Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
How is the Nostromo so far from Earth without faster-than-light speeds? If they are going faster than light, then why aren't they returning to Earth 5,000 years after they left?
To me, this is the more salient question.
It's why I love Interstellar, which explores the vagaries of deep space travel on a far deeper level that any other SF film that I've seen.
As far as the xenomorph's growth rate is concerned:
"Bacteria such as certain Bacillus stearothermophilus strains can double in size, as a percentage of bodyweight, every 10 minutes under optimal conditions. So, given unlimited resources, in one day a single bacterium could produce more offspring than the combined weight of all the organisms in the world!"
But if I were to question anything, it would be why the alien blasted by Ripley out of the exhaust at the movie's end looked like a teenager in a Halloween costume. It looked nothing like the creature Lambert and Parker encountered in the supply room.
If you look at films from simply a perspective of their being free floating stories that have no greater meaning, or you focus on plot flaws, you can miss the greater context of the film in society and what - at a gut level - makes it popular or worthy.
Many movies are variations of ancient themes. That is not surprising, as mythology developed as coded crystalizations of the fears and awes of mankind. When you come across Jungians and scholar geeks seemingly nattering on about some obscure ancient myth, you might want to consider how that introspection relates to a greater understanding of us as humans.
The "Alien" franchise works in part because it is a re-connection with myth, a re-telling or variation of fears so pervasive in humans that they still resonate after thousands of years. Mythic themes bypass logical barriers and can reach deep into the psyche of the viewer (or reader). That power can captivate, can force a drive towards a greater understanding of the mythic themes or the details of the myth container story.
The "Alien" is a form of one of the Greek "furies" or Erineyes. The world on which the eggs are formed can be interpreted as Gaea, and the greed and acquisitive drive of humans being avenged by a furie in the form of the alien.
Are you sure you are not looking too hard? I didn't really see any themes per say, it just came off as a haunted house monster movie in space, where one victim
SPOILER
Makes it out alive, and then that's it, end of movie. Unless I really missed out on some important themes? Even so I would say if I did, they are more like allegories, cause the themes are not really dealt with story-wise I feel, and they are just buried beneath the haunted house plot, which takes up most of the movie, rather than any themes.
Are you sure you are not looking too hard? I didn't really see any themes per say, it just came off as a haunted house monster movie in space, where one victim
SPOILER
Makes it out alive, and then that's it, end of movie. Unless I really missed out on some important themes? Even so I would say if I did, they are more like allegories, cause the themes are not really dealt with story-wise I feel, and they are just buried beneath the haunted house plot, which takes up most of the movie, rather than any themes.
The difference between watching for enjoyment and watching for themes and metaphor, for attempting to assess WHY a movie resonates or makes money are two totally different ways of viewing. If scrutiny allows you to make an extra million on the next movie, it isn't "looking too hard." If it allows you to notice a cultural trend, it isn't "looking too hard." OTOH, watching for enjoyment is what movies are all about.
I personally have ZERO interest in haunted house movies or horror movies from an entertainment perspective. Understanding the roots of other folks enjoyment of them is of interest to me, and I do very much appreciate the craft and work that goes into them.
It's a great movie except a tiny bit of bad C.G animation, just too many cooks in the kitchen and a tragic edit I'm looking for the best cut of this movie which I'm told exists...
I don't think the series went off the rails till Resurrection which frankly had some really cool stuff in it just too many one liners and pop culture characters... Winona Ryder was particularly terrible.
Frankly I thought alien movies 1-3 are perfectly biologically plausible except for the growth rate depicted in ALIEN 1979
It's a great movie except a tiny bit of bad C.G animation, just too many cooks in the kitchen and a tragic edit I'm looking for the best cut of this movie which I'm told exists...
I don't know about other edits. I know the version of Alien3 I saw in the theater and on video is a bad, bad, bad movie. It's one of the few movies out there that I genuinely hate and would not feel bad burning. Why that happened, I don't know. But it remains a bad movie. Even the director says so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boer
I don't think the series went off the rails till Resurrection which frankly had some really cool stuff in it just too many one liners and pop culture characters... Winona Ryder was particularly terrible.
I haven't seen it in ages. I don't remember Winona Ryder being particularly terrible in the movie, but the movie itself is pretty awful. It's really just a sci-fi slasher flick. Blech. That said ... it does have one great scene: The xenomorph swimming underwater was really well done and really scary. But yes, the rest of the movie is pretty much dreck.
But who knows what the thing ate when it was on the ship? The Nostramo was transporting and refining oil for petrochemicals if I remember from the book. And the biological structure of the creature was one designed for extreme survivability in the harshest environments. Maybe it ate glass or plastics or metal. Didn't the resin they produced have silicon like properties?
"The Thing" had some problems, too. One, if the alien breathed, it would expel cells which would infect a person through respiration in close contact with it. And I think that it was one of two possible origins. It may have been nothing more than a virus like life form that gained sentience when it infected and absorbed a living host. But while it could live being frozen for many thousands of years, I think it would die off pretty quickly if it didn't infect new organisms. Spray it with Lysol and that would harm it, or just wait a few days and it would seek to infect a new host to stay alive.
And then too, it wouldn't display any greater alien intelligence or knowledge than the creature it absorbed. It may be a smart dog or a human pilot or doctor, but it would have no advanced alien technical knowledge once that original creature was isolated and destroyed.
Or... it may have been a bio construct sent out to explore distant planets and to return home with examples of life it encountered and to study them as posing as one of them. In that sense it may not have wished to wipe out all life and absorb it, rather to take samples and to bring them back in a database. Not the doomsday scenario for the planet the original movie suggested, although it would have meant death for those it replicated.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
