Are the Aliens intelligent?

[Dave]

Originally posted by MetalAlien
Well look the problem is I don't have a quote from Ridley saying they were part machine.

I now have Alien on DVD and in the Ridley Scott commentary he makes several interesting remarks about how he viewed the alien.

Firstly, he says that the Titles were deliberately made hieroglyphic-like to make the aliens seem 'sophisticated'. Sophisticated means clever in my dictionary.

He certainly saw the alien as bio-mechanical in nature, he says this several times in fact.

He saw the derelict spaceship as an egg transporter. The "jockey-pilot" was not necessarily from the same race as the aliens, or an innocent spacefarer attacked by aliens, but could have been taking the eggs as bio-mechanical weapons to some other world, when one accidently escaped.

He says that the Company would have wanted the alien as a bio-mechanical weapon itself. Companies of the future having become so powerful that they require their own armies (something he explored further in BladeRunner.)

Finally, he says that the reason the alien looks humanoid is because it gestated inside Kane. If it had attacked Jones the cat first, then it would have looked feline. He uses the analogy of insects that lay their eggs within other insects.

[MetalAlien]

Even in the horrid Alien ressurection one of the things they hope to gain from the Alien was "new alloys". As far as the Jockey being the same race, I'm just going by looks. Giger made them both and everything giger does looks like it's from the same planet. He could draw a rock and it'd have bones all over it.

I don't think anyone will have their minds changed by an internet debate.