(screeching) - All right Alien franchise
nerds or any sci-fi nerds for that matter, let's have a
heart to heart for a second. It's hard to love the Alien movies. I mean, we do love them but
when sciency plot points don't seem to make any sense,
it takes away from the films and I think this is what's been
happening with the franchise for almost the last 40 years specifically because of the confusing
xenomorph life cycle. Let's fix that, let's piece
together every single movie and come up with the definitive
xenomorph life cycle. Hopefully. Maybe. First let me admit that I made a mistake with my previous Alien video. In my first attempt, I didn't
get to include Alien Covenant, I didn't really include the
queen, I brushed off the sequels and I tried to fit everything
into the original conception from the original script. That doesn't really make sense. These movies span decades
and include the visions of many different writers
and directors and producers. So let's try again, let's
start from the beginning and include quotes from
the people who actually made these movies to see
where the xenomorph life cycle conclusively ends up
from Alien to Covenant. No just go, there's like, there's like thousands of faces there, go. You almost done been face hugged. Let's start with Alien. The Alien mythology has been added to, subtracted from, cut, edited
and trimmed so many times that we need to go back to
the original film makers and track their intentions
chronologically. According to the original
script, co-writer Dan O'Bannon said that the xenomorphs
where an ancient intelligent species that reproduce via a
third party but had two sexes. In fact, according to Executive Producer and co-writer Ron Shusett,
the xenomorphs would reproduce more or less like this tarantula hawk wasp which first paralyzes prey like a spider, leads it to a den, cocoons
it, lays an egg near it, and then those eggs hatch
and feed off of the spider. However when the film
actually started production, having an ancient species
with breeding temples and pyramids was deemed too expensive and so Director Ridley
Scott instead merged that idea with the Space Jockey scene which was originally just an alien ship without any eggs on it. Dan O'Bannon felt uneasy about this merger because it eliminated a sex and also made a sensical
but complicated xenomorph life cycle more of a surrealist mystery. But we'll get back to that. Making things even more mysterious, a cocooning scene which would complete the wasp-like life cycle was cut. Fans called this the
famous egg morphing scene. In this cut scene it does look
like something is happening to the bodies of the Nostromo crew and some fans have interpreted
this as human bodies literally turning into eggs to complete the alien life cycle. Some fans are wrong. According to multiple quotes
from Director Ridley Scott, the humans are there to be used as food by eggs already laid. Quote "loose on the ship, a
new alien begins to lay eggs "in the bowels of the ship
and it lives to propagate "and must find food for it's offspring. "In this case, the crew
members of the Nostromo "upon whom the young aliens
can feed in their eggs "until a new host comes
along prodding the eggs. "Then the life cycle
begins all over again." I know that it looks like
something is happening to Brett's body in this scene, but look what's happening to this spider when infected by a parasitoid wasp. It's appearance can change too. So in the original Alien, after all the cuts and the changes, the life cycle was a bit vague. There was no longer an ancient
with two sexes reproducing with each other via a third party, so Ridley Scott made them asexual and there was no egg
laying or cocoon making in the final film so
this is where we're at. A classic xenomorph would lay some eggs with a facehugger that
has an embryo inside. A facehugger is more
or less just an embryo delivery device and then that facehugger would find a human host
and then a chestburster would gestate inside that
host and then burst out and become a classic xenomorph which would then repeat the cycle. See? Not so bad. But that egg morphing scene
didn't just confuse fans, it confused a director too. According to an interview in 1996, James Cameron thought that
audiences wouldn't accept human bodies literally
transforming into eggs even though that's not what happened and that scene was cut anyway so Cameron had a chance to officially establish where the eggs came from. He didn't think that one
single xenomorph could possibly lay all the eggs that
we see in the first film and so sticking with the insect theme, he created the queen. Cameron took much of his
