Gorman and Vasquez use pistols to pretty good effect in the air ducts, before they run out of ammo, and Gorman suicides them both with a grenade.
The aliens don’t have an infinite supply of drones - they’re limited by the number of available hosts, and in Aliens, that’s explicitly capped at 158, the population of the colony. (Less, actually, because some colonists died fighting the aliens instead of getting implanted.) By the time they call in the second drop ship and escape, they’ve probably killed most of the aliens on the planet. A squad that was familiar with the xenos’ tactics and practiced at countering them could probably have cleaned out the hive with minimal casualties.
The only reason In Aliens the marines got their asses kicked in the reactor is…the plot required a reduction of numbers to a more manageable level. The whole sequence doesn’t make sense. The Marines are too stupid, and the “don’t shoot in the reactor” rule just a manufactured obstacle, that never amounted to anything. (There is disagreement on this point - I maintain the reactor went critical is because of damage from the drop ship crash. Others say it was from the firefight after all. I wish the movie was clearer.)
Those dumb aliens get triggered by the slightest noise. Last time I was outside there were a lot of natural noises. Those bugs would be constantly running around in circles.
I don’t think it matters if the melt down was caused by the heavy weapons, or the drop ship crash. “Don’t shoot the reactor,” isn’t so much a manufactured obstacle as a Chekov’s gun. We learn the marines have those big guns in the same scene we learn they can’t use them, so it’s not like the script needed an excuse to disarm them - it could have just not given them the guns in the first place. Instead, the point is to establish that there’s a bomb in the movie, so when it start ticking, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. (It also helps establish that the marines are poorly led, but there’s plenty of other scenes that also establish this.)
I believe in the lore (the Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual mainly) that the pistols are shooting 10MM Armor Piercing Rounds that shrapnel upon entering a target, so the pistols would have been effective on the Xenomorphs with headshots (which shouldn’t be that much trouble in close range considering how giant their heads are)
I remember reading how in real life the Quiet Place aliens would immediately either drown themselves in the ocean waves or die during any massive fires they inadvertently set.
It’s worth a try, but we don’t even know if it’ll affect 'em.
Look … what are we talking about this for, huh? Why don’t we just bug out and call it even, OK?
Some additional points to consider given the content of the movie, and including the scenes added to the video version.
The marines appear to specialize in “bug hunts,” have a “bug stomper” logo in their dropship, and refer to dealing with “Arcturians.” That means they are familiar with the type of mission involved (but not this species encountered) and have encountered not only alien but sentient beings elsewhere.
All that is part of both the company and the government which had explored around 300 worlds.
Someone in another forum pointed out that there might have been around 158 aliens, including the Queen, and given the events in the movie, probably down to 9 or even less.
For some reason they had to get the layout of the colony after the first attack. One would think that they would have that and more prepared before landing.
Given the point that Burke knew about the location of the alien ship (which is how the colony found it and got infected) and that the only way he could have gotten that was from the hearing, then that would have meant that Ripley and the Board of Inquiry would have know the same. In which case, it’s highly unlikely that Burke was acting alone, and that if he had bothered to send an armed expedition and Ripley accompanying them, then they would have prepared better assuming that with many colonists and many eggs there’d be lots of aliens. With that, they’d need several ships of marines and scientists, with some going to the colony and the others to the derelict ship.
To be fair, we really don’t know what Arcturians are. They could be human, and the joke. “It doesn’t matter when it’s Arcturian, baby,” is similar to jokes I’ve heard about it not mattering in Thailand or Vegas. But I agree that interpreting Arcturians as being a sentient alien lifeform is not out of line.
The marines had a green commanding officer and they didn’t take the mission at all seriously until they landed and discovered evidence that Ripley’s bad guys were there.
Burke wasn’t sure if Ripley’s story was true or false. On the off chance there might be something to her story, he sent one of the colonists out to investigate. If administration had known, it would have been a major security situation and then nobody would get exclusive rights to anything. It was just a bad call on Burke’s part. A bad call, ralfy.
The fact that all the humans suck. The Colonial Marines most of all. They are the crappiest allegedly elite troops, even by the standards of Hollywood “elite” troops.
I mean seriously are Xenomorphs the only enemies that could possibly understand the concept of the 3D dimension?
The Colonial Marines aren’t elite. A colony transmitter broke down. You don’t send the Green Berets for that, you send a guy with spare transmitter parts, and one of your least essential squads of soldiers on the off hand chance it’s actually a space tiger or a colonist revolt.
I know nothing about guns, except what I’ve seen on TV and in movies.So please enlighten me as this seems like a contradiction. How can a bullet be armor piercing and shrapnel at the same time?
Sci-fi fans are supposed to recognize the reference: Arcturians are shape-shifting aliens which appear in Dan O’Bannon’s “The Long Tomorrow” (1975), illustrated by Moebius, a classic cyberpunk comic which was an influence on movies like Blade Runner and evidently James Cameron as well.
