ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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The Alien vs Predator franchise is a fun concept, and the idea of pitting these two popular aliens against each other has enjoyed a lot of attention from both Hollywood and sci-fi fandom.







But there's one more famous monster that would like a shot at the title, a serious contender who deserves his turn in the ring.

I'm referring, of course, to The Thing.

I started wondering about the various strengths, weaknesses, and general characteristics of these three classic creatures, and what those characteristic might mean it they tried to do things to each other that they've done so well to the poor humans in their movies!

I found two YouTube videos that deal with the idea of Alien versus the Thing, but they were both boring and talky, so I didn't even get through them. Besides, I wanted to do my own analysis of the concepts and present them for you guys to enjoy. And I wanted all the ideas to be my own, with nothing borrow from somebody else.

That said, here's a series of interesting questions, along with the answers I came up with.
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Question#1: Could the Thing (1982/2011) assimilate the Alien?

I don't think so, for the following reasons.

The Thing assimilates life forms by injecting its own cells into its victims, which then turn the person or animal into a duplicate of the original. In the process, the Thing absorbs the life form's knowledge and behavior patterns. We saw it do this to both people and dogs. The people seemed perfectly normal, and the dogs were just as friendly as Lassie!

But the Alien is a hard-shelled creature with acid for blood. The Thing probably couldn't convert its own invading cells into the material the Alien's body is made of, and the acid inside the Alien would destroy the Thing's cells even if they were successfully injected.

I'm less certain, however, that the Thing couldn't assimilate a facehugger. Even though it, too, has acid for blood, it's made of soft tissue that the Thing might be able to replicate, and if the copied cells were perfect, they wouldn't be harmed by the acid!

I just know which way to go on that one . . .




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Question #2: Could a facehugger latch onto a Thing-convert human and lay an egg in its stomach?





Again, I don't think so.

We've all seen what the Thing-People do the instant they're attacked or discovered to be Fake Folks. Remember the "blood test" scene. When the blood sample screeched and leaped right out of the petri dish, the guy who provided the sample knew the humans were onto him, and he went plum postal by turning into this!





In an earlier scene, the doctor tried to use a defibrillator on a man whose heart he thought had stopped, but the chest caved in and bit off the doctor's arms. The "man" disconnected its own head to create this monstrosity so it could get away from the threat!





I'm not sure how the hideous beast below managed to fit inside the assimilated man's chest, but it exploded upward from the cavity and clung to the ceiling, another example of a swift response to a threat.








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Question 3#: Could the Thing assimilate a Predator?





I'm pretty sure it could.

Unlike the Aliens, the Predators are flesh and blood, so the Thing's cells could convert the Predator's cells and take over the Ugly Hunter from Another World.

However, the Predators did have sensory-enhancing devices in their helmets, so they might be able just look at a bogus Predator and tell right away if it was real or if if was Memorex.

As far a Thing-Predator's behavior is concerned, I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't be able to act just like one of the normal fellas, sitting around the campfire, drinking beer, cleaning their weapons, and polishing their trophy skulls.




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Question 4#: Could the Thing assimilate the Thing from Another World?





Boy, THERE'S wacky idea, huh?

And the surprising answer is . . . no!

The Original Thing wasn't composed of animal cells, just "vegetable matter", as Dr. Carrington put it.





But wait a minute! The Original Thing fed on blood (human blood if he could get it, sled dog blood in a pinch), so some aspects of its physiology might have been more "animal" than "vegetable". However, we should remember that in that same scene the scientist talk about terrestrial plants that capture animals and insects and feed on them.





So, even though I lean towards the idea that the Carpenter Thing couldn't assimilate the Original Thing, we're talking about two wildly imaginative sci-fi creatures, so the question is definitely open for debate.
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Question #5: Could an Alien put a facehugger on a Predator and lay an egg?

Well, this one is easy, because we know the Aliens can do this. We saw it happen at the end of AVP.
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Bonus Question: If the Thing was able to assimilate a facehugger and it attached itself to a human victim, would the egg it laid be a Thing/Alien hybrid that could assimilate the human victim and allow the chestburster to break out WITHOUT killing the Thing-human?




