Alien: Covenant/Alien Series thoughts.

[Adamska]

It's amazing to watch them wear the skinsuit of the original product by doing cynical things like orange catposting, plundering the sound-effect archives made by smarter people to pretend to be canon while having a fucking clip/shorts style dimension and not giving a shit about this not feeling analogue, and then also in the same promo be retarded enough to forget that The Company for all intents and purposes had no clue on these fuckers and what they do.

Even if you count Prometheus; they'd be looking for Black Goo at best, since there's no Xenos in that film. There is no mechanical way for them to actually know this, let alone get speciments. And that's if the ship sent out to deep space on a private mission beamed back data, which lolno.

These are some pretty lame efforts to get people interested in this shit show.

In lighter news, I think I nailed why I don't like the Black Goo as a plot when I've recommended the Gibson script and the comic based on it. In Gibson's script, the xeno's DNA is highly receptive to recombinating with any gene templates, and it can also be cultivated and grown easily. It actually does some of the things I disliked from Prometheus and Covenant, which I think borrowed more from it than previously thought. Scraps of its genome eventually turns into something akin to a virus, which can infect and convert you into an instance like and akin to the Xenos. Just like the Black Goo.

But the reason it works in Gibson and not when Scott did it is because it is a twist in the base creature that doesn't fuck up what happened in the prior two movies. The virus/motes/spores are due to humans experimenting with gene samples from Bishop's remains and learning to their horror how easy this thing is capable of self-replicating. The Progressive Union of Peoples easily clones a drone from the remains and experiments with enhancements, making a worse monster. Wey-Yu accidentally creates a gene plague out of its scraps while attempting to make new eggs. It is the consequences of governments or corporations seeking to build weapons in an arms race they see in their heads. It is not the goo that all of them came from by blue men that were framed as the Demiurge and made Jesus.

It is the same concept, but framed much less retardedly.

 

[Wot Zit Too Yah0996]

Well, I'm thinking it can't be as boring as the video games.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Well, I'm thinking it can't be as boring as the video games.

That reminds me, did they ever make that mod for Isolation where the Xeno has heels and a maid outfit so it ends up klutzing around in a moe manner? I recall those conversations got detailed enough that I was expecting a TC like Doom in the day

edit- oh yeah like the classic franchise "Invasion Of The Dick Monsters From Space And Their Cunt Larval Form That Rapes Your Face" _wasn't_ deviant for the last fifty years, dozen movies, and umpteflump games
obviously putting the Dick Monster in a skirt was where the line must be drawn

 

[Wot Zit Too Yah0996]

That reminds me, did they ever make that mod for Isolation where the Xeno has heels and a maid outfit so it ends up klutzing around in a moe manner? I recall those conversations got detailed enough that I was expecting a TC like Doom in the day

edit- oh yeah like the classic franchise "Invasion Of The Dick Monsters From Space And Their Cunt Larval Form That Rapes Your Face" _wasn't_ deviant for the last fifty years, dozen movies, and umpteflump games
obviously putting the Dick Monster in a skirt was where the line must be drawn

Wouldn't know anything about that, but it sounds right that they wouldn't have the guts to do that mod.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Wouldn't know anything about that, but it sounds right that they wouldn't have the guts to do that mod.

I got the impression it was more "haha wouldn't it be funny if..." posting, but it seems like it would be pretty do-able.
And regardless of being thirsty for Dongdemons that would be pretty funny to watch a Xeno flail around because heels are a bitch to get around in

 

[Wot Zit Too Yah0996]

I got the impression it was more "haha wouldn't it be funny if..." posting, but it seems like it would be pretty do-able.
And regardless of being thirsty for Dongdemons that would be pretty funny to watch a Xeno flail around because heels are a bitch to get around in

Or trip over head-first constantly.

 

[74164978231]

Unpopular opinion but I did not like Alien Isolation. IMO it felt too much like a walking simulator. Played 2-3 hours of it before stopping as I got tired of endlessly hiding in lockers.

