How intelligent was the original alien?

With regard to intellect as we know it, not likely. It did however have a survival instinct and abilities far beyond human. The original Alien had no eyes, implying that it had an extrasensory ability that we don't have/understand. It could track/sense/attack it's prey in any lighting without difficulty. I always found this incredibly creepy. In keeping with Ash's "delusions of morality" speech, I think it implied that it was focused on action and survival and not deeper thought/self awareness.

Dumb as hell ;) Nah, i dont think that the aliens From the later movies were dumb. In aliens they could open Bay doors, cutting of the power And find other ways to get into The sealed room. In alien 3 it always hide and ambushed The prisoners. In alien ressurection they learned fast And killed one of their own To melt through their cage.

It's say they're super intelligent. Wylie E Coyote was a super genius, yet he failed to ever get the road runner. The Alien bagged almost all of his prey in less than 24 hours without a single invention from the ACME corp. Hence, his intellect must far exceed Wylie E Coyote. He is, therefore, a super genius+.

I don't think the following movies ever really dumbed it down at all

darn thing was on again last night on IFC - did I use my better judgement and turn it off at 2 am? of course not! anyway, I would say it was pretty intelligent based on the fact that it knew that the Nostromo was on auto-destruct, and it needed to hide away in the shuttle. it also knew to keep Ripley live to pilot the shuttle (it could've easily chased her down and killed her when she dropped the cat carrier).

I'd read before that it had a pretty short lifespan (24-48 hours?), so it was trying to find somewhere to hide and die (I always surmised that it couldn't die in its nest as Ripley had already torched that). It found a nice warm spot in the Narcissus, which by coincidence was where Ripley was also headed.

I can't wait for Scott to up the intelligence with Prometheus. The acting will be amazing and the effects will be glorious! [img]http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm311/ripleyclone8/NoomiMichaelCharlize.png[/img]

Can't have a short lifespan. They hibernated for weeks in Aliens.

Depends on who you talk to. Ridley Scott said the Drone in the first movie was savage because it had no culture, noone to teach it how it should be, so it acted on base instinct. There was the implication that it was merely stalking Ripley when it boarded the Narcissus, and that it was close to the end of it's life-span anyway, so it crawled up in the pipes to die. In the second Aliens comic series, the "research" done on offworld military bases found that the drones born without a queen were fairly intelligent, the drones/warriors born with a queen dumb as a dog, and the queens had IQ's well above human genius level (thus the reason the LV426 queen chose to nest under a nuclear reactor instead of in the colony proper). As far as sensory perception, the Alien Ressurection novel suggested that the creatures have sensory organs in their heads the "see" 360 degrees, thus the reason (other than screaming and shouting at it) Parker couldn't sneak up on the one that was accosting Lambert. It's intelligence level is kind of a moot point anyway. The Alien has one purpose in it's mind, and that is to have sex that ends in death with any other lifeform that crosses it's path.

IMO the original alien was as intelligent as a human being. In the original Alien, we had a predator that was very difficult to kill and I think this added to the mystique of the creature. In films like AVP I feel that the creature was reduced to being just a clever wild animal and by doing so made the xeno look dumb. I think Scott's original intent was for us to discover that the creature was not just a predator, and for brilliant dramatic effect to keep the audience guessing as it is more scary to be up against the unknown.

Not to put down the alien, but any rat will find a comfortable safe place t be when the shit hits the fan (escaping to Narcissus). And any rat will find way in and out of a locked room (chewing through the walls, using the spaces over the ceiling and under the floor, the ventilation, etc). These are fairly common animal instincts behaviors. Even dogs figure out how to open doors. I had a cat that would try to get the wrapping paper off christmas presents... What makes the alien scary is it's size and voracity. It's sneaky as hell too and like Ash said, it adapts remarkably well. It can tell where you're at (following ripley in alien 3 to the mess hall, through the airducts, to where the Superintendant starts chewing her out for "raving"). I don't know if that's smart, so much as AWARE.

One of the key elements to the Aliens intellect was it's inherent knowledge that was being passed genetically from one iteration to the next. Like our instinct, it might have a similar or totally alien means of learning that is not comparable to human intelligence. This is like comparing dolphins to humans, both are very intelligent but one is more geared to understand and live with it environment while the other (man on the other hand will destroy and overpopulate any territory it occupies).

Another key to this discussion is Ash's statement about the Aliens total lack of morality, as in purely without higher functioning abilities that allow for the choice of right vs wrong. It has no concept of this and thus is free to follow its need to reproduce.

I totally agree with Batchpool. In Alien, it was an intelligent life form, it was a being. It wasn't running around on the ceilings, chasing at anything that moved. No it was calm, it was calculating. It divided and conquered the crew. And the way it killed Lambert was no doubt sadistic, which surely denotes a capable mind. In Alien, it was a depraved and powerful being, in the rest it was a circus animal.