, Gorman had no clue about the xenomorphs whatsoever. No way. The Company did, Burke is part of the Company, but Gorman isn't. He, like the others, is just cannon fodder. The term is used as you describe it though. You gotta understand that the Company itself probably doesn't know how a full-grown xenomorph actually looks like. Not until Alien 4. They just know there is alien biotech to be claimed.
Corrected entry: After the ammo is removed when the team are under the reactor coolers Vasquez is still on point, even though her machine gun doesn't have a flamethrower capability and her hands are too occupied to be able to use one. Should have been replaced by another team member with an 'active' weapon.
Correction: True, but Vasquez's weapon is still loaded/powered and has a sophisticated sensor system which might be better at detecting enemies than naked eyes. It's still a bad choice by the command team because even if she sees something, she shouldn't be able to do anything except call it out (as far as Gorman and Apone know) or fire (which is what she and Drake actually do, against orders). But at least it's a logical error instead of a senseless one.
Vasquez's Smart gun is electric-operated, so the 2 smart gunners were taken electric sources (batteries) from them, instead of detaching 500-round drums, which effectively made them useless, but loaded still (if they didn't have spare parts, they wouldn't be able to fire against orders); as for the stupidity of actions - the chain starts long before, on Earth, since Burke wanted it to be stupid for his own purposes, he jeopardized as much as could with the mission, incl green Lt Gorman.
Question: I know there's a few different releases of this film with different scenes. Has it ever been revealed how the Aliens managed to get inside the complex? Ripley states they must have missed an entrance to which Hudson replies they didn't miss anything. Is there a deleted scene, director's cut etc that shows how the aliens got in?
Answer: It's shown in the film (both versions) that the Aliens use the space in the drop ceiling to get into the complex. The drop ceiling doesn't show on the blueprints so Ripley and the Marines didn't think about it. When Ripley wonders if they missed anything Hicks replies "We didn't miss anything." Hicks is technically correct, but Ripley then says "Something not on the blueprints, I don't know." They did not account for the fact the ceiling grates aren't the actual top of the room because they made their plans based on the blueprints.
The aliens used the space above the drop ceilings to move around the complex once inside, but it is never revealed how they actually got in from outside.
Alien: Resurrection shows the aliens are happy to sacrifice one of their own to use their blood to help them escape captivity - possible something similar happened here if they knew it was worth them getting inside.
Question: 1) If a commanding officer orders you to do something but what they ask you makes no logical sense should you still do it? I'm of course referring to Apone ordering his people to get rid of their ammo. And what are the repercussions for NOT obeying the order? 2) Why wouldn't they check for aliens coming on the ceiling? Wouldn't the ceiling ducts show up on the blueprints they looked over earlier?
Answer: 1) Of course they are supposed to obey orders. Superiors don't usually completely explain the full reason why they give a specific order, it takes too long. That's why soldiers are trained to obey orders, no questions asked. You can see what happens when soldiers don't obey orders, because they had a good reason to tell them not to fire their guns, and they got lucky they didn't hit anything that could compromise the reactor. Insubordination is a serious offense. But since these are fictional space marines we can't really know what the repercussions would be. 2) The aliens didn't come through any ducts. They were hiding in the walls, which had a similar structure and colour as their bodies (logical since they made it). The marines didn't know the aliens would be so stealthy and smart to hide in the walls. They were there for search and rescue and weren't ready to face the aliens, since they hardly knew anything about them.
I think the second part of the question is referring to the scene where Hicks checks in the drop ceiling and finds aliens there. The poster is asking how come the drop ceiling doesn't show up on the blueprints.
Continuity mistake: During the scene where Ripley is trying to break the window with a chair, there is a scuff mark on it before she hits it. It goes away and comes back. (01:32:15)
Suggested correction: The view from Ripley's side is looking up at the window and from the other side level where there are reflections at the same height (using Ripley as a reference) of the scuffs. There is no way to tell if the scuffs are there or not.
The Director's Cut (and maybe even on the theatrical version) on the 2010 Blu-ray removes the scratches, so I assume they were not supposed to be there initially.
Corrected entry: Hicks gave the tracker bracelet to Ripley, who in turn gave it to Newt when she put her to bed. There was no one else in the room and Ripley didn't tell anyone. So how come when they lose Newt at the end Hicks tells Ripley they can find her using the bracelet?
Correction: Hicks isn't blind...he saw it on her wrist.
