Aliens Didn't Ruin a Franchise, It Established One

[DocZombie]

I know the responses to this are stacking up, but...
"Xeno-" as a prefix means "strange", "foreign" or "alien" (in the context of something unknown or unfamiliar and with a small "a")
"morph" means "form" or "shape"

In the movie, it really is just Gorman trying to make himself sound clever, but the term has stuck because it's a handy label, and avoids confusion with other "aliens".

Is it? Maybe it's the official technical term for all weird looking aliens that officer types use. Was never made clear in the film.

Maybe it is, but that doesn't mean Gorman isn't using it to make himself sound smarter...
.


Hudson : "Is this gonna be a stand-up fight, sir, or just another bug hunt?"

Gorman : "All we know is that we've lost contact with the colonists and that a xenomorph may be involved."

Frost : "Excuse me, sir - a... a what?"

Gorman : "A xenomorph"

Hicks : "It's a bug hunt..."

 

[NSGrendel]

snip

Sterling work, as always, Jim!

I'm interested to see that no-one has yet brought up what I thought was a commonly-accepted analysis of Aliens - that "marines-versus-xenomorphs" is an allegory for the Vietnam War...

There are numerous parallels or references throughout the movie, but the biggest is that the "superior military power" finds itself floundering against a technologically inferior, but numerically superior and very, very determined enemy.

See above. Unless my posts are invisible. Which would be like, the best moderator revenge ever...

 

[DocZombie]

See above. Unless my posts are invisible. Which would be like, the best moderator revenge ever...

Oops - sorry!

Blame the poor eyesight on too much fapping to that video of Jim humping Aliens:Colonial Marines...

oh god, I just had to swallow back a bubble of sick...

 

[rofltehcat]

Interesting to see two articles disagreeing with each other. This certainly isn't a bad thing as only this way all sides of the franchise can truly be examined.

 

[Simonism451]

As for characters, who was that memorable from Alien apart from Ripley?

Everyone?

Let me see, there was Harry Dean Stanton, who is memorable for being Harry Dean Stanton, then there's Bukkake robot, who is notable for acting like the hero at the beginning but turning out evil, the other woman (Lambert, I think) who is notable for screaming even more than everyone else, the captain who looks like he's from Dark Star and is at least mildly competent, the black guy who acts all macho but then doesn't deliver and the dude that gets killed at the start. Also cat.
I mean, while I agree that the characterisation works to make them actually appear like working class space truckers and not like the larger than life scientist/warrior heroes of most of sci-fi or the dumb teens (usually played by people in their mid-to-late twenties) from other slasher flicks, the characters seem much less distinct than the (admitted) stereotypes in Aliens.
As for your point about the mystery of the xenomorph and maybe this stems from the fact that I knew what the Xenomorph was about long before I watched the actual movies but I never got the feeling during the first film that it was much more than an extraterrestrial grizzly with some serious phallic imagery and some note of that spider that lays its eggs inside its prey. It never showed enough intelligence or otherness (like for instance, The Thing in, well, The Thing) to really suggest something more exotic than eating them or somehow replicating the beginning of the film. But I can imagine it might have been different for someone watching in '79 (similarily, while I appreciate the cinematographic mastery of The Shining, I never quite got why people thought it mattered whether or not the ghosts are real or just in Jack Torrance's mind or thought the movie was particularily scary either.)

 

[NSGrendel]

Also - Xenos also means "guest", depending on context...

 

[Coreless]

Thank You Jim, I haven't said this before but I am saying it now for your quick defense to my favorite movie of all time.. Thank God for you.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Really? I remember Hicks saying Wierzbowski and Crowe are down directly after Frost's ammo bag explosion, and the marines didn't include him in the old "The Sarge and Deitrich ain't dead".

[EDIT: Wasn't it Wierzbowski that Hicks went to shake after the explosion, shouting his name while he did so?]

I'd say Weirzbowski and Crowe, as well as maybe even Apone, might have come through, 2 marines instead of 4 in one go and not having just suffered a large explosion, they might well have been more able to cover each other. Hell, Drake might have survived if Apone had been around to stop him being such a kill crazy fucker. Then I suppose they might have thought they could take the aliens and got swamped by all 200 of them instead of trying to pull out. I'd say either interpretation is valid though, it's a piece of fiction.

