Alien Queens 2

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The queen's head is larger than those of other adult Aliens and is protected by a large, flat crest, like a crown, which varies from queen to queen. Unlike other aliens, the queen's external mouth is separately segmented from the rest of her head, allowing her to turn her mouth left and right almost to the point where it is facing perpendicular to the direction of the rest of her head. In the second film, Aliens , unlike other adults and queens, the queen had high-heel protrusions from her feet.

Egg-laying Alien queens possess an immense ovipositor attached to their lower torso, similar to a queen termite's.

Unlike insect queens , there appears to be no need for an Alien queen's eggs to be fertilized. In the original cut of Alien , the Alien possessed a complete lifecycle, with the still-living bodies of its victims converted into eggs. However, the scene showing the crew converted into eggs was cut for reasons of pacing, leaving the ultimate origin of the eggs obscure. This allowed Aliens director James Cameron to introduce a concept he had initially conceived for a spec script called Mother , [26] a massive mother Alien queen which laid eggs and formed the basis for the Aliens' life cycle. Cameron conceived the queen as a monstrous analogue to Ripley's own maternal role in the film.

The queen was designed by Cameron in collaboration with special effects artist Stan Winston , based upon an initial painting Cameron had done at the start of the project. The Winston Studio created a test foamcore queen before constructing the full hydraulic puppet which was used for most of the scenes involving the large Alien.

Two people were inside working the twin sets of arms, and puppeteers off-screen worked its jaws and head. Although at the end of the film, the queen was presented full-body fighting the power-loader, the audience never sees the legs of the queen, save those of the small-scale puppet that appears only briefly. In Aliens , Cameron used very selective camera-angles on the queen, using the ' less is more ' style of photography.

Subsequently, the movie won an Oscar for Visual Effects. An adult queen was to reappear in Alien Resurrection. The original mechanical head previously used in Aliens was provided by Bob Burns and was an altered design. It was repainted with a blend of green and brown, giving it a shimmering, insect-like quality.

Alien Queens 2

This color concept would be abandoned in Alien vs. Predator in favour of the original black color scheme. In the climax of Alien vs. Predator , the queen's basic design was altered to make her more "streamlined" in appearance and her overall size was increased to six meters 20 feet tall. Other changes include the removal of the "high-heel" protrusions on her legs, including additional spines on her head and making her waist thinner because there was no need for puppeteers inside her chest.

The animatronic queen had 47 points of hydraulic motion. Requiem introduced a younger form of the full-grown queen, albeit with traits inherited from its Predator host. Recalling the facehugger's method of embryo implantation, the Predalien uses its inner mouth to directly deposit multiple chestburster embryos into pregnant female hosts, also using its mandibles to latch on the faces of said hosts, completely bypassing the need for facehuggers. The eggs laid by the queen are ellipsoidal, leathery objects between one-half and one meter two and three feet high with a four-lobed opening at the top.

The eggs can remain in a stasis mode for years, possibly indefinitely, until nearby movement is detected. As a potential host approaches, the egg's lobes unfold like flower petals, and the parasitic facehugger extracts itself from the egg and attaches itself to the potential host. Giger initially designed the eggs with a much more obvious vaginal appearance, complete with an "inner and outer vulva".

In the first film, the quick shot of the facehugger erupting from the egg was done with sheep's intestine. Resurrection , the entire egg was made to ripple as it opened. In Alien, the Director's Cut, an additional scene shows still living crew members being cocooned into new eggs, either morphing into a new embryo or acting as a food source for the facehugger inside the egg. A facehugger is the second stage in the Alien's life cycle. It has eight long, finger-like legs, which allow it to crawl rapidly, and a long tail adapted for making great leaps. These particular appendages give it an appearance somewhat comparable to chelicerate arthropods such as arachnids and horseshoe crabs.

The facehugger is a parasitoid ; its only purpose is to make contact with the host's mouth for the implantation process by gripping its legs around the victim's head and wrapping its tail around the host's neck. Upon making contact, the facehugger administers a cynose-based paralytic in order to render it unconscious and immobile.

The host is kept alive, and the creature breathes for the host. In addition, its grip on the host's head is strong enough to tear the host's face off if it is forcibly removed. Once the Alien embryo is implanted, the facehugger will remain attached until the implant is secure, which can take anywhere from less than a minute to 16 hours.

