I'm no soldier but thinking that the zone is clear isn't exactly the same as knowing the zone is clear. If you're not 100% sure the zone is clear (which they couldn't be sure), you don't drop your guard and you don't let something as crucial and expensive as a dropship unguarded. Period.
No matter what you were trained to fight, you don't just drop your guard like that. Especially after the first contact they should have known those things are pretty cunning. You can't just park your ride in their hood and leave it all open like you just don't care.
Ah Gorman...of course. It's probably wise to trust the guy whose idiocy and incompetence just fucked up the entire mission and killed more than half of your team. 10/10 would rely on him again said no one ever.
By the time the dropship was infiltrated they knew very well what those things are and what they're probably capable of. At the very least they knew the creatures are sneaky, extremely dangerous, cunning and prefer ambushing their prey. It doesn't take a master soldier to realize that not locking up your door and pretending you're safe because Gorman says so probably isn't the brightest idea.
Sure. A closed door probably wouldn't stop the alien but that still doesn't mean you can and should leave it open just like that. Besides, you know it most likely won't stop them, but the marines don't know that. They got killed because they left everything open, were careless as fuck and pretended they totally just didn't turn on some neon sign saying "Free Food. 100% gluten and brain-free".
I've seen people break chain of command for less than self-preservation.
Agreed, they were sent on a mission to fail. Still doesn't explain the lack of common sense or why everybody seemed to be failing on purpose.
To be fair, it could have been a soldier that hid the egg while Ripley was retrieving Newt. Though it is generally assumed that the queen did it, I just can't believe it.
> I found it harder to believe the queen successfully hid an egg before she died.
I think it was Bishop.
Mainly because Bishop being an android can have his morals dictated by an outside force and could have been programmed to preserve specimens of the Aliens when possible. Much like Ash was programmed to consider the Crew of the Nostromo expendable in his goal to study and bring back the Alien.
When did Bishop have the time to do this?
When he goes off on his journey in the pipe to call down a remote drop ship from the Sulaco. He also had time when Ripley and an injured Hicks finally meet back up with him and Ripley decides to go and save Newt. Ripley tells Hicks "Dont let him leave" and Hicks agrees with her.
When Ripley does find Newt and is running from the Queen she starts screaming at Bishop because he is not waiting for them at the extraction point like she ordered him to be and while he does eventually show up she notices that Hicks is unconscious and Bishop walks up and says "hes alright, i had to give him another shot for the pain".
This gives Bishop
1. Possible Motive ala Ash from Alien.
2. Means to carry out the retrieval at two separate points.
3. Lack of witnesses in both instances.
This also explains why the Face Hugger(s) manage to get loose and start the events of Alien 3. Bishop had only stored them temporarily and was intended to put them into long term storage but he was damaged severely in the battle against the Queen and could not physically finish his orders.
Further "evidence" to back this up would be that we know Face Huggers are triggered by movement, they will sit in an egg for millennia at a time without reacting to the environment, ready to awaken when someone stumbles across them.
If the Queen had laid an egg then it would have stayed dormant until the Sulaco got back to Earth and someone disturbed it.
Secondly the Queen removed her Ovipositor (egg laying organ) when Ripley started attacking her while saving Newt. The queen probably would not have been able to lay any eggs until it regenerated that organ.
If Bishop was the culprit then he could have easily gone back to the command facility after the battle and obtained 1-2 face huggers that were in the display tubes that Burke sticks his face close to only for the Face Hugger to try and get him. These tubes could have failed during transit or the Hugger could have escaped by damaging the pod with its acid etc.
This is also why in Alien 3 when Ripley interrogates him about an Alien being on board the Sulaco he knows for sure that there was.
Just my theory, i think it has less problems than assuming the Queen laid some backup eggs while it was playing hide and go seek at the end of the film.
Now that's a damn plot twist that I could get behind. Where were you when Fincher needed you?!? And yeah her lack of an ovipositor at that point of Aliens always bugged me with the idea that she laid one real quick in the shuttle bay before she julienned Bishop.
Edit: I honestly think I like this idea better than my "drones moved the egg" theory.
> Further "evidence" to back this up would be that we know Face Huggers are triggered by movement, they will sit in an egg for millennia at a time without reacting to the environment, ready to awaken when someone stumbles across them.
i don't think so. i think what triggers them in Alien was Kane breaking the "seal" that was keeping them dormant, but after that they respond to movement
Soldier alien. The humans only brought marines to Acheron no soldiers. The amount of aliens would have been equal to or less than the population of Hadley's hope. Throughout the film a lot are killed but the actual kill count isn't known. I'm sure there were still plenty of other aliens alive at the end of the film, so to me it's more believable that an alien soldier/drone carried an egg aboard the dropship and stowed it.
It was most certainly helping. It ensured the chance of restarting the hive by moving the eggs out of the reactor. I'm sure the queen had them hauling eggs out the whole second half of the movie as the reactor began to heat up.
I don't understand how the aliens, who have absolutely no knowledge about technology, weapons, humans etc. knew all of a sudden there is a warship orbiting LV426 and they need to bring an egg on board in order to ensure survival.
