Xenomorph

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 is 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. "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." O'Bannon felt that the symbolism of "homosexual oral rape" was an effective means of discomforting male viewers.

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." 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 Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel Dune. Also hired for the project was Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger. Giger showed O'Bannon his nightmarish, monochromatic artwork, which left O'Bannon deeply disturbed. "I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work," he remembered later. The Dune film collapsed, but O'Bannon would remember Giger when Alien was greenlit, and suggested to director Ridley Scott that he be brought on to design the Alien, saying that if he were to design a monster, it would be truly original.

After O'Bannon handed him a copy of Giger's book Necronomicon, Scott immediately saw the potential for Giger's designs, and chose Necronom IV, a print Giger completed in 1976, as the basis for the Alien's design, citing its beauty and strong sexual overtones. That the creature could just as easily have been male or female was also a strong factor in the decision to use it. "It could just as easily fuck you before it killed you," said line producer Ivor Powell, "[which] made it all the more disconcerting." 20th Century Fox was initially wary of allowing Giger onto the project, saying that his works would be too disturbing for audiences, but eventually relented. Giger initially offered to completely design the Alien from scratch, but Scott mandated that he base his work on Necronom IV, saying that to start over from the beginning would be too time-consuming. Giger initially signed on to design the adult, egg, and chestburster forms, but ultimately also designed the alien planetoid LV-426 and the "space jockey" alien vessel.

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, a serpent, a beast, a dragon, a monster, a nasty, or simply, a thing. 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 to refer to extraterrestrial life in general. The term was erroneously assumed by some fans to refer specifically to this creature, and the word was used by the producers of some merchandise.

The species' binomial names are given in Latin as either Internecivus raptus (meant as "murderous thief") in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD or Lingua foeda acheronsis (meant as "foul tongue from Acheron") in some comic books. The main Alien from Alien vs. Predator is listed in the credits as "Grid", after a grid-like wound received during the film from a Predator's razor net. Alien: Covenant actually credits the Alien as "Xenomorph", while also listing a different variety of the creature as the "Neomorph". In The Weyland-Yutani Report, the Alien encountered by the Nostromo was specifically referred to as "Xenomorph XX121", and this name is spoken out loud by the android Rook in Alien: Romulus.

Characteristics

Ridley Scott stated in the DVD commentary for Alien (and the accompanying 2001 DVD documentary Alien Evolution) that the concept behind the origin of the xenomorphs is that nothing so deadly could have evolved naturally, but was instead designed through genetic engineering by some other ancient race as a biological weapon. He described the crashed Derelict encountered by the Nostromo as essentially a "bomber" that would carry payloads of xenomorph eggs and drop them onto targeted planets. This concept was present since work on the first film, though Scott went on to refine and expand on it over thirty years later in the prequel Prometheus – which established that not only were the xenomorphs created by the "Engineers" (the race of the "Space Jockey" the Nostromo crew found), but specifically formed using a hostile mutagenic pathogen (the "black goo" termed "Chemical A0-3959X.91").

The second core concept was that in order to keep the monster horrifying and unpredictable, it would metamorphosize through several radically different life stages – one of which involved a larval stage gestating inside of a human host before fatally bursting out.

Another concept present since Scott's production on the original film is that xenomorphs have flexible genetic material which is designed to adapt to whatever environment they are in, by incorporating some genetic information from their host that is native to that environment. The xenomorph on the Nostromo has a bipedal humanoid stature because its larval form gestated inside of a human, resulting in what Scott described as "the man-version of Alien". Subsequent spinoffs demonstrated variations on this concept: a xenomorph gestated inside of a quadruped like a dog or ox results in a quadrupedal, panther-like xenomorph (Alien 3), and one gestated inside of a Predator/Yautja will become a powerfully built "Predalien" with mandibles (Alien vs. Predator).

