Connections between Xenogears and the movie Alien

One of the things I've noticed after having been away from Xenogears fandom for awhile is that a lot of connections I had picked up on (and posted about) years ago have been forgotten or at least downplayed.  Part of the reason I wanted to bring this up is because one of the old arguments I've seen people throw around again recently in criticizing the game is "OMG! It plagiarized Evangelion!".  The thing is, this couldn't be further from the truth, Xenogears was inspired (and that is the key word here) by a lot of the same works Evangelion was, I don't feel like Xenogears ever really crossed into plagiarism with its inspirations (2001: A Space Odyssey and the anime Space Runaway Ideon being two definite ones).  Anyway, I thought I'd do some of these type of threads and post my thoughts, starting with Alien since I never see it mentioned anymore.

First, if you aren't familiar with the movie, watch this summary by James Rolfe of Cinemassacre:  
http://cinemassacre.com/2013/10/20/alien-1979/

First off, we see the crew exploring a planet to find a supposed immigrant ship that has crashed.  We don't know it yet, but there was a living weapon on board (the face huggers) who use the human crew to create their offspring, a new life form.  A lot of these details were fleshed out by Ridley Scott later in supplementary material, and fully realized in Prometheus also. Sound familiar yet?  James specifically says in this video

We discover a bunch of eggs that the ship was carrying.  Why was it carrying these eggs?  Well, that's the beauty of this film.  That nothing is explicity answered, and the more times you view it, the more guesses you can make.  Ridley Scott specifically said on the commentary track that...the aliens were probably transporting these eggs to use as a type of weapon.  Against what?  But also, there's something else out there?  And something else beyond that?  The point is, it makes the universe seem so much larger.  Something that only the best science fiction films manage to do.

I found that pretty reminiscent of the Eldridge.

I'll be honest that I think Alien is definitely a reference point for Takahashi, but perhaps moreso in the Cathedral Ship of Xenosaga, than in Gears. In particular, the visuals of the ship with its dark techno-organic blends seemed to be using the alien ship for inspiration.

I would agree with that about Xenosaga as well, especially from an aesthetic standpoint.  I have no idea if Takahashi was even aware that the face huggers were supposed to be a weapon that brought down an ancient ship (most people don't pick up on it until several repeated viewings and looking at some of the symbolism really closely to begin with, that's why Ridley Scott later spelled it out in the Laserdisc commentary, because most people weren't getting it), I just thought it was an interesting parallel.  Just to be clear, too, I don't think Xenogears plagiarized it (or any other work for that matter).  What I think is interesting about comparing them (especially in that analysis James Rolfe did) was in showing that even Alien was really using a ton of those classic slasher movies as reference points, and now as time has gone by Alien has become the new reference point that Takahashi drew on for the camera perspective in the Kislev sewers.


*Also, I know everyone already points out the similarity with the Kislev sewers, I was just trying to see if we could find some less obvious connections.

That's a nice catch! It didn't even come anywhere close to my mind (probably has something to do with me not being able to stomach the willies enough to watch it from start to finish ).

Personally, I'm not so sure this particular detail was a deliberate reference or point of inspiration. Please forgive me if I am repeating myself too much, but as I said in that other thread, not all things like this happen deliberately or even consciously. Our experiences shape our minds whether we notice it or not. And when a person writes/draws/composes/sculpts/etc. something, things that have left a lasting impression somewhere in their mind may end up in the work even if the authour did not actually plan, carefully measure out and painstankingly put it in there.

So, in my opinion, while (for example) Grahf having a line that quotes Darth Vader almost verbatim is likely to be very much deliberate, this connection between Xenogears and Alien may not actually be so.

Alien was such a groundbreaking work that basically anything sci-fi that came after it was likely affected in some way or another, even if not directly. That said, I didn't get a significant Alien vibe from Xenogears.

Reichu wrote:Alien was such a groundbreaking work that basically anything sci-fi that came after it was likely affected in some way or another, even if not directly. That said, I didn't get a significant Alien vibe from Xenogears.

There is only part that I'm pretty sure you can definitively say is a callback to Alien, and that is the Kislev sewers.  Ridley Scott used what is called an i-camera for the POV shots of the Alien stalking its prey (the shots that we later found out are both Id and Redrum depending on if they are green or red, in Xenogears).  I couldn't find a video on Youtube, but here is a still image and some commentary on it:

That's a common technique now, but it was revolutionary for the time.

Clover says that use of I-camera can lead us into taking the point of view and identifying with the killer. As the film goes on, she argues, we identify more and more with The Final Girl instead of the killer due both to the use of the camera and storyline. "We are linked, in this way, with the killer in the early part of the film, usually before we have seen him directly and in any detail. Our closeness to [the killer] wanes as our closeness to The Final Girl waxes" (Clover 208). While Alien does make use of a few I-camera shots from the alien’s point of view, it does not make an attempt to have the audience identify with it. The alien is introduced to late into the movie to have the audience undergo a shift in identification to him and then back again to Ripley. The audience is not given any chance to empathize with the alien throughout the movie, even when we looking from his point of view.

http://mgutman.webs.com/narrativeanalysis.htm