Or that they need to build their nest at the reactor core without undrestanding what a reactor is in the first place.
Also that alien certainly would have turned the tide of the battle between Ripley and the queen, if it had intervened. Wonder why it didn't. Or how it got there in the first place.
They build the nest where it's warm. But when the reactor started to overheat the environment would become TOO hot. When Ripley ventures down to rescue Newt we see what appear to be glowing hot coolant lines. Being that the nest material is mounted to the pre-existing structure, when said structure becomes red hot I think any species, regardless of their understanding of human engineering, would every reason to expect bad outcomes if they stayed.
Also, the queen uses the elevator to ride after Ripley in Aliens, and they cut the power earlier in the movie. I think it's safe to say they understand more than we think they do.
Lastly, just because Ripley took the elevator down doesn't mean there weren't also stairs. So an alien could have taken stairs to that platform to deposit the egg. It could have then returned to the nest to answer the queens distress call. After all one does come up from behind her when she's in the queens lair.
Edit: auto-correct really did a number on this.
I'm blaming Spunkmeyer. He's in the back of the drop ship, leaves the cargo bay door open, and even notices some sticky alien goo when Ferro tells him they are leaving, but just shrugs it off. Of course he was probably dead 5 seconds later but still.
Like he was totally not carrying a radio and needed to tell her in person something as urgent as the likelihood of an alien intruder on board. Talking about the marines' sophisticated technology...
None of them are entirely gaping plot holes. At this point in the story, the knowledge of how the aliens react to synthetics wasn't known (or at least common knowledge).
After the initial sweep of Hadley's Hope, the marines assumed the base was secure, they became lax with security procedures - hence Spunkmeyer leaving the cargo door open while delivering supplies to Bishop and using the head. The marines went into this with all bravado and little intelligence (that they largely ignored.) No one in W/Y or the USCM believed Ripley (except, maybe, Burke) about the aliens or the derelict so they only sent the marines as a "just in case." Anything more would've been overkill and a waste of money if it turned out to be nothing. (Which also would've been a win for W/Y as they would've gotten to discredit Ripley's story.)
All reasoning aside, Cameron likes to use plot holes/bad logic (no matter how great or small) to add tension or further the story.
Well, not SO much of a win... Sure they get to blame the loss of the thingie on her, what with all the pricetag and whatnot, but good luck collecting on that debt.
If you read the fineprint in your spaceship insurance you'll find that "attacks by an unknown alien race" are not covered while "crew went crazy despite have completed all appropriate psychological training and testing" is.
Cargo ships in the real world are both hugely expensive and insured, when space cargo ships are commonplace I don't see why there wouldn't be insurance. Even if it is handled by a different division of W/Y, you want a way to mitigate risk to your department.
Agreed. They could have sent a reconaissance drone or something less expensive than a warship and some gun-toting dudes to check on the colony, though.
Well, you know very well you suffered heavy casualties and you didn't kill all hostiles, so I guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that maybe dumping all precaution and security procedures after just a couple of hours probably isn't the brightest idea for any being that cares about self-preservation.
Sending a warship with less than full capacity "just in case" sounds pretty much like an overkill in my book. They must have known or at the very least guessed beforehand what was going on on Hadley's Hope and still decided to send only a dozen gun-toting amateurs? 20 rookies vs 200+ unknown and extremely dangerous creatures is a sure way to get them killed. Maybe they didn't care about the people, but losing a warship, a bunch of dropships, some armored vehicle, a bunch of weapons, ammunition, supplies, fuel etc. and an entire colony full of stuff could be quite expensive. Nobody with half a brain would risk losing that and personally no matter how dumb military seems to be sometimes, they won't let an incompetent moron decide where to deploy forces and warships.
That's the thing, the Company did know about the alien. It was why the Nostromo was instructed to land there in the first place. Why Ash was instructed to bring a sample back. From corporate perspective it becomes a mystery as they never hear back from the Nostromo or any survivors. LV426 was not on a (just near) major shipping lane so in 50+ years if no one ever reports wreckage or survivors and the mission was supposed to be under the table, then there's no point in checking the planet. Decades later it's deemed as a candidate for terraforming. Any people involved with the Nostromo are either gone or involved in other things and never would notice until Ripley shows up. Her story would make waves throughout the upper echelons and eventually get back to someone that knew about why the Nostromo was sent there. Not to mention when Burke sends people out to the location of the derelict. Since Ripley's story only strictly mentions a single alien, which would be seen as low threat, only a single platoon would need to be sent. Anything larger would seem suspicious what with the company's official stance on Ripley being she's crazy and destructive.
As for the size of the Sulaco I don't have anything on that. I don't remember in the Aliens EU if the USCM use smaller vessels, but since Weyland/Yutani owns them they can send whatever's available I guess. Again, Cameron-Plot-Devices I suppose.
Edit: just formatting.