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There you have it, folks. If you think of any variations I missed, please share them with us.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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A few more questions about these marvelous monsters and their unique characteristics.
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Question #6: If the Thing assimilates two men, one who's a genius and one who's an idiot, will the two men have the same intelligence level after the assimilation?

My best guess is, no in both cases.

Despite the fact that an assimilated human ends up with all the memories and knowledge of the victim, I don't think the alien copy simply keeps the victim's brain. The body may appear identical to the victim prior to assimilation, but we know from the movie that an assimilated person's internal biology is different in ways both large and small.

The blood, for example, appears perfectly normal, but it acts like a separate entity, complete with the ability to leap out of a Petri dish and ooze across the floor!

And in the medical center scene, the head that detached and fell onto the floor suddenly sprouted spider legs and eyes on long stalks! Obviously the poor man's brain was no longer occupying the man's skull.

Apparently the assimilated humans have a non-human internal physiology, so the memories and the knowledge the aliens acquire from their victims are stored in some manner specific to the alien's physical makeup.

That, of course, means that both the genius and the moron no long have the intelligence level they had while they were human.
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Question #7: If a Predator is assimilated and then discovered by the other Predators, what would they do if the imposter escaped and was hiding out in a jungle environment on some primeval planet?

Presto! A great idea for a spin-off of The Thing, starring a cast of humans and Predators who team up to find the escaped Thing, for the sake of both their races!

Think of this as a version of Predators (2018), but instead of a Predator game preserve with humans as the prey, we have an "alliance of necessity", in which the Predators ask a group of humans to help them track down and kill a Predator-Thing before this determined creature can multiply on the jungle planet and spread to the Predator populace on the home planet.







And why, you may ask, would the big bad Predators need the help of us wimpy humans?

Two reasons.

The first reason is that we've encountered these aliens twice before and we put up a pretty good fight both times. This assumes, of course, that Kurt Russel and Keith David survived in the 1982 movie, and they warned the world about the dangers which the Thing posed.

We know from Predator 1 and 2 that the Predators have been here for years and they know a lot about us, so they would find out that we've encountered the Thing aliens before.

So, when the Predators discover they have a serious "Thing problem" that might result in the extinction of their race, they assemble a team of hunters to track down the escaped Predator-Thing on an alien planet, which the Predators maintain as a game preserve (lots of dangerous prey animals . . . including dinosaur-like creatures).

~ Click on the beautiful image below to enjoy a larger version.







The second reason the Predators need our help is because they come up with the clever idea to take along a team of humans who are experts on the subject of the "Thing threat" to help them and who can't be suspected of being "assimilated Predators" . . . because they're obviously human!

The Predators are aware of the fact that during the hunt on the jungle planet, the Predator-Thing won't be trying to kill them, it will trying to assimilate them one by one (in secret, as always) so it can return to the Predator home planet disguised as the team of hunters, who would report that the Thing has been killed . . . and then these Predator-Things would assimilate the entire Predator race!







In addition to assisting with the hunt, the Predator team will use the humans to insure that no assimilated Predators go undetected and cause the assimilation of the others! To do this, they provide the humans with sensory-enhancing equipment like their own, which allows them to detect both Predator-Things and human-Things.







What the humans don't know is that the Predators plan to kill all the humans before they leave the planet, just to make sure that no assimilated members of the team (humans or otherwise) leave the jungle planet.

That's my idea for new movie about the Predators and the Thing. Pretty good, huh?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

Have you seen The Predator (2018)? It neatly sets up your idea with a potential plot of Predators and humans against ALIEN Xenomprphs! Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Predator_(film) ) says that the producers have set-up TWO sequels!
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Bud Brewster]

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No, I haven't. I read the Wikipedia synopsis and the reviews for it, and frankly I'm not too tempted. I like my idea better . . . but I'm prejudiced, of course.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)