Xenomorph
Xenomorph | |
---|---|
Alien and Alien vs. Predator race | |
First appearance | Alien (1979) |
Created by | |
In-universe information | |
Other name(s) |
|
Home world | Xenomorph Prime |
Type | Endoparasitoid lifeform |
The xenomorph (also known as a Xenomorph XX121 or Internecivus raptus, and simply the alien or the creature
The xenomorphs' design is credited to
Unlike many other extraterrestrial races in film and television science fiction (such as the
Concept and creation
The script for the 1979 film Alien was initially drafted by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Dan O'Bannon drafted an opening in which the crew of a mining ship are sent to investigate a mysterious message on an alien planet. He eventually settled on the threat being an alien creature; however, he could not conceive of an interesting way for it to get onto the ship. Inspired after waking from a dream, Shusett said, "I have an idea: the monster screws one of them", planting its egg in his body, and then bursting out of his chest. Both realized the idea had never been done before, and it subsequently became the core of the film.[6] "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape", O'Bannon said in the documentary Alien Evolution. "That's scary because it hits all of our buttons."[7] O'Bannon felt that the symbolism of "homosexual oral rape" was an effective means of discomforting male viewers.[8]
The title of the film was decided late in the script's development. O'Bannon had quickly dropped the film's original title, Star Beast, but could not think of a name to replace it. "I was running through titles, and they all stank", O'Bannon said in an interview, "when suddenly, that word alien just came out of the typewriter at me. Alien. It's a noun and it's an adjective."[6] The word alien subsequently became the title of the film and, by extension, the name of the creature itself.
Prior to writing the script to Alien, O'Bannon had been working in France for Chilean cult director
After O'Bannon handed him a copy of Giger's book
Giger conceived the Alien as being vaguely human but a human in full armor, protected from all outside forces. He mandated that the creature have no eyes because he felt that it made them much more frightening if you could not tell they were looking at you.
Scott decided on the man-in-suit approach for creating the creature onscreen. Initially circus performers were tried, then multiple actors together in the same costume, but neither proved scary. Deciding that the creature would be scarier the closer it appeared to a human, Scott decided that a single, very tall, very thin man be used. Scott was inspired by a photograph of Leni Riefenstahl standing next to a 6'4" (1.93 m) Nuba man.[10] The casting director found 6'10" (2.08 m), rail-thin graphic designer Bolaji Badejo in a local pub. Badejo went to tai chi and mime classes to learn how to slow down his movements.[6]
Giger's design for the Alien evoked many contradictory sexual images. As critic Ximena Gallardo notes, the creature's combination of sexually evocative physical and behavioral characteristics creates "a nightmare vision of sex and death. It subdues and opens the male body to make it pregnant, and then explodes it in birth. In its adult form, the alien strikes its victims with a rigid phallic tongue that breaks through skin and bone. More than a phallus, however, the retractable tongue has its own set of snapping, metallic teeth that connects it to the castrating vagina dentata."[7]
Name
This creature has no specific name; it was called an alien and an organism in the first film. It has also been referred to as a creature,[3] a serpent,[11] a beast,[4] a dragon,[4] a monster,[3] a nasty, or simply, a thing.[12] The term xenomorph (lit. "alien form" from the Greek xeno-, which translates as either "other" or "strange", and -morph, which denotes shape) was first used by the character Lieutenant Gorman in Aliens[3] with reference to generic extraterrestrial life. The term was erroneously assumed by some fans[13] to refer specifically to this creature, and the word was used by the producers of some merchandise.[14]
The species'
Characteristics
At its core, the xenomorph is a hostile parasitic pathogen whose mutable mechanisms are signaled by perturbances to its chemistry. It evolves to assume biological and physiological traits of its host, thereby enabling it to adapt to its environment. As the film series has progressed, the creature's design has been modified in many ways, including differing numbers of fingers and limb joints and variations in the design of the Alien's head.
