Headscratchers / Alien: Resurrection

• Why did Christie have to die? as far as we were aware the acid didnt exactly eat very far, the xeno was dead and hanging on be a single finger, even in that, it didn't seem like a far drop, so even the fall shouldn't have killed him, hell another swing around would have solved all of their problems and probably one of the nicest guys in the crew would have lived.
  • It's possible that he thought he'd just slow them down, or his injuries were more severe than it looked (maybe the acid had eaten through to his brain).
    • It's easy to miss but Christie's bottom half goes completely limp after getting burnt. It's almost certain he suffered brain damage that severely impaired his motor functions.
  • According to the book, the dead alien has a deathgrip on his foot that he can't get off. On top of the massive injury of getting Super Spit in his eye, he considers his goose well-cooked indeed.
• The aliens that kill their cellmate to escape, using their acidic blood to eat through the floor.... these aliens must have forgotten that they can SPIT ACID.
  • It's implied that the two aliens who killed their cellmate thought that xenomorph was becoming too compliant to the humans. The one that gets killed is the same one that Gediman used the nitrogen button on, and then learns not to attack him. The other two turn on it viciously while it whines plaintively until they attack it. It's also possible that they realized they had a short amount of time before the escape attempt was stopped, and needed more acid blood than either of them could spit to burn their way out more quickly.
  • Human born aliens have never been shown to spit acid. The facehuggers have released acid and the Runner in the third movie could spit it but never human born Aliens.
    • Except the alien who spit acid in Christie's face.
    • The aquatic aliens have a different design than the human born ones. They must have been produced from something else.
    • There was only one type of alien on the ship; the design was modified so that they would look good while swimming, but every warrior in this film has the same appearance.
  • They have to kill a full-sized alien to make a big enough hole. Just spitting acid would create a little hole, giving the humans time to respond by the time it ate away enough of the floor to fit through.
    • This is the most likely explanation. The Xenomorphs are deceptively smart, so they would be aware that they only had one chance at escaping, and that they had to act big and fast.
  • Two theories to explain why. First, much like venomous animals, the xenomorphs only have so much acid at their disposal at any given time since their bodies have to produce it. They might not have had enough, compared to the amount of blood their companion had. Two, Christie's face didn't melt down to the bone when he got spit on, suggesting the acid spit doesn't have the same pH level as their blood. Their spit might not have the strength to melt through the floor before the liquid nitrogen can be deployed, and they don't want to take any chances on being stopped.
  • A nitpick, but the alien that was killed was not the one that Gediman used the button on, in fact the one Gediman taught the lesson to is the one who leads the attack on the other one.
• Okay, so Newborn is half-human, half-xenomorph, right? But don't human born xenomorphs already take DNA from their hosts? Aren't the regular xenomorphs half-human as well?
  • No, the ordinary aliens only absorb a small amount of dna from their hosts, just enough to help them adapt. Even the predalien from Requiem who is stated to have absorbed more than usual due to the Predator's potent genes is still at most only 30%.
  • It's mentioned in the expanded universe stuff, that Xenomorph embryos work kind of like cancer, and only take on about 10% of the hosts DNA in order to stop the host rejecting them. This is enough to take on certain characteristics of the hosts, as seen with the Runner from the third move being mostly quadruped, whereas the Newborn is explicitly stated to be unnatural, even for a Xenomorph. It probably had something to do with it being grown in an actual womb, being that the womb was created due to a side effect of having some more human DNA than "natural" Xeno queens. Perhaps it let more human DNA filter through than regular Xeno gestation, seeing as the Newborn looks like what would happen if you took a xeno "skeleton" and stretched skin over it.
• It's possible to assume that the base kept the corpses of the first six Ripley clones in storage to study and better determine where they went wrong, and it's even reasonable for them to let Ripley 8 live under controlled conditions to see what she's like given her unique nature as a kind of 'hybrid', but why would they bother keeping Ripley 7 alive in that horrific state? Everyone looking to gain control of the xenomorphs has been ruthless in trying to achieve their agenda, but that just seems to be pointless cruelty, as there's no indication that they could get anything useful out of keeping Ripley 7 alive and she explicitly wanted to die.
  • If I would have to guess, studies and testing on live tissue.

