Interesting statement from Ridley. Thanks for posting. I always kind of assumed the alien species was out of the ordinary. Maybe not engineered, but not necessarily natural. Especially if you think about Ash’s (Ian Holm’s) comment in Alien when he talks about them as “the perfect organism”. Ridley seems to be aluding to them being possibly unnatural.

Somehow having the xenomorphs as an engineered species makes them much less frightening. Who wants to be that if that angle is used, one of the movies ends up being about how the creation turned on its creators? I (mostly) trust Ridley Scott, but I see so many ways this can go wrong. Some things might be better left alone. I’m looking at you, Spielberg and Lucas.

Personally, I always assumed they were an engineered biological weapon. It was what made the most sense to me, given how it was discovered (stored in stasis in an alien ship), and how it takes the basic form of whatever host the drone gestates in (were it a naturally evolved species, I cannot see how this would be an efficient means of reproduction).

It seems logical that, under most circumstances, an efficient means of warfare would be to get a couple eggs onto a planet and just let it go (insertion of a small pod would be far easier than a full scale invasion). It adapts to the host, so it would work for practically any target, it would be self-sustaining, and once the all the macrofauna is gone, the weapon dies off, leaving an otherwise healthy planet for colonization.

What isn’t logical about it being an engineered weapon?
And, more importantly, how would that origin be any worse for storytelling than trying to come up with some very strained logic of evolution?

It actually leads to many other possible curiosities: who created it, why did they need it, who were the targets, was it actually just a terraforming tool getting rid of dangerous creatures (think what we did to all the large predatory species wherever we colonized)? I don’t think it would ‘ruin’ the story at all.

i don’t think they require humanoid life. In Alien 3, the titular menace impregnated a dog.

I have always held to the creature being natural but used for nefarious purposes, which of course backfired leading to the crashing of the space jockey’s ship

I believe the biological weapon idea was explored somewhat within the franchise back in the 80s/90s, I remember reading some of the paperback books written by Steve Perry; Earth Hive, Female War, etc. And there was further mention of the Space Jockey alien sitting in the spaceship in Scott’s original film, as being the race which may have created the Aliens as a biological weapon. And throughout the many graphic novels and books in the franchise there are depictions of Weyland Utani corporation and other crazy people wanting to harness the aliens as a weapon, it’s all there in the first two movies, so I’m slightly baffled as to why this stuff is such a shock to many of you.

To be honest I’d rather Scott did another Bladerunner type film if he’s re-visiting old stories, as the Alien stuff is all a bit tired now, raped by many hands, and seems to have been irrevocably altered from its eerie erotic Giger/Scott old-school horror roots by Camerons first sequel ‘Aliens’, its all guns and explosions now.
But anyway, I’m pretty sure Ridley will pull it out of the bag, as he is a strong film maker (as long as he lives that long, what is he 75 now or something?!)

I love to see a black and white erotic horror re-make of Alien shot on Super-8 perhaps, with an amazing synth and wind instrument soundtrack. 3D = BS

I always thought genetic engineered weapons was the default view of origin everyone had on aliens
Like gordon said, that was made quite clear on the graphic novels around

OKay.. what about the giant dead alien being in the original Alien film? y’know, the dead alien that flew the giant ship that had all the alien eggs inside?

Helloooo there’s a story RIGHT THERE.

—-ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

It’s 2010!

Someone tell ‘asleep at the wheel’ Scott.

Lets just hope its not like avatar CGI fest

Personally, I think the less we know about the origin of the Alien the better. We humans like to imagine “worse-case” scenarios. The less we know, the more mysterious and scarier the creature becomes.
Though I’m not thrilled with the idea of a genetically engineered creature (A film about how humans were genetically engineered sounds more apropos), I’m confident in Mr. Scott. He could make a film about wine corks interesting.

If they are created by our own hands as genetically altered bio weapons then I would only request that instead of being created from the hands of a human, that they be created by the hands of “Predators”

Now that would really link the two movies together.

All kidding aside. My wife loves these movies. In fact she has been trying to get an audition with Ridley Scott. She is an actress and we live in Los Angeles. Her manager has said that FOX is only looking for name actresses for the lead. Well she really wants to be a part of it so we created a video message for Ridley Scott and sent it out into the world. We are hoping that Ridley will take a look at it. We already got confirmation that RSA has seen the video as well as FOX.
Truthfully, my opinion is that you DONT need a name actress as the lead because the franchise itself holds the movie up, not the name in it…

In fact this is the perfect time to bring someone unknown into the project.

So that is what we were striving to do. here is the url for my wife’s video. Thanks again, Cheers.

http://www.ridleywatchthis.com

Vesey – It’s much more likely the aliens would have been engineered by an evil left wing government.

You want to know what hasn’t been done before? Leaving aliens as they are. The genetic engineered route has been done way too many times, and we have too many movies dedicated to showing how shitty human beings are. I want to see the Aliens and JUST the aliens for once. I dont want to see this bullshit angle of humans creating them for weapons any more. Give us what we really want, the Aliens.