Be Excellent To Each Other

You know what? The aliens in Aliens are rubbish.

What's so special about them?

They're really big!
Well, so are some people. Grim...'s about the same height as a building, IIRC.

They're really fast!
Usaine Bolt.

They have sharp claws which can hurt you if you let them get near you!
Yeeees, but then again so could a bloke with a knife.

If you stand still, let them hold your head and punch their tongue thing through you, you die!
The simples answer there is "don't do that, then". Also, you'd get the same effect if you stood still in front of a bloke with a knife.

They can use ventilation shafts and crawlspaces!
So can soldiers, small children, dogs, cats, pigeons and air. Viet Kong, anyone?

They have acid for blood, so if you shoot them and you're too close, you die!
The whole acid-for-blood thing is a bit silly for one thing. And in terms of its effect in combat, you'd get the same difficulty with a terrorist with a bomb vest and a deadman's switch. Actually, more so, as the bomb has a bigger kill radius. Just shoot the aliens before they get near you - and they die reasonably easily when you do.

What hugely pissed me off about Alien Resurrection was that (a) they put aliens (creatures they *knew* were intelligent) in the same cell and (b) didn't make the cells out of acid-reistant materials. Planning, people!

They look really scary!
So do Northerners. Hiya Z!

They make a noise like an angry baby elephant!
Actually, that's quite cool. Slightly out of kilter with the whole perfectly-evolved-death-monster vibe, but still quite cool.

They can climb walls and ceilings!
Aaaah, well, there you go. That's the unique thing about them as an enemy. Whoop de fucking doo.

You'd have had the same effect, tension-wise, if the marines had been going into a complex which had been full of IEDs and brainwashed suicide bombers from Newcastle. In fact, it'd have been much, much harder for them as the enemy would have had guns too.

Pinnacle of killing machines my arse.

So boo-urns, aliens, boo-urns.

Fuck me, you're brave.

It needed saying though.

Aliens are awesome in the first three films, then progressively more and more boring. I think the monster has run its course. Hollywood make new monster designs, please!

Also - why are these corps always stingy about the number of marines they put in the field? A load with flamethrowers - that'd do it.

Here come the "facts".

Not really. About seven feet, unless you include the tail.


Not at all. They're quick and have fast reactions, but they aren't that fast.


Not really. They nail you with their tail.


No they wouldn't. They nail you with their tail.


Yes they can! I'm not convinced this was a major OMG point, though.


Yes indeed. Terrorist's aren't born with that built-in, though. Plus, if they're holding a dead switch, they're not holding a gun.

The others are fair points, though.

See also : the Marines in Avatar. Five modern-day tanks would have torn those bloody smurfs to shreds, so how the hell did Future Space Dudes manage to build attack robots that were vulnerable to spears?

Aliens were never as frightening as facehuggers, of course.

Has anyone tested to see if they allergies, say to peanuts or pollen or jam or something? Might give humanity a vital edge.

Way ahead of you there, good buddy!



It's the 6 legged, bi-armed, quad-eyed monster. The stuff on its head are for detecting movement and stuff.

Bee stings. Run up to them and stab them with bees. That's how we save humanity.

Aliens? Yes, there were a couple of things that messed them up. They fucked up humans too, which kind of ruined that.
Something called "the juice" is niggling at my head, but I'd have to look in the CMTM to see what that was. I'm pretty sure it was some chemical-infused liquid that "blinded" them.

That would be semen.

That's pretty big to me, but then I'm just under 6'.

And, as you mention below, the tail.



They appear to be quicker and have faster reactions than most people they kill.



They use both, but point taken. Either way, in both cases the basic issue still remains - they have to be within tail-stabbing or claw-swiping distance of you. Which is considerably less than shooting distance.



That was my point too. It's case of having to really grasp for reasons that they make a particularly special or scary bad guy, and that's the sound of a barrel being scraped right there.


One handed dead man's switch, and a Skorpion.



You are being disappointingly un-arguey. Harrumph. When I poke a bear I expect a roar.

So Dimrill will save the world.

Then the ones that get killed are slower and have slower reactions then the people that killed them.


No they don't.

Ah, but inside that Russian doll is actually a sweetie.



So those bits where they put their tongue things through people's heads didn't happen, then?

Who'd win in a fight - an alien or a polar bear? An alien or a silverback gorilla? An alien and a rhino? I reckon the alien, but not by a huge margin.

Aliens are essentially velocirapters with penis heads & a mobile jaw like a shark has. What's not to like?

First the "I hate football" rant and now this? I'm starting to go off this "Chris" character.

Well, I can't think of any. Got an example, or the name of the unlucky recipient?

COME GET SOME!

And weird flutey things on their backs, which I can only assume get caught in ventilation shafts and tunnels and the like quite a lot.

"Aaah, fuck! Jim, Jim! I'm snagged! Unhook my back from this latch, would you?"

/






Christ, I'll have to Google a bit to give you specifics, but there are quite a few bits where they use the tongue things in the four films.

Four films?


Drone aliens and warrior aliens are very different things.
You appear to have made a mistake.

6 then.



I must have, as there do not appear to be more than two sorts of aliens - queens and the littler ones. Particularly in Aliens, which doesn't even have the variety of "oooh, it's a bit like a dog".

