Stupid Aliens Question
 

I have searched for this but to no avail:

Why is it, when Bishop alerts Ripley and Hicks about the emergency venting, does this mean the whole site detonates???

What is emergency venting in the first place? It seems so obvious to all the characters and maybe its a stupid question but I always wondered that?

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

I think it was going to detonate because of the first attack from the aliens. It takes place where the dude tells them not to shoot anything because of the gas pipes. The gas leaked as they were firing at the aliens.
Don't know how emergency venting got activated.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

I believe it's better explained in the Special Edition version of the film. The whole colony site is essentially a large nuclear reactor (as pointed out in an earlier scene between Ripley, Burke and Gorman) and was ruptured by the explosion of the ship. Now there's some sort of pressure build up that's going to cause LV-426 to go up.

I'm assuming that the emergency venting is automatically activated to keep the place from going up immediately.

I'm tired; maybe someone else can explain it better.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

RagingBull pretty much got it. The emergency venting isn't causing the reactor to detonate, the emergency venting is occurring because the damage done to the reactor will eventually cause it to detonate. The venting is there to try and stall the meltdown.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

The alien nest was under the primary heat exchanger, so all the firing must've ruptured the cooling system. The venting would be an emergency procedure to dump heat and avert a meltdown, but it was only a stop-gap so the colonists would have time to make repairs or get out of Dodge.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Damn, I thought this was going to be a discussion about stupid aliens, a much more interesting topic to me than a "Stupid question about the movie, ALIENS," which is what the thread should have been called so as not to confuse me. -rolleyes-

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Stupid Aliens = Building a nest inside a nuclear reactor. :)

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

this...

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

I thought it was the dropship crash/explosion that caused all the problems. I think Ripley asks if it's possible to reverse it, but Bishop says that the explosion caused too much overload. I assume the explosion he was referring to was the dropship.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Can someone post the same thread in the Politics section so we can have a REAL discussion please? kthxbye.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Same. This thread was a total cocktease. :mad:

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

OK, here's one. Why, in Signs, do the aliens invade a world which is covered in (and contains an atmosphere full of) the very thing that can kill them? It would be like humans deciding to invade a world made of methane with hydrochloric acid lakes.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Thank you, Suprmallet, for redeeming this thread.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

....holy fuck he's right? WHY did they come here? Wha? It's like me eating a lot greasy shit but doing it anyway knowing that I"m not going to like taking that shit later cuz it's going to hurt. It doesn't make sense!

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Because they're stupid aliens.

Next question.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Stupid aliens need our help most of all!

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

1) Maybe they had never encountered liquid water before.

2) Maybe it was only when water was at a certain temperature, or pressure, or mixed with air of a certain quality, or some other intangible (like faith) that it became dangerous to them.

3) Maybe we're the only other planet within trillions of light-years that has life, so we're on the short list to get invaded.

4) Maybe water fuels their systems and they're running out. (A planet covered in gasoline would be pretty inhospitable to us, yet quite worth the invasion.)

5) [dvdtalk] Maybe M. Night is a hack and cares only about the twist, plot be damned! [/dvdtalk]

:D

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

+1

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

rotfl Nice!

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

If I had to guess, I would say perhaps they've never encountered H2O before so they wouldn't KNOW that it would hurt them until they got here. That wsa my reasoning.

Imaging you went to uncharted world 3.7, once you get there you discover that the oceans are toxic to you. Hey, it looked like water from orbit.

Indigenous people: Stupid alien, why would he come here knowing that our oceans are covered in acid?

Answer: We DIDN'T know.

Edit: Oh Hi, Numanoid! Didn't see you there!

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

The three most common elements in the Universe are hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Helium being a nobel gas doesn't bond to anything, which means that molecules composed of hydrogen and oxygen are common. Really, really common. There is no way aliens could not know what water is or know that Earth is covered in it. The ideas of aliens coming to Earth for water is one of the most laughably stupid ideas ever used in science fiction -- they could stop in the Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt and get more water than all of Earth's oceans without having to lift it out of a gravity well.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Aside from Sean's comments about the abundance of water in the universe, do you think a society would get advanced enough to cross light years of space, but not enough to ascertain the chemical composition of a liquid?

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Stupid Aliens, Trix are for kids!

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

And can someone please tell my why in Starship Troopers they would send infantry down to the bug's planet? Why wouldn't they just send down an endless barrage of nuclear missiles until the entire planet was rendered lifeless?

