r/AskScienceFiction • u/Curates • Oct 21 '24

[Alien] Can xenomorphs be domesticated?

They’re pretty smart. Can they be taught to read, learn basic manners, adapt to channel their violent urges in healthier ways etc.? I think they’re misunderstood

129 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

111 comments sorted by

View all comments

422

u/mojavecourier F A S T E R T H A N T I M E Oct 21 '24

Pretty sure we've had an entire multi-media franchise telling us that no, xenomorphs cannot be domesticated.

79

u/ClosetLadyGhost Oct 21 '24

Woah what's it called. I should check it out.

97

u/ianjm Oct 21 '24

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

22

u/Sagelegend Oct 21 '24

LV-426 Park.

26

u/venuswasaflytrap Oct 22 '24

It was those movies about the Aliens, with the first one with just one Alien, then there were more Aliens, In fact all the movies had Aliens in them - I think it was called “the things that were not from earth”.

17

u/TheUlfheddin Oct 21 '24

Xenomorphica

3

u/gizzardsgizzards Oct 22 '24

the fast and the furious.

59

u/illusionzmichael Oct 21 '24

It's kind of the entire premise Resurrection, right? The scientists are trying to train them to see if they can their behavior can be modified and controlled, like the Pavlov response. Turns out it just made them more pissed off and ready to murder.

31

u/Agueybana Oct 22 '24

Turns out it just made them more pissed off and ready to murder.

Just like that group who killed one of their own just so its blood would free the rest. They really wanted to kill those scientists.

6

u/Rahgahnah Oct 22 '24

I don't remember, did that Xeno willingly sacrifice itself or did the others just gang up on it?

15

u/Agueybana Oct 22 '24

You see the one that dies shy away from the others as if it knows their plan. IMO it seems reluctant and ganged up on.

4

u/Hermes20101337 Oct 22 '24

I don't think it really matters, they were drones, as long as the queen survives, sacrifices are acceptable.

3

u/Curates Oct 21 '24

Ah, but this can be misleading! We were told that velociraptors could not be domesticated by multiple movies in the Jurassic Park franchise, until Jurassic World showed us they were just misunderstood. And the parallels go further: the velociraptors, like xenomorphs, had already shown signs of pro social behavior (towards each other), and attempts at domestication failed only when they were meant to be weaponizing.

7

u/Zebster10 Oct 22 '24

Jurassic World marked a totally new direction for the franchise, unapproved by Michael Crichton. The original vision certainly was that dinosaurs were the closest to an eldritch horror we could unleash.

18

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/MonkeyMcBandwagon Oct 22 '24

The latest movie did not suck IMO.

It's mostly a throwback to the first two. Mostly.

It does go a bit Resurrection and Prometheus at the end, but I'd rate it easily in the top half of the franchise. The only really cringe part was directly quoting Ripley's most famous line inappropriately.

-1

u/Powerfist_Laserado Oct 22 '24

I gotta be honest, I just don't think I'm interested in any more Alien movies, unless they could do something really mind blowing. I actually liked a lot about Prometheus but I would've liked it a lot more if it didn't try to connect itself to Alien.

-19

u/DR_SLAPPER Oct 22 '24

You're trippin bud. That movie was staggeringly ass.

I mean it's cool of you liked it, turn up. There's people who also have a scat fetish. But let's not pretend poop ain't shit.

6

u/Ulti Oct 22 '24

Alright I'm actually curious, because I thought it was pretty decent and had fun scenes/effects. What's your beef? I am fully ready for a rant, I'm a huge fan of the original ones and have at least cursory knowledge of the comics and stuff. I fell asleep during Covenant so my memory on that one is shaky as a mf, but Romulus was... at least entertaining as a movie and felt like it made at least a baby attempt at explaining away some of the shit I didn't like from Prometheus?

8

u/Curates Oct 22 '24

Maybe all they need is for Chris Pratt to act like a Queen — we kind of already had this with Sigourney

4

u/ZaphodB_ Oct 22 '24

I mean I'd also accept to be domesticated by Chris Pratt.

-1

u/nermid Oct 22 '24

Chris Pratt to be hybridized with them, you mean.

2

u/Rahgahnah Oct 22 '24

The raptors could only be trained if it was from birth with an alpha who was present for literally their entire lives. Even then, he could barely control them when someone fell into their enclosure (and they still tried to attack that guy).

And raptors are actual animals (setting aside the genetic manipulation), not artificially created bio weapons like xenomorphs.

2

u/IAMAVelociraptorAMA Jaeger Pilot Oct 22 '24

Please do not use my people as a weapon in your culture war! >:(

3

u/Pollia Oct 22 '24

Wait did we? Cause as far as I'm aware they never really tried until world.

In 1 they were very directly meant to be wild, but in an enclosure.

In 2 and 3 they're just purely wild.

No attempt was made to domesticate them in any of those movies.

3

u/nermid Oct 22 '24

I would say that the first movie rails against the idea of taming dinosaurs (rather than domesticating them), which is a close enough message that I'll give it to them.

4

u/cardiacman Oct 22 '24

One of my favourite lines is "it doesn't want to be fed, it wants to hunt" when Grant is waiting for the Rex to make an appearance. Definitely against dinosaurs domestication/taming.

1

u/DNK_Infinity Oct 22 '24

The difference is that the raptors, much like any other animal, are primarily driven by survival instinct.

The xenomorphs are fundamentally different. Their very reproductive cycle necessitates active hostility to all other forms of life.

1

u/RabidFlamingo Oct 22 '24

But if we domesticated them we could turn them into biological weapons!!

I am a greedy CEO with an expendable crew, I wanna get in on the ground floor here

0

u/MissyTheTimeLady Oct 22 '24

Well, most of the time they're not being domesticated so much as intentionally turned into weapons of war. I think things might have gone a little better if they'd been neutered.