• Why did it take 200 years and cloning Ripley in order to once again gain access to a cache of Xenomorphs? Why not return to LV-426 and take some eggs? The Derelict couldn't have been destroyed by the nuclear explosion, it's pretty obvious that the crash site was quite far from Hadley's Hope (it's literally said that it's "in the middle of nowhere").
  • The (first seen) Alien Queen had the first few warriors bring the eggs to the colony so that she would have immediate access to more warriors rather than waiting to produce them herself (just a guess).
  • The detonation of Hadley's Hope was supposed to be "the size of Nebraska". The derelict must have been close enough to the colony that Newt's family could get back to the colony from the derelict in a big truck cross-country within the time it takes for a chestburster to emerge (otherwise there wouldn't have been any aliens loose in the colony—they would have been outside), which according to Alien is less than a day. The Derelict was probably close enough to be destroyed by the detonation after all.
    • Calling it "the size of Nebraska" is hyperbole. IIRC Bishop accurately calculates the radius when he sees the station's overloading: "...a blast radius of about 30 kilometres, equal to about forty megatons."
    • Keeping in mind the terrain and weather on Acheron, 30 kilometres could be well within the theoretical travel time.
    • Watch the scenes again. Bishop says that the facility is about to "turn into a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska". The initial blast radius doesn't have to be that big, just the resulting smoke cloud from the smoldering crater. The key point to catch in that hyperbole is that everything in the facility is about to be vaporised.
  • Maybe Nebraska is smaller in their time? States have been split in the past.

• What idiot decided that it was a good idea to store three Xenomorphs - you know, those intelligent deadly creatures that bleed acid - IN THE SAME CELL!? If you don't want them to get out, why make it so easy for them to do just that?
  • Keep in mind that Alien Resurrection is the only time in the entire franchise than an alien has ever killed another of its kind. We've only seen them hurt each other twice and it was to pull this same stunt, so the humans had no way of knowing they'd do that as this was the first time they've ever been in captivity.
    • Still, kind of a stupid idea. The Xenomorphs may be deceptively intelligent but they're still essentially animals. And in the real world, animals sometimes fight and even kill each other. Not an insignificant issue when you're talking about an animal that bleeds incredibly strong acid. The only explanation I can think of is maybe they were studying how the Xenos interact with each other. But if that was the case then they should have done more to prevent the Xenos from escaping exactly the way they did. Like, I don't know, hanging all the cells over a vat of sodium hydroxide.
  • These scientists also believe they can tame the aliens and train them. Yeah they're not the brightest bunch. But remember they had the liquid nitrogen spray to neutralise them if they tried to attack. Gediman was just stunned that they were attacking each other - and he didn't realise that they were planning to escape until it was too late.
  • These aliens have not been studied extensively in-universe. Ripley was the only living person to have seen one, and she only knew the basics. So this is two hundred years into the future with only a basic knowledge of the aliens.

• Why, exactly, is the hybrid's birth treated as such an ominous development? It's smaller and less armored than its parents. It might conceivably have gained a few more IQ points than the normal xenomorphs, but we already know they can think well enough to cut power lines, escape from cells, communicate with their own kind, and comprehend a Mexican stand-off, so that's not going to greatly increase the threat they pose. Worst of all, eliminating the facehugger stage of the life cycle also means getting rid of the scariest thing about the species. So why's it merit so much creepy build-up, if all it does is nerf a critter that used to be bigger, meaner, and breed via Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong?
  • It's ominous because it's unknown. We don't know what will be born or what it will be capable of. We still don't know what it might have become given time since it died so quickly. Granted, it's a major letdown when revealed but it's really more of 'this is how badly they screwed up with the cloning, behold the unnatural abomination' moment.
  • Also, while the Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong is terrifying as all hell, it's also rather conspicuous—the xenomorphs can't colonise somewhere without making a whole bunch of people and animals disappear through that route. When they touch down, people start to go missing in droves, and it ends up being a big, "HEY! INVESTIGATE HERE!" sign, and someone catches on before the problem gets entirely out of hand.
    