Once this happens, the parasite detaches, crawls away, and dies. Science of the Xenomorph , a behind-the-scenes documentary on Aliens vs. Requiem , it is theorized that facehuggers may implant a viral agent that "commands" the host's cells to grow the chestburster, as opposed to an implanted embryo. Giger's original design for the facehugger was a much larger creature with eyes and a spring-loaded tail. Later, in response to comments from the filmmakers, Giger reduced the creature's size substantially. Scott and Giger realized that the facehugger should burn through the helmet's faceplate with its acid blood; subsequent redesigns of the space helmet included a far larger faceplate to allow for this.

However, when he received H. Giger 's designs, which substituted tentacles with fingerlike digits, he found Giger's design concept to be superior. Since no one was available at the time, O'Bannon decided to design the facehugger prop himself. The technical elements of the musculature and bone were added by Ron Cobb. Giger's initial design for the smaller facehugger had the fingers facing forward, but O'Bannon's redesign shifted the legs to the side. When the foam rubber sculpture of the facehugger was produced, O'Bannon asked that it should remain unpainted, believing the rubber, which resembled human skin, was more plausible.

In Aliens , the facehuggers were redesigned by Stan Winston so that they would be capable of movement. Unlike the creatures in the first film, the creatures would take a much more active role in impregnating their victims.

When Ripley throws one off her, the facehugger was now capable of scuttling across the floor and leaping at its prey, wrapping its tail around the victim's throat. The facehugger is also shown to be capable of independently surviving outside of its egg. Due to the film's budget, only two fully working facehuggers were built. In Alien 3 , another addition, a "super-facehugger" that would carry the embryo of the queen Alien, was planned, but ultimately dropped. After implantation, facehuggers die and the embryo's host wakes up afterward, showing no considerable outward negative symptoms and a degree of amnesia regarding events at the time of implantation.

Symptoms build acutely after detachment of the facehugger, the most common being sore throat, slight nausea , increased congestion, and moderate to extreme hunger. The incubating embryo takes on some of the host's DNA or traits , such as bipedalism , quadrupedalism , [4] possessing the mandibles of a Predator , [41] and other structural changes. According to Weyland-Yutani scientists in Aliens: Colonial Marines , the chestburster will draw nutrients from the host's body in order to develop a placenta as it grows, attaching itself to several major organs in the process.

The placenta has cancerous qualities, such that even if the embryo were removed surgically, the placenta would simply cause the affected organs to shut down, resulting in death. Over the course of one to 24 hours—indeterminable in some cases, and sometimes up to a week, in the case of some queens—the embryo develops into a chestburster, at which point, it emerges, violently and fatally ripping open the chest of the host. There is no on-screen explanation of the reasons for the different incubation times. Fully-grown aliens may avoid harming species acting as hosts for un-emerged chestbursters, though this may only be in the case of a queen embryo.

The emerging alien varies in size from a guinea pig to a large dog, depending on the size and species of the host, and its appearance and adaptive characteristics are also determined by the host. Typically, its first instinct upon emerging is to flee and hide until full maturation. The chestburster was designed by Alien director Ridley Scott and constructed by special effects artist Roger Dicken. Much to Giger's dismay, his model reduced the production team to fits of laughter on sight.

Scott drafted a series of alternative designs for the chestburster based on the philosophy of working "back [from the adult] to the child" and ultimately produced "something phallic". Resurrection , but return in Alien: When a chestburster erupts from the body of its host, it is less than 30 centimetres 0. However, it soon undergoes a dramatic growth spurt, reaching adult size in a matter of hours; in Alien , the chestburster had grown to 2 metres 6.

Requiem , Alien warriors are shown who are still growing, showing shedding skin. In the unrated cut, the Predalien is shown wiping off its final molted skin at the film's start.

Xenomorph Queen

Aliens take on various forms depending on the characteristics of their hosts. Most of the Aliens seen to date have been human-spawned, but a number of Aliens born from other hosts have also been seen. Some of these are also a different variants or species altogether such the Neomorph and Deacon. The "Dog Alien" or "Ox Alien", also known as "Runner Alien" in the expanded universe stories and referred to in-film as "Dragon", was introduced in Alien 3. The creature itself shares the same basic physical configuration and instincts as the other Aliens shown in the previous films, although there are several differences due to the host it was spawned from a dog in the theatrical cut, an ox in the DVD assembly cut.

The dog Alien in its chestburster form is a miniature version of the adult, unlike the larval human- and Predator-spawned chestbursters. The adult is primarily quadrupedal , has digitigrade hind legs, and lacks the dorsal tubes of the human-spawned variety. The only differences behavior-wise was that this Alien behaved more like a dog or another quadrupedal animal that generally is prone to using its mouth instead of its front legs as its primary weapon to attack and maul its victims with its teeth.