And she likely told him offscreen.
Corrected entry: After the Marines are attacked in the atmosphere processor and regroup in the APC, they surmise that Corporal Hicks is now in command. Wouldn't the pilot of the drop ship be next in line? Wouldn't she outrank Hicks even if she was only a warrant officer?
Correction: The pilot of the ship (Ferro) was also a Corporal, and Hicks being the highest ranking marine on the ground (with Gorman incapacitated), Hicks was next in the chain of command.
And she likely told him offscreen.
Corrected entry: It would have been impossible for the aliens to produce such a large army because of a limited number of hosts that can produce them. There was no indigenous life on the planet so there should only be as many aliens as there was colonists on the planet, which is about 150. It doesn't matter how many eggs the queen lays, they must have hosts to produce the alien creatures.
Correction: 150 is an army compared to 9 marines. Also the families would have brought animals such as dogs and cats and livestock to eat. This would further increase their amount of hosts.
Agreed, 150 is more than enough to account for all the aliens we see in the movie. It's really a testament to the film's direction and editing that so many people get the impression that there must be thousands of aliens.
Corrected entry: The crew finds half a dozen face huggers in the med lab, and two of them are still alive. One tries to attach to Burke when he gets too close to the glass case. If a face hugger was able to break the much tougher glass of Kane's space suit's helmet in the first film and attach to him, why wouldn't it be able to break through this less durable glass in this film to get on Burke?
Correction: The creature doesn't break the glass to Kane's helmet, it melts its way in with acid. Presumably the liquid in the container neutralizes the acid somehow. Also, we have no idea what either the helmet glass or the container are actually made of. The container is made of a material strong enough to withstand the strength of the facehugger.
A laboratory jar that is made of material stronger than that of the faceplate of a space helmet that is designed to withstand a pressure differential like that between atmospheric pressure and a vacuum. Yes, that's going to happen.
This is both a futuristic movie and there is a 57 year gap between movies. And it isn't a "laboratory jar", it's some sort of made up stasis device. It is completely plausible that a stasis device would be more durable than a helmet made nearly 60 years prior. But the point is moot because the alien in the first film never breaks the helmet, it melts it.
Even the strongest acid cannot corrode a glass beaker, but it could easily corrode other transparent materials. It isn't a matter of how "strong" it is, it's a matter of chemistry. We don't know what the faceplates of the space suits are made of, but current day ones are made of polycarbonate plastics.
Correction: Probably because the facehugger doesn't have anything to hold on to and break the glass.
Corrected entry: In the part of the film where Ripley and Gorman are inside the APC, and Ripley is trying to get the marines to get out of the bowls of the atmosphere processor before anymore get killed, she has the headset on, then in the next shot of her she doesn't, then she does, and then it gets ripped off by Gorman.
Correction: She never actually has the headset 'on' per se. She holds the ear pieces up to her one ear and speaks into the microphone. When Gorman appears to rip it off, you can see that it comes out of her one hand that she was holding it in.
There is a very clear moment where Ripley has the earpiece completely on her head. This mistake is correct; it is indeed a continuity error.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Newt and Ripley are in the room with the face huggers, Ripley tries to escape by banging a chair against the glass window full force. However, it merely bounces off. But, when one of the marines dives at the window, it smashes. How is this possible?
Corrected entry: The counter on a fully-loaded pulse rifle reads 300 rounds. However, a magazine of the size shown could never contain 300 rounds of 10mm ammunition.
Correction: I don't know where anyone in the movie said that the counter reads 300 bullets, because it certainly wasn't ever said in this film. The counter on the Pulse Rifle only goes up to 99. This is shown when Ripley loads it at 2 different parts in the movie: when Hicks is showing her how to fire it, and when she is getting ready to go find Newt in the hive. There was never any indication that the Pulse Rifle clips hold 300 rounds.
Correction: You sure? Cause, to me, they seemed more like a power source for the smart guns and not the ammo.
The video here shows her loading a full magazine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY2wGD6-j0Y At the 59 second point, she loads the magazine and the round indicator shows 95, not 99 and definitely not 300. The round indicator only goes to 2 digits.
