. . . burning everyone who failed the blood test and calling it a day?
I watched this last night and that really stood out to me. They kept acting like everyone was doomed and there was no way they were going to escape this situation, but it seemed to me like they were on the right track.
Just give everyone the blood test, and if someone fails, burn them. Once they've gotten everybody, the Thing is dead.
Right?
No, I don't think so. As I see it, each minute part of the infected blood can and may be a "thing"! If the thing is made of tissue as humans are, then any portion can arise into a whole. I don't know how infinitesimal is its make-up, though.
shareGuessing you are watching it now on ShowtimeBeyond? .. lol,
Was thinking the same thing, the movie never explains how little of the blood can convert a person or does a creature need to do a full body 'swap' of sorts. The way blood was flying all over the place some must have splashed on everyone at one point or another: would a little blood cause the person to change slowly or take over the mind immediately?
One thing I wondered is do people who have been 'Thinged' know they are 'From Another World' per se, or are they duplicates including memories and The Thing is more of a survival instinct that kicks in during life/death struggle, does it know other Things by sight/smell/ not at all?.... does the Thing have an 'original' form?
And what happens if it did get out there, would it just take over all life? Who was it running from?
[I have to re-read a comic book 'sequel' which isn't canon of course]
In the end its a scary horror movie with rules that really aren't based on reality kinda like zombie movies and series
What do you mean it never explains how little blood?
Blaire does that thing on the computer where it shows just one cell being corrupted then through duplication/mutiplication X2X4X8 etc, the whole body is taken over. This then goes person to person until the whole world is replicated/duplicated in less than 3 years if the Thing gets to civilization.
Yes, but there appears to be two types of 'possession ' where a Thing takes over the body and duplicates rapidly by melding with it and Blair's which seem to happen because he got blood on him during the autopsy ... My guess is that everyone was infected to some degree including the last two survivors at the end since blood was flying around.
Whatevs... It's just a horror slasher like pic, just wish the prequel had expanded more in it but it did so badly that it went nowhere.
I don't think there are two types of possession. They were speculating there could be, and this is why Fuchs urged Macready to have everyone eat only out of cans, but they didn't really know. I thought for years that Norris was one of those gradual takeovers -- that he had gotten exposed to a few cells and they started taking over his original cells at a geometric rate. And I figured that when he collapsed, that was the point when he lost enough of himself to "die" as the Thing continued to assimilate his body. However Carpenter and others involved in the production have gone on record that Norris had a heart condition, and when the Thing copied him, it did so perfectly, down to the last cell, which means it replicated Norris' heart defect and had a very human heart attack (which couldn't actually kill it, of course, just made that temporary human copy unviable so it had to change).
The problem is, if the Thing can take people over gradually, needing only a small amount of its own cells to start the assimilation process, then there is simply no rational explanation whatever for its using the violent attack method. If it could take people over gradually, without their even knowing until it was too late, why attack some people violently and alarm the survivors into fighting back? It would make no sense. It could just expose everyone a few cells at a time, and sit back and wait for them all to change.
Just give everyone the blood test, and if someone fails, burn them. Once they've gotten everybody, the Thing is dead
"Alien" (1979) - why didn't the Nostromo team kill a xenomorph at the very start?
shareacid for blood which would cause a hull breech remember.
shareAcid does not eat glass or plastic ... only the Alien's "molecular acid" seems to do that.
Also, as acid eats something, it reacts with it changing to neutral salt. That was not exactly well explained in Alien either.
Nevermind the point that since it eats through everything, how is it that it doesn't eat through the Alien itself?
I'm reffering to irinaoma's question about alien why they didnt just kill it on the nostromo. The acid demonstrated it can eat whole through 3 decks.
Nevermind the point that since it eats through everything, how is it that it doesn't eat through the Alien itself?
Meaning you have no answer for how ridiculous the idea is.
shareNot sure what your complaining about. If you thought the idea was rediculus just say so. They asked a question I answered. Why are you getting after me?
shareI did not mean to get after you at all, just to point out that in the movie that the acid for blood thing and the acid eating through the decks was silly.
shareYes. Dan Obanon regretted not finding a better plot point to prevent the crew from killing th beast early on.
shareWhy didn't they kill the xenomorph earlier?
One word answer ..... Ash!
Ash acting as a saboteur was actually written into the story later. Dan Obanon actually objected to that. He called it a "russian spy". A troupe in which a russian spy is thrown into the plot to create more tension when the authors feel the pacing of the story is dull.
I'm pretty sure the creature would have been killed fairly easily had the crew not had to worry about its acid for blood eating through the hull. Further more the crew already mentioned they had weapons earilier in the plot when approaching the derelict but were reluctant to use them on the full grown acid filled alien.
