Of course the entire genre of cosmic horror is reactionary by its very nature, except when there is enough self-awareness to subvert or satirize the genre's reactionary logic, as in Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. But James Cameron's Aliens has no interest in self-critique, sharing a lot more in common with Heinlein's original novel.
Xenomorphs have only ever defended themselves from human colonizers invading their home, but we're expected to see them as evil, the scary other. The aliens must be bad because they pose a threat to us. Oh, and because they're ugly.
At least in the first Alien, the human crew members are sympathetic because they are merely surviving a situation they didn't want to be in, put in peril by a corporation sacrificing them for profit. Humans, not aliens, are the true villains of the film.
But in Aliens, our hero Ripley goes back to the moon with a special team of Colonial Space Marines to kick some alien ass. While this is ostensibly a mission to save a group of endangered colonists, Ripley has no interest in a search-and-rescue mission. She only agrees on the condition that they go there to kill every last Xenomorph.
Ripley is more than willing to exterminate an entire species to save one little white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. In fact she still wants to genocide them even after safely escaping.
Ripley: I say we nuke the entire site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure
Burke: This is clearly an important species we're dealing with, and I don't think that we have the right to arbitrarily exterminate them.
Ripley: Wrong!
be sure of what, Ripley? you can just fucking leave. don't go back to the moon with all the Xenomorphs on it. seems pretty easy to me
now of course it turns out that Burke doesn't actually care about the Xenomorphs, he only wants to exploit them for profit. while this is keeping with the corporations=bad theme from the first movie, now we're supposed to think corporations are bad for... not wanting to do genocide? because of course no good person would be against murdering an entire species for no reason, only a villain would propose such a thing.
Now I'm not saying you can't enjoy Aliens, it deserves its status as one of the best action / sci-fi films of all time, and I'd argue these problematic reactionary themes actually make it more interesting and morally complex, giving us much to analyze and critique, elevating it above an average popcorn movie. Just please don't take it at face value.
Ripley is no longer the hero, even if she's portrayed as one. In Alien she is the scratched liberal, and in Aliens she is the fascist who bleeds. In a tragic turn, she has become the villain of the story. She reacts to her own trauma and loss of motherhood with mass murder, by killing another mother's babies right in front of her, and we're all supposed to clap and cheer, instead of asking why these humans are there in the first place.
- Show
Wow okay Xeno, how much is the Queen paying you?
Xenomorphs are outdoor cats that are so outdoors they're literally in space.
You should have put this in C/Badposting.
Next you are going to tell me that Covid is the good guy and that humans trying to stop it from spreading are the bad guys.
I don't like this metaphor, we didn't come into contact with COVID by traveling to an alien planet to mine its resources, and we can't avoid COVID by simply not going to the COVID planet. I think there's also a pretty big difference between a virus and a complex animal species
traveling to an alien planet
The aliens were strangers to the planet as much as the humans were but they only began to spread and reproduce when introduced to humans.
to mine its resources
What are you a primitivist? Humanity requires continued resource development to continue to exist and thrive. Is it not better to spread our resource extraction across the galaxy to limit the impact on an individual planet?
I think there's also a pretty big difference between a virus and a complex animal species
Both of them are parasitic by nature. They cannot survive without hosts. Both of them are an existential threat to human and animal life. I would compare the aliens with leaches or mosquitoes but they don't kill their host for a single offspring.
Both of them are an existential threat to human and animal life
I was going to disagree with this on the basis that the Xenomorphs are light-years away from Earth and thus pretty easy to avoid getting killed by... but considering that Weyland-Yutani was going to weaponize them you do have a point. I would be more on-board if that was the actual motivation for exterminating them, but really Ripley just wanted to kill them out of spite
The xenomorphs are dangerous genetically engineered bioweapons designed specifically to annihilate an existing biosphere and replace it with an invasive parasitoid species that consumes literally every living thing in reach of the hive
This is a bad take
there's nothing in the text of Alien or Aliens to suggest this. neither James Cameron, nor Ellen Ripley, nor audiences were privy to whatever ideas Ridley Scott would come up with some 25 years later
The plot of Alien extremely heavily implies that the xenomorphs were not native to LV-426 and were being carried on the ship with the Space Jockey, who itself ran afoul of one of them. They're extremely unnatural in that a creature whose bodily fluids are a highly hazardous acid cannot fit into an established ecosystem at all and seem to be interested in nothing but consuming and reproducing endlessly
Also Burke was clearly cool with Weyland-Yutani doing experiments on human beings to weaponize the creatures given that's basically what that lab in the colony was doing
not sure how them being non-native makes any difference as to the moral justification for exterminating them. they were put there against their will and were there before us, anyway.
