In Alien, we see a larval Alien about the size of a cat burst out of Kane’s chest, and then the next time we see it, it masses at least 400 pounds. How did it gain all that mass, in a matter of hours, without, apparently eating anything?
IMDB gives this:
I prefer to chalk it up to the “a wizard did it” trope.
It got down in the bottom of the hold and ate all the garbage.
Or Bert Gummer’s giant hidden stash of MREs.
Beefcake!
It did eat a fair chunk of John Hurt’s innards.
All the other flaws in that half-assed screenplay and that’s the one you notice? :rolleyes:
Zero Point Energy.
In Alan Dean Foster’s tie-in novel, the alien breaks into a food storage locker and consumes a big chunk of the crew’s food supplies. Then, when it gets large enough, it eschews spam, and starts hunting fresh meat.
Critics liked it, as did a very large chunk of the viewing public. RT gives it 97% from the critics, 90% from the RT community. It consitently scores in the top 100-or so movies of all time.
So maybe, Chuck, just maybe, it’s not about Alien, but about you, and your particular brand of thread-shitting narcissistic behavior you bring to every thread you participate in, every posted reply you submit, having to do with this movie.
That’s right, Chuck, everyone else is wrong, and only you are right.
They pull the same stunt with just about any other dangerous creature in the movies. I forget the name of the movie and I don’t give enough of a shit to look it up, but the one with the bug girl this spring that grew unusually fast is the one I’m thinking of. How the fuck would they be so shocked that it grew so fast when by the laws of physics, they would have to be feeding it enough to allow it to gain that mass?
See, I noticed the same thing in Alien 3 - thing bursts out of a dog, then seconds later the alien is 3X the size of the dog from which it came.
Maybe they have kelp DNA. Macrocystis pyrifera can grow 500 cm per day.
It’s inflatable?
nevermind
It’s just a storytelling shortcut, they do the same thing in Starman, I was thinking ‘that’s a lot of calcium out of thin air.’
Come on, ExTank. You know the rules here: personal insults aren’t allowed in this forum. This is a formal warning. Don’t do this again.
I gotta admit, Marley, ExTank is correct, here.
In every thread which mentions the movie Chuck does this. He’s got a hard on for it (and I’ve read his piece about it) and he’s more than assertive about it. Maybe he just needs some new material or something.
Where’s the personal insult in my reply to 'Chuck?
Perhaps it starts out extremely dense and as it expands becomes increasingly hollow, space that is latter filled up when it eats. Far fetched I know 
Eating something that just isn’t mentioned in the film is the best explanation.
Naah – I’m wrong, too. I’ve hated the film since it came out, for many of the same reasons Chuck gives, and much prefer the original film that Alien ripped off, Jerome Bixby’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space.
And the sudden weight gain of Alien is only one of the things that annoys me about that flick, although it’s high on the list.