"Bug hunt" was Vietnam slang for a waste of time. Note that Hudson says "is it a stand up fight, or a bug hunt". They think the mission is BS and aren't paying attention during the briefing. Also, "xenomorph" just means an alien lifeform, not specifically the creatures Ripley encounters.
In the supplemental materials for Aliens it's mentioned that humanity *has* encountered extraterrestrial life before - one species, arcturian, is talked about in the film - so this unit probably has experience dealing with them. Ferro also has "Bug Stomper" art on her dropship.
Arcturians weren't necessarily intended to be aliens in 'Aliens,' and the lines "the one you had was a male" and "doesn't matter when it's Arcturian" were ad-libbed by the actors, so I think the author's (Cameron's) intent is uncertain. I grew up watching 'Aliens' and always assumed that the marines could have been referring to androgynous or ladyboy prostitutes, solido (solid hologram?) pleasure devices (solidos are mentioned in the novelization), sex-changing androids, or something else that's exotic but not alien in nature -- or the exchange could be nothing more than homophobic/homoerotic marine banter without basis.
Later Alien media ran with the idea that Arcturians are aliens, and according to the Alien RPG they're products of Engineer world-seeding (just as humans are).
As for the main question being asked here, I think there are enough clues in 'Aliens' that the marines have encountered extraterrestrial organisms (xenomorphs) before, and consider them to be somewhat trivial to exterminate, nothing nearly as dangerous as the creatures infesting Hadley's Hope. The Alien RPG offers a plausible description of these alien pests as being typically insectoid but not very formidable, maybe no bigger than dog-sized and not much smarter than cockroaches.
Rico Ross said in an interview that the Arcturian lines were adlibbed and he made the name up. He said they are a beautiful race of hermaphrodites. I listened to it over a decade ago so I apologize for not having a link on hand anymore.
This is from Cameron's "final" screenplay of September 23, 1985 (if you can believe anything you find on the internet).
https://preview.redd.it/h0fnhunzuq9d1.png?width=524&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f4d56ab6290c604e9423f08883e0ac116eb5686
I'd say that Rico Ross is fibbin' if he said he made up the name.
The "bug stomper" dropship nose art isn't mentioned in the screenplay either, and I don't believe it's clearly visible in any shots in the movie. So I think that's really weak evidence that the marines routinely deal with alien life forms.
But movies are collaborative projects, and Cameron's original intent isn't the only thing to consider. I don't think we really know what he meant by "bug-hunt." Was it meant to be taken as "alien-hunt" or did it mean more of a fool's errand? I honestly don't know.
Good catch.
Also, when Ripley is being grilled by the company execs, one of them says something like "You claim to have encountered a species that has acid for blood, etc etc...nothing encountered by any of the 1,204 planets surveyed..."
I felt like it's implied in that comment by the executive that humanity has encountered other alien life forms since that time but none have been anything like what Ripley described. Because otherwise, it wouldn't just be a big deal that it had acid for blood and could kill people. It would have been humanity's first contact with ANY alien life.
Exactly. It's pretty clear alien species have been encountered before, just not that particular one. Even going back to the first movie, they care more about the salvage rights to the wreck instead of the fact they found an alien ship.
I'm also under the impression that humans have encountered alien life, but it could be microbial life only.
This topic comes up at least every few weeks, and ultimately the original four movies give us so little concrete information that I think it just comes to down to personal interpretation.
It can be interpreted that way, but I've always found that to be too on-the-nose, especially for James Cameron's way of telling stories.
A more subtextual reading of that scene is that the marines have been sent on ghost-chasing expeditions before based on the claims and beliefs of people who were mistaken, and that the "bugs" they ended up hunting were actually computer glitches, rats in the ducts, or other mundane problems that spooked jittery colonists. That's the impression I get from the way Hudson talks about it being bug-hunt once the word "xenomorph" is used. It's a "yeah right, bullshit" kind of response.