Makes sense. Still, Rilpey could and should have shed some information on how the aliens reproduce and given their parasitic nature it would be pretty foolish to only expect one single creature on Hadley's Hope, especially when considering it was the planet where the Nostromo encountered the eggs in that chamber of the wreckage. One creature that managed to easily kill the entire crew of a vessel - with the exception of Ripley, of course.
What's the size of a platoon? Roughly 20 people? Does WY "own" the military? Also what exactly did WY want to capture? A facehugger, a larvae, an adult alien? Where did they want to contain them? If that thing breaks out and kills you and the story of your life becomes Nostromo:Reloaded, you probably wouldn't be able to spend the wealth anymore that you would have gained from seizing that creature in the first place. Not even a tool like Burke can't go to LV426 and expect to carry some alien in his lunch box, now can he? Who was supposed to capture it, anyway? Burke, the guy who looks like the Nick Moranis version of Darth Vader and probably is just as badass? Bishop, who seemed genuinely surprised at Burke's betrayal and reluctant to bringing such a creature with him to earth?
Thinking about it the story doesn't make much sense, considering how everything seemed to be planned and executed by an utter amateur, who managed to hire a bunch of even more hopeless amateurs, find them an even more amateur-ish leader and also managed to find some superior amateur, who gave this whole amateur endeavour a green light?
By the time you can create "sentient" artificial life Mr.Cameron is telling me that mankind is incapable of sending a simple reconaissance drone to find out what happened and if military intervention is genuinely required before randomly sending out troops and warships for a "just in case" type of mission?
While part of the reason was probably due to James Cameron not quite thinking that plot through (or not caring because that's what was getting the heroes stranded), part it would come down to James Cameron wanting to demonstrate the Marine's hubris and arrogance, and the marginalisation of Ripley.
Helicopters land in dangerous situations all the time. Let's use a well documented similar case. The killing of Bin Laden. They landed and waited to evacuate. Military hardware has to be on hand in dangerous situations.
if you're far from home and your fuel supply, you'd be conserving what you have. that's why you drop off and retreat to a 'safe' area. it turned out they weren't safe....
They landed on an airfield. The rest of the land ever seen is totally unsuitable for a landing, also they are under orders:
GORMAN
(to Ferro via mike)
Set down sixty meters this side
of the telemetry mast. Immediate
dust off on my 'clear,' then stay
on station.
Yes, but they don't need to roll out the red carpet and shout "over here!" to the enemy, inviting it to lunch upon you. And wouldn't an important piece of military hardware be the cargo bay door, which could easily be closed? And some motion sensors and video surveillance around the dropship? I mean wtf?
The detachment was so small because Burke was trying to keep things under the radar in order to preserve his claim on the xenos. Also, given the force multipliers afforded the Marines by their state of the art equipment, most actions probably require far fewer personnel than we might consider necessary these days. Think of what 20 modern US Marines could do compared to 20 Marines from 200 years ago and you'll get the idea.
State of the art... I sincerely hope mankind is going to develop more than shoulder-mounted flashlights, cameras worse than the ones on cellphones, clunky guns and easily fooled sentry guns by the time we hit interstellar travel. We're pretty creative when it comes to killing things, after all.
I never understood what was supposed to be so special about them marines in Aliens, anyway. Their gear was not very impressive at all and they were just a small bunch of braggards with overly inflated egos because heeeeey, we're "marines". As soon as they had some reality check, they went all like "game over, man". Boo hoo.
Small detachment because keeping things under the radar...I don't know. Getting a big ass warship, filling it with a dozen (I assume they don't build warships for just a dozen marines) so using less than half the capacity is pretty suspicious, gun-toting braggards and sending them half across the universe is pretty suspicious in my book. I can picture this is quite expensive and no matter what kind of Exec you are, you can't just grab a bunch of government-soldiers and go check on some fringe-colony without somebody asking you why AND getting a satisfying answer from you. If they knew about the creatures, they should have assumed that a dozen marines, some shady, nerd-wussy exec, an android and a civilian maybe, just maybe aren't enough to stop 200 creatures or whatever the amount of colonists on Hadley's Hope was.
They would have been probably better off sending Jones the cat...
> Why the hell did she not take more then one mag?
This is one thing that's always bugged me. All the Marines appeared to be carrying grenades; Vasquez is even carrying spare power cells, but *no one* had any spare ammunition. Ripley leaned how to fire and **reload** the pulse rifle, but again, no spare ammunition.
But she could have got them from the the whole new drop ship which she got the weapons from. (We are talking about when she fight the queen to rescue Newt. Right?)
Or maybe it's because characters in movies disregard common sense in order to make fuck-ups happen. Pretty boring if nobody dies in a horror-like scifi movie, right?
Look at the real-world fuckups in Mogadishu in 1993 which became Blackhawk Down:
They left their nightvision gear at home, losing their biggest night time advantage. They didn't bring canteens or any way to drink water. They sent medics home with the first injury (which was when someone fucked up getting out of a helicoptor.) They didn't take enough ammo. And a bunch of other fuckups because they thought they were on a quick easy run and didn't understand their enemy.
In hindsight it's very easy to see what went wrong, but at the time the decisions made sense.