well, I suppose they'd just die off naturally without any other living organisms on LV-426 to eat or use as hosts, so in a way Ripley was putting them out of their misery (definitely not her motivation though lol)
Her motivation was "these things have killed hundreds of colonists and the Company wants to breed them and use them as weapons and fuck that"
Ripley wanted to kill em all before learning of the plan to weaponize them. She very explictly only agreed to the mission on the condition that they go there to kill every last xenomorph. At this point nobody knew how many colonists had died or if there were any survivors so her motivation was really about vengeance.
You could definitely argue that she suspected Weyland-Yutani of planning to weaponize the aliens. She certainly should have expected that based on the events of the first film. It does kind of beg the question why she'd agree to go then. If it was her plan all along to sabotage the mission then why tell Burke her true intentions?
Her motivation is she experienced her entire crew being killed by one of those things and she knew it was too dangerous to let out into the wider universe, so the thought of an entire colony of people being overtaken by these things is a tragedy beyond measure and one that could potentially spread to other colonies with similar results
They're space fire ants that are total assholes to everyone it's perfectly reasonable to want to call Space Dale Gribble
To be clear ALIENS does have a reactionary ethos but it mostly comes from the vilification of the military and the Space Vietnam narrative, but it's not really from the aliens. In Starship Troopers it's pretty clear the populace is being lied to about the bugs and the bug war; in ALIENS the xenos are a serious threat to human beings because they view us as prey and are very good at killing us as well as hiding inside of things, like rats bearing plague bacteria on cargo ships.
The xenomorphs are dangerous genetically engineered bioweapons designed specifically to annihilate an existing biosphere and replace it with an invasive parasitoid species
They say this explicitly, pretty much word-for-word in Alien: Covenant
Counterpoint: Alien and Aliens are the only good movies in the series and thus the only ones whose lore anyone should give a fuck about.
do not be a DEckhead - media analysis should not use DA LORE as a way to handwave what you are shown explicitly
please refer to the finkpiece
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okay but I'm talking about the movie Aliens from 1986, written and directed by James Cameron. neither the filmmakers nor the characters could have known about some lore from a terrible Ridley Scott movie that would come out 31 years later
as far as Ellen Ripley knows they're just some aliens living on a moon who never fucked with humans until they landed there and started fucking around with their eggs... and she still wants to nuke 'em from orbit, and this is depicted as heroic
What OP is saying is that lore from the later movies doesn't really have anything to do with the themes of Alien or Aliens.
The android guy maybe but Ripley and the space marines didn't
Edit: wait, I'm wrong and remembered the movie wrong
Put that way, it sounds like the xenomorphs are actually the colonizers.
Alternate read: the Xenomorphs are patriarchy and rape culture wrapped up into a giant alien exoskeleton.
- Don't want to get pregnant? Too fucking bad.
- The pregnancy will kill you? Tough shit, it's forced birth time.
- You think being a man shields you? Oh no, this shit will grind you down, too. Nobody is safe.
So we kill the patriarchy.
I'm only baiting for honest film discussion, I'm happy to hear other interpretations if you disagree
Okay, I shouldn't be commenting more but:
now of course it turns out that Burke doesn't actually care about the Xenomorphs, he only wants to exploit them for profit. while this is keeping with the corporations=bad theme from the first movie, now we're supposed to think corporations are bad for... not wanting to do genocide?
The corporation is bad because they want to use the aliens as biological weapons and sent Ripley's crew and the colonists to the planet as guinea pigs. That's why the middle manager wants to keep them alive.
they want to use the aliens as biological weapons
right so I understood that perfectly well and it's what I mean by "only wants to exploit them for profit". my point was not that Burke is actually good. the point is that by having the villain be the only one to advocate against extermination, the audience is expected to view that position as inherently wrong. only someone with ulterior motives would believe such a thing
it's similar to what happens in a lot of superhero trash where the villain is seemingly motivated by fighting injustice but then he kills a bunch of babies or something to assure us that it's bad actually
I would argue that Aliens does have a more complicated morality than you're suggesting.
the audience is expected to view that position as inherently wrong.
