{"id":473,"date":"2008-10-05T17:00:16","date_gmt":"2008-10-05T21:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/?p=473"},"modified":"2023-06-23T23:34:28","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T03:34:28","slug":"old-familiar-feeling-aliens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/2008\/10\/05\/old-familiar-feeling-aliens\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Familiar Feeling: Aliens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/2008\/10\/05\/old-familiar-feeling-aliens\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ascendantjustice.com\/files\/oldfamiliar\/alien\/01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"198\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A detailed account of how the beloved science fiction of <em>Aliens<\/em> influenced the Halo trilogy.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In 2006, Gamespot asked Jaime Griesemer, \u201cWhat were the inspirations for [Halo\u2019s] mythology?\u201d The Bungie designer for Halo: Combat Evolved and design lead for Halo 2 answered that among other sources, \u201cFor movies, obviously there is a big <em>Aliens<\/em> influence.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/?page_id=497\">[i]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, how did <em>Aliens<\/em> influence Halo?<\/p>\n<p>Well, to answer that question, a brief summary is in order for the science-fictionally deprived.\u00a0 <em>Aliens<\/em> is a 1986 action-heavy sci-fi film directed by James Cameron.\u00a0 \u201cA sequel to the 1979 film <em>Alien<\/em>, <em>Aliens<\/em> [\u2026] is regarded by many film critics as a benchmark for the action and science fiction genres.\u00a0 In <em>Aliens<\/em> [\u2026] Ellen Ripley returns to the planet LV-426 where she first encountered the hostile Alien. This time she is accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/?page_id=497\">[ii]<\/a> Beyond the first two films there were other sequels in the series, directed by neither Ridley Scott (<em>Alien<\/em>) nor Cameron and aren\u2019t of much interest to us in this article.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly the tone of <em>Aliens<\/em> versus that of the Halo trilogy as a whole is drastically different.\u00a0 If <em>Aliens<\/em> is the gritty space combat flick, Halo is the brightly colored Star Wars-esque space opera, complete with its own cyborgian Jedi who single-handedly dispatches villains by the legion.\u00a0\u00a0 However, in Aliens, even when Ripley and the big bad Colonial Marines come knocking with their futuristic boomsticks they find themselves reduced to prey.<\/p>\n<p>This tonal difference between the franchises is perhaps most keenly felt in the contrast of their villains.\u00a0 <em>Aliens<\/em>\u2019 antagonists, \u201cXenomorphs,\u201d are the more \u201cbelievable\u201d and realistic of the two.\u00a0 Halo\u2019s evil alien conglomeration, the \u201cCovenant,\u201d and the horrific zombie spawning, \u201cFlood,\u201d are comic-bookish by comparison.\u00a0 Then again, it\u2019s much easier to sell a single, silent, animalistic species that crawled out from under some rock as \u201cbelievable\u201d than an entire cast of alien races with society and culture, bent on galactic domination in big purple spaceships.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/old-familiar-feeling-aliens-part-one\/\">Continue to Part One<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> <em>It should be stated in advance that Valor is a guest writer and that the following is a work of his own doing, based on his own opinions. The work and the opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the Ascendant Justice site, staff or owner.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A detailed account of how the beloved science fiction of Aliens influenced the Halo trilogy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":246,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ascendantjustice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}