Is Alien DC consistent with Aliens?

[Extrocomp]

I've had an argument with SM over at AVPGalaxy about whether the scene in Alien The Director's Cut where Ripley finds Brett and Dallas mutating into eggs is consistent with the movie Aliens. He has no problem with the alien having a secondary life-cycle when the queen is absent but he insists that Ripley should've known where alien eggs come from in Aliens when the issue came up. He says Ripley had to have been stupid no to have realized that Brett and Dallas were turning into eggs. He says the Brett egg looked similar enough to a regular egg that Ripley should've been able to figure it out unless she was stupid. I disagree. Here's what I think:

Ripley saw what was happening but didn’t know where eggs come from in Aliens. However, it must be remembered that she didn’t go with Kane into the egg chamber so she wouldn’t have known what an alien egg looks like until she saw one up close in Aliens when she went to rescue Newt. Also the eggs that Brett and Dallas are mutating into are only partly formed and don’t look much like alien eggs yet. Even the egg that grew from Brett is much larger than a fully formed egg and still has his slimy head sticking out of the top. It was also stuck to the wall instead of sitting on the floor. Besides, no creature on Earth reproduces by turning its prey into eggs so Ripley would have no basis to realize that that’s what the alien was doing. It’s also possible that she repressed this memory because it was traumatic having to kill Dallas.

So what do you guys think? Is Alien The Director's Cut consistent with Aliens?

[Termite Scream]

Regardless of Ripley's behaviour, I think the queen concept just "kills" the egg-transformation thing. Unfortunately. Both cycles are too different, they render each other meaningless, they don't add up. It's like two different stories, like the various versions of red riding hood (same premise, different endings or logics...). So I have no issue with that.

[Injektilo]

I don't think Dallas was egging. Methinks he was the intended host, which is why Skull straight up slaughtered Lambert and Parker and captured Dallas presumably without a scratch ("No blood, no Dallas..") - Brett's head got cored I guess since the eggmorph just needs raw non-breathing biological...stuff.

The oozey stuff on the re-edit though, I don't know about that.

[nemarsde]

Ripley's an honest woman. She wouldn't say she knew where the eggs were coming from if she didn't know. Having seen the Alien Director's Cut scene, I don't know that Brett was turning into an egg. It sure wasn't an egg for a facehugger!

Maybe Brett was being cocooned, maybe the alien was going to cocoon itself with Brett once it had secured the area and metamorphose into a queen? Maybe Dallas would be the first host?

I really don't know what the hell was going on with that scene. Even the film-makers intention (that it was polymorphing Brett into an egg) doesn't even make a lot of sense within the context of the first film, let alone the second.

Something very alien was going on, that's for sure.

[Fomorian]

Whew... for a second there, I thought you were asking if the various Alien outings from DC (ie: Alien vs Superman) were consistant with Aliens

[Extrocomp]

Dallas WAS mutating into an egg like Brett. That's why Ripley had to kill him. If he was just a host who obviously hadn't been impregnated then Ripley would've made more of an effort to pull him out of there.

I agree with you nemarsde. The only reason we know that they're mutating into eggs is because of all the publicity surrounding this scene. However, I don't think a drone can turn into a queen.

[Fomorian]

I can live just fine with both explanations being true. Just goes to show we don't know everything about the Alien.

[Extrocomp]

But is it plausible for Ripley not to realize that Brett and Dallas were turning into eggs or even to repress the whole memory?

[Injektilo]

Originally Posted by Extrocomp

Dallas WAS mutating into an egg like Brett. That's why Ripley had to kill him. If he was just a host who obviously hadn't been impregnated then Ripley would've made more of an effort to pull him out of there.

Nothing was obvious to either of them though. Pasted to a wall with alien muck with your shipmate turning into something awful next to you (arguably after being 'stung'?) may very well lead to someone wanting to be simply dispatched. Ripley was pressed for time too.

[Termite Scream]

I find it impossible to tell whether I would have "seen" them turning into an egg, if I hadn't known about this scene before watching it. It's just too late. I know too much how to "read" it, what is its content, and I can't make the abstraction. That said, we know the intention. Whether the effects were conveying it enough to us or not (showing different passengers at different states of egg-turning), they are supposed to be to Ripley. It's a bit what matters, what is told in the story, whether the fx/images were too clumsy to be explicit about it. It's a bit like the wtf ending of 2001, that is open when it's thrown at you but take only one univocal meaning once you read the book and aknowledge the intentions of the story teller.

I see the intentions of the story teller as more "canon" than his grammatical mistakes.

[nemarsde]

Either way, within the context of the film, Ripley didn't have the film-makers talking about the scene in voice-over when she found Brett and Dallas.