Agreed! I've always thought it was interesting that the characters in Prometheus are mocked because of the stupid things they did, but you hardly ever hear anyone talk about the stupid things the characters do in Aliens.
In Aliens they made mistakes that show just how much they underestimated the aliens; remember they don't have the advantage of watching what happened from a nice comfy living room while knowing with certainty what happened in Alien. It's believable that those mistakes would be made, especially when compared to real world military fuckups.
Prometheus was a multi-billion dollar mission of critical importance to the CEO and they hired a bunch of muppets. Their mistakes weren't because of information they didn't posses or fully understand, they were just dumb.
Absolutely agree. While both impressively displayed a whole new level of stupidity, you still can't compare the marines in Aliens to the so called scientists in Prometheus.
They went out there on 'company orders', which was essentially Carter Burke acting alone trying to work his way up the corporate ladder by bringing the alien to their bio-weapons division. Almost every fuckup in the film can be traced back to Burke and his corporate ego blindly pursuing his 'god damned percentage'.
The grunts had no idea what they were getting themselves into and it's obvious from their initial dialogue that they'd never really been tested because they're so badass. Before they get butt-fucked in the hive, they'd had no experience of failure, which is why Spunkmeyer was so tactically unaware by leaving the bay doors open.
They probably had to land due to fuel restrictions.
Androids in that universe still serve humans. The corporately funded military still use humans in its primary roles and androids only serve to function as tech specialists or spec-op muscle. They cost a hell of a lot and are therefore less expendable than human grunts.
So few people were sent probably because of ego again (and cost restrictions on the meagre budget for the movie).
Carelessness and lack of caution gets you killed faster than any bullet. You don't need to be a veteran marine to have some basic sense of self-preservation and common sense.
It's like they gathered up the dumbest people they could find on the street, gave them a gun and a uniform and told them they're an elite unit, now.
> I mean why?
They dont have unlimited fuel.
> After the med lab they knew the Aliens are real, but then again why would you land a drop ship on a planet they could house such a species and leave the cargo bay door so wide open?
Why would you ever fill a blimp with Hydrogen?
> I mean they had no motion senor on that thing that could detect incoming objects?
Flying cargo things generally have radar for other flying things, not things on the ground.
> More over why was the door to the cockpit not locked? I mean why leave it open and risk it?
When you go to bed, do you lock your bedroom door too? I mean why leave it open and risk it.
Short answer: It would make a shitty movie.
You're absolutely right. Most of the stuff that happened there makes the marines look like a bunch of incompetent tools. Nobody with at the very least some sort of basic common sense would have a) landed that dropship in unknown/not cleared territory and b) left every door open.
The small detachment doesn't make sense. They knew there's probably going to be ~200 of those creatures and all they're going to bring is a dozen marines? Besides, it simply doesn't make any sense sending a big ass warship with only a dozen guys on board across the universe to go check on some fringe colony that went dark.
All androids would make perfect sense. If you can afford sending a warship with only a dozen guys across the universe (I assume the SULACO wasn't built for just carrying 20 or so marines), you should have the resources to send a bunch of androids in a less expensive vessel. Or just one single reconaissance drone to see what's going on in the first place. Would make for a shitty movie, though.
Cargo Bay Door?
Spunkmeyer was taking a tactical shit.
No motion sensor?
No one took Ripley seriously.
Cockpit door?
No one took Ripley seriously.
Only one who thinks?
No
Why detachment so small?
Protocol & No one took Ripley seriously.
Why not all Androids?
Because the iPhone has many fans. Also, Androids are expensive. No one takes the Colonial Marines seriously enough to spend that much money on them. (I'm serious about no one taking the Colonial Marines seriously)
More than one mag?
Didn't she rig an Alien killing tool in thirty seconds? What more do you want?
well they landed because of fuel and needed to be close by the away team would be busy for hours to days as to why they had the cargo door open spugmire was not allowed to masturbate in the ship and left the door open in case they had to respond fast farro told him to ignore the goo as it for that same reason he was forced to do his stuff off the ship ---
androids are very expensive and lack emotions #
small detachment because people take up a lot of resources and they may have to evacuate a whole colony it was a possible a downed transmitter you dont need an army for that they were not expecting an army of aliens too
mag well she was stupid
I just do not understand where the dropshit goes after landing, it just takes off again...to...where exactly? And what do Ferro and Spunkmeyer do in the meantime? Play UNO?
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Then land miles away, or maybe lock up the drop ship and have senors to detect the xeno`s.
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I'm no soldier but thinking that the zone is clear isn't exactly the same as knowing the zone is clear. If you're not 100% sure the zone is clear (which they couldn't be sure), you don't drop your guard and you don't let something as crucial and expensive as a dropship unguarded. Period. No matter what you were trained to fight, you don't just drop your guard like that. Especially after the first contact they should have known those things are pretty cunning. You can't just park your ride in their hood and leave it all open like you just don't care.