When the ammunition bag is spotted you get a brief glimpse of Hicks trying to pull Wierzbowski away from it. The bag explodes and it flings Crowe at a wall. The camera cuts to inside the APC and Goreman asks Apone what's going on. In the background you can hear Hicks shout, "Wiezbowski and Crowe are down!" Apone calls for Dietrich and Crowe, and Hicks shouts, "Dietrich, Frost, off the boards!" The next time it cuts back to Hicks, he's rolling Crowe over to see if he's alive (he's not). Hicks hears Wierzbowski screaming, so he turns around to shout for Wierzbowski. It then cuts to a view inside the APC from Wierzbowski's helmet camera, and he's being dragged off by a Xenomorph.

The problem is that there was a (very) brief clip of film that was edited out and not restored into the Special Edition where, after the bag of ammunition explodes, Hicks props up a wounded Wierzbowski against a wall before going to check on Crowe. It's implied that Wierzbowski's legs were messed up pretty bad in the explosion, which is why Hicks includes Wierzbowski when he says "Wierzbowski and Crowe are down."

Apone was likely still going to get dragged off. He was caught off-guard trying to hear Goreman over the radio over the sounds of Vasquez and Drake opening up with their M56 Smartguns. That was with just two guns. If the whole team had been firing assault rifles, and Apone is so apparently easy to catch off-guard, he likely wasn't going to be walking away from that encounter. Xenomorphs are smart, sneaky bastards.

Also, Apone wasn't going to stop anyone from going nuts. Vasquez and Drake open fire regardless of orders, and continue to fire even after Apone directly says "Vasquez! Drake! Hold your fire, God damnit!"

And again, the Pulse Rifle fires explosive tipped ammunition and they're fighting in extreme close quarters. What happened to Drake could have been a significantly larger risk to everyone if they'd had their Pulse Rifles.

And lastly, we don't even know how many Xenomorphs were engaged by the Marines. We never really get a good view of the battle. Sure... maybe the Marines would have killed enough so that they wouldn't be up against 200 later, but for all we know they only actually encountered like ten or so. The only ones that we know for absolute certainty were killed are the five near the APC (Vasquez guns one down, Drake guns one down, the one Vasquez kills that burns Drake, "EAT THIS!", and the one that gets run over by Ripley). There's also one early that you see Hicks firing at with his shotgun from Hudson's helmet camera, and you hear the Xenomorph scream, but it's not an on-screen kill. For all the rest of the firing, we don't know if anyone actually hit anything. It could have all just been suppressing fire for all we know.

As for "Hey! Hey look! The Sarge and Dietrich aren't dead, man! Their signs are real low, but they ain't dead!" from Hudson... he's only looking at a single monitor. The camera and lifesign displays were spread across multiple monitors. It was likely just an oversight on Hudson's part. The guy was panicked, wounded, and clearly not in the most stable of mental conditions.

So yeah... those Colonial Marines were pretty much screwed either way. Crowe and Wierzbowski are still the only real iffy ones in the group.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

While I will respectfully disagree I will concede a well reasoned argument.

My point of view has always been that while Aliens is a good movie and a worthy sequel to a great horror flick the tonal shift was the jumping off point for a series that grew exponentially worse as it progressed.


Now I like Alien 3, I think it does a lot of things right in trying to recapture the isolation and paranoid terror of the first film while expanding on the mythology. Virtually all the problems I have with Alien 3 boil down to the times when it tried to emulate Aliens. Specifically that a large portion of the cast are more cartoonish caricatures in lieu of actual characters and action scenes that seem a little too over choreographed.

These same issues crop up and are amplified in Alien Resurrection to the point where I have a hard time remembering the few things I did like about it.

The less said about the AvP series the better.

 

[Mr. Q]

I got the Blu-ray editions of Alien and Aliens for my birthday last year and I finally got to see the director's cut of both films. I will say the Aliens director's cut is far superior than its predecessor. With Cameron's cut, you got more details and backstory that was left out of the theatrical release. With the Alien director's cut... not so much. -_- Best to stick with the original cut of Alien and watch the director's cut of Aliens.

