Question: I know that the studio chose James Cameron to direct due to the strength of his script, but why wasn't Ridley Scott offered the chance to direct? And was the studio considering a sequel before Cameron joined?
Chosen answer: The studio was considering a sequel before Cameron was involved, but regarding directing it, Ridley Scott told "The Hollywood" in a 2008 interview, "They didn't ask me! To this day I have no idea why. It hurt my feelings, really, because I thought we did quite a good job on the first one." The studio liked Cameron's script and at that time he had enough clout to be able to insist on directing it.
Question: What ever happens to the female doctor that evaluates Newt? She evaluates Newt, says one line or so, then disappears forever.
Chosen answer: Down in the tunnels, she is the soldier that says "Maybe they don't show up on infrared at all." and is then grabbed and hoisted to the ceiling by an Alien, discharging her flamethrower and killing the other Marine. Later, Hudson says "The Sarge and Deitrich (the female medic) aren't dead. Their signs are real low but they ain't dead." So she was cocooned and played host for new aliens.
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: How did the first facehugger get through Kane's helmet? In 'Alien' the people searching the alien craft wore helmets, in 'Aliens', Newt's parents didn't wear helmets. Can anyone explain the discrepancy?
Chosen answer: It burned its way through Kane's faceplate by excreting some acidic substance - that's why it appears melted. As for the helmets discrepancy between the two films, when the Nostromo landed on LV-426, the planet's atmosphere wasn't capable of supporting human life, forcing Dallas, Kane and Lambert to wear full suits. By the time Newt's family locate the derelict ship, fifty-seven years later, the human terraforming process has been running for twenty years, altering the atmosphere enough to make it breathable.
Question: When the marines are being briefed before going down to the planet, I've two questions about those that Hudson asks. A) He asks something like, "Is this going to be a stand-up fight or another bug-hunt?" By "bug-hunt" does he mean they've fought some other kind of alien enemy before? It's made clear they've never encountered the signature aliens of the movie before. B) He asks, "How do I get out of this chicken-sh*t outfit?" What exactly does he mean by this? Is he referring to his team as the "chicken-sh*t outfit" and if so, why? None of them appear in any way concerned or afraid of what danger they may be heading into. Ripley in particular seems annoyed by how lightly they're treating the whole situation.
Answer: I would say that he says bug hunt because it isn't the first time Space Marines have had a report of alien life in the universe and had to investigate finding nothing. 2nd questions is that Hudson says that because he doesn't take that outfit seriously. They are Marines and want a confirmed fight not a "bug hunt" sounds like they are just being used to do stupid missions.
Answer: For the first question, he means "will we be actually fighting a real enemy (will this be enjoyable) or are we just going in to wipe out some helpless creatures (like an exterminator wipes out bugs)". For the second question, he is referring to his unit as the chicken shit outfit, but he's just making a joke; a humorous reversal of the truth referencing the fact that no one is afraid at all.
Question: I'm almost certain that the first time I ever saw this film on video (I never did see it during its theatrical release) there was no mention or use of the remote mini-guns that the Marines placed outside their "sanctuary", but I've since seen those guns in action. Does anyone know if there are several cuts of the video version in circulation within North America (Canada specifically), or import versions that would be different?
Answer: In the original theatrical release, the sentry guns are mentioned in passing when Hicks inventories the weapons that survived the crash of the first dropship. This reference was deleted in the original VHS release. When the movie was first brodcast on network television, the sentry gun scenes were added (as well as some other scenes including one near the beginning involving Ripley mourning the death of her daughter). As far as I know, up until the Special Edition DVD release which also includes those scenes, that was the only version which contained the sentry gun scenes and the network (I think it was ABC) would brocast this altered version from time to time.
Answer: The Special Edition was first released on video in 1991. While there have been times the Special Edition was the one most commonly available, it's definitely possible to have seen the theatrical cut on video first.
Question: Is the military privatised in the continuity of the films? Do they operate at the behest of the Company? Any official or generally accepted answer is appreciated.
Answer: From the books and comics, the answer seems to be that the Earth government still controls the military, but the megacorporations like Weyland-Yutani have so much influence, they can dictate pretty much what they want the govt to do with them.