Appearance
When standing upright, the Aliens are bipedal in form, though, depending on their host species, they will adopt either a hunched stance or remain fully erect when walking, sprinting, or in hotter environments. Their overall stance and general behavior seem to result from the mixture of the respective DNA of the embryo and its host. They have a skeletal,
Aliens have segmented, blade-tipped tails. The sharp tip was initially a small, scorpion-like barb,
They have elongated, cylindrical
In Aliens, the adult creatures have a more textured head rather than a smooth carapace. In the commentary for Aliens, it was speculated that this was part of the maturation of the creatures, as they had been alive far longer than the original Alien, although James Cameron stated that he simply left the carapace off because he liked them better that way.[3] The smooth design of the carapace would be used again in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, although made narrower with a longer muzzle and more prominent chin. This design would be kept in Alien versus Predator,[19] and abandoned in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in favor of the ribbed design.
Throughout their appearances, human-spawned Aliens have been shown to have different numbers of fingers. In Alien, the creature has
Aliens have been alternatively portrayed as both plantigrade and digitigrade organisms, usually relative to their hosts. Human-spawned Aliens were usually portrayed as having humanoid hind limbs, while in Alien 3 the featured Alien sported double-jointed legs due to its quadrupedal host. This characteristic would be continued in Alien Resurrection for the human-spawned Aliens. Tom Woodruff, who had previously played the "dog-alien" in Alien 3, described the human-spawned Aliens in Resurrection as feeling more like a dog than the previous creature, despite having been born from human hosts.[21] The human-spawned Alien warriors would revert to a plantigrade posture in Alien vs. Predator.
Physiology
Alien blood is an extremely potent
Aliens can produce a thick, strong
Intelligence
During various events in Alien Resurrection on the USM Auriga, the crossover film Alien vs. Predator, Aliens on the LV-426 colony Hadley's Hope, and Alien 3 when they are trying to trap the Alien, the species displayed observational learning & problem-solving skills.[3][25] It's also shown the ability to operate machinery at a very basic level.[27]
On the USM Auriga in Alien Resurrection, the Aliens kill one of their own, using its blood to melt through their enclosure and escape (according to the novelization, it was inspired to do so from genetic memories inherited from the original Ripley); in Alien vs. Predator, they use a similar strategy to free the queen from her chains. An Alien also uses acid spurting from its severed tail as an improvised weapon by flicking it, indicating they are fully aware of the effects of their acid blood.
In the original film, it is implied that the Alien cut the lights on board the Nostromo, though it remains ambiguous. On LV-426, the xenomorphs cut power in a section of the complex to gain access to the humans. In Aliens, the Alien queen learns to use an elevator after observing Ripley and Newt escape in the one beside it.
The novel for the film Aliens includes a scene where Bishop speculates on the reason why the Queen established her "nest" at the base's main power plant. His reasons range from an animalistic drive for warmth to an intentional strategic selection (any attacker could not destroy her without destroying the entire facility). In the director's commentary for Aliens, James Cameron noted that the creatures in Aliens had been alive for far longer than the Alien in the original, and had more time to learn about their environment. In Alien 3, Ripley and the inmates try luring the Alien into the lead works. It becomes obvious that the Alien recognized the trap and the danger it held. At one point, it hesitates to enter the lead works. Later, it hunts down most of the prisoners just before going into the lead works.
Life cycle
Aliens are
The facehugger then "impregnates" the host with an embryo, known as a "chestburster",[NB 2] which, after a period of gestation, erupts violently from the host's chest, resulting in the death of the host. The chestburster then matures to an adult phase, shedding its skin and replacing its cells with polarized silicon.
Due to
This process of horizontal gene transfer is also shown to be two-way; in Alien Resurrection (film & novelization), Ellen Ripley's clone, Ripley-8, is shown exhibiting numerous xenomorph characteristics, physical and behavioural; this is touched more upon in the novelization (chapter 4), where it is described that, when a host is infested with an xenomorph embryo, it does not just infest the host like a parasite, but also like a virus, "a major breakthrough in adaptive evolution ... a way to guarantee that any host, any host at all, would provide whatever it was the developing embryo needed, even if/when the host's body was inadequate."
