The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, often referred to simply as "The Company",^[1][2] is a large British/Japanese^[3] multinational conglomerate in the Alien franchise, where it plays a pivotal role. It is one of the corporations that operates human colonies outside the solar system through the Extrasolar Colonization Administration,^[1] has a seat in the Interstellar Commerce Commission's Company Review Board, and also has a large presence on Earth. They hold their main offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, The Sea of Tranquility and on Thedus.

Weyland-Yutani is consistently portrayed as exhibiting the worst aspects of corporate profiteering, willing to sacrifice decency and life in the endless pursuit of profits.^[2][4] As such, it is a modern example of the longstanding trope of the evil mega-corporation in science fiction. In various portrayals of the Aliens universe, the corporation has its hands in all aspects of space colonization and research. The corporation has consistently ordered its employees and agents to attempt to obtain living Xenomorphs to be exploited as biological weapons, without regard for the lives of any people involved in said attempts.^[1] According to Weyland-Yutani employee Karl Bishop Weyland, one of the corporation's primary goals behind capturing the Xenomorphs is to create weapons out of their biology in order to ensure humanity is the elite species in the universe, and not just because of profits.^[4]

HistoryEdit

OriginsEdit

The Weyland-Yutani Corporation has had several different origins in various media. While it was not the first to be portrayed, the origin established in Prometheus is now considered the canonical version. In the film, the company is preceded by Weyland Corp, established by Peter Weyland on October 11, 2012. Sometime after Project Prometheus, Weyland Corp would acquire the Yutani Corporation, thus forming the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

Other origin stories for the company have been given in other media, although these have now been rendered largely defunct by the production of Prometheus. Nonetheless, prominent references to Weyland-Yutani include:

• The video game Predator: Concrete Jungle depicts an unnamed company run by a man identified only as Weyland buying out business rival Borgia Industries in 2030, thereby obtaining the rights to their advanced weaponry, which was in reality stolen Yautja technology.
• In Alien vs. Predator, Charles Bishop Weyland is shown to be the founder of Weyland Industries, and heads an expedition to Antarctica that uncovers the relationship between the Predators and the Xenomorphs. The Weyland Industries portrayed in the film bears no connection to the Weyland Corp seen in Prometheus, and has essentially been rendered moot by the latter film.
• In the finale of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, the man who called himself Colonel Stevens meets with a woman named Ms. Yutani, offering her a Predator Plasma Cannon recovered from the survivors of the explosion in Gunnison, Colorado.

Growth and activitiesEdit

In 2122, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation established initial human contact with the Xenomorph species on Acheron LV-426, the middle moon of 3 that orbit around the ringed planet Calpamos.^[5] The company later established the Hadley's Hope terraforming colony there.^[1]

By 2179, Weyland-Yutani was heavily involved in the colonization of extrasolar planets, including the terraforming of suitable bodies with inhospitable atmospheres through the construction of Atmosphere Processor.^[1] The corporation constructed and administrated numerous colonies across the galaxy, including Hadley's Hope on LV-426 and Freya's Prospect on BG-386.^[4] Weyland-Yutani was also involved in non-civilian colonies, notably overseeing the Class C Work Correctional Unit and the associated industrial penal lead foundry on Fiorina 161.^[2]

The company also operated numerous research and development facilities throughout the galaxy, often pursuing research in illegal or dangerous fields, focussing in particular on the study of the Xenomorph species. Major Weyland-Yutani laboratories included installations on LV-1201^[6] and BG-386,^[4] and the Origin facility on LV-426.^[7] These labs often operated under particularly immoral conditions, especially where Xenomorph research was concerned; live humans were frequently used as unwilling hosts for the creatures, while some teams were even known to deliberately sacrifice low-level Weyland-Yutani employees as live prey in Xenomorph tests.^[4] On BG-386, inhabitants from the civilian colony were apparently abducted for use in research, often under the pretence of being "promoted" to a new job.^[4]

Despite tight security, typically enforced by Weyland-Yutani manufactured Combat Androids, these research facilities were notorious for their containment failures and outbreaks, events that usually led to huge loss of life amongst staff (and any civilians unlucky enough to be caught in harm's way) and the involvement of the United States Colonial Marine Corps.