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, biomechanical appearance and are usually colored in muted shades of black, gray, blue or bronze. Their body heat matches the ambient temperature of the environment in which they are found, so they do not radiate heat, making them indistinguishable from their surroundings through thermal imaging. In most of the films, adult Aliens are capable of running and crawling along ceilings, walls, and other hard surfaces. They have great physical strength, having been shown to be capable of breaking through welded steel doors over time.

Aliens have segmented, blade-tipped tails. The sharp tip was initially a small, scorpion-like barb, but from Aliens onwards the blade design increased in size and changed in appearance to more closely resemble a slashing weapon. From Alien Resurrection onwards, the tails have a flat ridge of spines at the base of the blade. This was introduced to help them swim convincingly, and was left intact in the subsequent crossovers. The original shooting script for Aliens and the novelization both featured a scene in which Lieutenant Gorman is "stung" by the barb tail and rendered unconscious; in the final cut of the movie, Gorman is knocked out by falling crates. As a weapon, the strength of the tail is very effective, having been shown to be strong enough to impale and lift a Predator with seemingly little effort.

The aliens have elongated, cylindrical skulls. In the novelization of Alien, the character Ash speculates that the xenomorphs "see" by way of electrical impulse, similar to some fish's Ampullae of Lorenzini. This method is illustrated in the original Aliens Versus Predator PC game and reused for the Predalien 8 years later. The Alien's inner set of jaws on its tongue is powerful enough to smash through bone and metal. How the creatures see is uncertain; in Alien 3, a spherical lens was used to illustrate the Alien's point of view, so, when the film was projected anamorphically, the image exhibited severe distortion. In the novelization of the movie Alien, the creature is held mesmerized by a spinning green light for several minutes.

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. 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, and abandoned in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in favor of the ribbed design.

Physiology

Alien blood contains concentrated hydrofluoric acid and sulfuric acid and is capable of corroding almost any substance on contact with alarming speed. It is dull yellow in color and appears to be pressurized inside the body so that it spurts out with great force when the creature is wounded. Ron Cobb suggested the idea of the Alien having acidic blood as a plausible means to make the creature "unkillable"; if one were to use traditional firearms or explosives to attack it, its blood would eat through the hull of the ship. The Alien novelization suggests that, at least at the "facehugger" stage, the acid is not blood but a fluid maintained under pressure between a double layer of skin. In the Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem documentary "Science of the Alien", it is hypothesized that the Aliens' acid blood could contain sulfuric acid due to its corrosiveness and the conspicuously toxic effects on living human tissue. The documentary also speculates that Aliens are immune to their own acidic and toxic liquids due to an endobiological build-up, similar to the human stomach's ability to protect itself from its own digestive fluids. The documentary takes this hypothesis one step further and speculates that the Alien organism's protection system against its own acidic blood is a bio-organically produced Teflon-like insulation. In the original Alien, the facehugger is shown to be able to "spit" acid, dissolving the faceplate of Kane's helmet and allowing the creature immediate access inside. This ability is also exhibited by adult Aliens in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection; much like a spitting cobra, they use it to blind their victims.

Aliens can produce a thick, strong resin that they use to build their hives and to cocoon their victims, and they can use the walls of their hives as camouflage. Aliens also salivate heavily in the form of a sticky, clear slime; while not a toxic substance in and of itself, it is common for the Alien films to use it as a suspense-building device, wherein a character will notice the falling saliva before noticing its source lying in wait above them.

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 and problem-solving skills. It's also shown the ability to operate machinery at a very basic level, with the queen in Aliens depicted operating an elevator.

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 awareness of the effects of their acid blood.

In the original film, it is implied that the alien cut the lights on board the Nostromo. On LV-426, the xenomorphs cut power in a section of the complex to gain access to the humans.

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. In the video game Alien Isolation, the Alien will be more cautious when threatened with the flamethrower after multiple uses against it, and will begin to adapt to the player's methods of staying hidden, such as checking lockers or underneath furniture more often.

