Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

> Ripley defeat the alien queen

What is it with "queens" in SF ? Off to a rant :)

IMO, adding a queen to the Borg destroyed the Borg. I was really intrigued by the Borg as presented in their first appearance. If you remember, they had a nursery with Baby Borg and a collective conscience, no individuality. Then came the queen, the ruler of all with some people having a "higher rank". Totally made the Borg irrelevant to me.

There was a TV show about an invasion of Earth, it went along fine until the last season, a queen was added, I could tell it was rushed and doing that changed its direction.

Same can be said about Independence Day, even though I did not like the queen addition, it did not take away from the whole movie and in a way a "queen" in that context made a bit of sense. The only thing is, if the Queen was killed, wouldn't that end these Aliens ? To me, a queen should not leave the home planet.

Alien movies were too much for me, things popping out of someone's belly would be a "close my eyes" type scene. But I really liked Promentheus. I did not realize until much later that was a prequel to Alien :) And I still think it is a good movie.

Well in the case of the first Alien movie, the whole thing is a left-then-right metaphor about conception, birth, motherhood, and gender roles in biology. If you were alive when it originally came out you wouldn’t know that Ripley is the true lead of the film (a now commonly known fact about the franchise). This idea plays off of scifi with male leads. The film then does A LOT to foreshadow Ripley as the lead and mother figure. So in the case of Alien it was a statement on traditional science fiction films. The Queen was added later in the sequels on an evolution of the birth theme.

A queen in Alien universe doesn’t operate like ants do. She is just the largest most vicious female amongst the brood.

> If you were alive when it originally came out you wouldn’t know that Ripley is the true lead of the film

?

I think they meant "wouldn't have known." The ensemble cast didn't really give contemporary viewers purchase on who would ultimately be the one to survive by the end of the film. Nowadays, many viewers go into the movie already knowing that Ripley will be the one to make it through, which makes it easy to see her as "the main character."

Ripley being the survivor was a rug pull on the audience's expectations. Tom Skerritt (Dallas) was a well-known actor at the time, and would have been assumed to have been the default lead.

In the marketing materials, Tom Skerritt got top billing as Dallas. He's also the captain of the ship.

Queen in the Alien universe is very similar to ants - she creates the eggs from which the facehuggers hatch. She is maybe much more dangerous than the ant queen but so are the “ants”

I meant in the context of the OP’s ask about the Alien’s dying off once the Queen is dead. They don’t operate like ants in a direct sense, etymology or logic, they operate like ants when it’s convenient for the world of Alien.

> They don’t operate like ants in a direct sense, etymology or logic, they operate like ants when it’s convenient for the world of Alien.

Sure, but this movie is aimed at a general audience, who don't have an exact understanding about ant society.

It's more important for the movie to conform to what the audience thinks ants are like than to conform to what ants actually are like.

Okay sorry. Aliens operate exactly like ants for anyone too dumb to grasp that they’re not but need an EILI5 description and may have stumbled upon this comment section. Thank you for helping me clarify that.

> Okay sorry. Aliens operate exactly like ants for anyone too dumb to grasp that they’re not but need an EILI5 description and may have stumbled upon this comment section. Thank you for helping me clarify that.

You think that people who don't know precisely how ant colonies work are dumb?

Not even close to what I wrote.

> Not even close to what I wrote.

I'm sorry, how did you expect this to be interpreted?

>>> Okay sorry. Aliens operate exactly like ants for anyone too dumb to grasp that they’re not but need an EILI5 description and may have stumbled upon this comment section.

As sarcasm because I’m responding to you. And you were responding to me. And that comment was directed at another user clarifying the intent of my original comment.

Your original response to a clarification is that it’s just easier to tell people they work like ants. Which is fine if that’s the point you’re trying to make but it’s irrelevant to my clarification.

How did YOU expect your first comment to be interpreted?

>What is it with "queens" in SF

Insects. Queen bees, queen ants, queen termites. Feels nice an icky to humans.

Now, SF mostly gets this wrong as isn't that much of a leader, more of a 'starter' and many species have multiple queens and when one gets killed another is promoted from larva. This and the vast majority of behaviors are self organizing, and not ones from a leadership position.

> IMO, adding a queen to the Borg destroyed the Borg.

Having more than one episode about the Borg destroyed the Borg.

1st appearance: there are some things out there that human civilization isn't ready for. You wanna see an example? You really wanna see? Okay, you asked for it. OMG it's the Borg!

2nd through Nth appearance: Demystifying Borg Internal APIs

> adding a queen to the Borg destroyed the Borg

Agreed. The Borg used to be scary because they seemed unbeatable. They were like grey goo that could adapt to whatever you threw at them.[1]

Having a queen gives them a single point of failure. Suddenly they are a lot less scary.

[1] I kind of felt the same way about the Boogieman from Ghost Busters when I was a kid. Teleports between closets and the regular ghost trap doodad doesn't work on him! Shit!

Wasnt the queen introduced in the sequel to Independence Day? The leaat of the films troubles. This is the worst thing I've ever seen, without hyperbole. I was convinced that it was an earpy attempt by AI to create something resembling a movie. I felt physically ill watching it.

Pink Freud: The Dark Side of Your Mother

Gotta have a boss fight at the end

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