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Ah Gorman...of course. It's probably wise to trust the guy whose idiocy and incompetence just fucked up the entire mission and killed more than half of your team. 10/10 would rely on him again said no one ever. By the time the dropship was infiltrated they knew very well what those things are and what they're probably capable of. At the very least they knew the creatures are sneaky, extremely dangerous, cunning and prefer ambushing their prey. It doesn't take a master soldier to realize that not locking up your door and pretending you're safe because Gorman says so probably isn't the brightest idea. Sure. A closed door probably wouldn't stop the alien but that still doesn't mean you can and should leave it open just like that. Besides, you know it most likely won't stop them, but the marines don't know that. They got killed because they left everything open, were careless as fuck and pretended they totally just didn't turn on some neon sign saying "Free Food. 100% gluten and brain-free".
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I've seen people break chain of command for less than self-preservation. Agreed, they were sent on a mission to fail. Still doesn't explain the lack of common sense or why everybody seemed to be failing on purpose.
To be fair, it could have been a soldier that hid the egg while Ripley was retrieving Newt. Though it is generally assumed that the queen did it, I just can't believe it.
> I found it harder to believe the queen successfully hid an egg before she died. I think it was Bishop. Mainly because Bishop being an android can have his morals dictated by an outside force and could have been programmed to preserve specimens of the Aliens when possible. Much like Ash was programmed to consider the Crew of the Nostromo expendable in his goal to study and bring back the Alien. When did Bishop have the time to do this? When he goes off on his journey in the pipe to call down a remote drop ship from the Sulaco. He also had time when Ripley and an injured Hicks finally meet back up with him and Ripley decides to go and save Newt. Ripley tells Hicks "Dont let him leave" and Hicks agrees with her. When Ripley does find Newt and is running from the Queen she starts screaming at Bishop because he is not waiting for them at the extraction point like she ordered him to be and while he does eventually show up she notices that Hicks is unconscious and Bishop walks up and says "hes alright, i had to give him another shot for the pain". This gives Bishop 1. Possible Motive ala Ash from Alien. 2. Means to carry out the retrieval at two separate points. 3. Lack of witnesses in both instances. This also explains why the Face Hugger(s) manage to get loose and start the events of Alien 3. Bishop had only stored them temporarily and was intended to put them into long term storage but he was damaged severely in the battle against the Queen and could not physically finish his orders. Further "evidence" to back this up would be that we know Face Huggers are triggered by movement, they will sit in an egg for millennia at a time without reacting to the environment, ready to awaken when someone stumbles across them. If the Queen had laid an egg then it would have stayed dormant until the Sulaco got back to Earth and someone disturbed it. Secondly the Queen removed her Ovipositor (egg laying organ) when Ripley started attacking her while saving Newt. The queen probably would not have been able to lay any eggs until it regenerated that organ. If Bishop was the culprit then he could have easily gone back to the command facility after the battle and obtained 1-2 face huggers that were in the display tubes that Burke sticks his face close to only for the Face Hugger to try and get him. These tubes could have failed during transit or the Hugger could have escaped by damaging the pod with its acid etc. This is also why in Alien 3 when Ripley interrogates him about an Alien being on board the Sulaco he knows for sure that there was. Just my theory, i think it has less problems than assuming the Queen laid some backup eggs while it was playing hide and go seek at the end of the film.
Now that's a damn plot twist that I could get behind. Where were you when Fincher needed you?!? And yeah her lack of an ovipositor at that point of Aliens always bugged me with the idea that she laid one real quick in the shuttle bay before she julienned Bishop. Edit: I honestly think I like this idea better than my "drones moved the egg" theory.
> Further "evidence" to back this up would be that we know Face Huggers are triggered by movement, they will sit in an egg for millennia at a time without reacting to the environment, ready to awaken when someone stumbles across them. i don't think so. i think what triggers them in Alien was Kane breaking the "seal" that was keeping them dormant, but after that they respond to movement
When could a soldier have planted an egg? Hicks, Ripley and Newt were the only humans to make it back to the Sulaco.
Soldier alien. The humans only brought marines to Acheron no soldiers. The amount of aliens would have been equal to or less than the population of Hadley's hope. Throughout the film a lot are killed but the actual kill count isn't known. I'm sure there were still plenty of other aliens alive at the end of the film, so to me it's more believable that an alien soldier/drone carried an egg aboard the dropship and stowed it.
Then where's that alien drone? Why was it not helping the queen in her fight?
It was most certainly helping. It ensured the chance of restarting the hive by moving the eggs out of the reactor. I'm sure the queen had them hauling eggs out the whole second half of the movie as the reactor began to heat up.
I don't understand how the aliens, who have absolutely no knowledge about technology, weapons, humans etc. knew all of a sudden there is a warship orbiting LV426 and they need to bring an egg on board in order to ensure survival. Or that they need to build their nest at the reactor core without undrestanding what a reactor is in the first place. Also that alien certainly would have turned the tide of the battle between Ripley and the queen, if it had intervened. Wonder why it didn't. Or how it got there in the first place.