Granted there's a difference in the head betwen Alien and Aliens but that was for production purposes, I thought, as the design for Alien was fucking horrible to replicate (according to me Giger's diary of the filming of Alien).

Aliens films, I mean. Pedant.

All the points in the OP apply equally to the 6 films.

Burke, I think.

Alien films. And no, they don't, as you appear to be unaware of several things, most notably the fact that there are drone aliens (seen in Aliens, note they never kill anybody) and warrior aliens (seen in Alien, Alien³ and A:Res) who kill lots of people very quickly.

Ripley killed Burke, in a scene that got pulled. I think it's considered canon, though.

Just going off the film...

IMDB

Just going off the film, you don't know what happened to Burke as you never saw it - the scene cut away after the alien hissed at him, which makes IMDB a bit wrong. The audience was probably meant to make the assumption he was killed (although only Jimmy Cameron and Peter the editor know for sure). However, in the cut scene, Ripely finds him when she goes to rescue Newt, all strung up in alien goo. She gives him a primed grenade and fucks off.

Only two have one alien in, so either is equally valid.



So noone in Aliens dies, then? All that blood in the cockpit of the dropship was from a juice carton?

I had heard of the warrior/drone thing, but thought that was just in the comics, and something that nerds on websites argued about as the difference in heads was something they leapt on, it being seen as Cameron being "canon" rather than that the heads were easier to make that way.

Of course the aliens in Aliens, whether categorised as "warriors" or "drones" also have killy tail, killy tongue and killy claws. Whether you see them use them in that film is neither here nor there. Those are the "weapons" the marines were up against.

The difference in whether people were killed or dragged off by aliens in Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien:Res would surely be down to whether or not there was a queen around, of course. That said, in Alien:Res they both killed people and dragged them off to the nest, and there was only one Alien model on view in that film, so how do you account for that then, eh? EH?

Reavers

Predator 2 has lots of Predators in, but you wouldn't call them the Predators films


Plenty of people die, but the aliens don't kill them. Sure, they cause the dropship to crash or spray people like Drake with acid, but they don't kill anyone deliberately.


Thinking is that came from when Ferro was nailed by the alien's tail, which have stingy stingers in.


Like we're doing?


They have stingy-paralysy-tails. And their little friends can ram babies into you. Then you die.


Warriors (and maybe drones, there's some debate about that) can lay eggs, but only slowly. There was a cut scene from Alien where Ripley finds Dallas all pregnant. Warriors are sent to fuck up any resistance, then the drones trundle along behind and take people away for babying. The fact that there were no warrior aliens in Aliens is a discussion we can save for later.


Look closer.

Cam himself said his aliens were meant to be different to the alien in Alien, which he described as a 'warrior alien'. And fo'sho, some of the books and comics make the difference between the drones and the warriors very clear.

Interesting theory on the Alien types in "Aliens" being all drones, and no warriors.

Anyway, I love the Alien character / species and think they are hardcore killers not pussies so Mr Chris is wrong.

I have never seen any of the Alien films all the way through. Just thought I would put that out there!

heathen

Well, strictly speaking they're not pansies, no, but they're no more worrying an opponent for soldiers than a bunch of jihaddis. So, compared to their own hype, they are sort of pansies, in a relative sense.



Heh. I still suspect that was a bit of retrospective justification.

Either way, both warriors and drones do have killy tails, killy tongues and killy claws. They just have different missions, it seems.

The drones don't have killy tails - are you even reading this? Stingy tails. Stingy.

The Jihad have a better "hiding in plain sight" ability, but fall down hard on the "holy fuck they can reproduce quickly" front.

All I'm taking away from this so far is that Mr Chris is wrong. Will check back later.

Aliens can 'see' in the dark, too. And they're fucking mad strong. And it takes some serious firepower to stop them.

That will also kill, of course, if they could create that much blood in the dropship cockpit. I'm not ignoring the fact that they also do stingy stingy, but they're there, and they could be put through someone's head. Hence killy.


Not if you listen to UKIP.



NV goggles?



They seem to fall down with much less than a clip in them. Or one shotty to the face.

That's hardly "serious".

Wasn't the whole point of Alien and Aliens that humanity are the real monsters, anyway?

Of course, it's largely situational, too. Put anyone in a space hulk or pretty damned derelict mining installation that you don't know the layout of and also happens to be riddled with alien access routes and it becomes pretty damned scary.

The man speaks the truth.

Humanity and short fat androids, of course.

@Craster - zackly. Put aliens on a big open stretch of a car park and they're far less of a worry than a ferw blokes with guns.

Except that what you're dealing with in pretty much all the Alien films is pretty much barely a raiding party. The point of them is that there wouldn't be a half dozen of them in a car park. There would be 50,000. And they wouldn't care about being shot.

In which case, Cras, we just nuke them from orbit. Or napalm them. Silly aliens, congregating in a car park.

You appear to have confused Aliens and An Inconvenient Truth. Common mistake.

They don't have eyes - they can sense things with their powerful PSYCOBRAINPOWA, and they hiss a lot and use echolocation.


If you use a futuristic Space Gun.

SPACE GUN!

I've only seen Aliens and Alien:R. However I plan to watch Alien on Film4 tomorrow night.