A real shame because the presentation was absolutely fantastic.

 

[#lurker]

Unpopular opinion but I did not like Alien Isolation

All those type of games (where you are forced to run and hide from the big bad monster) are incredibly shallow, and there is always a certain point while playing them where you "see behind the curtain" and realize it's just all smoke and mirrors. Terrible genre.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

The showrunner is apparently the guy who did the Fargo TV show and something called Legion. Neither of which I am familiar with but I vaguely recall people praising the Fargo show.

he's been a woke fag since covid/summer of floyd.

There's actually a lot of potential reasons MegaCorp would want something like the Xeno; it's the fault of modern writing being lazy and stupid they don't explore that.

i love the 4chan meme where the Xeno is just a byproduct of them finding a very impressive wheat crop that produces way more wheat than normal, something that sounds small but would have hilariously huge implications is exactly what a corporation would love, it ties into the "bonus situation" as well, if they find something worth this much, the bureaucracy might make them all filthy rich depending on the wording of how this crop was found and by whom. think about the story of flaming hot cheetos, only with the byproduct of tons of murder before it gets launched to stores.

Burke is powerful enough to send an entire army to a useless rock with the most valuable terraforming equipment in existence. I hated how he was written as some 'low level executive' yet somehow was able to move trillions in advanced machinery and 160 colonists without any oversight for months on end. He should have been written as someone more powerfu

when a company is big enough, you can be both a low level executive and have access to trillions, think about the plebs that control our nukes or spec ops teams or certain parts of companies.

And they hardly send an army, they send a single platoon.

exactly, i've worked at a few places where a manager was able to hire security with almost no questions asked just because its the type of rare situation that the company has "rainy day" funds for and would be in a much worse situation if they needed and didn't have.

160 people and an ultra expensive and rare terraforming unit is rather signifnicant. Platoons are usually four or five squads so maybe 50 soldiers.

thats basically a super walmart's worth of people, and there are about 4k of those on the planet in the current year. And if he's just a company rep, its even less impressive, like how hard do you really think it is for some guy in walmart's home office to volunteer to be the company rep at some location where someone just got killed in an industrial oven and police are investigating and probably has a lot of fucking questions. it was especially believable in the pre-internet days where you were limited to phone calls and fax machines so it was a lot more common for some corporate stooge to pop up all over the fucking place.

 

[I am Jack's dead arm]

Unpopular opinion but I did not like Alien Isolation. IMO it felt too much like a walking simulator. Played 2-3 hours of it before stopping as I got tired of endlessly hiding in lockers.

A real shame because the presentation was absolutely fantastic.

I liked the game, but it went on too long and got repetitive. I liked the DLC levels better. Shorter and to the point.

 

[CervixHammer]

Second Star To The Right / All This Has Happened Before

 

[augment]

I like to the think of the black goo in Prometheus as Damon Lindeloff's true form. He's this odd, malign substance which messes up any form of coherent story which is trying to be told; he wraps his tumorous amorphous tendrils over it and mutates it into an aberrant disaster that cannot make any sense "because movies are like black boxes!!"

 

[BrunoMattei]

edit- oh yeah like the classic franchise "Invasion Of The Dick Monsters From Space And Their Cunt Larval Form That Rapes Your Face" _wasn't_ deviant for the last fifty years, dozen movies, and umpteflump games
obviously putting the Dick Monster in a skirt was where the line must be drawn

Oh yeah? Well you're posting on the school shooter idealizing, neo-nazi, doxxing, hate terrorist website responsible for the deaths of billions of troons. So we're even.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Oh yeah? Well you're posting on the school shooter idealizing, neo-nazi, doxxing, hate terrorist website responsible for the deaths of billions of troons. So we're even.

"oh sure, I might be do- phonebooking innocent guys who want to whip their dongs out in public bathrooms with little girls there, but at least I'm not designed by H. R. Giger"

 

[Calandrino]

I liked the game, but it went on too long and got repetitive. I liked the DLC levels better. Shorter and to the point.

