side note: the xenomorph from Alien and its lifecycle are quite similar to very dangerous zombies, but in today's thinking-about-epidemiology-a-lot world, I want to note how the first Alien (and only the first) bothered to remember instant death = less long term threat
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Like, in Aliens, people get infected, xenomorphs pop out, kill non-infected, bam, what happens then? you need the Queen as a deus ex machina to explain how they're not an extremely wasteful and doomed species
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but in Alien, the incubation period is days, and to me it makes sense that that's not because the xenomorph needs all that time to grow, but because it wants time to be moved as an infectious vector to a new area
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Replying to @BootlegGirl
Yeah it's not exactly a genocidal bioweapon in the first movie, it comes off as a targeted weapon specifically for destroying a spaceship or fortress by sneaking the weapon inside someone's body (the acid blood is so even if you shoot it it makes a big hole where it does)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
In the original movie it was like the POINT was that there was no "Alien Queen" and the Alien doesn't have any way of making new eggs The eggs are manufactured, they're bombs designed to be smuggled somewhere to infect specific targets to "go off" later as an Alien attack
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
The purpose of the weapon is to be self-limiting, to NOT spread exponentially, it destroys a ship or a city and then leaves you free to safely pick through the wreckage The implication was that the Space Jockey ship was a target and/or attacker in some ancient war
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
(Note that this is a difference from the original concept for the film, where the Alien makes new eggs by dissolving its victims' bodies with its venom -- hence its penis-shaped head, it's a twisted parody of how insemination and fertilization work)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
(But I think the original film is more effective without this detail, like whether you like the existence of the Queen in the sequel or not, it makes the first movie stronger to have "Where the hell do these things COME FROM" a big mystery)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Part of what's so effective about the original theatrical film is that it's not even clear what the Alien is doing to its victims. We know it's not good, but we don't actually see it. Killing them is only one possibility, and not necessarily the worst one...
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Yeah the rapey implications aren't at all subtle and they're kind of the whole point, and that's why the point gets lost when you go from a creeping-through-corridors slasher into a big military battle in Aliens
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
I always thought the AVP movies missed a step by not doing anything with the subtext of the Uber-masculine predator going up against the allegorical male rape monster alien.
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Replying to @beetlefella101 @BootlegGirl
And the fact that the Predator's face is a vagina while the Alien's face is a penis
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