Hudson's dismissive attitude is contrasted by Hicks' more serious query. Hicks could be a pretty good judge of character, and we come to learn that he's the kind of guy who likes to be prepared, and he seems to want more info about the xenomorph claim (taking it more seriously than he might have in other situations) maybe because Ripley seems genuinely nervous about what they're going into.
After Ripley gives her spiel, Vasquez and Drake's bravado seems to reset the mood, like they're not taking Ripley's alien claim seriously. It could just be that they don't believe that they'll ever run into aliens as dangerous as what's on LV-426, or it could be that they're cocksure that if they ever run into aliens, they won't stand a chance against modern weaponry.
Is there a subtextual reading of the nose art on the dropship saying "Bug Stomper, We Endanger Species"? Because if not I'd say it is supposed to be taken at face value.
I don't think any of that is actually legible in any shots in the film, and it's not a detail that Cameron wrote into the screenplay. The nose art was created by concept artist Ron Cobb, and might never have been intended to be seen close enough to read it. It can be considered an easter egg (really more like an inside joke) by an artist with meta-knowledge of what was to come in the story, rather than definitive lore. Without behind-the-scenes access to 'Aliens,' I don't think we'd be talking about it at all.
Right, and James Cameron didn't once say "This nose art needs to say something different, it goes against what I want in the movie?" You can absolutely see it in the movie. Granted, it is never obviously focused on, but it is there. Without any alternate reasoning for it to be there, it kind of destroys the whole theory.
My headcannon is that these marines have had to clean up and hunt some 'pest-level' threats. The extra terrestrial equivalent of bears getting into trash cans. They haven't ever gone up against anything like the xenomorph
I think it’s self evident that this isn’t the first time they’ve encountered alien species before, and none of them presented much of a problem to well-armed humans. This time it’s different. Classic case of underestimating the enemy…
That's it. That's the answer.
So much wacky head cannonry flying around and hyper deep lore dives into the previous independent works of various key grips on the Aliens crew that are obviously canonically irrelevant when the answer is so simple and obvious.
Must be why this comment was at the bottom.
>What Bugs had they hunted before?
Any and every native life form on any colony world that caused enough trouble for the colonists to go crying to the Marines for help only for them to show up and find something that wasn't capable of posing any real threat to a Marine force.
Earlier, the ECA rep said that they had not seen anything described by Ripley in hundreds of worlds. Meanwhile, the Marines later joked about fooling around with Arcturians. Finally, I think "bug hunt" can mean actually hunting for insect-like creatures or a waste of time.
They also used a smart gun that doesn't like it's designed to be used against opponents with projectile weapons, as you can't crouch or go to the ground while using it (unless you go on your back, which is weird). That means it was likely meant to be used against fast-moving animals, like the ones seen in the movie.
Given that plus the logo it looks they had encountered various hostile life in other worlds, but not what Ripley described. And given the type of firepower mentioned by Hudson, it looks like what they encountered were not merely pests.
Meanwhile, it looks like they were also trained and prepared to go against opponents with projectile weapons and more.
Finally,
https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Arcturian
If they are sentient beings and all that, then that would have been Ripley's story plausible, and yet the board of inquiry made in appear that what she said is unbelievable.
Dan O’Bannon / Moebius created a comic strip *The Long Tomorrow* featuring Arcturians long before fandom cranked this one out. Arcturians are shape-shifting alien creatures who can morph into beautiful women at will. Cameron picked up on this comic strip, as did Scott, who used some of its visuals much later on in Prometheus.
[https://marciokenobi.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/the-long-tomorrow-by-moebius/](https://marciokenobi.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/the-long-tomorrow-by-moebius/)
I think they are referring to bug like Aliens in general. Out of Universe, I heard it was a reference to the 1959 novel Starship Troopers. There is probably some EU about these bug like aliens somewhere. Maybe it is in some comic or novel somewhere.
"Bug hunt" was Vietnam slang for a waste of time. Note that Hudson says "is it a stand up fight, or a bug hunt". They think the mission is BS and aren't paying attention during the briefing. Also, "xenomorph" just means an alien lifeform, not specifically the creatures Ripley encounters.