The adult phase of the Alien is known by various different names. The adult Aliens have been referred to as "drones", "warriors", "workers", and sometimes "soldiers", similar to the way ants have been defined. The names of the adult phase have also been used to name different types of adult phases of the Alien in numerous sources, including video games, comic books, novels, and the films, but only in the commentaries by the team who created the films. No official name has been given to the adult stage of the Alien in the films themselves.
Queen
Queen Aliens are significantly larger and stronger than the normal adults, being approximately 4.5 metres (15 ft) tall.[28] Their body structure also differs, having two pairs of arms, one large and one small. The queen's head is larger than those of other adult Aliens and is protected by a large, flat crest, like a crown, which varies from queen to queen. Unlike other aliens, the queen's external mouth is separately segmented from the rest of her head, allowing her to turn her mouth left and right almost to the point where it is facing perpendicular to the direction of the rest of her head. In the second film, Aliens, unlike other adults and queens, the queen had high-heel protrusions from her feet.
Egg-laying Alien queens possess an immense
In the original cut of Alien, the Alien possessed a complete lifecycle, with the still-living bodies of its victims converted into eggs. However, the scene showing the crew converted into eggs was cut for reasons of pacing, leaving the ultimate origin of the eggs obscure. This allowed Aliens director James Cameron to introduce a concept he had initially conceived for a spec script called Mother,[27] a massive mother Alien queen which laid eggs and formed the basis for the Aliens' life cycle. Cameron conceived the queen as a monstrous analogue to Ripley's own maternal role in the film.[27] In that vein, some critics have compared it to Grendel's mother.[30][31]
The queen was designed by Cameron in collaboration with special effects artist
In the climax of Alien vs. Predator, the queen's basic design was altered to make her more "streamlined" in appearance and her overall size was increased to six meters (20 feet) tall. Other changes include the removal of the "high-heel" protrusions on her legs, including additional spines on her head and making her waist thinner because there was no need for puppeteers inside her chest. The
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) introduced a younger form of the full-grown queen, albeit with traits inherited from its
Egg
Adult xenomorphs are capable of creating their own reproductive egg ('ovamorph') by embedding their prey into an organic substance that (in theory) metabolically reacts to merge host-parasite genetic material. The entire process is xeno-dominant, resulting in a facehugger. The eggs laid by the queen are ellipsoidal, leathery objects between one-half and one meter (two and three feet) high with a four-lobed opening at the top. The eggs can remain in a stasis mode for years, possibly indefinitely, until nearby movement is detected. As a potential host approaches, the egg's lobes unfold like flower petals, and the parasitic facehugger extracts itself from the egg and attaches itself to the potential host.
Giger initially designed the eggs with a much more obvious vaginal appearance, complete with an "inner and outer vulva".[34] The producers complained that Catholic countries would ban the film if the allusion was too strong, so Giger doubled the lobes to four so that, in his words, "seen from above, they would form the cross that people in Catholic countries are so fond of looking at".[34]
The interior of the original egg was composed of "Nottingham lace" (caul fat), which is the lining of a cow's stomach. In the first film, the quick shot of the facehugger erupting from the egg was done with sheep's intestine.[6] Initially, the egg remained totally stationary except for the hydraulic movement of the lobes; however, by Alien Resurrection, the entire egg was made to ripple as it opened. In the Director's Cut of Alien, an additional scene shows still living crew members being cocooned into new eggs, either morphing into a new embryo or acting as a food source for the facehugger inside the egg.[citation needed] According to the novelization for Resurrection, the Egg, in and of itself, could be considered a living organism in its own right.
