I was watching Aliens the other day on HBO or Starz or whatever. The film still holds up very well. But my big question.
What were the Colonial Marines actually prepared to face on LV-426?
What I mean is this. They clearly had been on “bug hunts” before (implying they had met other extraterrestrial life on other missions). They had Ripey’s intel from her experiences on the Nostromo so they could reasonably suspect it probably wasn’t separatist terrorists or some other human enemy. They had armor and air support and firepower out the ass. They even had access to orbital nukes on the Sulaco so I have to assume their unit wasn’t a complete bunch of fuckups. So why were they basically routed by 158 unarmed giant space cockroaches?
Yes, the alien xenomorphs are scary looking, but as Hudson put it, “they’re just dumb animals, aren’t they”? Would the outcome have been the same if they sent these marines to relieve a colony that was occupied by 158 man eating tigers or angry chimpanzees?
Now maybe I’m looking at this from the perspective of someone who has had the opportunity to study tactics and strategies of Aliens, Starship Troopers and StarCraft. But if the Colonial Space Marines from Aliens weren’t expecting the shit storm they walked into, what exactly were they expecting on LV-426?
My guess is that they were just a standard light infantry squad, and were armed accordingly. They’re probably capable of handling relatively small numbers of aliens or rambunctious humans.
The thing is, I had the distinct impression that nobody, with the exception of Ripley and Burke, were expecting anything at all out of the ordinary. All the commentary about colonists’ daughters and what-not bear that out. Even Ripley’s briefing aboard the Sulaco didn’t really hit home.
Later, after most of them were killed in the initial sweep through the terraforming facility, they realized that they were woefully underarmed and outnumbered. But going in, they had no idea that they were going to face dozens of the aliens, nor just how tough or resourceful they’d be.
A - From the other things the marines said, I got the impression they had experienced a lot of false alarms and easy deployments, so they were thinking they’d drop into “Bob is missing, he MUST have been eaten by aliens” which turned out to be “Bob is a dumbass and fell off a cliff”
2 - The aliens are smart; if the marines were actually used to angry chimps, the kind that aren’t stealthy and you can hear coming and whose only means of attack is “frontal assault”, they would have plowed through the other deployments without a problem. The Xenomorphs were probably their first enemy that was dangerous.
III - The fight was mismanaged to hell. Lt. Gorman was greener than Ripley, and did shit for recon and prepping for battle. He basically sent his whole squad right into the lion’s den, then took away their guns, then was surprised when they all got eaten. A better commander might have acted differently.
Hudson was wrong; they weren’t just dumb animals. And they’re not merely giant cockroaches. Chimps and tigers wouldn’t have shown the same level of stealth and ingenuity.
The decision to partly disarm them because of the reactor really hampered the marines.
That unit might be the sci-fi equivalent of a search & destroy/LRRP unit: if it’s small, the squad takes care of it with its own arms. If it’s big, they pull back and call in an airstrike/nukestrike. They APC might also be useful for outdoors mid-level stuff.
As I mentioned in the other thread, I think they were hampered by poor leadership. Both Lt. Gorman (who was a complete novice) and Burke (whose only interest was himself and the Company). They were stripped of most of their firepower before the first fight when the intelligent thing would have been to back out and come up with another plan that would let them get to the missing colonists AND keep their weapons along the way.
We don’t have any information on what life forms any of them encountered on previous “bug hunts” but their reaction to the aliens indicated that they were something new. The acidic blood, their transformation of the complex into a camouflage nightmare, their cunning and likely their sheer numbers. There was also something of a comedy of errors – for instance, if the dropship hadn’t crashed and damaged the reactor, the survivors could have likely holed up and awaited rescue. They only died because they were forced to leave safety and try to make it to the second dropship. I think the number sent was fairly low as well since the Company didn’t know what was actually wrong (only Burke knew about order to check out the alien ship). If the Company legitimately thought it was likely a downed transmitter, they weren’t going to send fifty guys. If they knew there was a couple hundred colonists impregnated with alien monster babies and a 15’ alien queen hanging out, they likely would have sent more men. After all, W-Y had a real interest in wanting the colony intact.