Question: Maybe I'm missing something, but if Ripley had been in hypersleep for 57 years, how could she have had a dream about speaking to Burke before waking up and actually meeting him?
Chosen answer: While the opening scene does show her in hypersleep, the moment we see her wake up (after the alien starts to push in her belly) is NOT her waking up from hypersleep, it's just her waking up from another bad dream. At that point she's been in the hospital for some time and already met Burke, but she's having nightmares. Presumably, this particular dream is of her remembering her first moments waking from hypersleep and then turning into a nightmare scene.
Question: What is the actual time frame from when Ripley is revived from the Nostromo's lifeboat to when she joins the mission to LV-426 to when the team actually arrives there? I know that the colonists were attacked after Burke sent the order for them to check out the alien spacecraft, but in alien, it was only a matter of hours before the facehugger dropped from Kane's face, and a few more after that when the newborn emerged. If this is accurate, then how could any of the infected colonists still be alive when the marines arrived and were checking the mass cocoon? In a previous question above, it was ascertained that the flight time was a minimum of 2 weeks, possibly more. Add to that the time it took to convince Ripley to agree to go and prep time for takeoff, I'd say it's anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 weeks before they got there and any impregnated colonists should have dead.
Answer: You're assuming that all the colonists were captured by the aliens at the same time. There's no evidence to support that, particularly; logically the takeover would have happened over a period of time. Only one alien would have been brought back to the colony, from the facehugger that attacked Newt's father, so some considerable time must have passed while new eggs were acquired to infect other colonists and increase the number of alien warriors available. We don't know precisely when communications with the colony were cut off, but, from the lack of information available to the marines sent to investigate, it must have happened relatively early in the infestation, so it's entirely plausible that the colonists' final stand didn't take place until the marines were already well on their way. Newt's survival until the marines' arrival clearly opens up the possibility that other colonists were able to avoid capture for some time after the final stand. As such, it's not remotely unreasonable to suggest that the live colonist found in the cocoon chamber had been captured by the aliens no more than a day before the marines found her.
Regarding the colonist dying from a chestburster in front of the Marines as opposed to sometime before, maybe the colonist went into a coma of some kind (psychological if nothing else) and the chestburster of course did likewise, and then the Marines caused her, and accordingly the alien larva, to awaken (seems an enormous coincidence of timing otherwise) at that particular moment. It's also possible the adult aliens, having gone dormant with nothing to do, have somehow caused the chestburster and/or host to do likewise, again, with the Marines' arrival, the larva awoke and the adults followed suit. It's even possible the chestburster had some form of birth defect that caused its "late start."
With reference to the original question about taking 2 weeks to get to the planet from earth, in the first Alien film the flight time was 10 months. I know that a military ship would be faster than an old tug 57 years previously but to cut the journey down that much would be impossible.
Well, the colonists may have been infected at the same time but that woman was still alive when they found her, so this shows that not all the colonists were infected at the same time assuming she even is a colonist.
Answer: You're assuming that they received transmissions at sub-light speed. It could have have been weeks or months before they received an S.O.S. Ripley said Newt survived for weeks on her own.
Question: Can anyone explain the airlock that the Queen gets sucked out of at the end? The location for the activation levers seems ridiculous. Ripley gets pulled in by the Queen, then starts climbing out and pulls a lever to open the outer door, then has to climb out to the top to close it. This seems like an insanely dangerous design.
Answer: The airlock was probably designed to drop out cargo in space to be taken to another ship or a space station or for astronauts to go on space walks or make repairs to the outer hull of the ship. Maybe to quickly get rid of something dangerous or deadly, like a bomb or alien monster.
Answer: The simple fact of the matter is she overrides the safety protocol of the airlock by opening the outer door manually whilst the inner door is still open. This of course is highly dangerous but necessary given the circumstances. For dramatic effect though she then climbs out of the airlock to close the inner door instead of closing the outer door first. It's possible though she can't close the outer door anymore because she overrode the system (or the outer door is now damaged) and she closes both doors at the same time after climbing back up.
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.
Question: Has there ever been an explanation as to why the number "57" appears throughout the film? The number appears specifically three times: Ripley was floating in space for 57 years, the sentry guns have a model number of 571, and 157 colonists were killed. It just seems like the number comes up too many times to be a coincidence.