CollapseEdit

By the year 2379, Weyland-Yutani is said to have been bought out by Wal-Mart decades previously.^[8] Consequently an interstellar military force called the United Systems Military now controls many of the weapons and R&D interests previously held by Weyland-Yutani. Some have theorised that the character who imparts this information, Dr. Mason Wren, was in fact lying about the "Walmart buyout" in order to mask Weyland-Yutani's involvement in his Xenomorph cloning project, and believe that the USM is in reality just another branch of Weyland-Yutani at the time.

DivisionsEdit

Bio-Weapons DivisionEdit

Weyland-Yutani's bio-weapons division was a special department that dealt with the research and development of biological and viral weapons. One of their primary goals was to obtain a viable Xenomorph specimen, whether it be in the form of a Facehugger, a Chestburster or a mature adult; in some cases a Chestburster sample was considered preferable due to the ease with which one could be passed through quarantine undetected within their hosts.^[1] Weyland-Yutani believed that biological self replicating weapons such as the Xenomorph could form a ubiquitous component of distant force projection operations vulnerable to unforeseen threats capable of exhausting traditional security personnel and ammunition stores that may not be easily replenished across the vast distances of space.

The company's attempts to obtain Xenomorphs frequently involved subterfuge and the sacrifice of human life to achieve this aim. Ellen Ripley inevitably became a major enemy of Weyland-Yutani's bio-weapons program after surviving the company's first attempt to capture a live Alien aboard the USCSS Nostromo. Ripley would subsequently uncover (and defeat) numerous other attempts made by the company in this regard. Following Weyland-Yutani's collapse, much of the bio-weapons division's work was appropriated and continued by the United Systems Military. The USM's over research would later fall foul of Ripley 8, a clone of the original Ellen Ripley.

Reverse-Engineering DivisionEdit

The reverse-engineering division was mainly focussed on the study and implementation of recovered Yautja technology. The department was largely built upon the work carried out by Borgia Industries^[9] and the Yutani Corporation,^[10] both of which were incorporated into Weyland-Yutani through business mergers (with the Yutani Corporation being a major partner and partial originator of the company's name).

As with the company's bio-weapons division, Weyland-Yutani's reverse engineering projects were generally run with little regard for morals, although owing to the research being based primarily on the study of appropriated technology, the scope for appalling breaches of human rights was less open. Even so, the division ruthlessly captured and exploited alien tech, stealing Predator and Engineer technology with little thought as to how the species that created it may react. As a result, the company often ran afoul of the Predators, who were fiercely protective of their advanced technology.^[4]

Other divisionsEdit

Weyland-Yutani held numerous other divisions of interest, including departments focussed on media, colonization and manufacturing. Their terraforming efforts were frequently portrayed as being benevolent in nature, but almost always carried a hidden agenda, or at least a substantial profit margin for the company.

Relationship to the USCMEdit

It has frequently been suggested that Weyland-Yutani shared close ties with the United States Colonial Marine Corps and even had a hand in the means and ways of its continued operation. Weyland-Yutani employee Karl Bishop Weyland alluded that the corporation may have played a massive part in the actual formation of the USCM, stating that he and the Corps were "old friends" and that it was effectively just another "corporate asset".^[4] Regardless of the truth in these statements, Weyland-Yutani did manufacture many of the Corps' weapons and vehicles, particularly their large spacecraft, including the Conestoga-class vessels, which were often used by Weyland-Yutani themselves.^[2]

Weyland-Yutani frequently oversaw the deployment of USCM forces in operations where it held a significant stake, including the initial mission to investigate Hadley's Hope. While Weyland-Yutani may not have had actual ownership of the Corps itself, the company at least held stock and/or partially financed the Corps, essentially allowing them to make the Corps available for their own personal use.

Behind the scenesEdit

The company's original name was Weylan-Yutani, briefly seen on a monitor in the film Alien; this name was created by Ron Cobb, one of the designers of the Nostromo and its crew's uniforms. The "d" was later added to the first part of the name by James Cameron in Aliens.

When James Cameron was assigned to write and direct an Alien sequel, the role and significance of Weyland-Yutani increased greatly, becoming an indispensable element in Alien lore. The original Weylan-Yutani logo, an Egyptian winged-sun emblem, was modified to its current corporo-industrial interlocked W/Y for the film. This logo can be viewed in various places throughout the movie, most prominently on crates and the front of a child's tricycle at the Hadley's Hope colony before the Xenomorph outbreak there.^[11] Cameron has also said that the way in which Burke accompanies the Colonial Marines on their mission to LV-426 was supposed to invoke the conspiracy of America's involvement in Vietnam being for purely corporate interests.