Within the context of the film, she'd just found Parker and Lambert's gruesome remains, the alien's still on the loose when she finds Brett and Dallas, and she doesn't take long to consider the situation. Clearly the alien has fucked up both Brett and Dallas almost beyond recognition. She burns them and gets the hell on with surviving.

In retrospect, could she say she knows that aliens reproduce by polymorphing humans into aliens? If we can't make complete sense of the scene, knowing all that we do, Ripley definitely couldn't, imho.

I'm sure it's all her report.

Remember, she didn't know what the hive was either, but you could extrapolate from the Brett-egg scene that the aliens might adapt their environment.

But I think it's clear in both films that Ripley is not, and never was, remotely interested in studying or understanding the aliens. She just wants them dead dead dead.

I don't blame her.

[Termite Scream]

I'll shock you, but my point is : I'm not sure she sees what we see. It's like having a badly drawed cowboy (looking like a cosmonaut) spotting a badly drawed horse (looking like a rabbit-cow). He goes "oh, a horse", not "oh a rabbit-cow". I'm pretty sure (read: not certain) that the script and the novelization (damn, how geek of me) state clearly that they are turning into eggs (and implies by default Ripley sees it). Whether it's unclear to us, due to the means of storytelling and the design failure, is none of Ripley's business. Just like none of Ed Wood characters doubt of the saucer nature of what we percieve as some unclear bit of concrete with a door. They are within the story and not affected by how well or not the story is told or displayed ("to us").



_________________
PS
I lie. Actually one of my own characters already refused to consider as a horse the one I had pitifully attempted to draw.

[Salvage Guy]

Ripley torched her comrades because one of them (Dallas? it's been a while) pleaded for her to kill them. She had respect for them but on a command / humanitarian basis. The best she could do was grant his wish and probably didn't have time to theorise about whether or not they were cocoons, eggs or Skull's way of sprucing up the place a bit.

Either way, it's not canon to suggest they're eggs because we haven't heard a thing about it since the said event in any report. You think it would be important enough to mention at her hearing with Van Leuwen (sp?) that not only would the organism which she and her crew encountered would abduct our species given (or taking) the opportunity, that they would go through a horrific transformation into something theoretically worse? The alien species itself?

When she mentions that Kane "saw thousands of eggs" on the ship, that would have been the most appropriate time to mention about Brett and Dallas, wouldn't you think? And when the event of the first chestburster was recounted, like Termite (loosely with my theory) and Nem suggest, she had obviously not considered another method of the creation of an alien.

It's a scene full of scope, yet at the same time utterly unnecessary. IMO, Skull likes the 'crunchy on the outside, smooth in the middle' better. It was obviously a forgettable attempt at further explaining the alien life-cycle, probably because some hunch in a cushy office said 'But how?'.

[Termite Scream]

I think that, if there was no sequel, no "Aliens", I would have preferred this scene to be included. Of course, I have to rewatch both versions to see how much it ruins the pace or not (which can be a very valid reason to not have included it), but it also added a bit to the gigerian wtf horror of the alien. "Arrgh kill me i'm becomming part of it" is always an efficient trick on my nerves. I'm easily scared by biological assimilation (I hated The Many even more than Shodan, and she knew it).

[nemarsde]

Originally Posted by Termite Scream

I'm pretty sure (read: not certain) that the script and the novelization (damn, how geek of me) state clearly that they are turning into eggs (and implies by default Ripley sees it). Whether it's unclear to us, due to the means of storytelling and the design failure, is none of Ripley's business. Just like none of Ed Wood characters doubt of the saucer nature of what we percieve as some unclear bit of concrete with a door. They are within the story and not affected by how well or not the story is told or displayed ("to us").

With a novelisation, I agree with what you're saying, but not with a script. A script is instruction to the cast and crew, not to the characters or the audience.

For example, iirc, the Predator script had the Pred throwing a "spear" and cutting up soldiers with its "spurs".

The film-makers first interpreted this by giving the Pred a... how to describe it? Like one of those toy helicopter guns that launch a plastic rotorblade, and long, clawed fingers. (I can upload the screen caps again if anyone wants a laugh.)

Thankfully, Fox's effects department got the boot and Stan Winston created the final design. Spear and spurs became a smart-tracking plasmacaster and wrist-mounted blades.

Either way, regardless of what the script describes, the film shows what it shows and is irrefutable.

[Termite Scream]

Ok, but in all honesty, you believe that this scene was designed as "people stuck on the wall in various forms of we have no clue what", and Weaver was instructed to "see the crew on the wall here and not know what is going on", or was it, from the actor's and director's point of vew, a "you see them being turned into eggs" scene ?

