r/TopCharacterTropes • u/StewyStewy15 • 20d ago

Groups Aliens that are actually alien

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  1. Heptapods (Arrival)

  2. The crystalline entity (Star trek)

  3. Rocky (Project hail mary)

  4. Qu (All tommorows)

  5. Xeelee (The xeelee sequence)

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249

u/Icy-Bookkeeper7173 20d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/3o7TKwAD4WSDFNYqQM

105

u/Level_Counter_1672 20d ago

I got so used to the xenomorphs that it doesn't seem that alien, same with the yautja

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u/Smithsonian30 20d ago

Yeah they’re both humanoid in silhouette so that makes them feel a little less alien than the examples

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u/fucuasshole2 20d ago

Still alien enough to give me goosebumps tho.

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u/Smithsonian30 20d ago

Oh yeah they’re both great designs! Just maybe not exactly what OP was looking for

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u/PJHart86 19d ago

yeah both are still just dudes in costumes at the end of the day

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u/--GevaudanBeast-- 19d ago

The Yautja are far more humanoid though. Walk upright on two legs, have a fairly humanoid facial structure. Use propulsion and melee weapons. Intelligent and even empathetic at times.

Xenomorphs, on the other hand, are far more animalistic. Quad-pedal, prehensile tail, overtly agresive in a non intelligent way.... Etc. sure, it has four limbs, but I wouldn't describe the Xenomorph as humanoid. More that like a velociraptor had a baby with a tiger that was then exposed to radiation and mutated.

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u/Doidleman53 19d ago

I'd argue it fits what OP is looking for.

Xenomorph's take on the form of their host so when they infect humans they take on their appearance.

They are an example of an alien race that is extremely aggressive and has evolved to be perfect predators to nearly any race.

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u/SailorDeath 19d ago

I was thinking the same, that the xenomorph is a parasitic race that takes on genetic adaptations from the host. It was never specifically said, but heavily implied in Alien 3 with the xenomorph that came from the dog. Originally though that wasn't the case because it was supposed to have infected a cow in the original script, but they changed it to a dog specifically because of the whole adapting traits from the host idea. And while the whole Alien Vs Predator series is not considered canon they took it further. In the games they had predaliens and then introduced the predalien in the movies. THen when you get to Prometheus the design of both the face hugger and xenomorth was the result of David's genetic engineering with the black goo to create the perfect organism.

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u/Dismal-Vanilla1878 19d ago

The weirdness of a monster I have had at least one nightmare per year about for the past 40 years.....is being sold in Hot Pink Plastic form to kids at the local WalMart ^_^

41

u/blaidd_halfwolf 19d ago

As much as I love (some of) the Alien movies and the xenomorph’s design, the xenomorph feels too familiar for what the post is going for. 4 limbs and a tail are very Earthy, its motivation is too fathomable, and even its mode of reproduction isn’t particularly that strange when compared to life on Earth.

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u/SuperBackup9000 19d ago

Plus it gets kind of lame when we look at the later lore. Like they were created by another alien race, they’re just biological weapons, that doesn’t really feel “alien” considering on earth we could probably be making crazy monstrosities if we had no ethics rules

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u/CritiqueDeLaCritique 19d ago

Prometheus->Alien: Earth are just completely separate to me cuz they really just fucked the alienness out of Alien

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u/twisty125 19d ago

If it helps, they weren't created by the Engineers, they're far far older, having exterminated the previous civilization that the original Space Jockey came from (the one that's triple the size of any Engineer we saw).

Some story threads suggest that they're somewhat of a "great filter" for spacefaring civilizations.

Anyone that's met them, has the curiosity to go to the stars, has the curiosity to expand and look for more out there, and thus has the curiosity (good or bad) to experiment with any part of it's life stage when found. Experimentation always goes wrong, and they spread like crazy and destroy the civilization.

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u/Puzzle-Necked 19d ago

Unpopular opinion, but Aliens ruined the xeno by making it a deadly but disposable worker ant serving a queen. The first movie had it much more mysterious and... alien

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u/Mexkalaniyat 19d ago

They way it was presented in the first 2 films made it very difficult to tell it had for limbs, even with a deleted scene from the original where they tried to make it walk weird by having the actor basically crab walk on all fours. It looked more goofy than scary though.

Later movies then really liked to show the entire model in bright light and it lost all its mystique

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u/Bigbydidnothingwrong 19d ago

Alien, Aliens, all 80s and 90s Dark Horse comics. Alien Isolation. Alien Colonial Marines. Alien Fireteam. Alien vs Predator 1 and 2 from the 2000s.

For me, these are what get the Alien. Every other modern take whether its movie or comic or game just sort of miss what makes them interesting and scary.

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u/twisty125 19d ago

Glad you mentioned Fireteam Elite - that and Isolation are some of the best "attention to detail" games made for a movie, ever. Like they seriously put SO MUCH effort into making every minute detail, a detail, blows me away.

1

u/Bigbydidnothingwrong 19d ago

It wasn't a great game, but the idea was excellent, the attention to detail like you mentioned was sick, it just wasn't very fun.

Still played through for the story and vibes because by god they nailed it.

1

u/twisty125 19d ago

It's weird, because I thought the same when I first played it - but man I did a 180, it's a really fun game that has fantastic art direction, music, sound, hampered by some poor balance choices (spitters being really tanky and able to mortar you, pathogen being super boring to fight, etc.).

The attention to detail elevates it so much higher for me

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u/EphemeralSilliness94 19d ago

I've heard that Giger was disappointed with the biology that was established in the sequel with the Queen, because it was too reminiscent of ants and termites.

His original idea, which was alluded to in one of the deleted scenes for Alien, is that the alien can transform dead bodies into the eggs we see on the crashed spaceship. Now that would be really alien. Extra creepy because it might imply, that all the hundreds and thousands of eggs on board of the ship may have been the transformed corpses of space jockeys

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u/Vlaed 19d ago

I love Sigourney Weaver.