Weyland Industries Investor Information Page Opened

[deezelboy]

The Weyland Industries site has now opened its Investment Information page.

A Better World Begins at Home.

[Necronom IV]

Fun little page, though seems a little premature narrative-wise in using the Building Better Worlds slogan, given that in Aliens, Ripley (a Weyland Yutani employee from 57 years prior) was apparently only familiar with the slogan from a contemporary advertisement in 2179, implying that it wasn't a buzz-line their employers were throwing around during the Alien days.

Maybe I'm nitpicking too much, and occasionally companies will deliberately rebrand themselves in a retro/nostalgic way (like when the WWF finally brought back the chrome logo from the 80s recently for various things in modern wrestling), so maybe it fell out of use and was brought back by some guy in PR who felt they wanted to get some of their classic historical image back a hundred years later, or indeed they REALLY liked their terraforming slogan and did in fact keep it around for a century and Ripley just never paid attention to it (but that comes across like an Apple employee having never heard 'Think Different').

However to me, it just comes across as a needless attempt to maintain a consistent array of references to the future movies when in reality their 100 year timeline between Prometheus and Aliens comes across as somewhat unlikely that they'd still be using the same advertising slogan (especially with all the young hotshots in advertising they would no doubt employ and constantly looking to keep their image fresh - especially after a merger with another company, would Yutani's board of directors really be entirely happy with only Weyland's slogan being used?).

I still enjoy all the stuff on that site though and I definitely think I am nitpicking too much

[deezelboy]

There's a lot of explanation in Aliens regarding terraforming that's given to, or around, Ripley. She's used as a surrogate for the audience, who given it's the 1980s are probably hearing it for the first time. But the impression I had was that it was a new thing, embarked upon during Ripley's long sleep.

I mean, there's Burke explaining Atmosphere Processors in the drop ship, adding helpfully that WY manufacture them. Yet by this point, they've apparently been manufacturing them for 150 years, and had initially invented them.

And then there's Ripley, supposedly born on the Moon, and now we found out that Weyland started to terraform the Moon in 2031 as a test project for the whole exosolar terraforming thing.

[Hudson]

I mean, there's Burke explaining Atmosphere Processors in the drop ship, adding helpfully that WY manufacture them. Yet by this point, they've apparently been manufacturing them for 150 years, and had initially invented them.

Yes, I definitely raised an eyebrow at this.

Pretty neat site. Noticed some of the countries on that map are grayed out? Does it give a reason for that?

[SM]

Guess those countries have no WY presence.  PNG must be completely mined out.

The terraforming thing struck me as a bit odd too considering the script (which I think is word for word in the film)...

                                 BURKE
                    Well, the corporation co-financed
                    that colony with the Colonial
                    Administration, against mineral
                    rights.  We're getting into a lot
                    of terraforming...'Building Better
                    Worlds.'

It does come across as a more recent development.

[Hudson]

Well...if this website is canonical then I guess it's already been going on for like 100 years.

[deezelboy]

Dunno about canon-stuff, but using ADF's novelisation it's a bit ambiguous.

This seems to suggest terraforming is a newish thing:

"Terraformers," Van Leuwen explained. "Planetary engineers. Much has happened in that field while you slept, Ripley. We've made significant advances, great strides. The cosmos is not a hospitable place, but we're changing that. It's what we call a shake-'n'-bake colony. They set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable. We can do that now, efficiently and economically, as long aswe have some kind of resident atmosphere to work with. Hydrogen,argon-methane is best. Acheron is swimming in methane, with a portion of oxygen and sufficient nitrogen for beginning bonding. It's nothing now. The air's barely breathable. But given time, patience, and hard work, there'll be another habitable world out there ready to comfort and succor humanity. At a price, of course. Ours is not aphilanthropic institution, though we like to think of what we do as furthering mankind's progress."

But then this seems to suggest it isn't:

Ripley was impressed. Like everyone else whose work took them out into space, she'd heard about the big terraforming devices, but she'd never expected to see one in person.