The Cigarette Smoking Man and Ms. Yutani in AVP2 Requiem

Another interesting aspect of AVP2 Requiem is the appearance of the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files. Okay, so the character is called Colonel Stevens, and he’s played by Robert Joy and not William B. Davis. However, he serves a similarly shady function within the AVP2 narrative. This American government/military official donning a black suit instead of uniform, orders the nuclear strike on the small town Alien infestation. Additionally, after the survivors make it out of the blast zone, they are intercepted by Special Forces members, who disarm them of the Predator energy weapon. This weapon in turn is then given by Col. Stevens to Ms. Yutani (Françoise Yip). This is an interesting development, because it serves to strengthen the bonds between government and corporate bodies. As you may know, Yutani is the other half of Weyland-Yutani, the mega-corporation from the original Alien and Aliens films (the Weyland aspect of the corporate puzzle is explained in AVP with the appearance of Charles Bishop Weyland played by Lance Henriksen). AVP2 does not go into the reasons why a government official would give otherworldly technology to a corporation, and my assumption is that this is a retelling and continuation of Cold War tropes embedded in Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Perhaps this signifies the hard currency payback by the government for its wholesale purchase by corporate interests in the here-and-now.

More AVP2 commentary on Dynamic Subspace here and here.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Movies, Review, Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “The Cigarette Smoking Man and Ms. Yutani in AVP2 Requiem”

  1. seano Says:
    January 30, 2008 at 6:04 pm

    no, no i don’t think so..

  2. Jason Ellis Says:
    January 30, 2008 at 11:09 pm

    Thank the maker for insightful Internet comments!

  3. David Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    I was excited to make the same connection, I believe the idea was to show how humans made a a giant leap in technological advancement through gaining that predator gun leading up to when the Nostromo intercepted the distress beacon from the space jockey ship on LV 426. I thought it was a brilliant way to end the avp2, thankfully so because I found the rest of the movie highly unrevealing in terms of the mysteries of both the xenomorphs and predators. On a side note it’s amazing to me how Blizzard entertainment seems to have melded avp themes along with terran marines in the upcoming release of starcraft 2, clearly we can see major influences in characters and story lines.

  4. Women Smoking Cigars Says:
    March 20, 2009 at 6:39 pm

    On a side note it’s amazing to me how Blizzard entertainment seems to have melded avp themes along with terran marines in the upcoming release of starcraft 2, clearly we can see major influences in characters and story lines.A lot of men think it is very sexy to see beautiful women smoking cigars. Many movies, pictures, music video clips ( that you can see in youtube ) have shown through the history of entertainment celebrity women smoking cigars

Leave a Reply