Facehugger
A facehugger is the second stage in the Alien's metamorphosis. It has eight long, finger-like legs, which allow it to crawl rapidly, and a long tail adapted for making great leaps. These particular appendages give it an appearance somewhat comparable to
The facehugger is a parasitoid; its only purpose is to make contact with the host's mouth for the implantation process by gripping its legs around the victim's head and wrapping its tail around the host's neck. Upon making contact, the facehugger administers a cynose-based paralytic to the host in order to render it unconscious and immobile.[35][1] During a successful attachment, the facehugger will insert an ovipositor down the host's throat while simultaneously implanting an embryo. The host is kept alive, and the creature breathes for the host.[12] Attempts to remove facehuggers generally prove fatal to the host,[3] as the parasitoid will respond by tightening its tail around the host's neck, and its acidic blood prevents it from being cut away. In addition, its grip on the host's head is strong enough to tear the host's face off if it is forcibly removed.[12]
Once the Alien embryo is implanted, the facehugger will remain attached until the implant is secure, which can take anywhere from less than a minute to 16 hours. Once this happens, the parasite detaches, crawls away, and dies.[1] The victim awakens with no awareness of the implantation, believing themselves to have been asleep, and appears to have a normal, healthy bodily function.
According to AVPR: Science of the Xenomorph, a behind-the-scenes documentary on Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, it is theorized that facehuggers may implant a viral agent that "commands" the host's cells to grow the chestburster, as opposed to an implanted embryo.[36] This is an alternate explanation to horizontal gene transfer as to how the resulting xenomorph is able to adopt the characteristics of its host.
Giger's original design for the facehugger was a much larger creature with eyes and a spring-loaded tail. Later, in response to comments from the filmmakers, Giger reduced the creature's size substantially.[37] At first, Giger assumed that the facehugger would wrap around the outside of the astronaut's helmet, but Scott decided that it would have far more impact if the facehugger were revealed once the helmet was removed. Scott and Giger realized that the facehugger should burn through the helmet's faceplate with its acid blood; subsequent redesigns of the space helmet included a far larger faceplate to allow for this.[38]
Dan O'Bannon initially conceived the facehugger as somewhat resembling an octopus, possessing tentacles. However, when he received H. R. Giger's designs, which substituted finger-like digits for tentacles, he found Giger's design concept to be superior. Since no one was available at the time, O'Bannon decided to design the facehugger prop himself. The technical elements of the musculature and bone were added by Ron Cobb. Giger's initial design for the smaller facehugger had the fingers facing forward, but O'Bannon's redesign shifted the legs to the side. When the foam rubber sculpture of the facehugger was produced, O'Bannon asked that it should remain unpainted, believing the rubber, which resembled human skin, was more plausible.[39]
In Aliens, the facehuggers were redesigned by Stan Winston so that they would be capable of movement. Unlike the creatures in the first film, the creatures would take a much more active role in impregnating their victims. When Ripley throws one off her, the facehugger is now capable of scuttling across the floor and leaping at its prey, wrapping its tail around the victim's throat. The facehugger is also shown to be capable of independently surviving outside of its egg. Due to the film's budget, only two fully working facehuggers were built.
In Alien 3, another addition was planned but ultimately dropped, a "super-facehugger" that would carry the embryo of the queen Alien.[40] This super-facehugger is briefly glimpsed in the Assembly cut of Alien 3 but not identified as such.[40][41] It made a brief appearance in the canonical Alien book called Alien: Sea of Sorrows, set after the events of Alien Resurrection, about the grandson of Ripley Clone 8, Ellen Ripley's clone.
Chestburster
After impregnation, facehuggers die and the embryo's host wakes up afterward, showing no considerable outward negative symptoms and a degree of
The incubating embryo
Over the course of one to 24 hours—indeterminable in some cases, and sometimes up to a week, in the case of some queens—the embryo develops into a chestburster, at which point, it emerges, violently and fatally ripping open the chest of the host.
There is no on-screen explanation of the reasons for the different incubation times. Fully-grown aliens may avoid harming species acting as hosts for un-emerged chestbursters, though this may only be in the case of a queen embryo.