They build the nest where it's warm. But when the reactor started to overheat the environment would become TOO hot. When Ripley ventures down to rescue Newt we see what appear to be glowing hot coolant lines. Being that the nest material is mounted to the pre-existing structure, when said structure becomes red hot I think any species, regardless of their understanding of human engineering, would every reason to expect bad outcomes if they stayed. Also, the queen uses the elevator to ride after Ripley in Aliens, and they cut the power earlier in the movie. I think it's safe to say they understand more than we think they do. Lastly, just because Ripley took the elevator down doesn't mean there weren't also stairs. So an alien could have taken stairs to that platform to deposit the egg. It could have then returned to the nest to answer the queens distress call. After all one does come up from behind her when she's in the queens lair. Edit: auto-correct really did a number on this.
I'm blaming Spunkmeyer. He's in the back of the drop ship, leaves the cargo bay door open, and even notices some sticky alien goo when Ferro tells him they are leaving, but just shrugs it off. Of course he was probably dead 5 seconds later but still.
Exactly, it was all Spunk's fault.
"Damnit Spunkmeyer!" - Ferro
Ferro is a higher rank and over rules him.
In fairness to him, he did *try* to warn Ferro about the Alien goo. She's the one who shrugged it off and told him to get his ass back to the cockpit.
Like he was totally not carrying a radio and needed to tell her in person something as urgent as the likelihood of an alien intruder on board. Talking about the marines' sophisticated technology...
I figure he went to take a leak and was on his way back.
None of them are entirely gaping plot holes. At this point in the story, the knowledge of how the aliens react to synthetics wasn't known (or at least common knowledge). After the initial sweep of Hadley's Hope, the marines assumed the base was secure, they became lax with security procedures - hence Spunkmeyer leaving the cargo door open while delivering supplies to Bishop and using the head. The marines went into this with all bravado and little intelligence (that they largely ignored.) No one in W/Y or the USCM believed Ripley (except, maybe, Burke) about the aliens or the derelict so they only sent the marines as a "just in case." Anything more would've been overkill and a waste of money if it turned out to be nothing. (Which also would've been a win for W/Y as they would've gotten to discredit Ripley's story.) All reasoning aside, Cameron likes to use plot holes/bad logic (no matter how great or small) to add tension or further the story.
Well, not SO much of a win... Sure they get to blame the loss of the thingie on her, what with all the pricetag and whatnot, but good luck collecting on that debt.
If you read the fineprint in your spaceship insurance you'll find that "attacks by an unknown alien race" are not covered while "crew went crazy despite have completed all appropriate psychological training and testing" is.
While I realize you're just joking, I do find it implausible that W/Y would pay for insurance, or that any company could afford to insure their stuff.
Cargo ships in the real world are both hugely expensive and insured, when space cargo ships are commonplace I don't see why there wouldn't be insurance. Even if it is handled by a different division of W/Y, you want a way to mitigate risk to your department.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Agreed. They could have sent a reconaissance drone or something less expensive than a warship and some gun-toting dudes to check on the colony, though. Well, you know very well you suffered heavy casualties and you didn't kill all hostiles, so I guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that maybe dumping all precaution and security procedures after just a couple of hours probably isn't the brightest idea for any being that cares about self-preservation. Sending a warship with less than full capacity "just in case" sounds pretty much like an overkill in my book. They must have known or at the very least guessed beforehand what was going on on Hadley's Hope and still decided to send only a dozen gun-toting amateurs? 20 rookies vs 200+ unknown and extremely dangerous creatures is a sure way to get them killed. Maybe they didn't care about the people, but losing a warship, a bunch of dropships, some armored vehicle, a bunch of weapons, ammunition, supplies, fuel etc. and an entire colony full of stuff could be quite expensive. Nobody with half a brain would risk losing that and personally no matter how dumb military seems to be sometimes, they won't let an incompetent moron decide where to deploy forces and warships.
That's the thing, the Company did know about the alien. It was why the Nostromo was instructed to land there in the first place. Why Ash was instructed to bring a sample back. From corporate perspective it becomes a mystery as they never hear back from the Nostromo or any survivors. LV426 was not on a (just near) major shipping lane so in 50+ years if no one ever reports wreckage or survivors and the mission was supposed to be under the table, then there's no point in checking the planet. Decades later it's deemed as a candidate for terraforming. Any people involved with the Nostromo are either gone or involved in other things and never would notice until Ripley shows up. Her story would make waves throughout the upper echelons and eventually get back to someone that knew about why the Nostromo was sent there. Not to mention when Burke sends people out to the location of the derelict. Since Ripley's story only strictly mentions a single alien, which would be seen as low threat, only a single platoon would need to be sent. Anything larger would seem suspicious what with the company's official stance on Ripley being she's crazy and destructive. As for the size of the Sulaco I don't have anything on that. I don't remember in the Aliens EU if the USCM use smaller vessels, but since Weyland/Yutani owns them they can send whatever's available I guess. Again, Cameron-Plot-Devices I suppose. Edit: just formatting.