As for the notion that Aliens "ruined" the franchise... no. Aliens took the concept into a new direction and executed it perfectly. It couldn't top the suspense of the first one, so it went with an action thrill ride instead. The reason why the franchise is a mess these days is due to mishandling the property after Aliens. Personally, I would have been more happy if the 3rd installment gave us a new cast of characters and let Ripley and her new family fly off into the sunset. But Hollywood, being the pack of morons they are, decided to stick with what was familiar and run it into the ground.

If the world of Alien/Aliens is going to evolved as a franchise, it needs to step out of the shadows of its more successful predecessors and take other paths aside from aping the past.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

I still don't understand why the franchise has been milked so much more than many other, similarly successful properties from the 80's. You don't see one or two video games from the Terminator franchise every year, right? Just seems weird to me. Are people really asking for this much Alien-themed shovelware?

I think its more that a Terminator game would either set in future mech-world times, which only one movie has more then tangentially touched upon, and that's largely reviled. Alternatively, it'd be in the present/past, being basically a guy running around shooting other guys, with one slightly stronger guy by virture of being a Terminator. Which is just a generic FPS with very little unique visuals or gameplay spins to make its own.

Belive it or not, they've tried. To recap -

(Actually not that bad of a game from what I remember. Hard though)

(Hey look! Shitty movie licenced game!)

(This game was Battlefield 4 before Battlefield 4 was a thing. In short, it's a really bad Battlefield knockoff)

(Ugh -_-)

You get the idea. While not as licenced out as much as Aliens or AvP, these are but four examples. There are more. Wikiped has a full list X3

 

[Iosifavich]

I agree with Jim, the franchise is made better by both films. Furthermore I disagree that the Marines over the top macho bravado was there to show how little it matter when everything goes horribly wrong. I think it was there to make the marines feel like bad asses and to offer a little comic releaf after the somewhat heavy beginning of the film. Also the act of laughing at Hicks, Hudson and Apone helps viewers connect with them on some level. Granted the Marines are pretty thin characters but they are more then a random 'Red Shirt'.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Totally is, it got re-appropriated. It's like arguing that Predator literally means "a creature that hunts prey" and isn't the name for that specific creature.

To be fair, they do have an actual name. Yautja.

Granted, Yautja is never actually spoken in any of the films and was something introduced to the Predator universe through the various comics, novels, and games... but still, it's a name that's become generally accepted.

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

Totally is, it got re-appropriated. It's like arguing that Predator literally means "a creature that hunts prey" and isn't the name for that specific creature.

To be fair, they do have an actual name. Yautja.

Granted, Yautja is never actually spoken in any of the films and was something introduced to the Predator universe through the various comics, novels, and games... but still, it's a name that's become generally accepted.

(You're totally right dude, but if I start calling them Yautja or Hish or something it kinda kills my point that common nouns can still be used to identify a species)

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

(You're totally right dude, but if I start calling them Yautja or Hish or something it kinda kills my point that common nouns can still be used to identify a species)

I actually do agree with your stance, though. It's why I still to this day refer to the aliens from... Aliens... as Xenomorphs. I fully acknowledge how vague of a term it is, but it's still the term used in-universe to describe them.

It's like calling the enemies in Starship Troopers "bugs" or "arachnids." Bugs and arachnids are two completely different things, and the aliens from that universe are neither - but it's what the characters call them, so it's what they are. Period. At least, until they're given a true canonical name that isn't "bug" or "arachnid."

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

The problem is that there was a (very) brief clip of film that was edited out and not restored into the Special Edition where, after the bag of ammunition explodes, Hicks props up a wounded Wierzbowski against a wall before going to check on Crowe. It's implied that Wierzbowski's legs were messed up pretty bad in the explosion, which is why Hicks includes Wierzbowski when he says "Wierzbowski and Crowe are down."

Ah, intersting stuff.

Apone was likely still going to get dragged off. He was caught off-guard trying to hear Goreman over the radio over the sounds of Vasquez and Drake opening up with their M56 Smartguns. That was with just two guns. If the whole team had been firing assault rifles, and Apone is so apparently easy to catch off-guard, he likely wasn't going to be walking away from that encounter. Xenomorphs are smart, sneaky bastards.

Also, Apone wasn't going to stop anyone from going nuts. Vasquez and Drake open fire regardless of orders, and continue to fire even after Apone directly says "Vasquez! Drake! Hold your fire, God damnit!"

