I have always wodnered: any reason the space ship was called the Sulaco?
The space freighter in Alien was named the Nostromo, which is the title of a novel by Joseph Conrad. “Sulaco” is a (fictional) town from that novel.
Presumably the Nostromo was named that in the original movie because someone associated with Alien liked Joseph Conrad, and they named the Sulaco just as sort of an in-joke. There is sort of a Hollywoodized, popularized, vaguely-Conradesque feel to Alien and Aliens: a heartlessly exploitative ruthlessly capitalist “Company” sends people into the heart of the darkness of space, where no one can hear them scream, where their own fellow men* are more corrupt and more dangerous than the alien monsters which lurk there. Or something like that.
(*Well, androids pretending to be fellow men, but programmed by fellow men–besides, Burke was human.)
I don’t know what in-continuity explanation there might be for why the Company named one of its space freighters after an early 20th century novel, or why the Colonial Marines have a warship with a name also taken from that novel. Maybe there was a huge Joseph Conrad revival on Earth in the 2090’s, and now the Way of Joseph Conrad (pbuh) is the Established Church of Earth and its various colonies.
Incidentally, Nostromo’s shuttlecraft is referred to as the Narcisuss (at least in the novelizations–I don’t know if the name is ever actually spoken on-screen by anyone).
Many thanks. I knew about Nostromo, but not having read it, I didn’t know about Sulaco. Perhaps Heart of Darkness would have been too obvious.
The ships in Starship Troopers have a less obscure but similarly thematic naming scheme: The larger ships are named after famous battlegrounds (Valley Forge, Hastings, El Alamein, Waterloo, etc.) while the smaller ships are named for military figures (Rodger Young, Audie Murphy, Vercingetorix, Montgomery, Geronimo…).
Oh you want some of this … you to…come and get it… waarrrgggggggg
{dragged down by the aliens to his doom}
well ok the dialoge wasn’t exactly like that but close as I can remember
Earlier this year, Microsoft got some press for publicly using the phrase “nuke it from orbit” to describe a recommended total reformat and reimage after a system has been infected with malware. (This was news because it was the first time they were admitting what a lot of us have known for a while – “It’s the only way to be sure.”)
Also, I named my cat Newt after the little girl in Aliens.
er, for computers affected by certain malware… the Microsoft guy wasn’t recommending a nuke from orbit for every simple virus-infected computer.
Sadly, Wierzbowski didn’t even get the lines you attributed to him. All of his lines from the original script either went to Frost or were just cut. The only thing Weirzbowski gets to say is “Ahhahagghahghh…” after the ammunition pack explodes and Weirzbowski gets thrown (and then presumably an alien eats him off scene since his yell is several seconds later).
Truly, T. Wierzbowski is the forgotten Colonial Marine 