inspiration from termite queens which first find a mate
and then a place to rule and then they begin transforming
into egg laying machines. As the female becomes queen, he abdomen swells exponentially, eventually making Her Highness here, up to a hundred times
larger than her subjects and then she starts laying eggs. One egg every three seconds for 20 years. This can lead to 200,000,000
eggs laid in a lifetime. This would certainly solve
Cameron's egg problem even though it wasn't really
a problem in the first place. This is how many xenomorph
eggs would've been laid during just this scene. (egg squelches) Wait, should I, should
I put my face near it? Oh, I'm not a bad scientist, okay I won't. That wasn't Cameron's only change. According to interviews,
it was clear that Cameron interpreted the xenomorphs
as taking biological characteristics from
the hosts that they use which would lay the groundwork
for hybrids in future films. Hybrids, I should note, that
were against the original conception in Alien by
Executive Producer Ron Shusett. Adding everything that James
Cameron did, our mural morphs. When a classic xenomorph is born, if there is no queen around,
it will become a queen, start laying eggs and
then the whole process proceeds as Alien established
but if a xenomorph is born and there's already a queen, it will become a male drone. With the idea of alien
hybrids now floating around, director of Alien 3, David
Lynch decided to establish it. And as I've said in the previous episode, one way that a xenomorph embryo could take characteristics from it's
host is through horizontal gene transfer where cells
exchange, don't worry, exchange bits of DNA between them without, that works, without having to go through the whole sex and reproduction thing. They can exchange genes right away and express them and change the organism. But this seems a bit too nice. If a xenomorph embryo was actively taking DNA from it's host, it might work a bit like CRISPR. CRISPR stands for clustered
regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats
and it's a defense mechanism that bacteria use to destroy
the DNA of invading viruses. When a virus invades a bacteria, that bacteria starts cataloging
bits of the virus' DNA with it's own DNA and then
it sends out that catalog as single strand RNA molecules. Then enzymes in the cell
called CAS enzymes pick up these RNA molecules and start
floating around the cell. If they encounter any DNA
that matches their catalog, they will cut it, they will cut the DNA of the invading virus, inactivating it. We are already trying to
use this kind of molecular machinery to revolutionize medicine but a xenomorph embryo
could use more or less the same thing to revolutionize itself. Given the Alien 3 hybrids, let's update the board. Facehugger interaction with a
human produces a chestburster which produces a class
xenomorph which then leads to everything that we already know. But in Alien 3, it interacts
with a dog which bursts out and then becomes the runner
alien and while we're at it, let's also add Alien versus Predator and Alien versus Predator Requiem because if a facehugger
interacts with a Predator, it bursts out and becomes a Predalien. This, this is the life cycle so far. But while us nerds were
worrying about life cycle stuff, Director Ridley Scott was
worrying about something else. The Space Jockey. He wanted to know who that
big guy in the suit was, and so we arrive at Prometheus. In Prometheus, also according
to the same quote, boop. This quote here, boop, (laughs) we learn that the eggs, I'm losing it, we learn that the eggs aren't
natural, they're bio-weapons. If the eggs are bio-weapons, that means that they're
not natural animals anymore as O'Bannon first envisioned
and now we have a problem. Which came first, the
xenomorph or the egg? This is a chicken or the egg situation but in the chicken or the egg situation, the egg comes first. The first genetically true
chicken was hatched in an egg that had DNA that
combined from two chickens that were not yet
genetically true chickens. But aliens don't have parents,
so this doesn't really apply. Or do they? As I said in my first video, this is where the black goo comes in. The goo is a genetic
accelerant that takes whatever biology it can find and weaponizes it. But now I think more accurately, it takes biology and turns
it into the first stage of a xenomorph so that
it can reproduce itself like a facehugger or in
Prometheus where you see the goo infect a worm and it becomes a Hammerpede that face hugs a bad scientist. (sighs) Back to the board! Here is how the goo