And again, the Pulse Rifle fires explosive tipped ammunition and they're fighting in extreme close quarters. What happened to Drake could have been a significantly larger risk to everyone if they'd had their Pulse Rifles.

And lastly, we don't even know how many Xenomorphs were engaged by the Marines. We never really get a good view of the battle. Sure... maybe the Marines would have killed enough so that they wouldn't be up against 200 later, but for all we know they only actually encountered like ten or so. The only ones that we know for absolute certainty were killed are the five near the APC (Vasquez guns one down, Drake guns one down, the one Vasquez kills that burns Drake, "EAT THIS!", and the one that gets run over by Ripley). There's also one early that you see Hicks firing at with his shotgun from Hudson's helmet camera, and you hear the Xenomorph scream, but it's not an on-screen kill. For all the rest of the firing, we don't know if anyone actually hit anything. It could have all just been suppressing fire for all we know.

As for "Hey! Hey look! The Sarge and Dietrich aren't dead, man! Their signs are real low, but they ain't dead!" from Hudson... he's only looking at a single monitor. The camera and lifesign displays were spread across multiple monitors. It was likely just an oversight on Hudson's part. The guy was panicked, wounded, and clearly not in the most stable of mental conditions.

So yeah... those Colonial Marines were pretty much screwed either way. Crowe and Wierzbowski are still the only real iffy ones in the group.

All open to interpretation.

As I said, might have been more orderly with only 2 guys down, might have been able to cover each other better so the alien didn't get the drop on Apone.

Apone might not have stopped them opening fire, but encouraging him back into the APC as part of a more orderly retreat? Possible, hell, Drake might have been nowhere near the alien when Vasquez shot it, he might not have run out of ammo with a few more people around.

Yes, they could have been at risk from acid spray, doesn't mean they are going to be hit, or maybe somebody will get hit, who knows?

You're correct, neither of us have any idea how many aliens they killed. Could have been 5, could have been 50.

Yeah, he could have missed them, or maybe he didn't. Or he could have died from his injuries from the blast.

No, I say they could have made it out. After all, the aliens are only directly responsible for taking out 2 marines, Deitrich and Apone, the rest are accidental, in fact 1/3rd of their casualties are down to 1 bit of bad luck. And even when they've lost over half their number the rest make it back to the APC (even if one of them stupidly decided not to get in it). Or maybe it could have gone even worse, maybe Drake flamed the inside of the APC and barbecued everyone when he died.


Here's the problem we have, it's fiction, either interpretation is valid, what you consider more likely is not what I consider more likely. I'm not saying either is more likely, I'm saying that either is possible.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

snip

We're actually both forgetting one more important detail. Who actually had Pulse Rifles?

If you watch the "Get on the ready line!" scene the team's armaments are (in order of appearance)...

Drake: M56 Smartgun / H&K VP-70
Dietrich: M240 Incinerator Unit / H&K VP-70
Wierzbowski: M240 Incinerator Unit / H&K VP-70
Frost: M240 Incinerator Unit / H&K VP-70
Crowe: M41A Pulse Rifle / H&K VP-70
Hicks: M41A Pulse Rifle / Ithaca M37 Shotgun / H&K VP-70
Hudson: M41A Pulse Rifle / H&K VP-70
Vasquez: M56 Smartgun / S&W M39
Apone: M240 Incinerator Unit / H&K VP-70

These weapons are mostly consistent with what's carried into the hive. The inconsistencies are as follows...

1. Apone's M240 Incinerator Unit is switched for an M41A Pulse Rifle. This is corrected though when the Chestburster comes out of the cocooned colonist. Apone takes Frost's M240 Incinerator Unit, and continues to use it until he is dragged off (Frost switches to a VP-70 handgun).
2. When taking magazines, Apone specifically demands Wierzbowski to give up his ammunition, despite Wierzbowski never at any point in the movie having an M41A Pulse Rifle. He's still carrying an M240 Incinerator Unit as they enter the hive.
3. Drake's M240 Incinerator Unit. When Drake runs out of ammo with the M56 Smartgun he switches to an M240 Incinerator Unit that just sort of magically appears in his right hand between cuts. Presumably he picked it up from one of his fallen comrades, but you never see it happen. Likely just a minor continuity error created by iffy editing.