Answer: I have done some research looking into this, and I can't find anything about it. Only stuff talking about her being asleep for 57 years. I believe the other two occurrences are in fact coincidence. If it was meant to signify anything, it would likely have appeared more and as its own number of 57. Not part of 571 or 157.
Question: It boggles my mind as to why Newt runs away from the Marines when she first meets them. She's been living alone for God knows how long and the Marines are the first people she's seen and her only thought is to get as far away from them as possible. Why on LV-426 would she do this?
Answer: She said it herself. She knows they won't help her and staying with them is probably just get her killed.
Answer: Maybe she is scared that they could be infected. She probably saw a chest burst-er come out of one of the colonists and she is traumatized.
Question: While Hicks and Vasquez are sealing the door during the attack, you get a good look at the magazine on Hudson's rifle while he is using the motion tracker. On the bottom of the magazine a large letter "D" is visible. Does anyone have any idea why that letter is there? Is this a prop designation?
Answer: The prop designation theory is probably right. It could stand for "Dummy" rounds. We can only speculate about future military conventions and best practices, but it's not likely that a magazine would be marked in such a manner because the ammunition it contained could be easily changed depending on the mission requirements. In our time, the ammunition itself is color coded so that it can be identified at a glance.
Question: When Ripley and Newt are trapped in the Med Lab with face huggers (thanks to Burke), Ripley wakes Newt and tells her they are in trouble (which they are). But how does Ripley know this? She hasn't seen the face huggers at this point.
Answer: The two face-huggers were being kept in glass containers. When Ripley woke up, she saw that the jars had been tipped over, were empty, and the creatures were loose; Burke had released them, took her weapon, and locked the doors, while she was sleeping. He also turned off the CCTV monitors.
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.
Question: Has there ever been a canon answer as to whether or not the Space Jockey's ship was destroyed in the explosion at the end? Something from Cameron or another of the film's writers? Comic adaptations and novelizations aren't canon.
Chosen answer: No, there hasn't, although an upcoming computer game, "Aliens: Colonial Marines", which is set post-Aliens, includes action set on the derelict ship. While obviously of dubious canonicity, as there are as yet no official statements to the contrary, the ship can currently be considered to have survived the detonation of the atmosphere processor. Should a future film provide further information on the subject, the status of the ship can be reconsidered canonically.
Question: Why didn't they go and wait in the APC whilst Bishop piloted the drop ship down? I know Ripley destroyed the transmission so it could no longer move, but it'd be a hell of a lot easier to defend than a giant complex.
Answer: One of the drop ships crashed into the APC and destroyed it. That's why Bishop had to crawl down the pipe to the transmitter, as their portable transmitter was on the APC when it got destroyed.
Answer: The Aliens were everywhere, they couldn't make it out of the room, much less the complex.
Answer: Plus, the front window was smashed in.
Question: How exactly was Burke planning to convince the others to get an impregnated Newt and Ripley off the planet without causing suspicion from Hicks or the other marines if the facehuggers had succeeded as he wanted?
Answer: The marines worked for the Weyland-Yutani company. They're basically a corporate para-military. Burke was in charge of the operation, so he presumably assumed they, and also Bishop, the company android, would follow his orders, not fully knowing the circumstances. Burke probably intended that most of the marines would also be "infected."
Question: When the Marines first enter the hive and encounter the cocooned colonist, at what point would she have been trapped there before the chestburster emerged?
Answer: As seen in the first Alien movie, once infected, the gestation period seems to be a matter of a few days. However, considering that Newt appeared to have been alone for a period of time, the colonists may have been cocooned for a longer period before the alien queen "impregnated" them.
Answer: No one can say for sure. In the first movie I don't think we really know how long Kane had the facehugger on him before they rescued him, so with this colonist, she could have been there for months.
Answer: It really was all down to James Cameron having already written the script and proving himself capable of directing with 'The Terminator.' It was just a quicker, easier, and almost certainly cheaper decision to let him direct his own script rather than get someone else, even Ridley Scott. While the producers had wanted to make an 'Alien' sequel almost immediately, at the time the head of 20th Century Fox didn't want to pursue it fearing it would be seen as an obvious cash-in and flop. When a new executive at the studio came in a couple years later, the project was put back on track, and I believe Cameron was the first to be approached to write the script.
TonyPH