Spoilers Alien: Questions

[Paul Farquhar]

The idea that the Engineers are motivated by religion is an interesting one. Maybe they are trying to create their god - a perfect life form - depicted in their art in Prometheus, but at that time yet to be achieved.

 

[Tonguez]

Others have already talked about how the Xenomorphs were created by the Engineers. However, I'll be the one to toss out the idea that calling them a "bio-weapon" is the word humans used to describe them, and isn't necessarily how the Engineers thought of them. One of the major themes of Prometheus is about how the Engineers revere sacrifice and life. "Life from death" is the basis for multiple parts of their technology/culture; it's why the Engineer at the beginning of the movie dies to bring life to Earth, and why they immediately disdain Weyland and David.

From an Engineer's perspective, the purpose of releasing a Xenomorph (or Xenomorph-like) plague on a planet isn't just to kill the existing population, it's to transform the population into something else. It's not really clear what reasons they could have for that. It could be a religious cleansing, a harvest (cutting down humans to collect Xenos the way we cut down corn stalks for food), or possibly even a reward for the victims to transcend into the next form of life.

Of course, it's still murder to the human victims. Something to think about, though.



In my headcanon, the Predators we see in the movies are just the uber-macho ultra-violent toxic-culture types who are hyper-fixated on hunting. It would be one thing if a human defeated a Predator once. But the number of times we've succeded? It's because we're not really seeing the best-of-the-best. We're seeing the Walter Palmer types to pay to go on safari and shoot a trapped lion.

We've never seen the Predator homeworld (in a movie). I want to see the day we first travel there and land in front of huge monolith, only to discover it's basically a giant office building. We are warmly greeted by a Predator secretary, and when we start talking about our first encounter with a Predator the secretary is like "Oh, jeez. Are you talking about Steve? Yeah, we all hated that guy. Never shut up about his tacti-cool toys. Actually, when we heard about that we started a petition to protect your planet as a wildlife preserve until you acheived space flight."

I would love to see that movie

 

[Morrus]

The Xenomorphs are so much better without an origin story. I much preferred it when we knew nothing about them, where they came from, how long they'd been around. It's the age-old Vader thing--mystery is scary. Explaining the mystery removes the scary.

(I mean, sure, they're still scary in the same way that a tiger is scary, but not in a horror movie way).

 

[TiQuinn]

The Xenomorphs are so much better without an origin story. I much preferred it when we knew nothing about them, where they came from, how long they'd been around. It's the age-old Vader thing--mystery is scary. Explaining the mystery removes the scary.

(I mean, sure, they're still scary in the same way that a tiger is scary, but not in a horror movie way).

Ash really summed up all that you needed to know about them in the original movie.

 

[aco175]

Ash really summed up all that you needed to know about them in the original movie.

 

[TiQuinn]

View attachment 377048

…Sure! Why not?

 

[Umbran]

The Xenomorphs are so much better without an origin story. I much preferred it when we knew nothing about them, where they came from, how long they'd been around. It's the age-old Vader thing--mystery is scary. Explaining the mystery removes the scary.

Mystery is scary.

But when the "mystery" is really biology and evolution that makes no freakin' sense, it starts looking less like a mystery, and more like a plot hole.

 

[Ryujin]

Mystery is scary.

But when the "mystery" is really biology and evolution that makes no freakin' sense, it starts looking less like a mystery, and more like a plot hole.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The Xenomorphs are so much better without an origin story. I much preferred it when we knew nothing about them, where they came from, how long they'd been around. It's the age-old Vader thing--mystery is scary. Explaining the mystery removes the scary.

Yeah, I agree. The older I get and the more franchises I get exposed to, the more I feel like the fandom's desire to have every little bit of background and lore explained is actually detrimental to the franchise. Tolkien's writing, for example, is full of a bunch of textual ruins that (IMO, obviously) are better off not explained. Implied world/universe/setting depth is better that fleshing out all the details, because explaining ultimately falls short.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In my headcanon, the Predators we see in the movies are just the uber-macho ultra-violent toxic-culture types who are hyper-fixated on hunting. It would be one thing if a human defeated a Predator once. But the number of times we've succeded? It's because we're not really seeing the best-of-the-best. We're seeing the Walter Palmer types to pay to go on safari and shoot a trapped lion.

We've never seen the Predator homeworld (in a movie). I want to see the day we first travel there and land in front of huge monolith, only to discover it's basically a giant office building. We are warmly greeted by a Predator secretary, and when we start talking about our first encounter with a Predator the secretary is like "Oh, jeez. Are you talking about Steve? Yeah, we all hated that guy. Never shut up about his tacti-cool toys. Actually, when we heard about that we started a petition to protect your planet as a wildlife preserve until you acheived space flight."

As the Predator franchise goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that they're tacti-cool morons. In The Predator, they actually run around fighting people while invisible which A) really ineffective and B) tosses out any notion that they're trying to stalk their prey in any meaningful way.

The Predator wasn't a great movie, but everyone referring to them as bass fishermen was pretty accurate, if a little harsh to bass fishermen.