In my view, Ripley wanting to wipe all the aliens out may not be the most moral reaction to experiencing all her co-workers being killed by a sexual assault monster and then witnessing the aftermath of hundreds of people being slaughtered by that species of sexual assault monsters, but I think it is understandable that she'd feel that way. The thing is that the movie actually does call into question whether this is the right thing to do when it draws an explicit parallel between the alien queen and Ripley- the queen is protecting its offspring in the same way that Ripley is protecting her surrogate daughter, which complicates the morality of this conflict and its result. In the end, the entire conflict is the result of a corporation seeking profit, creating a situation that spiralled out of control.
It's why I compare it to Avatar- James Cameron understands that people's moral decisions aren't usually the result of taking a view from a divine perch of perfect politics, but from an accumulation of their experiences and the material reality they face. Jake Sully is not the hero of Avatar because he's a great person- if he still had his legs and was just hired as a grunt on Pandora then he would have been just another genocidal colonial soldier. He had a very specific set of experiences that made him sympathize with the Na'Vi, and Ripley had a set of experiences that led to all her actions in all the movies. Like, sympathizing with the Xenomorphs or valuing their existence would be really hard for anyone who had to actually deal with them.
It’s not honest. It’s not their home planet. If you watch Alien a different species crash lands a ship that is infested with xenomorphic eggs. They are a parasitic species that work like a virus.
The corporations want to utilize the parasitic species to dominate other nations, or create new weapons.
If your dog went into a lake and got a tapeworm, are you gonna let it do its thing, or kill the tape worm to save the dog?
So dishonest
No,but you see,the tapeworm is a valuable form of life that the arrogant dog only encountered by acting on its hubris,traipsing in its natural habitat and expecting not to be used as a host for a parasitic lifeform
I know that it's not the Xenomorphs' original home planet, but it has become their home after being brought there
killing a species to prevent a corporation from using them as a biological weapons is very compelling idea. I wouldn't mind if the film had explored that idea more. it definitely does give the pro-extermination viewpoint more validity. though that's not Ripley's motivation as she wanted to kill them all before she learned Burke's true motives. she is primarily motivated by fear based on her past trauma, and by protecting her own species, which is also interesting, in a different way
dog metaphor is silly, I didn't say there was something wrong with killing a Xenomorph that was attacking you or a loved one! would you nuke the lake, or keep your dog away from the lake in the future? what if said lake is millions of miles away from where you actually live?
call me wrong if you want but I'm not being willfully "dishonest", please
“I know that it's not the Zionists original home, but it has become their home after being brought there” - you on Palestine I guess.
If you watch the directors cut an egg hatched and locked on to Newts dad and that started the species growth on the planet. Considering that in Alien they get back to the space ship before it hatches in the crew mates body, you could make the argument that they weren’t conscious on the planet at any point before killing Newts dad.
So no they weren’t “there” long before the humans. They legitimately need hosts to go through their developmental process. There is no peaceful existence with xenomorphs. If you aren’t being dishonest to make an argument, than you are being incredibly silly.
I don't feel like writing a whole thing but I think you've really misinterpreted the movie. But I'll just say that Aliens and Avatar are the same movie, both equally as anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist as Hollywood blockbusters are allowed to be.
BTW I thought my first comment was too harsh so I edited it. I'm sorry if it came off as mean.
The xenomorph is not wildlife. It's a metaphor for a few things, but not environmentalism.
My knee jerk reaction based on reading this post and briefly trying to remember movies I haven't seen in years is: don't the xenomorphs have to kill humans to reproduce, and in a way CW SV
spoiler
that is deliberately designed to evoke unwanted pregnancy from sexual violence in a way that is now a threat to cis men
Unlike almost literally any actual species I would say that they don't have a right to exist.
This also doesn't feel like a universe with free flowing information, and I don't think Ripley and her employer staying away from the planet is a guarantee that others will not fall prey to it later.
this doesn't affect your point (which I think is a good one) but although they reproduce parasitically the host doesn't have to be human. Alien (1979) shows this with the engineer pilot skeleton
they are indeed parasites but does that give humanity a right to decide whether they "have a right to exist"? especially when we only came into contact with them as a result of our own hubris. it's an interesting moral question that gets at the major theme of the Alien movies in general, which is humanity's desire to play God
the fact is that most lifeforms destroy other life to continue their own existence, including, of course, humans
I think that minimizing the amount of death required for a lifeform to exist is a good choice and not one really available to xenomorphs, who, due to their ecological niche, are required to kill sapient individuals to propagate their species and in a way which, again (refer to spoiler tag above).
