Kill Counts

One of the things I've always liked about the horror genre in general is the fact that the characters tend to be fragile.  Even individuals who are presented as being tough can easily be one bullet, blade or bomb blast away from injury and death.  It naturally creates an atmosphere of apprehension and suspense, especially whenever something physically dangerous is happening.  On the other hand a fair amount of action movies fall on the side of invincible heroes or at least a heavy layer of plot armor for the main cast.  After the release of the third-person shooter Aliens: Fireteam Elite, I decided to go back and re-watch the 1986 film "Aliens."  My reasons were two-fold.  First, I was interested in seeing where exactly the movie landed in terms of genre conventions.  In other words, was it more action than horror or vise versa?  The second motivating factor was wanting to confirm a suspicion I had since viewing the earliest gameplay footage of Fireteam Elite - namely, were the titular aliens dumber than I remembered?  Let's look at the first thing first, shall we?  

To answer the question, "is 'Aliens' an action movie or a horror movie?" we should check the rating..."R"...while fairly tame by modern standards "Aliens" does have some pretty gory bits, as well as more than a couple disturbing scenes and images.  It's certainly possible to make a good PG rated horror film, but the instances tend to be few, and the number of successes fewer still.  Conversely, action movies can be bloodless or extremely grewsome depending on who they're trying to market to.  Either way though the rating isn't a sure signifier.  So, how about the body count?  Horror movies tend to have a lot, but so do action movies.  For the film, it's easy; of the 11 marines sent in only one - corporal Hicks - survives (and even he is badly injured).  Those kind of losses are more in line with a horror film than an action movie.  However, that's really only half the picture.  What about the "bad guys"...in horror movies, it's pretty common for there to be only one antagonistic threat: Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, Sadako, the creature from...wherever.  The original "Alien" certainly falls into this category but, as it says right in the title, "Aliens" - plural - does not.  So how many xenomorphs are there?  

In the script and the director's cut of the film it's revealed that there are 158 colonists on LV-426.  A medical report read by Bishop mentions one dying in surgery and, obviously, Newt escaped...therefore the maximum number of people that could have been used as hosts to breed more aliens is 156.  The conversion rate though is a tricky percentage to pin down.  Dark Horse made a comic about the fate of Hadley's Hope, and more recently a novel entitled "River of Pain" was released covering the same territory.  Unfortunately, these accounts offer conflicting information in many places, and as such I tend to prefer to skew toward the original sources.  Ripley claims in a conversion with Bishop that there are "...at least a hundred" while the novelization by Alan Dean Foster proposes a two-thirds conversion rate.  So, assuming there are around a hundred adult xenomorphs in total, how many are killed over the course of the film?

Based on what can be seen and heard in the footage itself at least 38 warrior/drone aliens are killed.  Amusingly, it is Pvt. Vasquez who hold the highest count at eleven (two with her smart gun, three by grenade launcher, five via pulse rifle and one point-blank using a pistol), while Ripley comes in second place with nine (one crushed under the wheels of the APC and eight more by pulse rifle fire).  Of course, the thirty-eight kill count assumes that the sentry gun sequence (absent from the original theatrical cut) is included in the final tally.  At least six xenomorphs are shredded by the second set of turrets, but the first set weren't placed near the CCTV camera system and as such blast away unobserved.  It's in no small part due to this scene that I've seen others suggest figures as high as twice the amount of my relatively conservative estimates.  Either way, we're talking less than one-hundred which I find kind of hilarious considering players of Fireteam Elite will rack up kill scores far in excess of that before finishing the first of the twelve missions found in the base game.  This brings me to the other reason I decided to watch "Aliens" again.

The three person Fireteam in the game is able to mow down hordes of xenomorphs due to tactics (or lack there of...).  In the game the aliens tend to perform head-on charges down corridors or open spaces at the Colonial Marines producing a shooting gallery effect which might be fun, but doesn't really jive with how I remembered the movie.  Sure enough, upon review I can confirm there are no instances of the xenomorphs employing these World War 1 style assaults in any of the mainline films.  In "Aliens," the aliens utilize ambushes and flanking attacks almost exclusively.  An interesting little detail that also surprised me was during the battle in Operations.  After having their infiltration attempt partially foiled by motion trackers, the xenomorphs begin dropping into the room from the celling near to where the marines are located.  Initially, they attempt to vault over obstructions in order to get at their targets, but once everyone starts to open fire they take cover behind consoles and panels located in the room.  Hudson and, soon after, Hicks then take positions on top of a crate in an attempt to get better firing angles.  However, several of the aliens try to flank which forces the marines to withdraw toward the corridor leading to Medical.  Even so, a xenomorph that had gained access to the sub-flooring (probably from within the room) seizes and drags away Hudson.  Side note: the capture of Hudson, Dietrich, Sgt. Apone and Burke mean that the hive could have potentially recovered four of it's losses provided there had been sufficient time available. 

One more thing, I'd like to point out is the effect gunfire has on the xenos.  Pulse rifles definitely chew them up, but higher caliber smart guns and sentry turrets actually blow them to pieces.  Conversely, the lower caliber pistol shots (such as those made by Lt. Gorman in the airducts) can be seen ricocheting off the front part of an alien's domed head.  It's a nice bit of careful consideration that shows James Cameron and the film crew were paying attention to detail.  Sadly, it didn't carry over to the bullet-sponge xenomorphs in Fireteam Elite.  I guess it was decided to give them large amounts of health in order to compensate for their lack of brain power.  I get that good A.I. is hard to program, but proper xenomorph attack patterns have been done before for the most part with "stalker" enemy types in The Last of Us and Dead Space.

So, to conclude my findings, "Aliens" definitely falls into action horror territory with a helping of sci-fi to boot.  I feel calling it a pure action movie is unfair and probably has something to do with horror purists not wanting to share the label with any other genre.  Having stated that, Aliens: Fireteam Elite does feel like an action game with little to no emphasis on the scarier aspects of the IP.  In order to meet the requirements of a paint-by-the-numbers shooter the xenomorphs overall intelligence and competence took a major nosedive causing Colonial Marine kill counts to skyrocket.  Personally, I would have preferred something closer to the film it was based on which (ironically) might have lead to innovate game design reminiscent of GTFO.  Given the lack of quality in most officially licensed Aliens-themed video games though, I think the developers realized that competently done was all they needed to clear that low bar.  I also suspect that once the initial excitement dies down there will be some pushback, but...hey...if you happen to be someone who is enjoying the game, don't let me ruin your fun.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going over to corner to be an grumpy, old, curmudgeon.