When a chestburster erupts from the body of a human host, it is less than 30 centimetres (12 in) tall, although the embryo can vary in size from a guinea pig to a large dog depending on the size and species of the host. Its appearance and adaptive characteristics are also determined by the host. Typically, its first instinct upon emerging is to flee and hide until full maturation, as well as find a source of nutrition. However, it soon undergoes a dramatic growth spurt, reaching adult size in a matter of hours; in Alien, the chestburster had grown to 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height by the time the Nostromo crew located it again.[NB 3] The chestburster is shown to have molted before reaching maturity.[12] In Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, Alien warriors who are still growing are shown, displaying shed skin. In the unrated cut, the Predalien is shown wiping off its final molted skin at the film's start.
The chestburster was designed by Alien director Ridley Scott and constructed by special effects artist Roger Dicken.[43] Giger had produced a model of a chestburster that resembled a "degenerate plucked turkey"[44] and was far too large to fit inside a ribcage. Much to Giger's dismay, his model reduced the production team to fits of laughter on sight. Scott drafted a series of alternative designs for the chestburster based on the philosophy of working "back [from the adult] to the child" and ultimately produced "something phallic".[7] The chestburster in the original Alien was armless, but arms were added in Aliens to facilitate the creature crawling its way out of its host's corpse.[45] This concept would be abandoned in Alien Resurrection, but it would return in Alien: Covenant.
Alternative forms
Aliens take on various forms depending on the characteristics of their hosts. Most of the Aliens seen to date have been human-spawned, but a number of Aliens born from other hosts have also been seen. Some of these are also a different variants or species altogether such as the Neomorph and Deacon.
"Dragon"
The "Dog Alien" or "Ox Alien", (also known as "Runner Alien" in the expanded universe stories) and referred to in-film as "Dragon", was introduced in Alien 3. The creature itself shares the same basic physical configuration and instincts as the other Aliens shown in the previous films, although there are several differences due to the host it was spawned from (a dog in the theatrical cut, an ox in the novelized version and the assembly cut). The dog Alien in its chestburster form is a miniature version of the adult, unlike the larval human- and Predator-spawned chestbursters. The adult is primarily quadrupedal, has digitigrade hind legs, and lacks the dorsal tubes of the human-spawned variety. The only differences behavior-wise was that this Alien behaved more like a dog or another quadrupedal animal that generally is prone to using its mouth instead of its front legs as its primary weapon to attack and maul its victims with its teeth. This Alien, even when actively provoked, would not attack or kill Ripley, due to the queen growing inside her. This, however, changed towards the movie's climax, at which point the monster, after surviving a torrent of molten lead, burst from the liquid and went into a rampage, pursuing Ripley and presumably attempting to kill her until she destroyed it by showering it with freezing water, causing it to explode from thermal shock.
Originally, H. R. Giger was approached on July 28, 1990, by David Fincher and Tim Zinnemann, and was asked to redesign his own creations for Alien 3. Giger's new designs included an aquatic face-hugger and a four-legged version of the adult Alien. Giger said in an interview "I had special ideas to make it more interesting. I designed a new creature, which was much more elegant and beastly, compared to my original. It was a four-legged Alien, more like a lethal feline—a panther or something. It had a kind of skin that was built up from other creatures—much like a symbiosis." However, when Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis of Amalgamated Dynamics told Giger that they had their own design, Giger expressed himself as "very upset" and that the creature he had especially designed was his "baby". Even after the production severed contact, Giger continued to fax suggestions to Fincher and made full-scale drawings and a sculpt of the Alien, all of which were rejected.
"David Fincher neglected to inform me that Woodruff and Gillis were also contracted to take care of the redesign of the Alien—I found out much later... I thought I had the job and that Woodruff and Gillis would work from my plans. On their side, they were convinced that it was their job and accepted my 'suggestions' with pleasure. They believed that all my effort was based on a huge love for the matter, because I worked hard even after my contract was over."
Giger would later be angered by the end credits of the released film presenting him as merely the creator of the original creature, and the fact that ADI personnel gave a series of interviews that minimized Giger's contribution. Fox eventually reimbursed Giger, but only after he refused to be interviewed for their behind-the-scenes documentary of Alien 3.
