In addition to their other immoral and evil schemes, W/Y has been mucking around with cloning. Who better to be their first success story than the “Dear ole Dad” of the company? Of course, word got out and the share price dropped, so they just gave him a new identity and said “Here, we’ll make a line of androids in your image, and say you designed 'em. You keep your mouth shut, share price goes up, we’re all happy.”
Ah, but W-Y wasn’t featured in Alien Resurrection except in passing as a “terran growth conglomerate”, and the cloning was done via United Systems Military, “not some greedy corporation”. Plus there was no mention of cloning in the first three movies.
Mostly, though, I have a kneejerk negative reaction to any “oh, it’s because of cloning” plot-excuse due to all the cloned-Emperor crap in the Star Wars EU, let alone the fourth Aliens movie. (And if you mention that claptrap The 6th Day I’ll scream.)
You missed a fun game, man. Play as the Marine in a dark room, slinking around the abandoned corridors of the space station, searching for weapons and clues while you dig through halls filled with corpses and slime…
…and something goes hissssssssssss right behind you.
That is what we call jump-six-feet-in-the-air-and-shriek-like-a-cheerleader-time, my friends. 
What, didn’t you play the PC AvP games? I couldn’t stand playing as a Marine for that very reason - I much preferred the alien point-of-view, especially for clinging on walls, scampering through ducts to drop behind the entrenched humans, and all of the delicious head-chompin’ action.
I even forgot to mention meticulously downloading the Aliens-TC for Doom off of bbses back in the day. Playing that on Nightmare mode was … well, a nightmare.
Ahh - my bad. I thought’s that what you meant by “better” - el-sucko hollywood excuse. What better than the 1-2 punch of corporate greed & immoral clones??
Plus, by the time Resurrection rolls around, you can say the military appropriated the research “in the name of Planetary Security”. Now you have ‘evil military plot + immoral cloning combined with poetic justice dealt out against corporate greed.’
Work with me here.
Has anyone seen the ads for this on TNT? I seriously believed that it was going to be Alien vs. Predator vs…Evel Knievel. I stared like a slack-jawed yokel until they (barely) made it clear that Evel Knievel was a separate show entirely. What a stupid way to advertise.
(But whay a great movie THAT would be. Evel jumps a ramp over Aliens jumping and shooting out their mini-teeth at him, then dodges a few Predator discs, and the crowd goes wild…)
This movie will seriously blow. I loved the Aliens series and original predator movie, but Paul Anderson is a hack. This will be the end of a truely great series.
Wow! Aliens-TC for Doom! Glad to see another old timer! 
I had more fun playing that conversion than I ever had playing Rebellion’s official PC game. Basically because, hate to admit it, the PC game was too damn scary and too damn hard! Even with the (limited) in game save patch I could never get very far, and was so worn out that I didn’t want to play anymore! It was like a real, future, Aliens vs a Marine military simulator. It wasn’t fun, it was work. I’d finally finish a level and say, “God, I do not want to go back to that any time soon!”
Yeah, its highly possible. But I still think you’d be hard pressed to make a movie worse than Alien Ressurection. And as much as I hate to say it I think its a good thing Sigourney isn’t in this one. I swear she deliberately fouled up both 3 and 4!
I am all FOR this movie, so long as there’s plenty messy, violent, Alien vs. Predator action with poor humans scampering to stay out of the way and keep their relatively puny hides intact.
But the statement that the director of this movie is the one who did Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil … gives me pause. Game over, man! Game over!
Hell, I’ll check it out anyway.
{ Famous last words mode } How bad could it be? { /Famous last words mode }
Get some screen caps of Michael Bishop after he’s been clubbed.
I recall much discussion as to whether he was human or not at the time.