Life cycle

Aliens are eusocial life-forms with a caste system ruled over by a queen. Their life cycle comprises several distinct stages: they begin their lives as an ovamorph pod, which releases a parasitoid larval form known as a facehugger, which then attaches itself to a living host by, as its name suggests, latching onto its face. In the Alien 3 novelization, Ripley commented that this parasitoid would probably be able to use any host from as small as a cat to as large as an Asian elephant.

The facehugger then "impregnates" the host with an embryo, known as a "chestburster". During this time, the host is kept in an unconscious state with normal vital functions. After depositing the embryo inside the host, the facehugger dies and releases its hold on its victim's face and head, as shown in Alien and Aliens. The host will then experience a short period of near-symptomless recovery during which the embryo is in gestation, followed by the sudden and painful eruption of the chestburster from the host's chest, resulting in their death. The chestburster then matures to an adult phase, shedding its skin and replacing its cells with polarized silicon.

Due to horizontal gene transfer during the gestation period, the alien also takes on some of the basic physical attributes of the host from which it was born (something noticed by Ripley in Alien 3, when the xenomorph plaguing the complex moved on four limbs, having gestated within a quadruped (a dog in the theatrical release and an ox in the director's cut) whereas all the others she had previously seen had gestated within humans/bipeds), allowing the individual alien to adapt to the host's environment (breathe the air, etc.). This is also shown in the two live-action crossover films, Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), where an embryo, having gestated within a Predator/Yautja, displayed Predator/Yautja physical traits (arthropod-like mandibles) from eruption onwards.

This process of horizontal gene transfer is also shown to be two-way; in Alien Resurrection (film and novelization), 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 a 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."

Cocoon

The xenomorph lifecycle is expanded in the movie Alien: Romulus with the introduction of a "cocoon" stage, which bridges the gap between the chestburster and the fully-grown adult xenomorph stages as witnessed by the characters Bjorn and Kay while aboard the derelict Renaissance space station. It is shown that a chestburster which had emerged from their crew-mate Navarro had attached itself to a wall and electrical cables building a biomechanical protective cocoon around itself after shedding its skin. While inside the cocoon, the chestburster transformed into a fully-grown adult drone xenomorph.

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.

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 from which it was spawned (a dog in the theatrical cut, or as 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. As 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.

Critical response

Film historian Thomas Doherty described the Alien movies as exploring “not only the impact of extraterrestrial parasites on human digestion but the frontiers of genre and gender in Hollywood narrative.” Doherty dubbed the xenomorph “a cross-dressing monster from the id whose sexual confusion mirrors the shifting gender dynamics of the series.” He noted how its first three iterations–facehugger, chestburster, and dragon–“suggest the outline of the masculine member,” yet Aliens makes it a female–“a queen generating unholy spawn”–and in Aliens 3, “she reverts again to a he, pursuing the female to penetrate and impregnate her.”

Author Amanda DiGioia argued “the vagina dentata is an evolutionary fear that has been learned, due to the prevalence of the notion of the vagina dentata in societies around the globe.” DiGioia also argued that “[c]onceptually, a vagina dentata plays on male fears of vaginas, wombs, mothers and childbirth, and has been represented in various media from ancient times…The vagina dentata, for males, can also represent the fear of entry to the unknown, of the dark dangers that must be controlled and stamped out in women…Woman in possession of destructive or deadly genitalia are threats that must be neutraised: the dangerous teeth must be pulled out to make her a compliant, procreative partner, or the woman must be killed.”

Film professor Barbara Creed called the xenomorphs an example of the “archaic mother.” In Alien, Creed notes that while “the archaic mother, the creature who laid the eggs,” is never seen, her presence is signalled in “the text’s various representations of the primal scene and in its depiction of birth and death…in the film’s images of blood, darkness and death [and] in the chameleon figure of the alien, the monster as fetish-object of and for the archaic mother.” Creed also argued that the xenomorph’s phallic appearance was deliberate, in order to cover its vagina dentata.