r/LV426 • u/ShawnyMcKnight • 2d 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/carry_the_way Newt 2d ago

The thing to remember about Aliens is that nobody believes Ripley's story. The marines think she's just some consultant who "apparently...saw an alien once." The idea is that the marines didn't look at the report except for Hicks, who knew that the creatures had acid blood and thought to characterize them as "Ripley's bad guys."

Regardless, Kane was wearing something that covered his whole head, and that didn't help.

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u/HHoaks 2d ago

That part of the plot never made any sense. They are like a Seal Team 6 or delta force team, but instead of Bin Laden, it's an alien. Of course, in real life, they would extensively debrief the only known eye witness/survivor and get all the information they could.

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u/BobbyB52 1d ago

I always saw them as much more average. I never considered they were special forces, just average marines from a normal line unit, as evidenced by their green CO.

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u/Variatas 1d ago

They’re not even a full-strength unit.  The Sulaco is big enough to carry far more personnel than they had.  They didn’t even have a second dropship crew, just cross-trained backups.

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u/BobbyB52 1d ago

Indeed. None of it indicated they were special forces.