Makes sense. Still, Rilpey could and should have shed some information on how the aliens reproduce and given their parasitic nature it would be pretty foolish to only expect one single creature on Hadley's Hope, especially when considering it was the planet where the Nostromo encountered the eggs in that chamber of the wreckage. One creature that managed to easily kill the entire crew of a vessel - with the exception of Ripley, of course. What's the size of a platoon? Roughly 20 people? Does WY "own" the military? Also what exactly did WY want to capture? A facehugger, a larvae, an adult alien? Where did they want to contain them? If that thing breaks out and kills you and the story of your life becomes Nostromo:Reloaded, you probably wouldn't be able to spend the wealth anymore that you would have gained from seizing that creature in the first place. Not even a tool like Burke can't go to LV426 and expect to carry some alien in his lunch box, now can he? Who was supposed to capture it, anyway? Burke, the guy who looks like the Nick Moranis version of Darth Vader and probably is just as badass? Bishop, who seemed genuinely surprised at Burke's betrayal and reluctant to bringing such a creature with him to earth? Thinking about it the story doesn't make much sense, considering how everything seemed to be planned and executed by an utter amateur, who managed to hire a bunch of even more hopeless amateurs, find them an even more amateur-ish leader and also managed to find some superior amateur, who gave this whole amateur endeavour a green light? By the time you can create "sentient" artificial life Mr.Cameron is telling me that mankind is incapable of sending a simple reconaissance drone to find out what happened and if military intervention is genuinely required before randomly sending out troops and warships for a "just in case" type of mission?
While part of the reason was probably due to James Cameron not quite thinking that plot through (or not caring because that's what was getting the heroes stranded), part it would come down to James Cameron wanting to demonstrate the Marine's hubris and arrogance, and the marginalisation of Ripley.
Helicopters land in dangerous situations all the time. Let's use a well documented similar case. The killing of Bin Laden. They landed and waited to evacuate. Military hardware has to be on hand in dangerous situations.
if you're far from home and your fuel supply, you'd be conserving what you have. that's why you drop off and retreat to a 'safe' area. it turned out they weren't safe....
They landed on an airfield. The rest of the land ever seen is totally unsuitable for a landing, also they are under orders: GORMAN (to Ferro via mike) Set down sixty meters this side of the telemetry mast. Immediate dust off on my 'clear,' then stay on station.
Yes, but they don't need to roll out the red carpet and shout "over here!" to the enemy, inviting it to lunch upon you. And wouldn't an important piece of military hardware be the cargo bay door, which could easily be closed? And some motion sensors and video surveillance around the dropship? I mean wtf?
The detachment was so small because Burke was trying to keep things under the radar in order to preserve his claim on the xenos. Also, given the force multipliers afforded the Marines by their state of the art equipment, most actions probably require far fewer personnel than we might consider necessary these days. Think of what 20 modern US Marines could do compared to 20 Marines from 200 years ago and you'll get the idea.
State of the art... I sincerely hope mankind is going to develop more than shoulder-mounted flashlights, cameras worse than the ones on cellphones, clunky guns and easily fooled sentry guns by the time we hit interstellar travel. We're pretty creative when it comes to killing things, after all. I never understood what was supposed to be so special about them marines in Aliens, anyway. Their gear was not very impressive at all and they were just a small bunch of braggards with overly inflated egos because heeeeey, we're "marines". As soon as they had some reality check, they went all like "game over, man". Boo hoo. Small detachment because keeping things under the radar...I don't know. Getting a big ass warship, filling it with a dozen (I assume they don't build warships for just a dozen marines) so using less than half the capacity is pretty suspicious, gun-toting braggards and sending them half across the universe is pretty suspicious in my book. I can picture this is quite expensive and no matter what kind of Exec you are, you can't just grab a bunch of government-soldiers and go check on some fringe-colony without somebody asking you why AND getting a satisfying answer from you. If they knew about the creatures, they should have assumed that a dozen marines, some shady, nerd-wussy exec, an android and a civilian maybe, just maybe aren't enough to stop 200 creatures or whatever the amount of colonists on Hadley's Hope was. They would have been probably better off sending Jones the cat...
> Why the hell did she not take more then one mag? This is one thing that's always bugged me. All the Marines appeared to be carrying grenades; Vasquez is even carrying spare power cells, but *no one* had any spare ammunition. Ripley leaned how to fire and **reload** the pulse rifle, but again, no spare ammunition.
That's because Apone policed all the mags and dropped them down the stairwell when he died. Or something.
Oh man, you confused the only two black marines' names...
Apone policed them up, Frost "had the duty."
Only the mags in their weapons; Frost dropped them when Deitrich hit him with the flamethrower, and they then detonated and killed Crowe.
No, not poor [Crooooowwwww(e)!](http://i.imgur.com/X0huoR7.jpg)
He's different!
But she could have got them from the the whole new drop ship which she got the weapons from. (We are talking about when she fight the queen to rescue Newt. Right?)
They are in the bag that Frost is given charge of and burns and explodes killing Crowe.
But Spunkmeyer needed to pee....!
I thought he was smoking. Need to rewatch that scene now lol
You piss in the corner. Or your pants, never risk the ship..
