Amph On Earth, Everyone Can Hear You Scream: The Prometheus / Alien Discussion Thread (Romulus)

Probably would be easier at this point to say the initial gestation period from Alien was actually elongated...perhaps due to the long hibernation of the egg/facehugger at the crash site.

You could make the argument, given the aggressive nature of the species that a fast life cycle is necessary to explain such a hostile and urgently predatory creature throughout it's entire life-cycle. No time to relax or mate or think...just kill, feed, and provide for a Queen to spawn again.

 

Everything in the film was sped up.
We have 30 hours to get in and out.
Actually it's 30 minutes now.

 

I mean, that's just normal upping the stakes of the story. If there's any criticism here it's that it's yet another "callback", that being in 'Aliens' when Bishop suddenly informs everyone that (thanks to the dropship crash) they now have four hours to evacuate Hadley's Hope until the atmosphere processor blows up (when before they had to theoretically hold out for 17 days until rescue). But I have zero problem with it, it's a classic way to ratchet up the tension and momentum of the story going into the 3rd act.

 

But we really don't ever see a full gestation period in Aliens. We only see the one chestbuster scene...perhaps that was the last hold out besides Newt and was only recently "hugged."

I also seem to recall there was a scene cut from Aliens that had some of the marines, or maybe it was Burke, who were in the nursery when Ripley goes in search of Newt. I think they were already implanted and awaiting the chestburst and asking Ripley for a merciful death. If that was taken as valid, the rapid pace of gestation would be further solidified.

Another element could come down to just how healthy the "host" is during gestation. Both Kane and Ripley are able to get up...eat...move...they, perhaps, continued to provide for the growing organism inside, whereas a host who was restrained, not fed, near death, is only going to give so much before the chestburster must escape to find additional nutrition to grow.

 

Ridley's advice = Always double dip with a director's cut.

 

In the first film, we have a good idea of how long implantation is. Then gestation. Growth is unclear. At best an hour to ninety minutes. The colonist in the second film might have been captured a few hours before the drop ship launched. Newt doesn't say how long ago the last stand was. There probably wasn't time to properly log much by that point. The idea of a Queen taking longer to gestate became official afterwards. Purvis is the only exception, which meant that either he had an abnormal Chestburster, or it was a Queen.

As to Hadley's Hope, they can expect a rescue team in seventeen days, but Hicks didn't say how long it took to be declared overdue.

 

Greatest Beer In the Universe, Aspen Beer!

 

Yeah. But having a normal, conventional, contrived way of upping the stakes is not a point in its favor, IMO.

 

More Alien-verse.

Anything on a sequel to this or any other Alien film is speculation. But then:


Until then, however, Hulu is developing an "Alien" TV series from "Fargo" creator Noah Hawley. Titled, "Alien: Earth," the series is set 30 years before the events of Ridley Scott's original movie.

Little is known about the plot, but it includes "Andor" star Alex Lawther as CJ, a soldier, and Sydney Chance as Wendy, a woman with the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child. According to Deadline, "Fargo" season five star David Rysdahl is also in the cast as Kirsch, an android in charge of looking after Wendy.

30 years before Alien. On Earth? Ok, I guess.

 

Well it is clear at this point that there was knowledge of the xenos prior to the original film.

So it just becomes one of those conspiracy-type plots...who knows...who has to be kept quiet...who will be silenced.

It gets more difficult if the show is a success because of just how much of the alien universe do they bring into one story.

 

30 years before the original movie? Doesn’t that put it at the same time as Prometheus? How’s that gonna work exactly?

 

Just before Prometheus.

 

So is the retcon gonna be that David created xenos, but other xenos already existed too? I know there was that xeno “mural” in Prometheus but I always interpreted that as some kinda ancient Cthulhu god and that David made the xenos in said god’s “image.” Then again, I guess the xeno-ish creature that popped out of the engineer at the end already contradicts that theory.

 

When everything is a secret, you can do whatever you want with timelines.

It just means there will be no world changing shift in the status quo of the show.

Xenos will not destroy the earth or start a war, etc.

Secrets, coverups, conspiracies.

 

That's the take of the Alien RPG, certainly.

It is broadly hinted there that the Engineers aren't responsible, either - they are obsessed with the 'perfect organism' that they encounter and an attempt to create their own versions (they create the black goo for this purpose, possibly derived from the original xenomorphs). In fact, the generation of the 'squid baby' and so forth in Prometheus is treated as this Engineer version

Spoiler

That can, in fact, end with humans, Engineers and even androids being turned into the "Perfected", a sort of hyperevolved, intelligent Giger humanoid. The last campaign for the RPG has this lead to the Engineers' downfall, as their obsession with the xenomorphs leading to their own destruction. The Perfected also have a fascination with the xenomorphs bordering on the religious.

I like the concept that the true origin of the xenomorphs is still unknown. We'll see what the TV series does.

 

Hawley already said the show is going to sidestep Prometheus (and it is also about a different megacorp)

“Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show,” Hawley says. “For me, and for a lot of people, this ‘perfect life form’ — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that’s just inherently less useful to me. And in terms of the mythology, what’s scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards … You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies’ future. There’s something about that that doesn’t really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me.”

 

Alien Earth . . .

Could be good, I guess it all depends on the premise. One would assume that androids will be a big part of it, in many ways they’re more the stars of the franchise than the xenomorphs, especially post-Prometheus. There will probably be some comparisons to the Scott-produced show Raised By Wolves which I thought of as perhaps existing in an alternate Alien timeline of some sort.

I liked Romulus, I wouldn’t put in my top three favorites of the franchise but it was fun and I’d be down for a sequel. I wouldn’t even mind if they go for a kind of soft-franchise reboot with a follow up featuring colonial marines.

As to any potential new AvP movies, I’m not opposed to it but I’d like to see them treat it seriously and have it exist in the futuristic Alien timeline, concurrent with Romulus, Aliens, etc. That could lend some opportunities for world building where the humans have more tools for understanding the bigger picture and the Predators would have a tougher challenge fighting humans with advanced tech.

 

The Alien RPG ties the 'futuristic' tech to Weyland Corp itself and with its collapse and loss of its genius CEO, much of it falls to the wayside (also in part due to it being hideously expensive, which allows for Weyland's vanity project being not indicative of how regular tech looks at that time).

 

Contriving a countdown to up the stakes is! Physics or no physics. I don’t mind it if done well, though.