So at the very most the team would have entered the hive with four M41A Pulse Rifles, assuming we give Apone his despite its presence being a continuity error.

As for Apone, it's reasonable to assume he still would have been taken out even if they had the Pulse Rifles. He was taken completely by surprise by a Xenomorph that nobody spotted (except for him, when it was already too late). Notably it was a Xenomorph that attacked from the ceiling. Given Apone's position in relation to the other Marines, he was either in the center of the group or at the rear - though the center is the one that seems most likely given what we see in the movie. So that means that the Xenomorph that grabbed him either came from a vent or something above Apone and wouldn't have been killed anyway, or it managed to sneak along the ceiling and breach their perimeter anyway. And given the Xenomorph's position prior to attacking Apone, if anyone had shot it with a Pulse Rifle, it would have completely showered Apone with acid. So yeah... Apone had no chance.

As for Drake, as it is, he already wasn't near the Xenomorph that Vasquez iced. The Xenomorph was directly in front of Vasquez, who was standing in the door on the right side of the APC. Drake was a few yards away from the front/center of the APC. Vasquez was actually closer to the Xenomorph than Drake was, but because of where she hit it it sprayed acid (which is highly pressurized) in an arc to the side - effectively spraying a cone in front of the APC that could extend outward at least a few yards. The only ways Drake could have survived would be if he was the one to kill that Xenomorph (which is a big maybe, especially if he still had ammo for his Smartgun - he either would have been sprayed anyway, or he might have killed everyone standing inside the crew compartment of the APC) or if he had entered the APC before Vasquez. And regardless of whether or not he was wielding the M56 or the M240, he wasn't going to be ending that shooting spree he was on since he clearly was trying to cover everyone else's retreat and planned to be the last one to board the APC. So yeah... like Dietrich, Frost, and Apone... Drake was pretty much screwed. Though in his defense, his sacrifice may have been the only thing that kept the Xenomorphs at bay long enough for the rest to escape.

Also, as for additional evidence of the kill count, every single Xenomorph killed in the entire movie "screams" as it's killed. All of them (including the Chestburster). The only Xenomorph death "screams" we hear in that entire sequence are the one that Hicks shoots at off-screen with his shotgun, the two that Vasquez and Drake kill during the retreat, the one Vasquez kills that burns Drake, "EAT THIS!", and the one that got run over. So that means that all the other shots fired in that scene were suppressive fire to keep the Xenomorphs' heads down and prevent their advance.

 

[Calbeck]

Spot on, Jim. Spot on. Exceeeeeeept...

I was not able to stand Aliens 3, and don't really see why anyone could.

Of course, my loathing is in large part because I saw it in the theaters, with full surround sound, and OH GOD THE ECHOES. For most of the movie, I could only understand the first few seconds of what anyone was saying, because their echoes would come back and immediately destroy whatever followed. Nevermind that its beginning manages to destroy the second film's ending with the whole "impregnated while a human popsicle" thing.

Perhaps the first problem has since been solved by sound editing, once it had to go from the big screen to the small (and the movie might be tolerable as a result), but I really can't be arsed to watch Ripley wandering around the inside of a foundry while everyone around her gets killed off with tropes and jump-scares that were old when the film came out.

I suppose I'd been fairly warned by their marketing department, though.

As I went into the darkened theater, there was a banner on the wall which read:

"ALIENS THREE! THREE TIMES THE HORROR! THREE TIMES THE SUSPENSE!"

One-third the movie.

 

[ErythorbicAcid]

I have alway's loved Aliens. When other kids were watching Disney as there favorite movies, that's what I was watching. Granted it was a scrubbed for tv version. I have a very serious place in my heart for it. I would not say that the marines were incompetent. I would say they were unprepared. In their banter they lay a foundation for past exploits where they were more than successful. They had no reason to fear anything, they thought. They had not confronted an enemy like this before though. A low tech, highly organized force using tunnels and EXTREME guerrilla tactics.

Which brings me to the next thing I love about this movie. It's parallel's to The Vietnam War. I discovered as an adult, that Aliens is a Vietnam War movie. High technology coming in to a "bug hunt" and losing much to their disbelief. It deals with PTSD in the opening with Ripley in a very real, very human way. Not over dramatized or a focus. Yet it's there for all to see and deal with. The scene where Ripley bolts up almost screaming holding her chest covered in sweat is uncomfortable to say the least.