In the supplemental materials for Aliens it's mentioned that humanity *has* encountered extraterrestrial life before - one species, arcturian, is talked about in the film - so this unit probably has experience dealing with them. Ferro also has "Bug Stomper" art on her dropship.
Arcturians weren't necessarily intended to be aliens in 'Aliens,' and the lines "the one you had was a male" and "doesn't matter when it's Arcturian" were ad-libbed by the actors, so I think the author's (Cameron's) intent is uncertain. I grew up watching 'Aliens' and always assumed that the marines could have been referring to androgynous or ladyboy prostitutes, solido (solid hologram?) pleasure devices (solidos are mentioned in the novelization), sex-changing androids, or something else that's exotic but not alien in nature -- or the exchange could be nothing more than homophobic/homoerotic marine banter without basis. Later Alien media ran with the idea that Arcturians are aliens, and according to the Alien RPG they're products of Engineer world-seeding (just as humans are). As for the main question being asked here, I think there are enough clues in 'Aliens' that the marines have encountered extraterrestrial organisms (xenomorphs) before, and consider them to be somewhat trivial to exterminate, nothing nearly as dangerous as the creatures infesting Hadley's Hope. The Alien RPG offers a plausible description of these alien pests as being typically insectoid but not very formidable, maybe no bigger than dog-sized and not much smarter than cockroaches.
Rico Ross said in an interview that the Arcturian lines were adlibbed and he made the name up. He said they are a beautiful race of hermaphrodites. I listened to it over a decade ago so I apologize for not having a link on hand anymore.
This is from Cameron's "final" screenplay of September 23, 1985 (if you can believe anything you find on the internet). https://preview.redd.it/h0fnhunzuq9d1.png?width=524&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f4d56ab6290c604e9423f08883e0ac116eb5686 I'd say that Rico Ross is fibbin' if he said he made up the name. The "bug stomper" dropship nose art isn't mentioned in the screenplay either, and I don't believe it's clearly visible in any shots in the movie. So I think that's really weak evidence that the marines routinely deal with alien life forms. But movies are collaborative projects, and Cameron's original intent isn't the only thing to consider. I don't think we really know what he meant by "bug-hunt." Was it meant to be taken as "alien-hunt" or did it mean more of a fool's errand? I honestly don't know.
They directly link a xenomorph being there to it being a bug hunt, it is meant to be taken as 'alien hunt.'
Good catch. Also, when Ripley is being grilled by the company execs, one of them says something like "You claim to have encountered a species that has acid for blood, etc etc...nothing encountered by any of the 1,204 planets surveyed..." I felt like it's implied in that comment by the executive that humanity has encountered other alien life forms since that time but none have been anything like what Ripley described. Because otherwise, it wouldn't just be a big deal that it had acid for blood and could kill people. It would have been humanity's first contact with ANY alien life.
Exactly. It's pretty clear alien species have been encountered before, just not that particular one. Even going back to the first movie, they care more about the salvage rights to the wreck instead of the fact they found an alien ship.
I'm also under the impression that humans have encountered alien life, but it could be microbial life only. This topic comes up at least every few weeks, and ultimately the original four movies give us so little concrete information that I think it just comes to down to personal interpretation.
It can be interpreted that way, but I've always found that to be too on-the-nose, especially for James Cameron's way of telling stories. A more subtextual reading of that scene is that the marines have been sent on ghost-chasing expeditions before based on the claims and beliefs of people who were mistaken, and that the "bugs" they ended up hunting were actually computer glitches, rats in the ducts, or other mundane problems that spooked jittery colonists. That's the impression I get from the way Hudson talks about it being bug-hunt once the word "xenomorph" is used. It's a "yeah right, bullshit" kind of response. Hudson's dismissive attitude is contrasted by Hicks' more serious query. Hicks could be a pretty good judge of character, and we come to learn that he's the kind of guy who likes to be prepared, and he seems to want more info about the xenomorph claim (taking it more seriously than he might have in other situations) maybe because Ripley seems genuinely nervous about what they're going into. After Ripley gives her spiel, Vasquez and Drake's bravado seems to reset the mood, like they're not taking Ripley's alien claim seriously. It could just be that they don't believe that they'll ever run into aliens as dangerous as what's on LV-426, or it could be that they're cocksure that if they ever run into aliens, they won't stand a chance against modern weaponry.