I play Isolation for a couple hours once every few months. I think I've been at it for years with no end in sight. I go kinda slow. I think I played it for longer than the length of an Alien movie before I got to the alien. Still, not a bad game at all; if I eat healthy, I might finish it some day.

 

[regalterry]

And they hardly send an army, they send a single platoon.

It wasn't even a platoon, just a dozen troops, TOTAL.

It never made sense and is one of the weakest aspects of Aliens, combined with the fact they basically left a warship with nuclear weapons unattended in orbit .The pilots keeping the dropship ramp lowered in hostile territory and not staying at their post, just so a xeno could conveniently wander in and kill them was also incredibly stupid.

How do they even justify the costs involved in ferrying such small numbers of troops around? If they're in cryo they don't need to waste food and resources on sleeping soldiers and can just pull them out of the freezer as necessary.

Also, I never quite understood how the smart gun was supposed to be used. I get that it fills the role of a squad automatic weapon, but the way it's carried makes it impossible to use when laying prone (barring the goofy way it was shown in the technical manual), and very awkward when crouching, only really being usable when standing out of cover.

 

[Ghostse]

It wasn't even a platoon, just a dozen troops, TOTAL.

It never made sense and is one of the weakest aspects of Aliens, combined with the fact they basically left a warship with nuclear weapons unattended in orbit .The pilots keeping the dropship ramp lowered in hostile territory and not staying at their post, just so a xeno could conveniently wander in and kill them was also incredibly stupid.

How do they even justify the costs involved in ferrying such small numbers of troops around? If they're in cryo they don't need to waste food and resources on sleeping soldiers and can just pull them out of the freezer as necessary.

The Sulacco was mostly automated. The ship-based weapons would have auto-triggered if needed, and in a perfect world where the atmosphere wasn't electrically charged and the dropship hadn't crashed into the APC, they would have been in contact with ship during the mission for orbital support.

They sent a light assault ship because they weren't sure what they would find. They might find an assault force from the USSR stand-in, or just a busted comms relay. Two Squads of marines should have been enough to deal with most threats or coordinate an evacuation if needed - which is why they send a mostly empty ship. They might have needed to extract the colonists.

Also, I never quite understood how the smart gun was supposed to be used. I get that it fills the role of a squad automatic weapon, but the way it's carried makes it impossible to use when laying prone (barring the goofy way it was shown in the technical manual), and very awkward when crouching, only really being usable when standing out of cover.

The idea with the smart gun is you don't need cover. The target does.
You are also seeing the marines doing a lot more fighting in spaceships and colony buildings where the need to fire prone is going to be less important. Thought the the arm could pivot up if you did decide to low crawl, or you could detach it from the assembly.
Its just an MG-34 after all.

 

[regalterry]

The Sulacco was mostly automated. The ship-based weapons would have auto-triggered if needed, and in a perfect world where the atmosphere wasn't electrically charged and the dropship hadn't crashed into the APC, they would have been in contact with ship during the mission for orbital support.

That's a weird justification in a universe where they put in strict limitation on what synths can do. They don't trust the android to the point there's limiters in place to prevent it from harming humans in any shape or form, but trust the ship AI not to nuke them from orbit?

The plot actively torpedoes the justification by presenting a situation where having a human contingent on the ship, in the loop, would have resolved the situation. Hell, even having one or two people in cryo the ship could activate when encountering unforeseen situation would have helped avoid further loss of life.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that Cameron was just trying to create cool shit, and he's generally better than most in the industry at this kind of stuff, and has certainly improved by the time Avatar rolled around, but it still triggers my 'tism.

Thought the the arm could pivot up if you did decide to low crawl, or you could detach it from the assembly.

No, it can't.



This is a great way to shoot off your foot, or both of them, considering the gun swings automatically to track targets.

 

[Overly Serious]

It wasn't even a platoon, just a dozen troops, TOTAL.

It never made sense and is one of the weakest aspects of Aliens, combined with the fact they basically left a warship with nuclear weapons unattended in orbit .The pilots keeping the dropship ramp lowered in hostile territory and not staying at their post, just so a xeno could conveniently wander in and kill them was also incredibly stupid.