They're not normal predator animals, they're fictional monsters designed to be as violating and horrible as possible
I view it more as neoliberal ideology, where in the original it felt more clear that the violence was a product of the system and living under capitalism and working for corporations, Aliens centers the Xenomorphs as the primary source of evil that needs to be exterminated. It's been a minute since I've seen them, so I could be way off base. Still, I think this represents a big ideological shift.
humanity a right to decide whether they "have a right to exist"?
humanity already has a right to decide because rights come at the barrel of a gun, and humanity has allllllll the guns
I'm showing my age here but here but I thought the two most common readings of the film were:
- Vietnam War movie in space:
The military at the behest of the MIC get sent into a situation that they have little to no understanding of which results in many good men and women dying, all because the powers that be think that they can turn a profit. Only by banding together can the working class (human or android) survive this situation
(And when viewed it this light, Avatar can be seen as more a refinement of James Cameron's anti-war views than a 180.)
- Girl Power
Ripley, the lone survivor of the Sexual Assault Monster is forced/blackmailed by the Patriarchy(Burke) into confronting said monster because the Patriarchy wants to profit off of it, and then the Patriarchy is
face when they find out that they can't control the Sexual Assault Monster and gets sexually assaulted. Only by building a coalition of feminist allies and confronting her trauma head on (with a power loader) can Ripley prevent the same trauma that was inflicted on her from being inflicted on the next generation.I've heard the Vietnam metaphor before, and I think it pretty much supports my thesis since that would make Ripley a volunteer soldier in the US military who decides to nuke North Vietnam because a few of her fellow soldiers got killed - and uhh to be clear I am not into the idea of likening Xenomorphs to Vietnamese people obviously but if that's what the movie was going for then it seems very reactionary indeed
The reason you can't go "Xenomorphs are a 1-to-1 allegory for the Viet Cong" is the same reason you can't just say that the movie is reactionary and pro-genocide: the Alien is too big and all encompassing a metaphor for how uncaring and hostile nature is in the face of human endeavour. It's not just a simple Other, it's the face of annihilation; it's a WMD found in the wild the same way Uranium or Anthrax is.
Ripley's argument that the Xenomorphs need to all be destroyed is the same argument for the destruction of all samples of deadly diseases that can be used as biological weapons: it is too inimical to human life to be allowed to exist, especially because the MIC keeps trying to weaponize it in order to profit off of it.
if you disagree with the points I've made here feel free to give your alternative analysis. because simply commenting a downbear emoji is kind of rude and annoying
Ignoring the rest of the take, what makes you say Aliens is cosmic horror? I've always felt it was just
a slasheredit: an action movie in space. There's very little of the typical cosmic horror theme of "you are an insignificant speck and the universe does not care about you". Even moreso for Starship Troopers.Seems like the only "its reactionary" justification is that the actor that played Newt was a white kid. That's... not very compelling.
The "cosmic horror" of it all...
The only person to come into contact with the Xenomorphs and survive is telling the universe that these are an existential threat and everybody else thinks 1) she's insane/traumatized and not thinking clearly 2) the military can easily handle any physical threat 3) the scientists/researchers can easily/safely study these creatures and 4) corporations can easily/safely exploit the Xenomorphs.
Then Ripley's proven correct.
There's no reasoning with the Xenomorphs, there's no attempt by the Xeno's to communicate in a peaceful way, the Xeno's make no attempt to avoid humans, the Xenomorphs view humans in the same way that humans view the rest of the universe as something to be used without consideration to the point of destruction. After the Xeno's face r#pe and chest burst out of every available creature possible... they don't go extinct, they don't develop into something with anything remotely close thoughts, they leave no words of wisdom about the error of over consumption... they go dormant and wait and wait and wait until the next unfortunate creature large enough to be face r#ped and chest bursted out of stumbles across it.
One of the key points in cosmic horror is often, human curiosity will always win out over humanity's sense of self preservation. Ripley knows that the correct answer is to "nuke them from orbit" because it will only be a matter of time before some unlucky human explorer, or colonist, or scientist, or miner or business exec will fuck around on a planet full of dormant Xeno eggs to kick off the who cycle again because they're thinking, "Nah... this time will be different. The leopards won't eat MY face! They've got to be pretty full from eating all those other people's faces, right?"
Sure, we can look at the Ripley/Newt vs Queen/Eggs as "two mothers defending their children/defenseless. We could also look at the Ripley/Queen dynamic as a dark reflection. Ripley wants to defend a human being who we can relate to and we assume is capable of intelligent thought, art, learning, whatever who is mirrored by the Xenomorph Queen who's children (as far as the Alien and Aliens movies show us, the audience) exist to aid the Queen for the sole purpose of consuming all life that can be bent to the purpose of mindlessly making more Xenomorphs.