However, Giger would comment that he thought the resulting film was "okay" and that the Alien was "better than in the second film".[46]
Newborn
In
The Newborn creature was originally scripted by Joss Whedon as being an eyeless, ivory-white quadruped with red veins running along the sides of its head. It had an inner jaw, with the addition of a pair of pincers on the sides of its head. These pincers would have been used to immobilize its prey as it drained it of blood through the inner jaw. The creature was originally going to rival the queen in size, but Jean-Pierre Jeunet asked ADI to make the human/Alien hybrid, known as the Newborn, more human than Alien. The Newborn's eyes and nose were added to improve its expressions to make it a character, rather than just a "killing machine", and give it depth as a human-like creature.
Predalien
This variation is the result of a facehugger impregnating a
The Predalien shares many characteristics with its hosts, such as long hair-like appendages, mandibles, skin color, and similar vocalizations. It is a large, bulky creature, and possesses physical strength greater than that of human-spawned Aliens. Like human-born Aliens, it is also shown to be stronger than its host species, as evidenced by its ability to pin, push, and knock a Predator away with ease.[47]
Deacon
The dark-blue Deacon is a different species that makes an appearance in
Neomorph
The pale-white Neomorph is featured in Alien: Covenant.[17] It was created through exposure to spores found growing on the Engineer homeworld. The embryonic Neomorph gestates inside the host until it bursts out from wherever in said host they've metastasized (one is seen gaining entry through the ear and emerging from the spine, while a second one, inhaled by nose, later erupts from the host's throat; other means of entry and egress are not made clear), using mostly its head, which is sharp and pointed, not unlike the Deacon. Similarly, the Deacon and Neomorph share the same type of Pharangeal Jaw (similar to that of a Moray Eel) among other distinctivly less biomechanical traits than the traditional xenomorph, though the latter does share with the Neomorph a tail strong enough to cause grevious injury; at one point, a violently thrashing Neomorph tail is seen to instantly remove a human jaw. This behavior is just one of several demonstrating the Neomorph's far more feral nature; they are voracious predators, often eating the corpses of their victims, and they appear to lack their xenomorph cousins' hive structure, possibly since they propagate through mutated animal life.[16]
See also
- Dracunculiasis, a real parasitic infection by a worm (up to 1 m long) that emerges from the body one year after infection
Notes
- ^ With acheronsis instead of acheronensis, acherontea or acheruntica.
- ^ The terms "facehugger" and "chestburster" date at least as far back as The Book of Alien and HR Giger's Alien—behind-the-scenes scrapbooks composed the year of the original film's release—and are used frequently by the film's cast and crew in retrospect.
- ^ In Aliens, Ripley claims that the creature killed the entire crew in 24 hours, so the growth stage must be under one day
- ^ Common term before the xenomorph crossed over into other universes, such as that of Predator
References
- ^ a b c d Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report
- ^ Alien: Sea of Sorrows
- ^ 20th Century Fox.
- ^ 20th Century Fox.
- ^ Gaska, Andrew E. C. (2019). Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Free League Publishing. p. 284.
- ^ Alien Quadrilogyboxset
- ^ Alien Quadrilogybox set
- ISBN 9780826415707.
- ^ Paul Scanlon; Michael Gross (1979). The Book of Alien. WH Allen & Co.
- ^ HR Giger (1979). HR Giger's Alien. Sphinx. p. 60.
- ^ 20th Century Fox.
- ^ 20th Century Fox.
- ^ Hutchinson, Lee (August 2, 2014). "The throwaway line in Aliens that spawned decades of confusion". Ars Technica.
- ^ "List of Aliens action figures". Retrieved May 29, 2013.
- ^ The comic book Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator includes the binomial name Linguafoeda acheronsis.
- ^ a b John Logan, Dante Harper, Jack Paglen, Michael Green (writers); Ridley Scott (director) (2017). Alien: Covenant. 20th Century Fox.
- ^ a b "Alien Covenant Neomorph Revealed". /Film. April 20, 2017.
