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MediumGiantAnt (15)
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As for why they were terraforming lv426, remember that the events of Alien were 50 years in the past at that point. Everyone from W-Y who knew anything about it was probably dead from old age, or at least long-since retired. There might have been some secret files hidden away somewhere, but it's also very possible that 50 years ago they just covered it up, destroyed the evidence, and never talked about it again.
All Burke knows is that he sent some colonists to investigate the area and then he lost contact with the colony. He even explicitly says "Hey, I didn't even know if that ship really existed!" when talking to Ripley about why he came on the mission.
My point is that Burke didn't really have much of a plan other than to go along on the mission and see if the aliens were real and if there was some way he could benefit if it turned out they really existed. He didn't have any sort of big scheme to use the marines as test subjects, he was just making it all up as he went.
Step 1: trash some stupid little colony's transmitter
Step 2: wait for 10 marines to show up in a huge warship to investigate
Step 3: steal unattended ship
My favorite part was how at the end the crew was like "Oh, don't worry, we can fix this. Turning salamanders into people is totally no problem. That's, like, easily within our capabilities."
I actually found "The Good Shepherd" much more irritating, because it was terrible but took itself seriously. At least with this one it was more self consciously goofy.
No one at the Company except Burke even considered the possibility that there might really be aliens, and even he was just curious enough to go check on the off chance it might be true. Clearly, if the company really thought that there might be aliens they would have sent a team of company scientists and security people.
I think part of the problem is that the Sulaco is clearly a huge ship with a lot of extra room, an enormous cargo area you could play football in, enough crates that it looks like they must have enough equipment for a battalion, etc. (not to mention a whole extra drop ship that they apparently didn't bring another flight crew for?), which makes it seem weird that they have such a tiny number of people.
It would have worked better if they had made the Sulaco some kind of small fast-reaction scout ship that was cramped inside and only had room for a few marines (and no extra dropship).
It seemed like they couldn't decide if they wanted a slow-paced movie about character development or an action movie, so they tried to cram both in and did a poor job with both.
"People are gonna get bored listening to Brad Pitt's psyc eval monologues and it's still half an hour before the space monkey attack. Add some moon pirates!"
Arguably Bishop piloting the dropship counts as automation ;)
It didn't seem to really be crewed at all; the marines never interact with the ship in any way, they're just passengers.
I wonder what would have happened if there had been a hostile warship in orbit when they arrived? Would the marines have controlled the Sulaco during a battle? They certainly didn't seem like they would have known how to do that (they were basically grunts). Maybe they would have just pressed the ship's "fight that" button and let the computer do it?
I think it's interesting that the only character I can recall from the entire series that seems really, genuinely upset about being stuck in the delta quadrant is the angry dude from that "Good Shepherd" episode. He has a simmering outrage about the situation that seems very realistic and totally understandable, but the episode clearly intends for him to seem unreasonable and in need of being "fixed."
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