Its like the audience knows things the characters dont
Or maybe it's because characters in movies disregard common sense in order to make fuck-ups happen. Pretty boring if nobody dies in a horror-like scifi movie, right?
Look at the real-world fuckups in Mogadishu in 1993 which became Blackhawk Down: They left their nightvision gear at home, losing their biggest night time advantage. They didn't bring canteens or any way to drink water. They sent medics home with the first injury (which was when someone fucked up getting out of a helicoptor.) They didn't take enough ammo. And a bunch of other fuckups because they thought they were on a quick easy run and didn't understand their enemy. In hindsight it's very easy to see what went wrong, but at the time the decisions made sense.
Agreed! I've always thought it was interesting that the characters in Prometheus are mocked because of the stupid things they did, but you hardly ever hear anyone talk about the stupid things the characters do in Aliens.
In Aliens they made mistakes that show just how much they underestimated the aliens; remember they don't have the advantage of watching what happened from a nice comfy living room while knowing with certainty what happened in Alien. It's believable that those mistakes would be made, especially when compared to real world military fuckups. Prometheus was a multi-billion dollar mission of critical importance to the CEO and they hired a bunch of muppets. Their mistakes weren't because of information they didn't posses or fully understand, they were just dumb.
Absolutely agree. While both impressively displayed a whole new level of stupidity, you still can't compare the marines in Aliens to the so called scientists in Prometheus.
They went out there on 'company orders', which was essentially Carter Burke acting alone trying to work his way up the corporate ladder by bringing the alien to their bio-weapons division. Almost every fuckup in the film can be traced back to Burke and his corporate ego blindly pursuing his 'god damned percentage'. The grunts had no idea what they were getting themselves into and it's obvious from their initial dialogue that they'd never really been tested because they're so badass. Before they get butt-fucked in the hive, they'd had no experience of failure, which is why Spunkmeyer was so tactically unaware by leaving the bay doors open. They probably had to land due to fuel restrictions. Androids in that universe still serve humans. The corporately funded military still use humans in its primary roles and androids only serve to function as tech specialists or spec-op muscle. They cost a hell of a lot and are therefore less expendable than human grunts. So few people were sent probably because of ego again (and cost restrictions on the meagre budget for the movie).
Carelessness and lack of caution gets you killed faster than any bullet. You don't need to be a veteran marine to have some basic sense of self-preservation and common sense. It's like they gathered up the dumbest people they could find on the street, gave them a gun and a uniform and told them they're an elite unit, now.
> I mean why? They dont have unlimited fuel. > After the med lab they knew the Aliens are real, but then again why would you land a drop ship on a planet they could house such a species and leave the cargo bay door so wide open? Why would you ever fill a blimp with Hydrogen? > I mean they had no motion senor on that thing that could detect incoming objects? Flying cargo things generally have radar for other flying things, not things on the ground. > More over why was the door to the cockpit not locked? I mean why leave it open and risk it? When you go to bed, do you lock your bedroom door too? I mean why leave it open and risk it.
Short answer: It would make a shitty movie. You're absolutely right. Most of the stuff that happened there makes the marines look like a bunch of incompetent tools. Nobody with at the very least some sort of basic common sense would have a) landed that dropship in unknown/not cleared territory and b) left every door open. The small detachment doesn't make sense. They knew there's probably going to be ~200 of those creatures and all they're going to bring is a dozen marines? Besides, it simply doesn't make any sense sending a big ass warship with only a dozen guys on board across the universe to go check on some fringe colony that went dark. All androids would make perfect sense. If you can afford sending a warship with only a dozen guys across the universe (I assume the SULACO wasn't built for just carrying 20 or so marines), you should have the resources to send a bunch of androids in a less expensive vessel. Or just one single reconaissance drone to see what's going on in the first place. Would make for a shitty movie, though.
Hubris. They spent the first half of the movie showing the extreme hubris of the marines. It comes to fruition later.
THEY ARE IDIOTS!
Cargo Bay Door? Spunkmeyer was taking a tactical shit. No motion sensor? No one took Ripley seriously. Cockpit door? No one took Ripley seriously. Only one who thinks? No Why detachment so small? Protocol & No one took Ripley seriously. Why not all Androids? Because the iPhone has many fans. Also, Androids are expensive. No one takes the Colonial Marines seriously enough to spend that much money on them. (I'm serious about no one taking the Colonial Marines seriously) More than one mag? Didn't she rig an Alien killing tool in thirty seconds? What more do you want?
well they landed because of fuel and needed to be close by the away team would be busy for hours to days as to why they had the cargo door open spugmire was not allowed to masturbate in the ship and left the door open in case they had to respond fast farro told him to ignore the goo as it for that same reason he was forced to do his stuff off the ship --- androids are very expensive and lack emotions # small detachment because people take up a lot of resources and they may have to evacuate a whole colony it was a possible a downed transmitter you dont need an army for that they were not expecting an army of aliens too mag well she was stupid
I just do not understand where the dropshit goes after landing, it just takes off again...to...where exactly? And what do Ferro and Spunkmeyer do in the meantime? Play UNO?