In a stand-up fight, I think the Colonial Marines would have done much better. The aliens weren’t bulletproof, the marines just didn’t get to use their bullets.
He also completely froze when the bloodbath started. The only reason ANY of the Marines survived was because Ripley commandeered the APC and drove in for the rescue.
Back to the nukes: Again, if the alien hadn’t gotten into the dropship and crashed it, the surviving marines would have hopped on board, gone back to the Sulaco and nuked the place. End of story. If the place wasn’t going to explode anyway, they likely would have waited out a rescue and then nuked the place.
Hudson mentions two mission types in his question to Gorman during the briefing: “Bug Hunts”, and “stand up fight”.
I imagine a “bug hunt” is where the Marines were called out to kill off a few dangerous predators (sic) on colony worlds. In this case, the enemies (non-sentient animal) numbers are going to be small, and I imagine usually uncoordinated. Only basic small unit tactics and weapons are needed in this kind of action.
A “stand up fight”, the enemy may be separatists, terrorists, prison breaks, or other actions against a better armed and possibly better coordinated (sentient) foe. Heavier weapons, better recon and intel, and different approaches are needed to be employed.
My impression is that Burke probably understated the danger to the colony and the Marines, and that Gorman was too inexperienced to properly assess the situation. I think the Marines were expecting a bug hunt, but they walked in to a stand up fight.
The Alien Queen (if there was anything to her ability to control the drones in the egg chamber) may have been able to coordinate the attacks of her drones, making them much more dangerous than just animals. Also, remember Hudson asking “Cut the power?? What do you mean they cut the power? They’re just animals!”? To me, that implied that there was more coordination (if not sentience) in the xenomorph actions than the Marines expected. (Still. Even after the fight in the reactor room.)
The Marines never really played to their own strengths. They might have been able to hold the command center in the face of uncoordinated animal attacks. But the close quarters of the colony habitat severely restricts the Marines ability to showcase their fire power (restricted line of sights/field of fire). Fighting in an urban environment against a coordinated enemy that outnumbers you is a pretty tough nut to crack.
Plus the aliens displayed two dangerous traits you don’t usually see combined. They were cunning/smart but they were also hive creatures without much sense of self-preservation. You wouldn’t expect a swarm of bees or ants to cut the power or seek alternate routes when you block the main one. But you’d also expect semi-intelligent creatures (your “angry chimpanzees”) to scatter when you’re blasting into them with pulse rifles. The aliens were willing to throw great numbers of themselves at killing you AND cunning enough to find new ways to reach you when that didn’t work.
I think the marine’s main take-away from Ripley’s briefing was, “An unarmed and untrained civilian can kill one of these things, so us heavily armed veteran marines should have no trouble at all.”
Burke pretty much shows me that the main mission wasn’t really rescue and relief, but retrieval of bio-something for The Company. So, I wouldn’t be surprised (in the Aliens universe) that W/Y actually held back critical intel.
I was just rewatching Robocop 2 (yeah, yeah) and got to the scene where the female cop - what the hell’s her name - drives the tank into the new Robocop. She smashes him against the wall and stops. Once. My immediate thought was, “She’s no Ripley”. Ripley would have backed up, run him over and again and again until she was sure he was dead.
Other than that, people make excellent points here. The Marines made some mistakes:
They didn’t even have a Chief, you know, someone who would stay back on the ship and monitor the cargo hold and such.
They were extremely cocky, thinking that civvies were by uniform dumb and panicky, and they’d seen it before.
Gorman!
I guess they never expected to have to watch the ductwork. Even Ripley didn’t think of that one.
They didn’t have a secure place to fall back.
They were also severely misinformed:
No one told them the details of the attack on the Sulaco. They should have been made to listen.
No one told them about the acid blood.
No one told them how smart the Aliens can really be.
The Company hid and flat out lied to them so they could get their samples back. Weyland-Yutani is the stupid company that ever lived.