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

that would be better answered in the "Stupid Humans Question" thread.

one of you should go start one. I'm too lazy to do so.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Well that's really the whole joke of the movie. Clearly the humans were after something. The thing is that information and the media (like the film itself) is so controlled by the government, we never learn what that is. We only learn what they want us to know: the bugs are bad and we'll kick their ass.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Ahh, good explanation. I always found this movie pretty unsatisfying, as it never seemed to be coherent to me as either a straight-up action movie, or as the satire/parody many have claimed it to be. Others have said the book made a lot more sense---I'll have to check that out sometime.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

maybe we were the closest planet to them and maybe our planet had something they needed to resupply no matter the cost.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

So why don't the aliens have hazmat suits?

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

only direct contact with water hurts them. walking around won't, so there doesn't seem to be much of a problem unless they are in a situation where there might be large quantities of water.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Like coming to Earth, which is covered in it? What if it rains?

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

The book and the movie are two totally different beasts. They essentially tell the same story but have a very different theme. In fact, the book may make you dislike the movie even more.

To really get the satire of the film, it helps to be familiar with Triumph of the Will
(from where many of the opening shots and the overall vibe are derived). Though that's certainly not a requirement. It just helps.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Oh, I got the fascist newsreel/propoganda influences in the film, but generally the point of a satire is to subtly point out the ridiculousness or folly of the subject. When the main characters basically all end up promoted, successful, brave, noble, heroic, paired up with sexy partners and saving the earth, and we have almost no concept of the negative impact this fascist system has had on them---I don't really see the satire.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

I get what you're saying but therein lies the satire of the film. We have a bunch of HS kids brainwashed into thinking that blindly murdering some aggressors the media has led them to believe are evil with no real context of why they were fighting beyond they were told it was the right thing to do.

The key moments are the school lesson from Michael Ironside (where they learn of the "merit" of citizenship), when Casper Van Dien essentially becomes a junior Michael Ironside, and when Doogie Hauser went from a bright fun loving kid to a cold number cruncher that has little qualms about sending his friends to die if their deaths will be of use.

The fact that the movie cheers them on is a huge joke. At the expense of the audience? Maybe. But still a funny joke if you get it.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

People walk along side active volcanic flow without special suits. That's harmful to you if you fall in but not if you are near it. That's the point. There's risk involved by being there but it's not always an immediate risk.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Okay, I think that approach gave it less of an impact for me, but your explanation does makes sense.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

I absolutely hated the movie and didn't appreciate any of the satire it attempted. It's been a while since I actually watched it so I've forgotten some plot points.

Did the bugs actually send the asteroid or whatever it was to Earth that killed so many people, or in other words, strike first? Or was part of the satire that the humans just blamed it on the bugs and then brainwashed everybody into going to war because the bugs are bad?

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

And they're told to stay away from any kind of hazy air, because it contains poisonous gases. The air on Earth is full of water vapor.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Good satire never steps outside itself to say, "This is satire, and here's the moral you should take away." Swift didn't end A Modest proposal with, "Nah, just kidding." He let the idiots in his audience think he really advocated eating the Irish.

Starship Troopers plays out like a propaganda film from the Federation, showing how awesome their fascist military state is and how evil the bugs are. It's not going to show the characters in anything less than a positive light, any more than 30 Seconds Over Tokyo portrayed the Doolittle Raid as the mass murder of civilians.

Re: Stupid Aliens Question
 

Your two paragraphs contradict each other. Starship Troopers WAS like 30 Seconds over Tokyo, and 30 Seconds over Tokyo WASN'T a satire---that's my whole point. Swift's WAS a satire, and it presented the outrageous idea that he really did advocate eating the Irish---the satire derives from leading the reader gradually, subtly and skillfully to an argument for something morally loathesome. The characters at the end of Starship Troopers don't engage in anything morally loathsome. They're not presented as cruel, sadistic, selfish, disloyal---quite the contrary, their friendships are warm and loyal, they're brave, selfless and heroic, and don't exhibit any negative impact from their fascist ideology---exactly the opposite from satire as done by Swift. I think rather than it being skillful satire, the actual satire was cut out of the film so it would be more marketable, and full of good-looking characters that everybody liked in the end.

edit: I agree with you that it plays out like a propoganda film, and I think it's fair to categorize it as a parody of that. I don't see it as successful satire, however.