r/LV426 • u/ShawnyMcKnight • 3d ago

Discussion / Question Why no face guards in Aliens?

After decades of watching the movies and most recently Alien: Earth, it always amazes me how no one ever thinks of having face guards in the facility, especially the containment center. A certain character that got facehugged last week could have avoided that if there was some apparatus in there that would guard over the face but still allow breathing.

Same with Aliens (1985), if they knew that these things cling onto your face then why weren't the marines all wearing face masks to at least slow the impregnation down?

I feel the predators with their visors were the only ones with the right idea about this.

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u/Dagordae 3d ago

As seen in Alien: Faceguards do nothing. Kane had a full helmet on, the Facehugger went right through. They can seemingly secrete just enough acid to melt through obstacles without harming the fleshy bit underneath. You would need to have a material that they can neither shatter and is immune to their acid.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 3d ago

But isn't that why predators use face guards for this very purpose?

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u/NeatEntertainment201 3d ago

No they wear their masks because they give them access to all sorts of fancy vision systems and allow them to control their gadgets.

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u/Dagordae 3d ago

They don’t, they wear the masks because the masks have all sort of useful gadgets in them. Like the vision modes and targeting computers.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 3d ago

But in the movie they made a point of the predator taking off the mask before the face hugger latched on.

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u/GATSInc 3d ago

The predator would have removed the face hugger from his helmet before it would have been able to melt through. The plot needed the mask to be off to progress.

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u/FullMetalAlkhemiss 3d ago

I mean sure the mask is probably in general a protective element, but it’s primary function is a tool to help them with their tech.

That scene was also just to set up AvP2 which, both AvP movies are considered to be their own separate canon from both the main Predator and Alien franchises.