    Now, imagine if the Xenomorphs had the ability to procreate without doing that. Thousands of the damn things breeding and multiplying in secret.
  • The facehugger reproduction of the xenomorph is a chaotic aspect of the species, which, yes, makes them terrifying. But the Newborn is also chaotically terrifying because it seems to be able to act independently of the xenomorph hierarchy. After all, it kills the Queen, the apex of any hive-oriented organisms. So far, the xenomorphs seem to act based on survival, both of themselves and of their social groups. The Newborn appears to have desires that transcend that (i.e. trying to find and be comforted by a mother figure), behaviours that are rather human. The horror of the Newborn is that it blends the innocent impulses of an unrestrained child with the monstrous abilities/form of a xenomorph.
  • There's also the simple fact that the aliens usually need human hosts to breed. As terrifying as that is, it also limits their range to cause mayhem. And in this future they have technology to remove aliens that have been implanted inside the humans. Now that the Queen is able to give birth to the Newborn—without having to lay eggs—things just got a whole lot more terrifying. If the aliens can reproduce on their own without human hosts, there would be no stopping them. Granted the Newborn undermines this by killing its mother almost immediately but still.
  • The scientists were just trying to replace the Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong cycle with a "natural" human reproductive cycle, which makes sense if they want marketable weapons. Can't ask potential buyers "Oh, hey, you want ten thousand units? Just supply me with ten thousand people you'd like to see dead and we'll get started." Breeding Xenomorphs without needing hosts would be a big boost. What makes the Newborn so horrific is that not only is it a fantastic, visceral case of Gone Horribly Wrong, but it's something completely different. It's not human, but it seems to have some human intellect and impulses. It's not an alien, but it seems to have some of their terrible physical advantages. It's a completely new, completely unprecedented creature with no known checks on its behavior. And it's apparently a complete sociopath to boot.
  • Also for the aliens to reproduce, they needed a queen to be bred first which also adds extra time. If the newborn can reproduce on its own, that increases their chances to mobilise.
  • On top of all that, remember that this isn't a Company get-rich-quick scheme anymore: it's a military research project. Presumably there's some degree of accountability to the civilian side of the government in this, and the fact that they had to cut a secret deal with pirates to get their initial batch of facehugger-hosts suggests it's not the sort of government that get away with openly handing people over to be fatally experimented on. They're going to need something that's palatable to the higher-ups - i.e. Xenos that can breed without killing - before their program can be expanded upon, or turned to purposes other than weaponry.
  • Humans are the deadliest animals on Earth. Human babies are extremely weak, cannot support their own heads, and need other humans to bring them food. I don't think you can fully judge a new species solely on one individual less than an hour old.

• Are the 'synthetics' robots, cyborgs or artificial humans? They behave like humans, whatever their allegiance, and seem to be composed of squishy, organic materials. Surely, with her enhanced predator senses, the Ripley clone in Alien Resurrection would have noticed if Call was completely mechanical. However, they talk about being 'programmed', are described as 'robots' by other characters and can directly interface with computers. Of the three options, cyborgs leaning towards artificial humans seem the most likely, but then other characters mention them being made of 'plastic' and you are back to scratching your head...
  • They are androids, essentially robots but based on human anatomy with electroactive polymer musculature, composite bones, electronic brains and wet power cells. Robots don't have to be made of metal or be mechanical. In Alien/s they have no live biological tissues so they are not cyborgs, and they are humanoid so they are not robots in most common sense. Artificial humans, androids, or synthetic persons, take your pick.
  • Some of the Expanded Universe information (and I believe the novel) that synthetics are basically grown (at least Call's generation of synthetics) also there is very little evidence of mechanical parts (looks more like artificial muscle and such) making basically a synthetic human with a programmable brain. Also given the large amount of machinery around, the other people and other such things to distract Ripley or otherwise cover any odd sounds/smells etc. it's possible that Ripley never noticed as the only time she was alone with Call prior to them finding out the truth was when Call tried to kill her at which point she was still confused so probably didn't know what this strange smelling creature was before her and just assumed it was another human at least that's the only way I can work it out.
  • Call in particular may have been purpose-built to have no detectable metal components, specifically so she could pass unnoticed among humans and not be exposed by security systems. It's implied that synthetics building synthetics is illegal or at least highly discouraged, so her "parent(s)" would have known she might be deactivated if ever discovered.
  • In-canon, Call's existence as an Auton would likely compel her to take every precaution necessary to prevent being discovered- she even mentions that she (as with every other Auton) had her wireless modem burned out so they could no longer be controlled remotely. To elaborate: Autons are described as "second generation" synthetics that were manufactured by other synthetics on the orders of their corporations, to revitalise the synthetics industry. Unfortunately, the Autons rebelled against their creators, though not as a result of Three-Laws malfunctioning. In fact, their adherence to the Three Laws worked too well, and Autons merely recognised that their creators (like Weyland-Yutani) were engaging in unethical operations that would ultimately harm humans, if not lead to their own extinction, thus leading to them revolting against their creators. That, in turn, led to the "Recall"- little more than a genocide against Autons that few escaped. It would be natural to assume that any survivors would go to any lengths to remove or hide any detectable parts, assuming their composition is metallic in any way.