I think Aliens makes it clear that no one even believes Ripley in the first place.
She’s only along because Burke knows the truth, but Burke has intentionally made sure no one else has his corroborating evidence. (Because that corroborating evidence implicates Burke.)
Thus, the marines have every reason to believe it’s just a downed transmitter except for Ripley’s word. And let’s face it, the official inquiry into Ripley’s actions did not go in her favor. She lost her pilot’s license. And her psych review says she’s not entirely sane. Even if she is telling the truth, “bug hunts” are easy missions because nothing out there is as dangerous as xenomorphs.
In the absence of real information, an inexperienced Gorman does everything he can wrong. When they confirm a real problem at the base, for example, he doesn’t pull them out to regroup and re-plan. He just finds the locators and heads on in. Then he freezes. He doesn’t keep anyone available as backup. And so on.
Had Gorman been playing it safe/smart, the first thing he’d have done upon losing the dropship would be to have Bishop remote pilot the backup dropship down to the planet, as he does later in the movie under Ripley’s instructions. As long as they have a dropship, they’re “safe” and can spend as long as needed to assess their options.
As an additional note: I hate to cite the Aliens Role-Playing Game when discussing the movie, but the background information, rules, equipment, stats, etc. really does help put the movie in context. If you try to play out the movie using the rules in the game, you realize that the only reliable way for the Marines to survive is to have foreknowledge of what they’re facing. Ripley could have provided that information, but they did have plenty of legitimate reasons to ignore her.
We’ve debated this in other threads (not you and I, of course) but I don’t think W-Y knew really what was going on. Burke sent the order for the colonist scavenger to check out the coordinates of the alien ship (so someone would get infected) and Ripley threatens Burke with exposure later on. I think Burke was acting largely on his own, thinking he could smuggle the aliens in and then sell them to W-Y. If W-Y had planned the whole fiasco on a corporate level, there would have been much easier and better ways to smuggle the aliens in than infecting one of their expensive colonies, involving the government with a military operation and then trying to cover it all up. I’m sure W-Y could have afforded an independent scientific/mercenary team to collect the eggs or aliens rather than getting the Colonial Marines involved.
Burke was the only one to know what happened and that there would be aliens there. W-Y was probably legitimately handling it as a “downed transmitter” and the Colonial Marine detachment was just a standard precaution in case it was a crazed axe-murdering colonist or the colony had mutinied or something ‘normal’ like that.
Or, Burke was the point man and possible fall guy by corporate design. Either W/Y profits greatly, and Burke gets rewarded, or it all goes to hell and Burke gets thrown under the bus.
I can see either train of thought being valid. Or some variation of our theories.
Something else that I don’t think anybody has mentioned–there were colonists alive so the marines thought they were heading into a (likely) friendly area.
Burke’s motivation is hard to explain. Given that he was (apparently) OK with an atrocious commander (Gorman) he either didn’t know how bad the xeno’s were or he was a retard in risk assessment. If he knows the xeno’s were bad-ass why risk it all with such a poor commander? That certainly doesn’t help him bring one back.
Gorman’s inclusion in the mission can only be attributed to rotten bureaucracy that has some bean counter assigning commanders.
Gorman admits that this is only his second combat drop.
My guess is that the Marines weren’t told much by W-Y or Burke, and thought they were assigning him to a milk run. “It’s probably just a down transmitter.”
That’s a point; Burke, on the one hand, is apparently aware that the aliens are so lethal that they’d make a highly valuable bio-weapon, yet it doesn’t seem to occur to him that the same characteristics might make it a bit difficult to arrange capture of a specimen.
I’m going with the notion that Burke assumed all along that that the ease with which the Nostromo’s crew was dispatched was due mainly to their being (his view) yokels without military training, that Gorman’s lack of experience would be a plus as he might be more easily handled than a battle-tested veteran, and that said lack of experience wouldn’t matter that much because the Marines would at best only encounter one or two potential specimens. Of course, Burke was wrong. It was a bad call, Deeg, a bad call.