[Guan-thwei]

Originally Posted by nemarsde

The film-makers first interpreted this by giving the Pred a... how to describe it? Like one of those toy helicopter guns that launch a plastic rotorblade, and long, clawed fingers. (I can upload the screen caps again if anyone wants a laugh.)

Please upload it, I'm curious.

[Herne the hunter]

I'm with Termite on this. If Alien was a stand-alone film then I'd have to accept that the creature reproduces by turning prey into eggs, but since Aliens makes that theory redundant I can't accept it.

Regardless of Scott's intentions, the movie doesn't specifically *STATE* that Brett is turning into an egg, and nothing with lots of legs and a penis like a surgical camera jumps out of him so as far as I'm concerned he was merely coccooned to the wall, regardless of what he may have looked like.

The whole "turning prey into one of them" concept is way too 50's B-movie IMO, and had it been included in the original release of the film I would've seen it as an immensely bad ending to an otherwise fantastic film. It's interesting to think though what Aliens might have been like if the scene had been included from the start...

[Termite Scream]

Originally Posted by Herne the hunter

Regardless of Scott's intentions, the movie doesn't specifically *STATE* that Brett is turning into an egg

If that was the idea, how would you had conveyed it? I mean, without resorting to dumb action-flick redundant explainations like "ARRRGH, ARE YOU, LIKE, TURNING INTO AN EGG ??" "- yes, i think i'm turning into an egg. an alien egg of aliens." "- my GOD, that means that... ALIENS CAN TURN PEOPLE INTO EGGS". Would there have been an univocal, and clear, and elegant ways to "state" it ?

[MacCabbe]

An alien with Brett's base ball cap maybe ? Would that be elegant ?

[Herne the hunter]

Originally Posted by Termite Scream

If that was the idea, how would you had conveyed it?

I wouldn't. Like I said, I think it's pure cheese. But for the sake of argument if I wanted it so there was absolutely no uncertainty, I'd have made Brett's chest slightly translucent and maybe had an underdeveloped 'hugger inside, or at least a twitching gooey mass.

The audience would associate that with the facehuggers twitching inside the clear eggs on the derelict and the connection would have been made with no margin for error.

[nemarsde]

Originally Posted by Termite Scream

Ok, but in all honesty, you believe that this scene was designed as "people stuck on the wall in various forms of we have no clue what", and Weaver was instructed to "see the crew on the wall here and not know what is going on", or was it, from the actor's and director's point of vew, a "you see them being turned into eggs" scene ?

I see what you're saying, but by my Predator example I was saying that, semiotically, there's a difference between the signifier and the signified, and the same applies to the Brett-egg scene.

When I watch that scene, I don't see Brett transforming into a facehugger egg. I see him turning into something that roughly resembles a facehugger egg, but without knowing what a facehugger egg looks like, I see Brett being dissolved and turned into a cocoon or something. This is all regardless of the script or the film-makers intentions.

The scene's ambiguity is perhaps one good reason why they cut it.

Btw, I'll post the Gimp-Pred pics into another thread.

[Injektilo]

Originally Posted by The Real Mac Cabbe

An alien with Brett's base ball cap maybe ? Would that be elegant ?

[img]0728765910[/img]

[Guan-thwei]

Originally Posted by Injektilo

[img]0728765910[/img]

FAIL.

[MacCabbe]

Originally Posted by Injektilo

[img]0728765910[/img]

Let's call that !

[Herne the hunter]

Originally Posted by Injektilo

[img]0728765910[/img]

To reiterate:

[Guan-thwei]

Originally Posted by Herne the hunter

To reiterate:

[Extrocomp]

I think you guys are forgetting that Ripley doesn't know what alien eggs look like when she finds Brett and Dallas. She's never been inside the Derelict. Then next time she see's an egg it's through the fuzzy marine camera view and it's open and empty. Although we know the film-makers intended Brett and Dallas to be turning into eggs, some things make me suspect that they weren't eggs or at least an entirely different kind of eggs than what we've seen elsewhere. They were much bigger than eggs. Does that mean they're supposed to grow smaller? How does do they do that? And they were stuck to the wall instead of sitting on the ground.

Does anyone know what Ridley Scott says about this scene in his director's commentary? It might clear some things up? The commentary for the Director's Cut is only on the Region 1 DVD.

There's no actual contradiction between the two different life-cycles. It's perfectly plausible that an alien has a second way of reproducing if the queen is absent for some reason. Many Earth species have two ways of reproducing. It's only the fact that Ripley saw it that's iffy.

[Injektilo]

Originally Posted by BlahdB00rn

FAIL.

Ooo scathing.

[MacCabbe]

There's even his beer bottle in the background ! Ultimate proof that Brett-Alien exists !