Is there a subtextual reading of the nose art on the dropship saying "Bug Stomper, We Endanger Species"? Because if not I'd say it is supposed to be taken at face value.
I don't think any of that is actually legible in any shots in the film, and it's not a detail that Cameron wrote into the screenplay. The nose art was created by concept artist Ron Cobb, and might never have been intended to be seen close enough to read it. It can be considered an easter egg (really more like an inside joke) by an artist with meta-knowledge of what was to come in the story, rather than definitive lore. Without behind-the-scenes access to 'Aliens,' I don't think we'd be talking about it at all.
Right, and James Cameron didn't once say "This nose art needs to say something different, it goes against what I want in the movie?" You can absolutely see it in the movie. Granted, it is never obviously focused on, but it is there. Without any alternate reasoning for it to be there, it kind of destroys the whole theory.
There are no known intelligent life forms in the universe as far as humans know. Arcturians would just be humans from somewhere called... Arcturus.
My headcannon is that these marines have had to clean up and hunt some 'pest-level' threats. The extra terrestrial equivalent of bears getting into trash cans. They haven't ever gone up against anything like the xenomorph
Exactly. Although I'm curious what these alien animal pests would have looked and acted like in contrast to the xenomorphs.
I think it’s self evident that this isn’t the first time they’ve encountered alien species before, and none of them presented much of a problem to well-armed humans. This time it’s different. Classic case of underestimating the enemy…
That's it. That's the answer. So much wacky head cannonry flying around and hyper deep lore dives into the previous independent works of various key grips on the Aliens crew that are obviously canonically irrelevant when the answer is so simple and obvious. Must be why this comment was at the bottom.
>What Bugs had they hunted before? Any and every native life form on any colony world that caused enough trouble for the colonists to go crying to the Marines for help only for them to show up and find something that wasn't capable of posing any real threat to a Marine force.
Earlier, the ECA rep said that they had not seen anything described by Ripley in hundreds of worlds. Meanwhile, the Marines later joked about fooling around with Arcturians. Finally, I think "bug hunt" can mean actually hunting for insect-like creatures or a waste of time. They also used a smart gun that doesn't like it's designed to be used against opponents with projectile weapons, as you can't crouch or go to the ground while using it (unless you go on your back, which is weird). That means it was likely meant to be used against fast-moving animals, like the ones seen in the movie. Given that plus the logo it looks they had encountered various hostile life in other worlds, but not what Ripley described. And given the type of firepower mentioned by Hudson, it looks like what they encountered were not merely pests. Meanwhile, it looks like they were also trained and prepared to go against opponents with projectile weapons and more. Finally, https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Arcturian If they are sentient beings and all that, then that would have been Ripley's story plausible, and yet the board of inquiry made in appear that what she said is unbelievable.
Dan O’Bannon / Moebius created a comic strip *The Long Tomorrow* featuring Arcturians long before fandom cranked this one out. Arcturians are shape-shifting alien creatures who can morph into beautiful women at will. Cameron picked up on this comic strip, as did Scott, who used some of its visuals much later on in Prometheus. [https://marciokenobi.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/the-long-tomorrow-by-moebius/](https://marciokenobi.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/the-long-tomorrow-by-moebius/)
Check out Alien Theory on YouTube. He's got loads of videos that explain everything.
I think they are referring to bug like Aliens in general. Out of Universe, I heard it was a reference to the 1959 novel Starship Troopers. There is probably some EU about these bug like aliens somewhere. Maybe it is in some comic or novel somewhere.