Corrected entry: In Alien, Kane refers to the eggs as "leathery objects, like eggs or something" but does not say how many. In Aliens, Ripley says in her deposition, "Kane, who went into that ship, said he saw thousands of eggs there. Thousands." After Kane comes out of his coma, he couldn't have told anyone about the number of eggs. When Dallas asks him, "Do you remember anything about the planet?" he just shakes his head no. (00:13:10)
Correction: During Kane's report BEFORE this exert he does state he sees hundreds of eggs, maybe thousands. Where he is initially lowered into the pit and looks out and sees all the eggs.
Just watched this scene, in both the theatrical and director's cut, Kane does not mention how many. Could you please point out the moment in which he said there thousands of them potentially?
Question: Why did Ripley not yell for Newt and Bishop to hold onto something before she opened the air lock?
Answer: I wondered about this, too. Ripley may simply have overlooked doing this due the extreme duress she was under, focused on killing the creature. She intended to act quickly and save Newt if needed, but the creature grabbed onto her leg, delaying it being shot into space. Ripley may also have believed that Newt was still hiding under the grates, and that Bishop, ripped in half, was already "dead." I also think it's something of a plot hole.
I know I'm answering my own question here but when I look back at the scene, you do see her press the button that triggers the alarms before she pulls the latch to open the air luck. Probably a form of telling them what she is about to do. And looking back at the scene it's pretty obvious what she's doing, unless Newt was all of a sudden oblivious to what was happening.
Newt was not exactly oblivious, but she was a frightened child who was reacting, as would be normal for someone her age, impulsively and without much forethought. She was also unfamiliar with the ship, its operation, and probably would not know what the warning alarm was. Her instinct was to jump out of the recessed floor space to see what was happening to Ripley. I don't think Ripley turned on the alarm separately. It would just automatically go off as soon as someone started opening the hatch. It's the same as a back-up alarm on the truck.
True she's unfamiliar with the ship but even when you move to a new school or building, you're still aware of the fire alarm.
Newt had never been on the ship before and had only been there for about five minutes when the mayhem started with the alien queen. A child going to a new school might be aware of the fire alarms, but only after they are taught about safety issues by an adult and not during a panicked emergency. Newt, terrified, had no understanding of what exactly was going on when the alarm sounded or how to react to it.
Question: If the company knew about the Aliens from the start and coveted them as a bioweapon, why did it take 57 years and the reappearance of Ripley for someone from the company to make another effort to get one? In the intervening 57 years, wouldn't the company have sent someone out to the derelict spaceship wreckage?
Answer: The company doesn't wait 57 years, they built a colony on the planet over 20 years prior to finding Ripley. The company was apparently unaware of the exact location of the derelict spacecraft. After finding Ripley and obtaining information from her, Burke was able to send the Jorden family to the precise location of the derelict spacecraft.
Answer: For me anyway, the company doesn't seem to be as hostile as they do in Alien. Won't surprise me that in 57 years there has been a change in leadership and they are no longer interested in capturing the alien, Burke seems to operating on his own. Minor plot hole ultimately.
I think the original answer is right and they simply didn't know where the crashed ship was located on the planet since the beacon was deactivated and all information was on the Nostromo and with Ripley. They built a colony there to find it eventually, just takes a long time. Until they got lucky and found Ripley. Burke is definitely not working on his own though, they still knew about the aliens and the original idea still remained, capture aliens and bring them back to study.
Yes that's right, because when Ripley has a run in with Burke he says that this specimen is worth millions to the bio weapons division and if we bring it back we will be made for life.
Question: Why did Ripley attack the hive near the end of the film? Firstly, she had Newt with her, she knew that the planet was going to explode, she had little time to get out, and if she hadn't attacked the hive, the Alien queen wouldn't have gone after her. Ripley utterly hated the Aliens, but she is intelligent and Corporal Hicks had earlier praised her tactical thinking - attacking the hive was foolish.
Answer: In her haste to escape, Ripley accidentally entered the egg chamber and found her only exit routes blocked by xenomorphs. Correctly suspecting that the queen was intelligent, Ripley assumed a threatening posture, and the queen cautioned the other xenomorphs to back off, clearing a path for Ripley to leave. However, Ripley also suspected it was a trap and that she would be quickly ambushed by the xenomorphs when she tried to flee. Ripley thought this was her last living act; so, she defiantly blasted and burned the egg chamber, taking out as many eggs as possible before her death. As it happened, the ensuing chaos allowed Ripley to escape the egg chamber.
Answer: One of the eggs had started opening and presumably more would also begin hatching and the newly-born facehuggers would pursue and infect Ripley and Newt. That was when Ripley torched the nest. Even if Ripley had not burned the eggs, the alien queen would have chased them, wanting bodies to incubate more creatures.