Its terrifying because we can't understand any potential thoughts of the Xenomorphs. We don't know where they came from, if its possible for them to want more than mindless reproduction/consumption. They lack advanced technology but are completely able to turbo fuck any humans they come into contact with. The Xeno's were able to fuck up a ship full of space truckers in the Alien movie... but those weren't soldiers and the only crewmember expected to be capable of fighting back is a cyborg who's programmed to let the Xenos kill the crew "for science!" The Xeno's were able to turbo fuck a colony full of people so having more folks didn't help humans survive. Then the troops that were sent in knowing that there was a threat and prepared for fighting got fucked up even with all their fancy techno weaponry.
The Xeno's are less a "species" and more an inscrutable force of nature... at least until the later movies explain that they exist as bio-terminators (or the Predator comics/movies explain that the eggs are located and spread around for them to have something scary to hunt).
the little white girl comment was more of a humorous remark and not really the essence of my point
I just don't think the fact that something being scary and beyond our understanding is reason enough to eradicate an entire species without giving it careful thought. Wanting to kill what you don't understand is the heart of reactionary thinking.
Ultimately as a work of fiction the writer can come up with whatever justifications they want for why the aliens are bad and need to be mass murdered. Or why it's wrong to study and learn from them because only bad actors are doing it.
My view of cosmic horror as a reactionary genre stems from what aliens in a story represent - something foreign, something we don't understand and don't want to understand, the unknowable other. This tendency for fiction writers to portray aliens as inherently unworthy of life is a frightening reflection of how they view the world around them.
the little white girl comment was more of a humorous remark and not really the essence of my point
Okay, that's fair... bit of friendly fire on my part.
I just don't think the fact that something being scary and beyond our understanding is reason enough to eradicate an entire species without giving it careful thought. Wanting to kill what you don't understand is the heart of reactionary thinking.
Counterpoint, enough was understood by the characters in the story to identify a threat. I can agree that its ... knee jerk reactionary like somebody punching a person who jumped out from around a corner... but I'm less inclined to shove it into the political reactionary box.
Ultimately as a work of fiction the writer can come up with whatever justifications they want for why the aliens are bad and need to be mass murdered. Or why it's wrong to study and learn from them because only bad actors are doing it.
This feels like a good place to slap the "political reactionary" label for me. "Good guys need bad monsters to fight and overcome" makes for a pretty shallow story.
... something we don't understand and don't want to understand, the unknowable other.
I think you're wrong there in the bolded part. Cosmic horror isn't about people not wanting to understand something that is understandable because its inconvenient, its about seeing something that cannot be understood because its so different from human thoughts/wants/needs/desires that there is no way to even try to start comprehending it without destroying a human's psyche.
I guess what bothers me the most is how completely uninterested the film is in exploring the moral complexity of eradicating an entire species, especially one who did not invade us and whose only known existence is 39 light years from Earth.
Burke's retort exists in the film solely to dismiss the anti-extermination viewpoint as ridiculous. In a vacuum his argument is compelling, but it's simply hand-waved away by having a bad guy be the one to say it. As such the film is utterly incurious about the implications of deciding what lifeforms deserve to live or die. Instead we get a message that's all-too morally simple and convenient: "of course something capable of killing a human deserves to die, how dare you suggest otherwise"
I don't know if cosmic horror as a whole is about not wanting to understand that which is foreign and scary, but Aliens sure is. I don't see how Xenomorphs are completely beyond our understanding, when the characters are unwilling to give the question a single thought. It sounds like a convenient excuse to justify your base instincts, to kill.
The idea that theres an SA species that all it does is SA and therefore the children have to be slaughtered in front of their own mother rings incredibly vile after seeing exactly how israel has used the same rhetoric.
People can argue all they want about how the aliens are ACTUALLY bad and ACTUALLY deserve to be genocided but the film maker DECIDED to make this alien race the way they were. It reveals how they view the world.
You read anything about parasitic wasps and you could get alien np
also it's very interesting that James Cameron would go on to make Avatar, an explicitly anti-imperalist film which casts the aliens as the unequivocal heroes and the space marines as the villains. in a way, Avatar feels like Cameron apologizing for Aliens 20+ years later.
although he still couldn't help but turn it into a white savior narrative where the epic space marine becomes the indigenous peoples' chosen one (ugh). and of course the Na'Vi are like, super hot. hot aliens good, ugly aliens bad!
