Question: This entire expedition is just that, an expedition. It's not a hunt for Aliens or Predators, so why do Max Stafford and his team bring machine guns into the Pyramid? What are they expecting to find that would cause them to shoot? I've never heard of an archaeological team or a drilling team, for that matter, ever having to refer to projectile weaponry during an excavation.
Answer: Remember that they find the pyramid because of detecting a heat source - which implies that there's something down there, either something living or a technological source, that's created that heat, as spontaneous fires are something of a rarity in the Antarctic. Essentially, they have little or no idea what they might encounter down there, so it makes sense to cover all the possible scenarios, including the possibility of encountering a hostile force.
Question: Can anyone tell me why the Predators didn't scan the 'token' human survivor or the last dead predator to see if either were infected with an Alien? Especially when the Predator was not wearing his face mask which would serve as protection against this infection.
Answer: When they emerged from the underground pyramid unscathed, the Predators assumed they were not infected. Any Predator, young or old, would have been taught to self destruct rather than be caught or killed. As seen in the previous movies. Lex was given the mark of a warrior, they assumed she was taught their code of honor.
Chosen answer: Given the speed with which the chestbursters emerged from the other humans, it seems likely that these have been engineered by the Predators to emerge as quickly as possible. As such, they probably assumed in Lex's case that, were she impregnated, it would have emerged before that point. As for their fallen comrade, it may well have simply not occurred to them that one of their number would be foolish enough to get himself impregnated. Even proud alien hunters can make mistakes.
Question: Why didn't the Predator who gets attacked by the face-hugger know? He must have known what had happened to him when he woke up, shouldn't he have killed himself? Or at least let his fellow Predators know before resuming the mission? I understand he needed to stop the Aliens reaching the surface, but surely he should have known or done something.
Chosen answer: The predators are proud creatures, and stubborn. He probably knew but couldn't be 100% sure. He only just killed an alien and marked himself with this trophy, making him victorious in his quest. Killing himself or telling his mates he is incubated right after that achievement is not in a predator's nature.
Additionally I think he would have told the other predators if he hadn't been killed by the alien queen. Before reaching the surface he was probably not in a position to remove the creature from his own chest. Maybe he thought that he would make it to the surface and get it dealt with when he is back in the ship. Instead things took another turn and the alien queen killed him before telling the adults. To be fair, scanning any surviving warriors left after battle, knowing what these creatures do to reproduce, would be a good standard procedure for the predator race in my opinion. But they apparently don't.
Question: If the Predators know that the Alien's skin won't be affected by their blood why don't they use the Alien skin as their armor?
Chosen answer: The trial Predators purposefully don't have access to Alien skin before they are dispatched to the trial. Each Alien has a fairly skeletal structure, meaning that it would be very difficult to skin enough Aliens to cover an entire Predator during the trial. Besides, they're not supposed to get close enough for the Aliens' blood to get on them - they're supposed to use the shoulder blasters in the chest.
Question: In one scene, the Predator is about to kill Weyland, but it uses its x-ray vision to look inside him and it sees something (bad lungs?) that makes it decide to spare his life. Can anybody tell me why the Predator at first spared Weyland's life and what it had to do with the x-ray?
Answer: The Predators have natural vision in the infrared range (they see body heat) and their helmets allow them different types of vision. The Predator detects something weak about Weyland's movements and decides to examine him more thoroughly with specialized vision. This reveals that he is dying of some lung infection. The Predator honor code deems that diseased individuals are not worth killing, so he pushes Weyland aside and continues forward. When Weyland attacks him, it becomes honorable to retaliate according to the code, so the Predator kills him.
Question: Does anyone know how the war between the Predator and the Alien began? Is there any story about it?
Answer: They're not at war. The Predators discovered the Aliens and realized that they make for excellent, challenging hunting. However, they could not morally sacrifice their own race to provide the incubators for the Aliens to be born, nor could they allow the Aliens access to advanced technology and spaceships (they could spread). So they found a world on the outer edge of the galaxy inhabited by technologically backward people capable of incubating Aliens and created an elaborate system of initiation rites for young Predators to test their worthiness. This and other worlds like it are the only way that Predators interact with adult Aliens.
Question: At the very end, how did the predators not know that their wounded rescuee had an alien inside of him? After all, he was able to see one inside Miller before he was shot by Alexa.
Answer: They simply didn't scan their fallen comrade for a xenomorph. Mostly because he was wearing his mask and they didn't know he had taken it off and been incubated.
Question: Near the end, when Lex and the Predator are trying to kill the Alien Queen, Lex says "Got it." when she hooks the Queen's chain to the water tower. When she says it, there is a Spanish subtitle on the bottom of the screen for the only time in the movie. Why is this?