In Alien³, Weyland-Yutani's logo appears on the furnaces at the Fiorina 161 Class C Work Correctional Unit, and can also be seen stencilled across the shirts, prison jackets and caps worn by various characters in the film, including Ellen Ripley. It is also seen on screen several times written in Japanese; it appears on a box of supplies as ウェイランド湯谷. The first six Kana of this are part of the Japanese syllabary Katakana which is used to spell foreign words, and here they spell weirando (Weyland). The second part is the Japanese name Yutani written with two kanji, which literally means "hot-water valley" in English. The corporation's name also appears in a newspaper headline where the last four kanji (株式会社) read Kabushiki gaisha which means "joint stock corporation".

TriviaEdit

• Despite the fact that the company is portrayed as almost entirely ruthless, they appear to let Robert Morse live, even though he is a witness to the events on Fiorina 161 and what the company attempted to do there. Since Morse is a convict, it is possible the company simply rationalised people would be unlikely to believe anything he could say to damage them. Moreover, it is entirely possible Morse was subsequently detained by the company or even killed after the events of the film, as such behavior has been seen from Weyland-Yutani in other instances.
• The corporate/military collaboration in pursuit and protection of commerce isn't unprecedented, dating back to the 16th cenutry Dutch Empire's West Indies Trading Companies explicit charter to colonize territories using the Dutch Navy. James Cameron referenced this historical model in the Aliens directors commentary as the basis of the Weyland-Yutani/Colonial Marine Corps relationship.
• Weyland-Yutani has been referenced in several other films and television series since Aliens:
  • In the episode "Harm's Way" of TV series Angel, Weyland-Yutani is revealed to be a client of evil interdimensional law firm Wolfram & Hart. As co-creator Joss Whedon had written the original draft to Alien Resurrection, this was most likely an in-joke aimed at Whedon himself.
  • In another Whedon television series, the short-lived space western Firefly, the pilot episode sees main character Mal Reynolds using a turret gun in a flashback sequence. At the top of the targeting system, a Weyland-Yutani logo can be seen.
  • While Weyland-Yutani does not feature, a similar conglomerate appears in James Cameron's later film Avatar, often referred to by the same moniker of "The Company".
  • Weyland-Yutani was also referenced in ABC's television show V, during a presentation of alien technology to various companies on Earth.

AppearancesEdit

• Alien/novel/comic
• Aliens: Apocalypse - The Destroying Angels
• Aliens/novel
• Aliens: Newt's Tale
• Alien³/novel/comic
• Alien Resurrection/novel (mentioned only)
• Aliens versus Predator (video game)
• Aliens versus Predator 2 (video game)
• Aliens versus Predator 2: Primal Hunt (video game)
• Aliens vs. Predator (video game)
• Aliens: Berserker comic/novel
• Aliens vs. Predator: War comic /novel
• Alien vs. Predator: Sand Trap
• Aliens: Colonial Marines (video game)

GalleryEdit

Karl Bishop Weyland, a Weyland-Yutani Executive.

Michael Weyland, a Weyland-Yutani Employee.

Combat Androids.

Weyland-Yutani Commando.

Add a photo to this galleryAdd a photo to this gallery

ReferencesEdit

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5} James Cameron (writer and director). Aliens [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3} Vincent Ward (writer) and David Fincher (director). Alien³ [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
3. ↑ "Strange Shapes - Space, 2122 – 2179". Retrieved on 2013-05-10.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7}  Aliens vs. Predator [Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360]. Rebellion.
5. ↑ Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett (writers) and Ridley Scott (director). Alien [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
6. ↑  Aliens versus Predator 2 [Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X]. Monolith Productions.
7. ↑  Aliens: Colonial Marines [Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360]. Gearbox Software.
8. ↑ Joss Whedon (writer) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (director). Alien Resurrection [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
9. ↑  Predator: Concrete Jungle [PlayStation 2, Xbox]. Vivendi Universal Games.
10. ↑ Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Jim Thomas, John Thomas (writers) and The Brothers Strause (directors). Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
11. ↑ James Cameron (writer and director). Aliens Special Edition [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.