Alien (film)
Alien is a culturally influential
1979 sci-fi horror film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver.
The film's title references the main antagonist, a highly aggressive, unfamiliar
extraterrestrial life-form. Reluctantly following a distress beacon in deep space,
a crew member of the space-faring towing vehicle Nostromo encounters a young Alien
that attacks and infects him. The creature soon comes aboard the ship, wreaking
havoc and threatening the entire crew.
Alien garnered both critical acclaim and box-office success, spawning a Hollywood media franchise of literature, video games, merchandise, and three official sequels. The film effectively launched actress Sigourney Weaver's career as well. By featuring a strong heroine, Alien also proved unconventional (by Hollywood standards) for the action genre. While the Alien itself (referred to in spin-offs as a xenomorph) was a popular aspect of the film, the story of Ellen Ripley became the thematic thread that ran through the series. Together with the films of David Cronenberg from the 1970s, Alien emerged as a central work in the development of the body-horror subgenre. Publicity for the film involved a tagline that became widely known: "In space no one can hear you scream."
Sequels to the film include: Aliens (1986), Alien³ (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). The 21st century saw a possible end of the Alien franchise in favor of a crossover with the Predator series Alien vs. Predator (2004) and its sequel Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).
Principal
characters
Actor Character Job Gender
Tom Skerritt A. J. Dallas Captain
Male
Sigourney Weaver Ellen Ripley Warrant Officer Female
Veronica Cartwright
J. M. Lambert Navigator Female
Harry Dean Stanton S. E. Brett Engineering
Technician Male
John Hurt G. W. Kane Executive Officer Male
Ian Holm Ash
Science Officer Male (Android)
Yaphet Kotto J. T. Parker Chief Engineer Male
Other-character crew
Actor Character Description
Helen Horton MU-TH-R
182 (known as "Mother") Nostromo's computer (voice)
Bolaji Badejo
Alien (drone) Extraterrestrial
Percy Edwards (Alien vocalizer)
Eddie Powell
(Alien stunts)
Ridley Scott (puppeteer) Alien (facehugger) Extraterrestrial
Inspirations
Some reviewers have noted that the basic plot of Alien,
the pitting of a small group of humans against a relentless alien creature in
a remote location, derives from earlier sci fiction horror films. Dan O'Bannon
has over the years expressed clear views on the exact sources. He has even gone
as far as saying: "A lot of people speculated as to where I stole it from.
The truth is I stole it from everywhere."
Admitted inspirations include:
The
Thing from Another World (1951), featuring the hunting of professional men (soldiers
in this case) through closely confined areas.
Forbidden Planet (1956) in which
a ship lands despite warnings and an invisible creature hunts them down one by
one.
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) where a spaceship crew bring
a murderous alien onboard who then hunts them down. Ivor Powell, the associate
producer, has also highlighted the influences.
Planet of the Vampires (1965),
in which humans discover the remains of a large alien sitting at the controls
of its spaceship.
"Junkyard", a short-story by Clifford D. Simak:
humans find deserted spaceships on an asteroid and the crew stumble across an
egg-chamber.
Strange Relations by Philip José Farmer which deals with
extraterrestrial reproduction.
Various stories from Weird Tales in which monsters
eat people from the inside.
2001: A Space Odyssey which inspired some scenes
in Aliens. One is the similarity between HAL 9000 "HAL" and MU-TH-R
182 "MOTHER" as the ships' central computers that make the decisions
for humans when they are in cryogenic hibernation; the computers also hide ulterior
motives not known to the crew.
O'Bannon denies influence on the part of The
Voyage of the Space Beagle, which features aliens laying eggs in people which
then hatch and eat their way out. However, a lawsuit brought by A. E. van Vogt
ended with a settlement out of court.Philip French suggests another non-science-fiction
parallel: Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.
Plot
The
Nostromo, an interstellar commercial towing-vehicle with a crew of seven, has
set out from Thedus to Earth, hauling twenty-million tons of mineral ore. At the
start of the film, the ship's computer MU-TH-R 182, simply called "Mother"
by the crew, receives an apparently unidentifiable signal from a moon orbiting
a nearby planet, while monitoring the ship's operations. "Mother" wakes
the crew from stasis, so they can investigate the signal's origin. With the ore
and mining facilities left in orbit, the tug portion of the Nostromo lands on
the moon, suffering serious damage during the rough landing.
Most of
the cast together in the ship's bridge, with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the
center.Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Kane (John Hurt) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright)
leave the ship to investigate the signal. They soon discover a derelict spacecraft
of unknown origin. The group enters the craft, finding the pilot's desiccated
remains. Kane descends into a chamber beneath the pilot, discovering thousands
of leathery eggs protected by a forcefield. One of the eggs opens, a lifeform
inside leaps out, burns through the visor of Kane's spacesuit and attaches itself
to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo.
