#XENOMORPH ALIEN ISOLATION MOVIE#

'Xenomorph' is just a fancy word for 'alien,' not the proper name of the creatures.Īnd that, of course, leaves us with a bit of a vacuum - what are the aliens called? The use of 'Xenomorphs' as a proper noun used to describe the series' aliens is blatantly wrong. If the creatures have an official name that even a corporal like Hicks knows, why in the world is Ripley there as an advisor? What Gorman is saying isn't 'There's a specific type of creature called 'Xenomorphs' down there!' Instead, he's saying 'there are non-human lifeforms down there.' Any other interpretation is easily disproved in the same scene,when Ripley is prompted to describe the aliens. The word xenomorph in this context is a generic term for any 'strange or foreign form' - any alien life form. Morph, which means a shape or form with the prefix's supplied attributes. Dropping a fancy college word like 'xenomorph' is just another way to lord rank and position over the jarheads - people whose names he hasn't even really bothered to learn. Writer and director Cameron takes pains to set Gorman up as the embodiment of Vietnam-era military officer hubris and jargon-veiled incompetence, and the lieutenant holds himself above and entirely separate from the squad under his command. The way Gorman rattles off the term makes it sound like he knows what he's talking about, but unfolding events make it clear he's as clueless as the rest of them about the nature of the creatures. Then there's Gorman's 'xenomorph' comment. And, as before, most of those sources also agree that calling the aliens bugs is just a common figure of speech. If we expand our view to include extracanonical sources like theĬolonial Marines Technical Manual, we can find tons of additional support that extraterrestrial life (sentient and otherwise) is common in the Aliens universe. The ICC has strict controls on biological items moving around in human space - we know this from later in Aliens, when Ripley explains to the Marines that Burke planned to stuff alien babies inside her and Newt in order to 'get an alien back through quarantine.'

#XENOMORPH ALIEN ISOLATION MOVIE#

Ripley refers to it as the 'ICC quarantine,' and we know from Burke's dialog in the Special Edition of the movie that ICC is the initialism for the Interstellar Commerce Commission (a futuristic spin on today's Interstate Commerce Commission), some form of future regulatory body. The 'quarantine' gets another couple of mentions inĪliens, or at least something similar. It's also possible that 'bug hunt' is a play on ' snipe hunt,' a term that can be used to describe a purposeless task. Though it's never clarified on-screen in a canonical fashion, it's likely that the Colonial Marines are indeed called upon to perform sweep-and-clear operations without clear objectives. Why, then, does Hudson ask if the mission is a 'bug hunt?' And that is all consistent with Weyland-Yutani's information suppression in the Alien universe. When the squad encounters captive facehuggers in the colony's medical lab, even Burke has to ask if these are indeed the aliens Ripley briefed them on.

The corridors of Hadley's Hope are littered with craters and holes from acid, but they're attributed to 'Ripley's bad guys' instead of any kind of formally named foe. But the fact that Ripley's character has been invited along as a 'consultant' and has to explain the aliens to the squad is proof enough that they've never run into the things before - as is the total collapse of discipline and unit effectiveness that the squad undergoes when their encounter does turn into a firefight.

Hudson's question in the scene about a 'stand up fight' versus a 'bug hunt,' implies he's done both before and vastly prefers the former. Even Carter Burke, the unctuous Special Projects Director of Weyland-Yutani (Space)Ĭorp's Special Services Division, appears skeptical of Ripley's story (though he believes it enough to send a team of wildcatters out to the reported coordinates of the Engineer derelict, thereby causing the death of all but one of the Hadley's Hope colonists). And then there's that whole Prometheus movie.īut Weyland-Yutani keeps its secrets, and whatever revelations the company got out of the events in Alien were suppressed, or at least held very, very closely.

Xenomorph alien isolation