interacts with everything in Prometheus and everything else. Okay, okay, okay. The goo, if it interacts with an Engineer and the Engineer has too much, he vaporizes and turns into
like a planet fertilizing goo. If it interacts with a human, if it's too much, it also causes death or it turns you into a zombie guy. If the goo interacts
with something like sperm which gets into Shaw, it
comes out as a Trilobite. The sperm is weaponized
which finds an Engineer, face hugs it, comes out
as, it chest bursts out but I didn't have space
and then it comes out as the Deacon alien but if it
infects maybe a native worm, it also turns it into a first stage, the Hammerpede vagina snake thing and then if that finds a human who's also a bad scientist,
it gets in his mouth and then it comes out
presumably as something. Okay, okay. All right, the last Alien film, except for Alien Resurrection because it doesn't really change any... Dang it! Dang it! In Alien Resurrection, the
military combines Ripley 8's DNA with the DNA of a queen
xenomorph embryo so... If you combine a queen
xenomorph's DNA with human DNA, it also gets a womb I guess
and then it doesn't have to lay eggs anymore, it
can just produce a gross human alien hybrid which
is the newborn, all right. All right, all right. The last Alien movie, Alien Covenant. In Alien Covenant, oh wait, spoiler alert. Turn back now if you don't
want to hear spoilers. Okay, in Alien Covenant we
see even more biological interaction with the goo. Specifically we see the
goo interact with some kind of native fungus to
produce a spore which would be the first stage of its life cycle and it drifts into some human's ear, eventually bursting out
and becoming the neomorph. But more importantly, in the
movie we see the android David messing around with the goo, these spores and what look like wasps just as the original Alien intended. How did I get that freeze frame? Don't worry about it. All in order to create
the classic face hug-- (facehugger screeches) Facehugger. In this way, David is
directing how the goo interacts with organisms and what DNA it has to work with through CRISPR like or horizontal gene
transfer like processes. David wants the chicken,
so how does he get the egg? Doctor Elizabeth Shaw. Through David's dialog
and even his drawings, it's implied, we don't have
the same level of evidence that we had for the previous movies, so it's implied that he is
using Dr. Shaw's physiology. Her egg cells. She would still have hundreds
even if she was infertile at her age to create a mutated
egg that he could place the facehugger that he created, in, and thus complete the life
cycle of the xenomorph. Time to complete the board! Okay, here we go. The goo can also interact
with fungus and produce spores that when they interact with humans, produce the neomorph. But the goo when you
have David's tinkering, Shaw's egg cells, spores and native wasps, can produce the classic
facehugger with an embryo inside, inside of an egg that will
interact with a human, chest burst out, only a human,
and come out as a classic xenomorph that then proceeds
as we've already established. Presumably a lot of these
stages would also go on to have their own queens if Aliens
still holds in this life cycle. But this is it, this
is the the definitive, conclusive, xenomorph
life cycle, probably. Maybe. Gaze, gaze upon it's beauty. I did this for you because-- (facehugger screeches) Because science. (sighs) (upbeat music) Woo! Make sure to follow me
on Twitter at Sci_Phile where you can suggest
ideas for future episodes and on Instagram where I'm now posting mini episodes like I did today. Also on Facebook. And if you want even more of my silliness, I'm now doing a show called ♫ Muskwatch with Dan Casey, my good friend, and it's very silly
and I suggest you watch if you want to and also if
you want even more space, I have a new show on Alpha
called The Space Program. It's kind of a like a combination of Cosmos and Mystery Science Theater. So check out Alpha,
check out Space Program and check out Muskwatch, check out all the other
stuff I just said, thanks. Okay, if all that works, even the parts where I'm speculating about the eggs and stuff, how did they, how did they get to LV-426? And why are there xenomorphs after they appear in Alien versus Predator? Huh? Ridley Scott me that. Woo, nailed it!
I liked his Wolverine's claws are too long video.
Interesting video, but I don't think many people watch these films to check for scientific facts. And I don't think the xenomorph's life cycle makes it hard to love these movies. In fact, it's their life cycle that makes them unique among other movie monsters and horror movies.
Can't wait for the next movie so he he has to do it all over again ;p