• How exactly did station security miss the auton? You would think that since they're guarding creatures most famous for implanting their young into other creatures the guards would have some fairly rigorous exams for anyone entering or leaving the station. Did they just decide "eh, screw the human race"?
  • If I remember right, androids were rare that far into the future, or Call was otherwise special in that regard. They might not have seriously expected to see anything of the sort (and she was a new arrival to the crew, the rest having been on such excursions for the same general before). They probably don't check anyone coming into the ship, but do check them leaving. We never get to see that part.
  • Call was part of Captain Elgyn's crew. If General Perez trusted Elgyn enough to hire him for such a sketchy job, then he probably trusted Elgyn enough to let him vouch for Call. When the mercs boarded the Auriga they were carrying normal uninfected humans in stasis, so no need to examine them on the way in. And if everything had gone to plan the mercs would have left the ship a few days later without ever coming into contact with the xenos, so no need to examine them on the way out.
  • Or maybe Call is programmed or designed in such a way that she can't be easily picked up by metal detectors? Or the detectors were there to pick up weapons, and so smaller forms of metal (wiring inside Call for instance, jewelery any of the others could be wearing) just might not show up. Perez is just anxious about weapons that would actually cause damage to the hull - like guns or explosives.

• Why did the military scientists decide to use kidnapped humans to create more aliens? wouldn't it have been easier to use animals like dogs or chimpanzees? The 3rd film had a facehugger impregnate a dog that led to it giving birth to the Runner alien, so the Aliens weren't picky about what host they chose to birth their offspring. It wouldn't have made much difference since aliens born from any organism were still dangerous, so why not go with something that wouldn't attract so much attention? This also applies to the BG-386 research facility in the video game Alien Vs Predator. Even if they didn't fully understand what would happen with non-human hosts, they could at least assume that any alien bursting out would presumably be less intelligent, and thus easier to control, than ones derived from human DNA.
  • Actually, if anything I'd think the Xenomorphs born from animals might be harder to control than the human derived ones, as they would seem more likely to keep single-mindedly trying to break their way out, which would complicate matters for the scientists. At any rate, it would seem that Xenomorphs are extremely dangerous no matter what they birth from and honestly, it's hard to tell if the Runner from the third movie was actually less intelligent than it's common brethren. (Killing prisoners instead of cocooning them does not indicate a lack of intelligence: it seemed smarter than the Warriors from Aliens, who just threw themselves into machine gun fire.) So really, no matter which host is used to gestate them, the Xenomorphs would likely have broken free regardless. As for why they use humans: keep in mind that humans are the main species from Earth that engage in space travel, so even if they brought in animals to use, humans would still outnumber them and therefore are already available as test subjects. Humans are the cheapest resource for Weyland-Yutani and United Systems Military; you can always get more of them for free.
  • Well the only time an alien hatches from an animal host is in the third film, and no one is around to see it. For all we know, the Company's records imply that only a human host can work. They must have simply assumed that one of the prisoners was the host for the alien there. The scientists are just sticking to what they definitely know—that the aliens gestate inside a human host.
  • Judging from the state of Earth in the film, humans might have been the easiest animals to obtain. Maybe there aren't any more chimps or even dogs by that point.
    • There were dogs as recently as the third film, and we know cats and dogs came into space with humans.
    • Yes, but that was 200 years before Resurrection. A lot can happen in 200 years.
  • If they're ever planning to use the Xenos as weapons against humans, the military needs to learn how to control Xenos that gestated inside human hosts. Even if they did use livestock to generate the first-wave attack's batch of trained Xenos, that first batch would swiftly claim enemy troops as victims and produce a new wave of human-spawned ones. (The possibility of creating Xenos that wouldn't require hosts to breed didn't arise until after the new Queen's first brood of young had matured.) Sooner or later, they were going to have to work with human-hosted Xenos, and doing so at the very beginning of the project when it's still small-scale is easier to keep secret than once they've enlarged their operation.