OBannon objected to Ash?
He regrets the acid for blood which then prevented them shooting/stabbing etc and forcing them to flush it out of the airlock via chasing it through the ventilation shafts?
Do you know what? It's these things that help make Alien the movie it is. What does OBannon wish he'd done instead with the benefit of hindsight? Because that's what we're talking about here aren't we? For some reason OBannon thinks the idea is ridiculous yet millions of fans of the movie think that concept is brilliant. In fact the whole story is about ordinary people (truckers in space) who find themselves in a situation that they are ill prepared to deal with.
Guess we're all wrong then eh?
If it comes down to opinions, then as far as I'm concerned OBannon is talking out of his arse and Alien is the brilliant movie it is despite his objections and not because of them.
I just watch both movies again on Amazon Prime, and I have to say, as much as I love both movies, there is a lot of silly stuff. Maybe it takes too much and too long to really write a good movie that makes sense, so they have to rely on the people doing stupid stuff like wandering off alone, or the ability of a huge alien being able to move silently through the ship like they do on Walking Dead with the zombies who usually start growling and hissing whenever they see a living person ... unless they are right there behind them to grab them out of camera frame.
I'd like to see a movie like that where they actually took some time to figure out what would intelligent people do when confronted by something scary out of human experience. That would be kind of cool to see.
For instance, in Prometheus how they just fly down to the planet and go walking off, and trust the android who magically appears, not to mention all the other stupid stuff they do.
I like to think that a lot of the mistakes made were down to them being ill prepared and underestimating the Alien. For example, when Brett walks off alone he isn't expecting to come across anything bigger than the cat. As for it moving silently, well lions and tigers tend to move silently when stalking their prey so that's no biggie for me.
shareThat's a reasonable point, but it is a horror movie.
How does this creature get so big with nothing to eat and if it doesn't need to eat, why does it had such a specialized biting and chewing anatomy? You can blow in the wind all you want, but this movie is very simpleminded entertainment, for about a 4th grade mentality.
Any why if it can eat anything, does it need a living host, of close to human shape to gestate in, and why on some occasions does it seem to kill the host, or bit them. Why not evolve a different way to disable the host, like poison or an hallucinogen?
I don't like movies, more and more movies these days, where one has to do mental gymnastics in order to fool themselves enough to suspend thier disbelief.
Well the simple reply, or cop out, is it's alien.
But the best reply is yours....
You can blow in the wind all you want, but this movie is very simpleminded entertainment.....
The rest of what you say can only be answered by theory and is down to interpretation and is in no way definitive.
Brux - you do know there is more than one type of acid dont you?
and while we're on the subject theres more than one type of plastic too.
See early breaking Bad episode for more a demonstration .
Mark, are you lecturing me about acids?
I always like to learn stuff.
I am all ears, what did I get wrong?
well i'm no chemist , i was gonna mention thats why I wasnt being more specific.
but a quick google tells me:
Hydrochloric Acid – HCl.
Nitric Acid – HNO3.
Sulfuric Acid – H2SO4.
Acetic Acid – HCH3CO2.
"and many more"
And some of these acids have different properties,
What I learned for definite from an episode of breaking bad , is that when you are trying to disolve a body in acid , you have to have the right kind of plastic container - one type will hold the acid fine , the other will disolve along with the body.
Also there is acid in your stomach that dosent eat through your skin like the Alien's acid does.
...and in oranges and lemons.
how is it that it doesn't eat through the Alien itself?for the same reason stomach acid doesn’t burn through your stomach. share
that is because we have mucous in our stomachs that protects us from acid ... but the alien's "molecular acid", whatever that is, ate through anything, even glass and plastic ... it's like there as nothing that would protect against it. I know ... it's just a movie, still that bothered me. It would have been just as scary without the acid blood, or if it was not exaggerated so much.
The movie wouldn’t have worked without the acid blood, or else they could have just killed the alien with lasers and been done with it.
Also it’s theorized the alien’s biological makeup is made of acid-resistant Teflon to insulate against it.
What do you mean? They did do that. They did everyone.....but Blair was still locked in the hut outside because he went crazy and tried to kill everyone. When they went to give him the blood test and get him he had escaped and was underground building that ship. All of the ending drama resulted in Blair being hidden and attacking and killing everyone in private. If Blair had just been hanging out in that shack still they would have tied him up, tested him, he would have failed and they would have burned him. He got away before they got that chance.
shareExactly. I just wrote the same thing 2 years later, having not advanced far enough in the thread initially to see what you'd written.
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Don't forget, the thing could easily hide a part of itself in someone's bag, wait for the bag to be transported to a more favorable climate, then take over the Earth.
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