- ^ Unnatural Mutation – Creature Design, Alien Quadrilogy, 2003, 20th Century Fox
- ISBN 1-84576-004-2.
- ^ a b c Alec Gillis & Tom Woodruff Jr. (2004). Alien vs. Predator: The Creature Effects of ADI.
- ^ Hochman, David (December 5, 1997). "Beauties and the Beast". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on January 6, 2008. Retrieved January 31, 2008.
- ^ Alien commentary, Alien Quadrilogy boxset
- ISBN 0-354-04436-2.
- ^ [Shane Salerno (writer) Colin and Greg Strause (directors). (2008). Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.]
- ^ 20th Century Fox.
- ^ ISBN 978-0786458349.
- ^ a b c Aliens, film commentary, Alien Quadrilogy box set
- ^ Sideshowtoy. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- ^ James Cameron, Alien Evolution: Aliens
- ^ The Alien Trilogy: A New Beowulf Archived February 9, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Alien Queen in Cameron's Aliens (1986). Archived January 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "The bellybursters were actually in the first draft that Colin and I read...They had the bellybursters...caused by an alien warrior...We actually made it the Predalien that was reproducing in this fashion" –Greg Strause, "AvP-R: Preparing for War: Development and Production" featurette, from the Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem Region 1 Extreme Unrated Set DVD
- ^ "Basically the Predalien's kind of a baby queen—there's a phase in between warrior alien and full-blown queen...they do this thing with embryo implantation.. the idea with that was, how does a baby queen quickly form her own little mini-drone army to get the hive built before she evolves into the final state where she can't completely defend herself?"--Colin Strause, "AvP-R: Preparing for War: Development and Production" featurette, from the Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem Region 1 Extreme Unrated Set DVD
- ^ a b H. R. Giger Alien Design by Frederic Albert Levy, p.36
- ^ Aliens Colonial Marines Tech Manual
- ^ Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem 2-disc ultimate combat edition
- ^ HR Giger, The Beast Within: The Making of Alien, Alien Quadrilogy Box-set
- ^ Giger 52
- ^ Dan O'Bannon, audio commentary, Alien, from the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set
- ^ a b Alien3: Adaptive Organism: Creature Design, from the Alien Quadrilogy boxset.
- ^ Alien3: Assembly cut
- 20th Century Fox.
- ISBN 9780826415707.
- ^ Giger p. 56
- ISBN 978-1-84576-150-9.
- ^ "The Official Website". HR Giger. Archived from the original on February 28, 2009. Retrieved March 2, 2009.
- ^ AVP-R: Crossbreed: Creating The PredAlien (DVD), Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem 2-disc ultimate combat edition, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2008.
- ^ Wreckage and Rage: Making Alien 3 (DVD), Alien Quadrilogy (Alien 3) bonus disc, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2003.
Further reading
- Alien – Released on May 25, 1979 – On-line script. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
- Aliens – Released on June 18, 1986 – On-line script. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
- Alien 3 – Released on May 22, 1992 – On-line script. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
- Alien: Resurrection – Released on November 26, 1997 – On-line script. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
- Goldman, Willie. "Sideshow Collectibles, Inc". HAIL to THE QUEEN. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- Nathan. "PlanetAVP.com". Alien universe. Archived from the original on February 8, 2006. Retrieved February 15, 2006.
- Unknown author (2002). "Alien Collectors Homeworld". Xenomorph.org. Archived from the original on February 6, 2006. Retrieved February 18, 2006.
{{cite web}}
:|author=
has generic name (help) - Unknown author. "Predalien". Predalien information. Archived from the original on February 3, 2006. Retrieved February 18, 2006.
{{cite web}}
:|author=
has generic name (help) - Aliens versus Predator(computer game).
- Aliens versus Predator 2(computer game).
- Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual, HarperCollins 1996, ISBN 0-06-105343-0.
- Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure (computer game)
- The Anchorpoint Essays, DNA Reflex
- Xenomorph Types at Alien vs. Predator Central