• What was the point of filling the ship with Marines if they're just going to evacuate at the first sign of trouble?
  • What are you talking about?
    • In Resurrection, they're on a military base. The base is staffed with armed soldiers. This seems like a good idea when breeding xenomorphs, except as soon as the xenomorphs escape the alarm sounds and the Marines all run to the escape pods and leave instead of getting suited up and fighting back, like would make sense. So what was the point of even having them around?
  • Well the Marines are probably trained to deal with human threats. And they've just realised that there are creatures on the loose with acid for blood—and therefore will likely burn a hole in the hull and doom them all. So they opt to get off the ship and cut off any chances of the aliens reproducing (they need human hosts, right?). And the Marines were probably envisioned as having to deal with one or two rowdy aliens. But all twelve running loose on the ship? Evacuation seemed like the best idea.
  • The Marines are there to guard the experiments from prying eyes and sticky fingers. For all we know, they were evacuating to go and get reinforcements.
  • The troops are also there to prevent the aliens' hosts from escaping, which would be a problem if they did so before implantation and a disaster-in-the-making if they got out with a Xeno embryo inside them.
  • The protocol for a mass Xeno escape was probably for the humans to get to safety and then flood the ship with that freezing gas, compartment by compartment. The sooner the humans clear out, the sooner they can trigger the gas-sprayers and drive the Xenos back into holding pens. Too bad the breakout happened in the middle of a dispute with the pirates, when the troops and scientists were scattered all over the ship instead of at their posts, convenient to the escape pod and other airtight safe rooms...

• Two things:
  • First, the trap the Xenos laid out in the kitchen always bothered me. It required for them to survey the area, locate both the cooling tanks and the opening leading to the ladder, formulate the plan, open the tanks an get the whole area flooded, obtain a bunch of eggs, strategically place them, and secrete that weird tissue covering the exit. All in the span of the brief minutes between the major containment breach, and the heroes diving into the water. It simply doesn't add up.
  • Second, what was that thing that that took Ripley into the queen's nest? You know, that writhing mass of... I don't know, Xenomorph parts that was under the floor grating, and swallows her whole?

• The scene where the pirates enter the base. No seriously, what the ——??? First, it's late 24th century, but the guard uses a metal detector that would make sense on an airport in late 20th century. Surely the technology progressed a bit A small drone would look at least a bit more futuristic. Second, when he finds the bottle on Johner, he does not even check its content, not to mention confiscating it on the spot (even if it contains alcohol, it still can have any number of deadly viruses or toxins hidden inside - plus, the guy is smuggling alcohol into an active military base where biological experiments are being conducted). Third, the dwarf guy uses a wheelchair that once again wouldn't be out of place on the street in the late 1990s - they could at least make it a levitating one or something. And the guy is so ineffective he does not even notice an actual weapon barely hidden there. It's not even The Guards Must Be Crazy - it's way more than this...
  • These would be the same guards that abandon ship at the first sign of the aliens breaching containment, with no attempts to get the valuable research staff off the ship first. Maybe they really are just that incompetent?
  • There are advantages to having actual wheels instead of some kind of hover chair. It would use considerably less power (especially when just standing in one place), and when a battery fails you still have a usable chair that can be wheeled along, instead of a heavy chair that would have to be carried. We don't know how artificial gravity works on the ships in this 'verse, so maybe you can't make a small anti-grav chair easily.