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the commanding officer in Dallas's absence, refuses
to let them back onboard, citing quarantine protocol. However, Science Officer
Ash (Ian Holm) disregards Ripley's decision and lets them in. In the ship's infirmary
Dallas and Ash attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face, but they discover
they cannot remove it by force without harming Kane. When they try to cut off
one of its digits, the alien's highly acidic blood sprays on the floor and burns
its way through several decks of the spaceship. Due to this lethal defense mechanism,
the crew cease from further attempts at removal. Eventually the creature detaches
from Kane's face on its own, and the crew find it dead. Kane wakes up, seemingly
unharmed.
With the ship repaired, the crew leave the moon and have one last meal before re-entering hypersleep. During the meal Kane begins to choke and convulse until an alien creature bursts through his chest, killing him. The creature then scurries away. After ejecting Kane's body into space in a brief funeral, the crew splits up into two teams to capture it. Ash rigs together a tracking-device, while Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) assembles a weapon similar to a cattle-prod. Picking up a signal, Parker (Yaphet Kotto), Brett, and Ripley think they have the creature cornered, only to discover Jones, the crew's cat. Realizing they might pick up the cat on the tracker again later, Parker sends Brett back to catch Jones. During his search Brett encounters the alien, now fully grown and enormous. The creature attacks him with its inner jaws and hauls the paralyzed crew member into an air-shaft.
Kane examines an egg, unaware of the coming dangerThe crew realizes that the
alien has used the air-shafts to move through the ship. Dallas enters the network
of air-shafts with a flamethrower, intending to drive the alien into an airlock
in order to blow it out into space. Using the trackers, the crew picks up the
alien's signal moving toward Dallas. Attempting to escape, Dallas runs right into
the creature. His body disappears. Ripley queries Mother for advice on destroying
the alien, but in the process discovers that "The Company" had already
detected the alien transmission, had decoded the signal as a warning and wanted
one of the alien lifeforms brought back — ostensibly for weapons-development
— even at the expense of the crew. Ash, the Company's agent on board, attacks
Ripley after she learns of the "Special Order 937", but Parker and Lambert
arrive before he can kill her. Parker dislodges Ash's head with a fire-extinguisher,
revealing Ash as an android.
The three remaining crew members decide to destroy the Nostromo and escape in the shuttle Narcissus. While Ripley preps the Narcissus for launch, Parker and Lambert go to gather coolant for the shuttle's life-support system. Ripley hears the screams of her colleagues over the ship's communication system and runs off to investigate. She arrives too late, discovering the alien has killed Parker and Lambert. Ripley activates the ship's self-destruct sequence and races to the shuttle, but sees the alien near the shuttle entrance. After an unsuccessful attempt at aborting the self-destruct sequence, Ripley escapes with Jones to the shuttle again, with the alien nowhere in sight this time. Ripley takes off in the Narcissus, and the Nostromo explodes. While preparing for hypersleep Ripley discovers that the alien has hidden itself inside the shuttle. Ripley manages to slip on a space-suit. She then blasts the alien out of the shuttle's airlock with a grappling-gun. When the Alien (still tethered to the grappling hook) climbs into one of the shuttle's engine nacelles, Ripley activates the engine and blasts it clear into space. The film ends as Ripley and the cat enter hypersleep.
The
xenomorph is a member of the fictional parasitoid extraterrestrial species that
is the primary antagonist of the Alien film series and its subsidiary literature
and video games. The name was first spoken by the character Lieutenant Gorman
in the second film of the series Aliens to indicate this non-terrestrial life-form.
The term was also used by Ellen Ripley to identify the creature, in a deleted
scene from Alien³. Because the films did not give a specific name, this was
adopted by fans as a taxonomic classification for the Alien series' titular monsters.
The Alien Quadrilogy DVD identifies the scientific name of the creatures as Internecivus
raptus (literally "murderous thief").
Unlike many recurring enemy alien races in science fiction, the xenomorphs are not an intelligent civilization but predatory creatures with no higher goals than the reproduction of their species and the destruction of life that could pose a threat. Their disturbing life-cycle, in which a living host is forcibly impregnated with an embryo which then bursts violently from its chest, is perhaps their most noteworthy aspect. Like wasps or termites, xenomorphs are eusocial, with a single fertile queen and a caste of sterile warriors and drones.
The xenomorph design is credited to Swiss
surrealist and artist H. R. Giger, originating in a lithograph called Necronom
IV and refined for the series' first film, Alien. In that film, the xenomorph
was played by an actor in costume (7 foot 2 inch Bolaji Badejo) and make-up, a
technique used in later films of the series. The queen was depicted in Aliens
and Alien: Resurrection using animatronic puppets and in Alien vs. Predator using
computer-generated imagery. The species' design and life cycle have been extensively
added to throughout each film. The Alien was voted as the #14 most memorable villain
by the American Film Institute.
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