Comment by righthand

Comment by righthand 2 days ago

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Well in the case of the first Alien movie, the whole thing is a left-then-right metaphor about conception, birth, motherhood, and gender roles in biology. If you were alive when it originally came out you wouldn’t know that Ripley is the true lead of the film (a now commonly known fact about the franchise). This idea plays off of scifi with male leads. The film then does A LOT to foreshadow Ripley as the lead and mother figure. So in the case of Alien it was a statement on traditional science fiction films. The Queen was added later in the sequels on an evolution of the birth theme.

A queen in Alien universe doesn’t operate like ants do. She is just the largest most vicious female amongst the brood.

hnspammers 2 days ago

> If you were alive when it originally came out you wouldn’t know that Ripley is the true lead of the film

?

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  • throwawayk7h 2 days ago

    I think they meant "wouldn't have known." The ensemble cast didn't really give contemporary viewers purchase on who would ultimately be the one to survive by the end of the film. Nowadays, many viewers go into the movie already knowing that Ripley will be the one to make it through, which makes it easy to see her as "the main character."

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  • Baeocystin 2 days ago

    Ripley being the survivor was a rug pull on the audience's expectations. Tom Skerritt (Dallas) was a well-known actor at the time, and would have been assumed to have been the default lead.

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  • jjmarr 2 days ago

    In the marketing materials, Tom Skerritt got top billing as Dallas. He's also the captain of the ship.

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portaouflop 2 days ago

Queen in the Alien universe is very similar to ants - she creates the eggs from which the facehuggers hatch. She is maybe much more dangerous than the ant queen but so are the “ants”

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  • righthand a day ago

    I meant in the context of the OP’s ask about the Alien’s dying off once the Queen is dead. They don’t operate like ants in a direct sense, etymology or logic, they operate like ants when it’s convenient for the world of Alien.

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    • lelanthran a day ago

      > They don’t operate like ants in a direct sense, etymology or logic, they operate like ants when it’s convenient for the world of Alien.

      Sure, but this movie is aimed at a general audience, who don't have an exact understanding about ant society.

      It's more important for the movie to conform to what the audience thinks ants are like than to conform to what ants actually are like.

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      • righthand 21 hours ago

        Okay sorry. Aliens operate exactly like ants for anyone too dumb to grasp that they’re not but need an EILI5 description and may have stumbled upon this comment section. Thank you for helping me clarify that.

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        • lelanthran 7 hours ago

          > Okay sorry. Aliens operate exactly like ants for anyone too dumb to grasp that they’re not but need an EILI5 description and may have stumbled upon this comment section. Thank you for helping me clarify that.

          You think that people who don't know precisely how ant colonies work are dumb?

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