Ask A Genius 1505: Strong-Jaw Stars, Bar Fights, and Alien: Earth’s Giger DNA
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/31
Rick Rosner riffs on screen “great-man” jawlines, wondering if the actress is Sydney Chandler, and cites tall, strong-faced performers like Katey Sagal, Sigourney Weaver, and Geena Davis. He recalls chewing gum as a mouthguard while working bars, sporadic real fights versus triumphant fight dreams, and a 1998–99 sucker punch that cost him $959 and his job. Pivoting to Alien: Earth, he notes the heroine’s synthetic brain with wireless telemetry and a multi-species arc. He contextualizes xenomorph sexuality—facehuggers, cocooning, Alien: Resurrection’s hybrid—via H. R. Giger’s biomechanical aesthetic. He contrasts the sensual 1970s with today’s AI mash-ups, where filters mute tropes and echoes.
Rick Rosner: I went out to dinner with Carole, then we watched some TV, and I went back to the gym—so I haven’t checked yet. I thought the lead actress was Kyle Chandler’s daughter.
She might be—Kyle Chandler’s daughter, Sydney Chandler, is an actor—but without the show title, I can’t confirm that’s who you mean. In any case, some actors with strong, square jawlines photograph exceptionally well on screen.
Katey Sagal—she has a strong face. Sigourney Weaver also has a notably square face and is about 5’11”, which plays well for action roles.
She and Geena Davis are around six feet tall. Geena Davis trained seriously in archery and competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials around 1999–2000, though she didn’t make the team. Being tall and strong can be an advantage in that sport.
Good bow, strong back. So what happened to that “great-man” look? It’s the Batman-face thing—strong-jaw actors. I’m particular about the shows I watch, but I get what you mean about that actress. I even chewed a ton of gum to build up my jaw muscles.
Additionally, it serves as a type of mouthguard. When I worked in a bar, I figured if someone punched me, the gum might help. No one ever got me in the mouth—they always aimed for the eye. Luckily, I’ve got much bone around the eye socket, and drunk swings rarely landed cleanly.
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Still, a big wad of gum might work as a mouth guard.
So—when was the last time you got punched?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Never.
Rosner: Peaceful, fricking Canadians.
Jacobsen: I can’t. I’ve never been in a fight. That’s wild. I’ve never been in a fist fight. The only time I punched someone was on a dare, and they were horrified. They were short, so I punched downward and hit the top left side of their head.
Rosner: That would be shocking, coming out of nowhere. That’s violent.
Jacobsen: They asked me to do it, they wanted me to. Then I felt so bad. I turned on my heel—it was in high school. I’ve never been in a real fight.
Rosner: In actual fights, I usually get my ass kicked, but not seriously—never anything hospital-worthy. They were always dumb bar fights. Someone would take me down, maybe bite me, but usually it was just a takedown. I didn’t even get hit that much.
But in my dreams, when I fight—like when I’d wrestle Sal at Kimmel—he’d have me tied up on the ground in seconds because he was a competent wrestler and I wasn’t. Still, in my dreams, I’m the one beating people up. I feel a little bad about it, because they won’t stay down. In movies, when someone gets their ass kicked, the victor says, “Stay down.” That’s what I say in my dreams.
They don’t stay down—they keep getting up. I keep pummeling them worse and worse. So I guess my dream self vastly overestimates my fighting skills.
Jacobsen: How are the fights around your eyes in the dream? Do they go for your eyes?
Rosner: Not really. They don’t do much damage. I end up cumulatively beating them down because they won’t quit. My punches don’t devastate them in one shot, but eventually they add up and leave them pretty beaten up.
Now… I did sucker punch a guy at work back in 1998 or 1999. Since it was a sucker punch, I had the advantage—they didn’t know it was coming. I landed three punches around his eye socket, which gave him a full black eye.
Jacobsen: Ouch.
Rosner: Yes. I technically won that fight, but the guy made me pay him $959 in damages, and I was subsequently fired from my job. So I won, but I lost.
Jacobsen: Now, speaking of eyes, did you notice anything in the first eight minutes of episode four of Alien: Earth?
Rosner: I shouldn’t spoil too much—but I will. The main character turns out to have hardware in her head, abilities neither she nor anyone else fully understands. She has a synthetic brain, and they must have built-in telemetry so she can Wi-Fi into systems.
Jacobsen: So she can communicate just by thinking?
Rosner: Not with every system, but when she wants to, she can figure out a way in. She has an extended sensory and transmitting array, and she picks up signals—including from the xenomorphs, the classic aliens. That was revealed at the end of episode three and carried over into this episode. Obviously, it’ll pay off later in the series, which is eight episodes long.
The writers and producers said they’ve planned a story arc that could continue for many seasons if the show gets picked up. I hope it does—I think it will. There are five different alien types in this show, including the one we know from the films. She’ll end up facing at least one of them. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley faced several across the franchise—Weaver starred in the first four Alienfilms.
And in each of those Alien films, Sigourney Weaver becomes more intimate with the xenomorphs, even as she fights them to the death. In one of the movies, one of them impregnates her.
The facehugger implants an embryo—essentially a larval alien—into the host’s chest cavity, and it grows until it bursts out. But that’s not the same as a pregnancy. In Alien: Resurrection (1997), Weaver’s Ripley is cloned with alien DNA and ends up carrying a human–alien hybrid, which was more science fiction than biology.
That was one of the arcs: the more she fights them, the more she understands them, almost like frenemies. In that film, she wasn’t conscious when the impregnation happened. Sometimes the aliens cocoon people, gluing them to walls with resin for later use. She was likely subdued and implanted that way.
The artist who inspired the look of the Xenomorph was H. R. Giger, a Swiss painter and designer. In the 1970s, he created surreal, biomechanical art featuring dark, disturbing, and often sexually charged imagery. The producers of Alien brought him in to design the creatures. From the beginning, the alien was meant to be both terrifying and disturbingly sensual.
The facehugger forces intimacy—it literally invades your face. That sexual undertone was deliberate. It was also the 1970s, a time when sexuality was in everything culturally. Now it’s different—this isn’t a particularly “horny” era.
Instead, AI is generating all sorts of conflated imagery. AI doesn’t have imagination, but it mixes and matches artistic tropes.
Like the meme—“Honey badger don’t care.” AI doesn’t care either. It’ll mash genres together in unexpected ways. Even though our era isn’t especially sexual, AI-generated images often hint at sexualization.
If you look at MidJourney and other AI image tools, they’re careful not to produce overtly pornographic material, but traces of sexual undertones appear. And they could generate more if filters were removed.
The alien design itself is filled with sexual symbolism: slime, penetration, and that inner jaw extending outward. If you feel like it’s creepy and sexual, you’re right—it was built that way.
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