Answer: I think there was a malfunction in your theater. I haven't seen any subtitles in the film yet.
Question: Don't the impregnated hosts have to be alive in order to incubate the aliens to term? Lex kills the impregnated Italian guy to prevent him have the Alien rip out of his chest, which would imply that the Alien needs to be in a living environment to survive. Not the case with the Alien/Predator hybrid that emerges at the end of the movie, when it's clear that the Predator had died some time ago . . .
Answer: Killing the host doesn't necessarily kill the Alien. Its like human fetuses - if it is far enough along in its development, it can survive even if the host (mother) dies.
Question: How did the ancient predator see the mark on Lex's face when predators can only see in infrared?
Answer: It is possible with their infrared vision which shows body heat that the burn from the blood was in fact hotter, which allowed it to be seen more visibly to the commander.
He didn't have a mask on at the time.
Predators can see infa red without masks. The masks give them other vision.
Question: It has been shown that the alien takes on part of the host traits as it matures on the inside the host body. It becomes a cross breed, EVERY TIME. So unless it has been breading with the same host (humans) over eons how can this race survive and reproduce? Over just a few generations it would have evolved so far in so many direction it would fail to exist as a alien.
Answer: Well, the alien warriors don't breed, so any traits that they might take on are irrelevent. The Queens are the key - one plausible explanation is that the Queens don't take on the host traits, or that they only take on those traits that are useful to them - they get incorporated into the species, improving them while still conforming to the basic alien structure. Also possible is that the Queens do take on some traits from their host, but that their reproductive system is isolated from this - i.e. the eggs produced are the same no matter what additional traits the Queen producing them might have. This would allow each newly hatched alien to take on traits relevent to its environment, without hampering the overall progress of the species.
Question: Several times throughout the movie, we see Lex refer to a digital compass on her wrist. I know that a normal compass, the kind with a suspended needle, will bottom out that close to the south pole, and even if you get it to work, it's useless because it says every direction is north. How does hers work?
Answer: It's a GPS. It gets its location and direction from an orbiting satellite.
Question: Two questions: 1. When they arrive at the whaling station, Lex states that the pyramid is "directly beneath" the camp, but the map shows that the pyramid is much further away from the station and is definitely not "directly beneath." Why would she say this? 2. When Lex and the Predator leave the pyramid, the platform that they get on goes extremely fast. Why would this be logical at all? Without any kind of stopping mechanism, it would fling the sled far away and severely injure the user. Why?
Answer: 1) This is a goof, most likely left over from an early version of the script when the pyramid was supposed to be directly beneath the whaling station. Clearly on the map the pyramid is a good distance away (some estimates say it's close to half a mile). 2) The winch has to be high powered because it is carrying heavy supplies and equipment for the expedition. Lex uses the sled as fast as it will go in an effort to escape but that doesn't mean it has to be used that way. No doubt under normal circumstances the sled wouldn't need to go so fast and can be stopped normally and safely once it reaches the summit.
Question: I may have missed this in the movie but where were the fully grown aliens to come from if the humans were not there? The predators knew the pyramid was under the ice so surely the could tell there were no humans to incubate the baby aliens. Even if they couldn't, when the predators got to the surface wouldn't they communicate with the mothership that no-one was about (if the team weren't there, I mean)?
Answer: The Predators would have a decent idea of the capabilities of Earth technology; they can hardly have missed all the satellites floating about. They relied on somebody detecting the pyramid's systems powering up and on curiosity to lead a team there to investigate. Which, as we see, worked perfectly. How they got humans there in previous centuries isn't clear. In 1904, handily there was a whaling settlement nearby; prior to that, who knows - possibly they abducted worthy humans from elsewhere and brought them there.
Question: If the Predators are so big on honor and the hunt, why do they always fight with the cloaking devices, wouldn't it be more honorable to meet an enemy head on?
Answer: It's almost always a single Predator against hordes of armed enemies without backup of any kind; there's nothing in the honor code that says that a Predator should be suicidal. Even with prey exempted from the code (pregnant mothers and ill or disabled prey), they are honorably killable if they become a threat to the Predator.
Question: Does anyone know what the worldwide gross of AVP was worldwide, or at the current moment? I've tried looking on IMDb but it doesn't have the worldwide listing.
Answer: As of 9/16, $92,481,503. This is a great site for such info. www.the-numbers.com.
Answer: The pyramid was in a tropical climate at the time of its construction, but Yautja are sticklers for tradition so continued to use it as the climate changed.