Plus, name another movie with a female protagonist that is just that. A female. Not a man with boobs and good hair. But truly feminine. Weeping openly during multiple scene's. Being a mother and protector to Newt. Flirting shyly with a marine, AND A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BADASS! When the elevator door's open and she is standing there with her taped together uber-gun, you KNOW it's on.

So no, Aliens ruined nothing.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

So at the very most the team would have entered the hive with four M41A Pulse Rifles, assuming we give Apone his despite its presence being a continuity error.

So the whole team would have been properly armed instead of just over half.

As for Apone, it's reasonable to assume he still would have been taken out even if they had the Pulse Rifles. He was taken completely by surprise by a Xenomorph that nobody spotted (except for him, when it was already too late). Notably it was a Xenomorph that attacked from the ceiling. Given Apone's position in relation to the other Marines, he was either in the center of the group or at the rear - though the center is the one that seems most likely given what we see in the movie. So that means that the Xenomorph that grabbed him either came from a vent or something above Apone and wouldn't have been killed anyway, or it managed to sneak along the ceiling and breach their perimeter anyway. And given the Xenomorph's position prior to attacking Apone, if anyone had shot it with a Pulse Rifle, it would have completely showered Apone with acid. So yeah... Apone had no chance.

Yeah, again: "reasonable to assume". It's also reasonable to assume they might have been in different positions without the exploding ammo bag. Are you saying they couldn't have seen the alien? Because I say, yes, they could have. More eyes cover more angles. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, just that saying "this is what is most likely to happen" based on an incomplete knowledge of completely fictional events is just your interpretation, not the right one. It's not "wrong" but it's not the definitive answer.

As for Drake, as it is, he already wasn't near the Xenomorph that Vasquez iced. The Xenomorph was directly in front of Vasquez, who was standing in the door on the right side of the APC. Drake was a few yards away from the front/center of the APC. Vasquez was actually closer to the Xenomorph than Drake was, but because of where she hit it it sprayed acid (which is highly pressurized) in an arc to the side - effectively spraying a cone in front of the APC that could extend outward at least a few yards. The only ways Drake could have survived would be if he was the one to kill that Xenomorph (which is a big maybe, especially if he still had ammo for his Smartgun - he either would have been sprayed anyway, or he might have killed everyone standing inside the crew compartment of the APC) or if he had entered the APC before Vasquez. And regardless of whether or not he was wielding the M56 or the M240, he wasn't going to be ending that shooting spree he was on since he clearly was trying to cover everyone else's retreat and planned to be the last one to board the APC. So yeah... like Dietrich, Frost, and Apone... Drake was pretty much screwed. Though in his defense, his sacrifice may have been the only thing that kept the Xenomorphs at bay long enough for the rest to escape.

Again, whose to say he would have been standing there had there been more of them?

Also, as for additional evidence of the kill count, every single Xenomorph killed in the entire movie "screams" as it's killed. All of them (including the Chestburster). The only Xenomorph death "screams" we hear in that entire sequence are the one that Hicks shoots at off-screen with his shotgun, the two that Vasquez and Drake kill during the retreat, the one Vasquez kills that burns Drake, "EAT THIS!", and the one that got run over. So that means that all the other shots fired in that scene were suppressive fire to keep the Xenomorphs' heads down and prevent their advance.

Maybe, but we didn't follow the marines the whole time did we?


Look, really my point here is not specifically about aliens, it's about speculating on what would have happened or what did happen in a work of fiction is not going to come up with a definite or even most "likely answer", unless it's a very simple cause and effect. It's hard enough in reality, but in fiction we have even less to go on a lot of the time because not only do we not have all the info, the info doesn't actually exist because it wasn't important to the plot. Discussing what might have happened, yes, saying "this is what would have happened", eh, no.


Change something like "what if they were still armed" and suddenly Frost may not explode, that means W&C might not die, the sqaud don't have to duck and cover from the explosions so maybe their positioning is different...I'm sure you can come up with a way to say "actually I think it's more likely that..." and I can come up with a way to say "actually no, I think it's perfectly possible and just as likely".