In any event, I think it’s pretty pointless to try to work AVP in with the rest of the established facts of the seperate Aliens and Predator worlds. It might work pretty well to say that Weyland Industires reverse engineered the Predator technology, allowing us interstellar travel in time for Alien… and the merger with Yutani Corp was to get some cyborg replacement parts for Charles Weyland’s cancerous bits… but what would be the point? AVP makes a number of errors in the physiology of the aliens as established consistently across the first four movies (and I don’t want to hear anyone suggest evolution). If they screw that up… Longer and pointier guys, good job.
IIRC, the Jaguar version was the first AVP game for a home system. Rebellion just took all the stuff that didn’t fit on the Jag and stuck them on the PC.
Oh, true. The Jag had the game in the early 90s, and Rebellion/20th Cent Fox released theirs in 1999. I’m just sayin’ that the PC games had the same effect on me. 
After the cockups of alien physiology in Resurrection, I wouldn’t be surprised if AVP features a Martha-Stewart-esque alien decorating the hive with cut flowers and potpourri.
And I was getting short, too! Four more weeks and out!
The TC was great. The first level featured no aliens at all, which just made me twitcher when I found the beginnings of the hive on level 2. I loved their little tricks to get aliens appearing out of the walls, like putting them in alcoves hidden by a wall which had only one side, so from your POV the room had a smooth wall; from the alien’s POV he was watching the entire room waiting for something to move.
Coming next summer
Alien and Predator VS Freddy and Jason
It’s the tag-team match of the century!
What did they change about the aliens’ physiology? I didn’t notice anything different about them in the previews. Or were you talking about the various books/games/etc instead of the movie? I thought Resurrection was the one that screwed things around…
Oh, and for you Alien & Predator junkies, you do know there is/was a trading card game, right? (okay, after checking out their Latest News dates, it seems this is definitely more of a “was” situation than an “is”)
I’m going to completely ignore the whole Alien-R newborn thing.
Well. In Alien, the skull is smooth. In Aliens, the skull is ridged. In Alien3 and Alien-R we’re back to smooth. The explanation for this is that the only time we ever see mature adult aliens is in, well, Aliens… and the juvenile aliens in the other three movies haven’t grown into their skull ridges yet, still have baby fat, etc.
Alien3 and Alien-R both show the aliens as walking on their toes. This isn’t the case in the first two, but there’s generally very little shown of how the aliens really walk around, and is probably just a limitation of prop design at the time (i.e. the humans in the suits are not toe walkers). The Queen, notably, is a toe walker.
Maybe there are some details here and there, but basically consistent.
Anyway. AvP has mature aliens with smooth hard skulls.
Okay, but why is it in Antarctica? Didn’t the two Predator movies firmly establish that the Preds prefer the heat?
Because, obviously, Antarctica used to be a lush tropical paradise. They mawk a bit about how old portages show the antarctic coastline, even though the coastline is under several hundred feet of ice, and ice sheets extending into the water would obscure where land began, as well. Guess whomever thought up this bit of plot dressing wasn’t told that the continent of Antarctica would rise a couple of feet if you removed the mass of ice pressing down on it, so it’s current actual coastline is not representative of what its ice-free coastline might be.
Alternatively, it’s a training ground. The Predators have a technological solution to the cold, while the Aliens do not… thus it slows down the aliens, making them ever so slightly less effective at eviscerating the young folks. The survivors move on to more advanced training in South America, Cambodia, and/or Egypt.
What I think is a great question is how this temple escaped being ground into fine dust by however many years of glaciers cruising around on top of it.
(Note to the Predator): don’t cut the Alien…that acid will burn you alive!! :rolleyes:
actually, not true.
if you accept novelizations as canon, Predators are immune to the acid-blood of the Aliens. (actually, more like their blood neutralizes the Aliens’.)
And if you accept the AvP comic book as canon, the predators themselves aren’t immune to the acid. Hunt leaders use it to burn Marks of Adulthood™ into young predators after a successful hunt.
I was under the impression that the predators used armor made from Alien chitin to protect themselves from the acid. Or something.
Man, I’m such a dork.