Answer: Like the Queen would let her just leave. Ripley knew they would come after them, more host bodies.
No I don't think so, the queen was in the process of laying eggs through a large tube and was being protected by her warriors, so in order to chase Ripley she had to tear herself away from the tube. She did this because she was furious about what Ripley had just done and wanted to get revenge.
Answer: Ripley wasn't there by accident; she had to rescue Newt. Newt was stuck in some sort of sticky goo, so Ripley had to make her way through the nest of eggs to get Newt. Newt was being held prisoner by the queen who saw her as prey for her offspring, so Ripley got on her bad side when she destroys the nest.
Answer: I would imagine Ripley did do a bit of tactical thinking, she probably made a logical guess that if she destroyed the nest, the Queen would likely want to get revenge personally rather than getting her "minions" to do it. Fighting off one Queen would be a lot easier than fitting off a few dozen Xenomorphs.
Corrected entry: This isn't a mistake, but a funny little thing: When you look closely to Drake's an Vasquez' Auto-cannons, you can clearly see, that these are modified German machine guns, produced by Heckler & Koch. In some shots, when firing, you can also see the ammo-belts hanging out of the guns (e.g. when Drake is firing his last rounds, just before he drops the gun). These machineguns are also carried by some Stormtroopers in "Star Wars" - almost unmodified.
Correction: The auto-cannons are actually German World War II era MG-42s, according to the special edition DVD.
Correction: The Stormtrooper E-11 Blaster was in reality the Sterling smg, manufactured in the UK.
Corrected entry: When the marines are in the dropship and ready to go to the planet below, the couplers release and the ship literally drops from the Sulaco which is in a gentle orbit. The dropship should have continued to move with the Sulaco in orbit.
Correction: Assuming that the planet has the same gravity pull as our Earth, all that would be required for the dropship to appear to "drop down" would be for the Sulaco to give the it "a push" and/or the dropship to push back.
I think it's the dropship's own propulsion system which sends it plummeting at high speed towards the planet.
Corrected entry: Not really a HUGE mistake, but when Ripley finds Newt in her hole the first time you can see lots of boxes laying round with rations or MRE's in them. But later when the female medic is checking her out she says she is suffering from "Borderline Malnutrition" How is that possible when she had so much left over food?
Correction: The term "malnutrition" does not necessarily mean that you have had too little food, it also includes the bad effects of an improper regular diet. MRE's are not designed to be eaten on a regular basis, but as emergency food when nothing else is available. Newt has eaten MRE's for a very long time, and is suffering from the ill effects from this (most likely constipation and lack of proper vitamins).
Not to mention people who have suffered severe trauma often lose appetite. Even though she has collected food she may not be eating as regularly as she should. With nobody around to counsel her or force her to eat she is probably not getting regular meals or resting as often as she should.
Question: How did all the colonists get relocated to where the queen is? Do the aliens paralyze them when interacting with them? I can't imagine Hudson going there to be cocooned without struggling.
Answer: In the original script, yes the aliens have a barb at the end of their tails which is used to sting their prey and paralyze them. This was deemed unnecessary, however and the idea was dropped. We are shown an alien grabbing Dietrich and carrying her away and they do indeed just seem to strong-arm their victims and carry them, kicking and screaming the whole way. Bear in mind that a xenomorph is considerably stronger than an average human. It doesn't appear to be any more difficult for them to carry an unwilling human than it would be for a parent carrying a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Could be even more than that, they could concuss their captives or release some sort of odour that causes sleepiness. Could be anything. The captives always wake up cocooned before being impregnated so they are anesthetized at some point. We know the facehuggers anesthetize their victims, so the fully grown xenomorphs must have still have the same chemical compound as well.
The comic books and novels go into great detail regarding the chemical the facehuggers use to put people to sleep. It has a name and everything. This chemical is what causes some people to have nightmares while they are subdued. Curiously, I've never noticed them saying the adult xenomorph also uses the chemical but like you say, it stands to reason that they do. Why the movies and novels etc. ignore this element entirely is anyone's guess. It seems like an interesting element that has been consistently left out and, like you also say, people just seem to "wake up" after being cocooned but before they are impregnated so obviously they were put to sleep at some point.
Answer: In addition to the other answers, I'd like to point out that xenomorph simply means strange or alien form.