What the heck is the Xenomorph doing at the end of "Alien?"
- Thread starter RoJoHen
- Start date
I was also always puzzled by what the alien was doing at the end of the movie. My initial though when seeing the scene was that it was hiding so it could sneak up on Ripley, but its lack of reaction to her throws that idea out the airlock. I then though that maybe it was hibernating so it could survive the trip back to Earth which would explain why it was a bit sluggish to react. I honestly don't know what to think, I guess Scott's explanation that it was chillaxing on its death bed makes as much sense as any.
I think it would make more sense if there was a larger amount of time between the last few scenes. Just a couple minutes earlier we see the alien running around the Nostromo trying to kill Ripley. Then the Nostromo blows up. It's very unclear how much time then passes before Ripley finds the alien. It seems to only be a couple minutes, which to me is not enough time for the alien to crawl into a hiding space and fall asleep.
I'd always assumed the Alien had gone into some kind of hibernation. When it got to the shuttle it was empty and probably seemed safe enough as Ripley was off screaming at the computer or discovering the half formed eggs (depending on which version you watch.) It's behaviour after Ripley started messing with it looks consistent with a creature still groggy after having slowed down it's metabolism. The hand shooting out was probably just a reflex reaction to Ripley's proximity.
As for Lambert; I think there's something in her crew dossier about emotional instability (and a medical history that includes a male to female in vitro sex change.) One assumes that's the same document that Veronica Cartwright was working from, so a tendency towards hysteria was probably intentional. Aside from that, it may have been the intent to make the two female characters as different as possible.
Speaking of Lambert, anyone else notice that when Ripley finds her and Parker's bodies that Lambert's legs are bare? I only noticed this back when I bought the quadrilogy set. Up till then I thought the idea of the Alien raping her was just a concept they'd toyed with prior to filming and never followed through on.
As for Lambert; I think there's something in her crew dossier about emotional instability (and a medical history that includes a male to female in vitro sex change.) One assumes that's the same document that Veronica Cartwright was working from, so a tendency towards hysteria was probably intentional. Aside from that, it may have been the intent to make the two female characters as different as possible.
Speaking of Lambert, anyone else notice that when Ripley finds her and Parker's bodies that Lambert's legs are bare? I only noticed this back when I bought the quadrilogy set. Up till then I thought the idea of the Alien raping her was just a concept they'd toyed with prior to filming and never followed through on.
I'd always assumed the Alien had gone into some kind of hibernation. When it got to the shuttle it was empty and probably seemed safe enough as Ripley was off screaming at the computer or discovering the half formed eggs (depending on which version you watch.) It's behaviour after Ripley started messing with it looks consistent with a creature still groggy after having slowed down it's metabolism. The hand shooting out was probably just a reflex reaction to Ripley's proximity.
As for Lambert; I think there's something in her crew dossier about emotional instability (and a medical history that includes a male to female in vitro sex change.) One assumes that's the same document that Veronica Cartwright was working from, so a tendency towards hysteria was probably intentional. Aside from that, it may have been the intent to make the two female characters as different as possible.
Speaking of Lambert, anyone else notice that when Ripley finds her and Parker's bodies that Lambert's legs are bare? I only noticed this back when I bought the quadrilogy set. Up till then I thought the idea of the Alien raping her was just a concept they'd toyed with prior to filming and never followed through on.
As for Lambert; I think there's something in her crew dossier about emotional instability (and a medical history that includes a male to female in vitro sex change.) One assumes that's the same document that Veronica Cartwright was working from, so a tendency towards hysteria was probably intentional. Aside from that, it may have been the intent to make the two female characters as different as possible.
Speaking of Lambert, anyone else notice that when Ripley finds her and Parker's bodies that Lambert's legs are bare? I only noticed this back when I bought the quadrilogy set. Up till then I thought the idea of the Alien raping her was just a concept they'd toyed with prior to filming and never followed through on.
To me the bigger question is: why the heck would the Nostromo, a commercial towing and mining vessel, have a self-destruct button built into it? I can kind of understand not wanting the advanced technology of the Enterprise to fall into enemy hands, but the Nostromo?
And is this just an invention of scifi, or do aircraft carriers and other real world vessels have these too? Because it doesn't seem to me like the smartest thing to have built into your ship. lol
And is this just an invention of scifi, or do aircraft carriers and other real world vessels have these too? Because it doesn't seem to me like the smartest thing to have built into your ship. lol
A self destruct could potentially make sense..... the ship could be used to carry some high-tech or top secret stuff that if they're attacked by pirates or other corporations, they would rather have the cargo destroyed than captured. Or the ship could get infested with something and they don't want any possibility of it getting out. There are all sorts of "practical" reasons why it wouldn't be a bad idea for a ship to carry a self destruct.
My guess is that, if the Nostromo or another ship like it was hauling something that was deadly toxic, or nuclear, and something happened where the crew had to abandon, they would want the ability to scuttle the cargo so that it wouldn't crash into and contaminate a habited world/moon/space station. The cargo containment module was enormous compared to Nostromo herself, so it was possible that it could deal quite a bit of damage to anything it ran into. As bureaucratic as Weyland-Yutani was, I suspect this could be chalked up purely to liability mitigation.
But there was no Alien 3 it went straight to Alien Ressurection?
Damn, I'm getting those weird emails from Lacuna Inc again!
There was no Alien Resurrection. You must be getting confused with Alien Vs Predator.
There was only an Alien Trilogy which ended very well for all fans who watched it.
Off-topic: That's what I always say about Picard and Shinzon. If he had just waited a few more days, Shinzon would've died and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
There was no trilogy. There were only two Alien movies, plus a bunch of Ripley's increasingly bizarre cold-sleep nightmares.
Check the DVD if you don't believe me. When Ripley finds them, you can see Parker's (fully clothed) body slumped on the left and in the foreground is Lambert's bare legs, her body apparently hanging from the ceiling or something above frame.
Taking into account the way it was toying with her the last time we see her and the...uh...'noises' she was making over the intercom while Ripley was pelting down the corridor and it's pretty evident something creepy was going on. Like Dren from Splice creepy.
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This is what the xenomorph would have done at the end if Ridley had had his way:
"Scott had wanted the Alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea as they believed that the Alien had to die at the end of the film."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)
"Scott had wanted the Alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea as they believed that the Alien had to die at the end of the film."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)
I believe that is what happened as well.
Sort of like if someone on a nuclear sub disabled all of the cooling systems.
If i remember my history correctly the Nazis scuttled the Admiral Graf Spee but most of the time during the war a destroyer was sent to torpedo a ship thought to be sure loss to the enemy.
That sounds close enough to "Self Destruct" to me, if you can get there fast enough to accomplish your goal.
I've always wondered the same thing. I can see some way of, say, over-riding the cooling systems of the powerplant so it destroys itself and the ship, but it does seem odd that there was a whole system devoted to self-destruct with printed instructions, audible warnings and all.
When one hears of ships being purposely scuttled, it usually involves opening or damaging/destroying various valves that let water into the hull, usually in engineering spaces, and circumventing all water-tightness precautions. Sometimes in wartime explosives have been rigged ad hoc to accomplish this in a rapid and irreversible way, but I don't believe it is standard equipment on modern warships. Of course a spaceship can't be sent to the bottom of the sea, so making one irrecoverable pretty much has to involve a big bang.
--Justin