Alien (creature in Alien franchise) - Wikipedia

This Alien, even when actively provoked, would not attack or kill Ripley, due to the queen growing inside her. This, however, changed towards the movie's climax, at which point the monster, after surviving a torrent of molten lead, burst from the liquid and went into a rampage, pursuing Ripley and presumably attempting to kill her until she destroyed it by showering it with freezing water, causing it to explode from thermal shock.

Giger was approached on July 28, , by David Fincher and Tim Zinnemann , and was asked to redesign his own creations for Alien 3. Giger's new designs included an aquatic face-hugger and a four-legged version of the adult Alien. Giger said in an interview "I had special ideas to make it more interesting. I designed a new creature, which was much more elegant and beastly, compared to my original.

It was a four-legged Alien, more like a lethal feline —a panther or something. It had a kind of skin that was built up from other creatures—much like a symbiosis. Even after the production severed contact, Giger continued to fax suggestions to Fincher and made full-scale drawings and a sculpt of the Alien, all of which were rejected. I thought I had the job and that Woodruff and Gillis would work from my plans.

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On their side, they were convinced that it was their job and accepted my 'suggestions' with pleasure. They believed that all my effort was based on a huge love for the matter, because I worked hard even after my contract was over. Giger would later be angered by the end credits of the released film presenting him as merely the creator of the original creature, and the fact that ADI personnel gave a series of interviews that minimized Giger's contribution.

Fox eventually reimbursed Giger, but only after he refused to be interviewed for their behind-the-scenes documentary of Alien 3. However, Giger would comment that he thought the resulting film was "okay" and that the Alien was "better than in the second film". However this is not so clean cut as it first seems for the robots divide into two opposing halves; the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime and the Deceptacons led by Megatron. Although constructed of metal parts and machinery it is represented as darkly gothic and as labyrinthine as any Alien subterranean vault.

This contrasts dramatically with the Autobots who are shown as being very controlled, clinical and clean. Not unlike the med-lab on the Auriga, they example the purveyors of a male controlled domain, like the boys-toys that they embody, where women are to be looked at and not listened to. Somewhat curiously however it is a world that is ultimately as unproductive as that seen in Alien. Megan Fox may typify a very particular male fantasy but there is no way that it could be ruined through the abject act of child-birth. This is further exampled in the Autobots, who are also never seen to reproduce.

Although configured as the good guys, and representatives of traditional values and hetero-normativity, they can only swell their ranks through machines that are already in existence, they may be able to swap body parts and even die, but not reproduce. It is only the Deceptacons that seek to break this seemingly implicit taboo and it is what forms the core of their configuration as evil; for they want to reproduce to excess.

Fortunately for sensitive viewers this reproduction does not involve any kind of robotic sex but is instigated by what is called the All Spark.

This is a metallic cube that contains the life-force, or energon, that created the first robots on the distant planet of Cybertron. It has remained hidden on earth for centuries until discovered by the American government and kept for safety under the Hoover Dam. We are told that the Autobots want to use it to rebuild Cybertron and bring peace to their, and our, world. The Deceptacons however want to use it to destroy the Autobots, humanity and the planet earth. What we actually see is that the Autobots want to control the reproductive powers of the cube whilst the Decepticons want to release its potential and to create as many robots as possible.

That this power in their hands is uncontainable and the source of evil is shown when it comes near to any kind of machine. Whether large of small, a mobile phone or a food mixer the previously inanimate object springs to life instantly armed with all manner of weaponry that it then fires at will. These children of jouissance are immediately destroyed by the Autobots leaving only the Decepticons to be their cybernetic mothers.

As such this forms a correlation between the monstrousness configured in the Deceptacons and the Alien Queens, but also of that connecting the vitalising force with femininity and reproduction. This forms an equivalence of inclusion and exclusion for the terms are held together because they are excluded from normativity and patriarchal authority. The otherness of the robot produces a similar excess as that seen earlier in the zoophageous nature of the Alien being configured as outside, or beyond normal categories of gender.

Here the robotic blank of the machine-man is clearly feminine and so it comes as no surprise that when it is required to form a central role in the evil professor Rotwang. As such mechanical malevolence becomes linked to not just otherness but a sense of femininity that directly opposes male authority. Her monstrousness is configured in many ways but all of them become explicitly linked to her femininity.

