Saturday, June 14, 2008

Alien VS Predators

I recently watched Aliens versus Predator (the first one). This was not the first time I watched it. It is not that good a movie, I knew that prior to watching it the first time. For some strange reason though I sometimes feel like watching movies that I know are bad. There is a lot I can say about this movie. I could mention continuity errors, stupid stuff in the movie, or the poor acting but I don't really feel like writing about that. The basic premise for the movie wasn't that bad though. Predators using Earth as a staging ground to hunt aliens for sport. That made lots of sense Predators like hunting dangerous prey. Aliens are dangerous prey. It's too bad they didn't do a better job making the movie. I'm probably going to see it's sequel eventually but I'm not expecting much from it.

A few thoughts brought on by the movie:

1. Pyramid buried under Antarctica ice why mix of Egyptian, Aztec, and (not sure but) pre-Cambodian. This didn't make sense to me the Aztec people even if you include the migration period are simply not old enough - started moving into the area that is now Mexico in 600 AD. If it was me I would have used Egyptian, Mayan (region inhabited by them had people as early as 10000 BC but they didn't start building pyramid like structures until around 1000 BC) and Asian (probably Chinese since there were Pyramid like structures there for example the first emperor of China's tomb is a Pyramid
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/firstemperor4a.html). Though Japanese would work as well since there have been pyramid structures found underwater off the coast of Japan that date around 8000 BC http://www.morien-institute.org/yonaguni_schoch1.html, http://www.timstouse.com/EarthHistory/Lemuria/japanpyramids.htm.

2. I do like that Antarctica was the chosen place for the pyramid since there is some small amount of data that shows that it maybe possible that a pre-historic civilization may possibly have been there (not much though and mostly hypotheses).
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/378/16465_.html

3. I don't know if many others noticed it but at one point in the movie it mentions that the Aztec calender was metric (based on 10), in real life it is vigesimal (based on 20) with twenty days in 18 "months". In addition to that the guy figured that the pyramid would reconfigure itself every 10 minutes because the Aztecs supposedly used base 10. Yet did not take into account that our 60 seconds in a minute is not base 10.

4. The end of the movie had a few things that really made no sense what so ever. First the girl running outside in just a tee-shirt in Antarctica the coldest place on the planet and not shivering. The predators used their technology to see the alien spawns inside humans during the movie but do not think to check the dead predator they bring on the ship with them for alien spawns. Did the girl even have a way to get back to civilization without freezing to death? The people who built the whaling station (which I'm not sure but don't think there were any in Antarctica as far back as October 1904) built the whaling station on ice that close to the edge and it didn't melt and fall in.

5. It is mentioned a few times that it is October during the movie and yet it was dark all the time. In the southern hemisphere that would make it summer time so there would be day light.

6. The Alien blood is highly acidic. The Alien at the end of the movie was injured meaning blood would flow. The Alien was dragged underwater. Strong acids when immersed in water have a tendency to heat up since there is a acid-base reaction. So it is likely that the Alien at the end of the movie would be boiling away because the blood would react with the water.

7. What would happen if an injured Alien was in an environment surrounded by base chemicals or if someone threw a base chemical onto the wounded alien?

8. The alien species sort of reminds me of Phragmites which are a reed like plant that excludes gallic acid from its roots. The acid destroys tubulin (a structural protein) of neighboring plants.

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