How do they even justify the costs involved in ferrying such small numbers of troops around? If they're in cryo they don't need to waste food and resources on sleeping soldiers and can just pull them out of the freezer as necessary.

Also, I never quite understood how the smart gun was supposed to be used. I get that it fills the role of a squad automatic weapon, but the way it's carried makes it impossible to use when laying prone (barring the goofy way it was shown in the technical manual), and very awkward when crouching, only really being usable when standing out of cover.

There are passable attempts to justify some of the holes you pick up on in various expanded material. The best of which is probably Free League's Alien RPG because they can pick and choose from a lot of the expanded material to try and make their own coherent canon and the only real constraint is to stay in line with the movies. So you have a whole setting involving the United Americas, the Three World Empire and the UPP (a kind of Soviet Successor group but surprisingly plausiblely done). The setting still has holes but you get enough of a fig leaf that lets you preserve your suspension of disbelief. For example there are literally hundreds of stations and colonies and proto-colonies out there by this point in the timeline. It's a not quite Wild West situation with smaller companies or self-funding groups going out prospecting for good worlds or mineral deposits. Even religious groups who want to do things their way without some world government nosing in on them. Basically any group that can raise the capital to get a big enough ship and supplies and get out there. And as colonisation equipment and processes become more commoditised that becomes easier to do. So when you see LV-426 and that's all you see, maybe it creates a bit more of an impression of importance than it actually has. And a "downed transmitter" usually turns out to be exactly that in these scenarios.

With the capability to largely automate ships it's actually not that bizarre that one might travel with only a skeleton crew. It might ship out a couple of hundred marines in cryo out to some active front against the UPP and then on a return journey have the handful of troops being shipped back. Or vice versa be sent out with only a few and expect to evacuate many out. Much conflict by this point in the Aliens timeline is naval. How many marines do you need when your vessel's primary role is to dominate from orbit? And "nukes" can just be "tactical nukes", not city destroyers.

How do they even justify the costs involved in ferrying such small numbers of troops around? If they're in cryo they don't need to waste food and resources on sleeping soldiers and can just pull them out of the freezer as necessary.

In setting, FTL Space travel ends up being pretty cheap. It has to be for things like hauling minerals back from other star systems to make economic sense. And the difference in cost between hauling two-hundred frozen bodies through space or thirty isn't going to be that much on a ship the size of the one in Aliens (the Sulacco). But the difference in cost in pay would be. So if you want to keep costs down it's actually more economical to send a large empty ship than a large full one. And it's clear that nobody thinks the mission is actually that important in the first place. Which is why Burke can only wrangle a bunch of bottom-tier recruits and a green untested commander.

Still, you're pretty much right. I actually started to write rationalisations for some of your other points but I found I was reaching too much. James Cameron had no familiarity with the military at all at this point in his life and pretty much his entire view was formed on Vietnam movies he watched. In his commentary on the movie he sounds a bit embarassed at the scene where the marines assemble for their briefing and says he had no idea what real life marines were like or how unrealistic his portrayal was. And that he's wised up since.

EDIT: Was writing at the same time as @Ghostse . That's a good point about needing capacity in the event of an evacuation of the colonists. Had not thought of that at all.

 

[Ghostse]

They don't trust the android to the point there's limiters in place to prevent it from harming humans in any shape or form, but trust the ship AI not to nuke them from orbit?

When I say ship-based I mean the particle cannon and rail gun. that is if a USSR-Stand-in cruiser had rolled up. Any ground strikes would have clearly needed human involvement.

You can question everyone leaving the ship, but Ferro and Spunkmeyer were supposed to be in the drop ship and in constant contact. As good as being there if Spunkmeyer hadn't needed to go take a piss.

I mean if you are triggering your 'tism why not do it over an actual head scratcher like wondering why the bastard offspring of a spaceshuttle and a huey is being piloted by a corporal and a private.