Any human forms produced by both sets of robots have been nominal clones to imitate pilots or people driving motorbikes or cars but Alice perfectly mimics a young and sexually available woman. Secondly she then becomes the sexual aggressor, not unlike bad-Maria in Metropolis, she actively, and quite literally, hunts down her man. That this contravenes patriarchal authority and constitutes a threat to social control is shown when she straddles Sam on the bed in his college dorm.

In conclusion then whilst seemingly very different the worlds created within the two film series of Alien and Transformers share some striking similarities. Both are governed by an inherently male orientated system which imposes its rule of law through control of the means of reproduction which consequently constructs a view of the future that can only be a continuance of the present within which it now lives.

Within this framework it is the procreative force itself that becomes the primary source of anxiety as it constantly threatens to exceed the limits that the dominating authority has placed upon it. The All Spark represents the uncontainable monstrousness of this as it manifests this chaotic force as disembodied and beyond individual control meaning that not only do organic bodies require constant regulation but also the very stuff of our everyday environments. As such all bodies beyond normalised gender categorisation are seen as threats and points of further social anxiety.

Here the blurring of boundaries signifies the loss of control over the regulated present intimating the allowance of change and an uncontrollable future. Curiously, within the films, these beyond human categories once again resort to a binary system that is equivalent to a gendering of roles. Out of all the Xenomorph castes, the Queen possesses the most physical differences. Its most prominent feature is its immense size, typically standing more than double the height of most other Xenomorphs, while some older Queens have been known to grow larger still.

Correspondingly, many typical Xenomorph features are also considerably larger on a Queen, including her jaws, which are filled with razor-sharp transparent teeth several inches long, and her inner jaw , the maw of which can be almost as large as a human head. Queens have large, armored, crown-like carapaces on their heads, into which they are able to withdraw their face and mouth as a means of protection, similar to how a turtle can withdraw its head into its shell.

This great carapace is of disproportional size when compared to the rest of the Queen's very large body. Queens also have double-jointed hind legs, two sets of dorsal tubes, which are more spike-like than on other Xenomorphs, six digit hands — with the third finger being much longer than the others — and an extra armored shell on their chest in the form of another carapace. They are also semi-tetrabrachial, possessing a second, much smaller pair of arms extending ventrally from the center of their chest; the exact purpose of these arms is not known.

A Queen's tail is extremely long and segmented, with a large, blade-like tip. As with typical Warriors, Queen tend to be black or black-blue in coloration. Egg-laying Queens are easily identified by their enormous Egg sac , which extends from beneath their tail and can be up to 30 or 40 feet in length. These Egg sacs are typically suspended from the ceiling of the Hive by "straps" created from the same secreted resin as the Hive itself. Owing to the size and weight of this sac, any Queen in the laying stage is immobile and totally dependent on her subordinates for assistance and protection.

However, the Egg sac can be detached in a critical situation to allow the Queen to escape, although this process is apparently painful for the Queen [1] and it is unlikely the sac can be reattached as easily, if at all. However, Queens are capable of growing a new Egg sac within a reasonably short period of time, [2] though this too can prove painful for them. However, in very short order, fertile Eggs will be created. A Queen, despite her size ratio compared to other Xenomorphs, can sustain near-limitless gunfire before having to retreat, thanks largely to her thickened skin and additional armor.

They have also been seen to survive being almost totally enveloped by fire, [1] although prolonged exposure to heat and flame is eventually fatal. It has also been noted that Queens display numerous signs of extreme muscle density; indeed, Queens are capable of tearing synthetics in two with just their hands. The Queen is fast considering her size, capable of sprinting quickly across large distances. While Xenomorphs are usually said to be asexual, Queens are typically classified as female, owing to their similarities with similar female egg-laying castes in the insect kingdom.

Usually, there is only a single Queen present in any Xenomorph populace. However, on occasion it is possible for multiple Queens to come into contact with each other. Such a course of events will lead to conflict, with the ultimately dominant Queen often being referred to as an Empress and ruling over any other Queens situated in her domain. As with the Spitter and Runner castes, Queens are capable of spitting acid from their mouths.

A Queen with a "fanned" crest. The Ryushi Queen 's "three pronged" crest.

While Queens may appear broadly identical to each other, there are often subtle variations in their physical appearance that differentiate one individual from another. Whereas many lower castes are essentially indistinguishable from their fellow Xenomorphs unless marked or visibly injured in some way , Queens may occasionally vary quite noticeably in color.

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