How Every Xenomorph Fits With Every ALIEN Film! (Because Science w/ Kyle Hill)

(squeals) - Alright, Alien franchise nerds or any sci-fi nerds, let's talk honestly for a second. It's hard to love the Alien movies. I mean, we love them, but when the scientific plot points don't seem to make any sense, it detracts from the movies and I think this is what's been happening with the franchise for almost the last 40 years, specifically

because

of the confusing

xenomorph

. life cycle. Let's fix that, put each movie together, and find the definitive life cycle of the

xenomorph

. With a little luck. Maybe. First let me admit that I made a mistake with my previous Alien video.

On my first try, I couldn't include Alien Covenant, I didn't really include the queen, I ruled out the sequels and tried to fit

every

thing into the original conception of the original script. That doesn't really make sense. These

film

s span decades and include the visions of many different writers, directors and producers. So let's try again, start from the beginning and include quotes from the people who actually made these movies to see where the xenomorph's life cycle from Alien to Covenant conclusively ends. No, just go, there are like thousands of faces there, go. You almost finished getting a hug in the face.

Let's start with Alien. The

alien

mythology has been added, subtracted, cut, edited and trimmed so many times that we need to go back to the original

film

makers and follow their intentions chronologically. According to the original script, co-writer Dan O'Bannon said that xenomorphs were an ancient intelligent species that reproduced through a third party but had two sexes. In fact, according to executive producer and co-writer Ron Shusett, the xenomorphs would reproduce more or less like this tarantula hawk wasp that first paralyzes its prey like a spider, takes it to a lair, wraps itself around it, lays an egg near it, and Then those eggs hatch and feed on the spider.

However, when the film went into production, having an ancient species with reproductive temples and pyramids was considered too expensive, so director Ridley Scott merged that idea with the Space Jockey scene, which was originally just an

alien

ship with no eggs. . Dan O'Bannon was uncomfortable with this merger

because

it eliminated one sex and also made the sensible but complicated life cycle of a xenomorph into a surreal mystery. But we'll get back to that. To make things even more mysterious, a cocoon scene that would complete a wasp's life cycle was removed. Fans called this the famous egg transformation scene.

In this scene, it appears that something is happening to the bodies of the Nostromo crew and some fans have interpreted this as human bodies literally turning into eggs to complete the alien life cycle. Some fans are wrong. According to multiple quotes from director Ridley Scott, the humans are there to be used as food for the eggs already laid. Quote "released on the ship, a new alien begins to lay eggs" in the bowels of the ship and lives to spread "and must find food for its offspring." In this case, the crew members of the Nostromo "upon whom the young aliens can feed on their eggs" until a new host appears and pushes them away. "Then the life cycle begins again." I know it seems like something is happening to Brett's body in this scene, but look what happens to this spider when it is infected by a parasitoid wasp.

So in the original Alien, after all the cuts and changes, the. life cycle was a bit vague. There was no longer an ancient with two sexes that reproduced each other through a third, so Ridley Scott made them asexual and there was no egg laying or cocoon creation in the final film, so this is where we are. A classic xenomorph would lay some eggs with a facehugger that has an embryo inside. A facehugger is more or less just an embryo delivery device and then that facehugger would find a human host and then a. chestburster would gestate inside that host and then explode and turn into a classic xenomorph which would then repeat the cycle.

See? It's not that bad. But that egg transformation scene not only confused the fans, it also confused the director. According to an interview in 1996, James Cameron thought that audiences would not accept human bodies being literally transformed into eggs, although that is not what happened and that scene was cut anyway so that Cameron would have a chance to officially establish where he came from. the eggs came. He didn't think that a single xenomorph could lay all the eggs we see in the first film and, continuing with the insect theme, created the queen. Cameron was largely inspired by termite queens, who first find a mate and then a place to rule and then begin transforming into egg-laying machines.

As the female becomes a queen, her abdomen swells exponentially, eventually causing Her Highness to be here, up to a hundred times larger than her subjects, and then she begins to lay eggs. An egg

every

three seconds for 20 years. This can lead to 200,000,000 eggs being laid in a lifetime. This would certainly solve Cameron's egg problem, although it wasn't really a problem in the first place. This is the number of xenomorph eggs that would have been laid during this scene. (egg sloshing) Wait, should I, should I move my face closer? Oh, I'm not a bad scientist, okay, I won't be.

That wasn't Cameron's only change. Based on interviews, it was clear that Cameron interpreted the xenomorphs as taking biological characteristics from the hosts they use, which would lay the groundwork for hybrids in future films. Hybrids, I should point out, which went against the original conception in executive producer Ron Shusett's Alien. Adding everything that James Cameron did, our mural is transformed. When a classic xenomorph is born, if there is no queen nearby, it will become a queen, start laying eggs and then the whole process continues as set by Alien, but if a xenomorph is born and there is already a queen, it will become a male drone . .

With the idea of ​​alien hybrids now floating around, Alien 3 director David Lynch decided to set it up. And as I said in the previous episode, one way that a xenomorph embryo could take on characteristics of its host is through horizontal gene transfer where the cells exchange, don't worry, they exchange DNA fragments between themselves without, that works, without having to go through the whole sex and reproduction thing. They can exchange genes immediately and express them and change the organism. But this looks too pretty. If a xenomorph embryo were actively taking in DNA from its host, it might work a bit like CRISPR.

CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and is a defense mechanism used by bacteria to destroy the DNA of invading viruses. When a virus invades a bacteria, that bacteria begins to catalog fragments of the virus's DNA with its own DNA and then sends that catalog as single-stranded RNA molecules. Then, enzymes in the cell called CAS enzymes pick up these RNA molecules and they begin to float around the cell. If they find any DNA that matches their catalogue, they will cut it out, cutting the DNA of the invading virus, inactivating it. We're already trying to use this kind of molecular machinery to revolutionize medicine, but a xenomorph embryo could use much the same thing to revolutionize itself.

Given Alien 3's hybrids, let's update the board. Facehugger's interaction with a human results in a chest burst that produces a class xenomorph which then leads to everything we already know. But in Alien 3, he interacts with a dog that explodes and then becomes the running alien and while we're at it, let's also add Alien versus Predator and Alien versus Predator Requiem because if a facehugger interacts with a Predator, he explodes. and he becomes a Predalien. This, this is the life cycle so far. But while us nerds were worrying about the life cycle, director Ridley Scott was worrying about something else.

The space rider. He wanted to know who that big guy in the suit was, and so we got to Prometheus. In Prometheus, also according to the same quote, boop. This quote here, boop, (laughter) we learn that eggs, I'm losing it, we learn that eggs are not natural, they are biological weapons. If eggs are biological weapons, that means they are no longer natural animals as O'Bannon first imagined and now we have a problem. What came first, the xenomorph or the egg? This is a chicken or egg situation, but in a chicken or egg situation, the egg comes first.

The first genetically true chicken was born in an egg that had combined DNA from two chickens that were not yet genetically true chickens. But aliens don't have parents, so this doesn't really apply. Or them? As I said in my first video, this is where the black goo comes into play. The goo is a genetic accelerator that takes any biology it can find and weaponizes it. But now I think more precisely, it takes biology and turns it into the first stage of a xenomorph so it can reproduce like a facehugger or into Prometheus where you see the goo infect a worm and it turns into a Hammer that hugs a bad. scientist. (sighs) Back to the board!

This is how the goo interacts with everything in Prometheus and everything else. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. The goo, if it interacts with an Engineer and the Engineer has too much of it, vaporizes and turns into some sort of fertilizing goo. If you interact with a human, if it is too much, it also causes death or turns you into a zombie. If the goo interacts with something like sperm that enters Shaw, it comes out as a trilobite. The sperm becomes a weapon that finds an Engineer, the face hugs him, it comes out, his chest bursts but he had no room and then he comes out as the alien Deacon, but if it infects maybe a native worm, it also turns it . in the first stage, the Hammerpede vagina snake and then, if it finds a human who is also a bad scientist, it crawls into his mouth and then comes out presumably as something.

Well well. Alright, the last Alien movie, except Alien Resurrection because it doesn't really change anything... Damn! Damn! In Alien Resurrection, the military combines Ripley 8's DNA with the DNA of a xenomorph queen embryo, so... If you combine the DNA of a xenomorph queen with human DNA, I guess she also gets a uterus and then she doesn't have to lay eggs. It can no longer produce anything but a crude alien human hybrid that is the newborn, okay. Well well. The latest Alien movie, Alien Covenant. In Alien Covenant, wait, spoiler alert. Come back now if you don't want to hear spoilers.

Well, in Alien Covenant we see even more biological interaction with the goo. Specifically, we see the goo interact with some type of native fungus to produce a spore that would be the first stage of its life cycle and reaches the ear of some human being, eventually exploding and becoming the neomorph. But most importantly, in the movie we see the android David playing with the goo, these spores, and what look like wasps, just as the original Alien intended. How did I get that freeze frame? Don't worry about that. All to create the classic facehugger... (facehugger squeals) Facehugger.

In this way, David is directing how the goo interacts with organisms and what DNA it has to work with through processes similar to CRISPR or horizontal gene transfer. David wants the chicken, so how does he get the egg? Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. Through David's dialogue and even the drawings of him, it is implied that we do not have the same level of evidence that we had in the previous films, so it is implied that he is using Dr. Shaw's physiology . His eggs. She would still have hundreds, even if she were infertile at her age, to create a mutated egg into which he could place the facehugger she created and thus complete the xenomorph's life cycle.

It's time to complete the board! Well, here we go. The goo can also interact with fungi and produce spores which, when interacting with humans, produce the neomorph. But the good thing is that when you have David's tinkering, Shaw's eggs, spores and native wasps, you can produce the classic facehugger with an embryo inside, inside an egg that will interact with a human, the chest bursts, just a human, and comes out. like a classic xenomorph that then proceeds as we have already established. Presumably many of these stages would also have their own queens if Aliens is still in this life cycle.

But this is it, this is probably the definitive and conclusive xenomorph life cycle. Maybe. Look, contemplate its beauty. I did this for you because... (face hugger squeals) Because it's

science

. (sighs) (upbeat music) Wow! Be sure to follow me on Twitter at Sci_Phile, where you can suggest ideas for future episodes, and on Instagram, where I'm now posting mini-episodes like I did today. Also on Facebook. ANDif you want even more of my nonsense, I'm doing a show now called ♫ Muskwatch with Dan Casey, my good friend, and it's very silly and I suggest you watch it if you want and also if you want even more space.

I have a new program at Alpha called The Space Program. It's kind of a combination of Cosmos and Mystery Science Theatre. So look at Alpha, look at the Space Program and look at Muskwatch, look at all the other things I just said, thank you. Well, if all that works, even the parts where I'm speculating about eggs and stuff, how did they get to LV-426? And why are there xenomorphs after they appear in Alien versus Predator? Hey? Ridley Scott tells me that. Wow, you nailed it!