MovieChat Forums > Alien: Romulus (2024) Discussion > I really didn't like the big change to t...

I really didn't like the big change to the lore. (Surprised not to see much discussion of it here)

posted 3 months ago by Zarkoff (1857)
3 replies | jump to latest

If you follow the series closely, the OG xenomorphs from Alien and Aliens took at least a day or two to gestate. In this movie, they can do it within an hour, I'd say. And then they can grow to full size in about the same amount of time.

The science officer mentions that they can vary their metabolism as they like, but then why take their time developing so that the adults have to stash them away in cocoons and all the rest and having to wait for the new xenos to be born.

They vary their development time according to the needs of the screenwriter and plot, I guess. Oh, the screenwriter doesn't want the crew standing around trying to figure out what to do with my host this time, I better get to bursting right away.

[–] Filmtenk2 (4045) 3 months ago

I wonder what Bjorn was trying to accomplish shocking the cocoon. He needed to light that thing on fire not tickle it.

[–] Zarkoff (1857) 3 months ago

At least he wasn't a scientist. LOL.

One of the things that annoyed me about Covenant and Prometheus was some of the shit that supposedly professional scientists would do. (I didn't hate either of those movies, but they had some serious flaws)

[–] redban (6194) 3 months ago

In the original Alien, the xenomorph went from baby (ie when it burst out of a man’s chest) to adult in an hour or two.

The part that took long in the OG was when the facehugger was attached to the guy’s face. The facehugger in the OG seemed to be attached to the guy’s face for several hours, and when the face hugger got off, the guy seemed to be up and moving for a while before he died (whereas in this movie, the short-haired girl was face hugged for like 15 minutes and the alien burst out of her chest about 10 minutes after removal)

I guess the explanation is that, in this movie, they used the cryofuel to remove the face hugger early. Rook said they had a 60-40 chance of stopping gestation by doing so. My guess is that by removing the facehugger early, the alien was forced to come out prematurely, which in this instance didn’t hurt it (but it presumably could have done so). So the reason a face hugger would normally take a longer time (as it did in the OG) would simply be to remove risk and ensure that the alien comes out healthy.