Alien film: Encyclopedia - Alien film

Alien (film)

The science fiction/horror film Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, has become extremely popular and influential, and has spawned several sequels and imitators. The title of the film refers to highly-aggressive extraterrestrial creatures (unnamed in this orignal film, but referred to as Xenomorphs in the sequel Aliens). But the connecting thread becomes the saga of Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, a human woman who finds herself the principal opponent of the species throughout the series. The film launched the first major American film series with a female action hero.

The film depicts only seven human actors:

• Tom Skerritt (as Captain Dallas)
• Sigourney Weaver (as Warrant Officer Ripley)
• Veronica Cartwright (as Navigator Lambert)
• Harry Dean Stanton (as Engineering Technician Brett)
• John Hurt (as Executive Officer Kane)
• Ian Holm (as Science Officer Ash)
• Yaphet Kotto (as Chief Engineer Parker)

The crew of the ship Nostromo also includes an onboard cat named "Jones".

H.R. Giger designed the film's visual imagery and won an Oscar for it.

In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed Alien "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Alien film - Plot

The eponymous alien creature, a lethal predator with consistently exotic abilities and physical attributes, reproduces by parasitizing living victims with embryos or by transmuting them directly into the early alien reproductive stages (egg and facehugger) through unknown means when it lacks a Queen is not present and an established hive. The film crew set up the plot device of the alien having acid for blood in order to prevent the Nostromo's crew from readily killing it with firearms — the spilled blood would have eaten through the ship's hull. On the other hand, a flamethrower is thought to be a suitable weapon, as one character explains "Most animals retreat from fire". The life cycle of the alien has been compared to that of the ichneumon wasp due to its parasitoid nature.

After the ship's captain is captured by the alien in a botched attempt to trap the creature, Ripley assumes command. She discovers that the ship had been deliberately re-routed by the Company that owns it to investigate a non-human distress signal and to return a specimen. The Science Officer Ash is revealed as an android, placed by the Company on short notice at Thedus to protect the creature, with instructions to regard the crew as "expendable". Ripley—as the sole survivor of the Nostromo—initiates the ship's self-destruct sequence, escapes in a shuttle craft with a cage carrying Jones, the ship's cat, and finally destroys the alien by blowing it out of the airlock into open space.

Alien film - Early versions

The original screenplay was written by Dan O'Bannon, who had collaborated with John Carpenter on the cult sci-fi film Dark Star. O'Bannon's original script was titled Star Beast, and was a revision of an idea O'Bannon had years before, about gremlins getting loose aboard a World War II bomber and wreaking havoc with the crew.

O'Bannon's original script bears many resemblances to the film that was actually produced, yet with significant differences. The spaceship—designed with a low-budget production in mind—was a small craft called the Snark. In the original script, the ship's crew—including the Ripley character—are all male. Actor Tom Skerritt was originally cast as Ripley, but during script development the character was re-cast as a woman, reportedly at the insistence of producer Alan Ladd, Jr.—a decision which proved crucial to the film's success.

After sailing in response to the intercepted alien message, the crew discover the derelict alien craft and its dead pilot. Ominously the pilot in its death throes had scratched a triangle on its control console. The crew members go outside and see the remains of an ancient pyramid. Kane is lowered into the structure where he finds a chamber with a breathable atmosphere. The alien embryo eggs are housed in an altar like structure and there is a hieroglyph depicting the alien's lifecycle. This concept was retained for a long time, and preliminary H.R. Giger pyramid drawings intended for Alien exist, but eventually the producers went with the idea of combining the wrecked derelict ship with the egg chamber (also designed by Giger), although the ideas of the pyramid, the altar and the hieroglyphs were retained for the 2004 film Alien vs. Predator. The subplot of Ash being an android and the betrayal of the crew was introduced later in the script development. A scene in which Ripley and Dallas have sex was dropped in order to secure a lower censorship rating.

Substantial excerpts of O'Bannon's original script appeared as bonus materials on the 1992 laserdisc boxed set of Alien, though they were not included in the 1999 Alien Legacy DVD box. The complete O'Bannon script was included on the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set as a bonus feature.

Some early concept art was drawn by Chris Foss, and Jean Giraud, who is better known as the comic book artist Mœbius. Mœbius's designs for the Nostromo spacesuits made it into the final film.

Alien film - Production

O'Bannon wrote the original treatment in 1976 while staying with Ronald Shusett after the film version of Dune (directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky) on which he had been working fell apart. Artist Ron Cobb, who had worked with O'Bannon on Dark Star and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, produced a series of conceptual designs that defined the gritty realism of the film. O'Bannon and Shusett sold the script to the Brandywine company of David Giler, Gordon Carroll, and Walter Hill who had a production deal with Twentieth Century Fox with Hill attached to direct.

Hill and Giler re-wrote the script, ejecting superfluous elements and making it more action oriented. These changes were the source of tension between O'Bannon and the other production members that lasted through the making of the film. O'Bannon invited other artists who had worked on the Dune project to work on the film including Foss, Mœbius, and Giger. At this stage, there was a hiatus in the production, as the studio was alarmed at the prospect of committing to a new science fiction film when it feared the yet-to-be-released Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope would be a flop.

When Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope became a box office hit, Fox gave the film the go ahead with an $8 million budget—much higher than the writers had originally hoped. During the production hiatus, Hill had been replaced by Ridley Scott who revised many of the design elements before principal photography started at Shepperton Studios in England. Giger was brought in from Zurich and along with Ron Cobb was set up at the studios as a type of artist in residence. (Giger kept a diary through the production that was the basis of his book Giger's Alien). Much of the film's production design was done by the same team that had worked on Star Wars, with John Mollo supervising the costumes including the distinctive spacesuits and Carlo Rambaldi producing the crucial mechanical effects for the title alien's head. Special effects were led by the team of Brian Johnson and Nick Allder who had worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Space 1999. Scott turned to a computer animation pioneer Bernard Lodge from his old college the Royal College of Art in London to produce the film's influential green line computer displays.

Alien film - Music

The original score for the film was composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Despite the film's futuristic setting, the film is actually a horror picture, and the composer's score reflects this. With its oscillating string textures and bizarre sounds, like the titular creature, Goldsmith's score lurks in corridors and pounces without warning. Goldsmith composed a main theme in the romantic style that barely appears in the finished film.

Director Ridley Scott and editor Terry Rawlings became quite attached to several of the cues they used for the temporary track while cutting the movie. As a result, much of Goldsmith's score was moved around and many sequences were rescored. Two cues from Goldsmith's earlier score for Freud appear in the film, and the end credits were replaced by a section of Howard Hanson's second symphony, "The Romantic." As a result, Goldsmith's original soundtrack LP was more a representation of the original score he wrote than what ended up appearing in the film.

The initial DVD release of Alien included an isolated score track that synched the original music up to where it would have appeared in the film, as well as an additional track with the re-scored tracks (the production audio plays when the music does not appear). The soundtrack CD is out of print, however.

Alien film - Themes

The theme that most critics and fans of the film have pointed to is that of the human birth cycle. When Kane, Dallas, and Lambert venture into the alien craft, they enter through giant vagina-like openings and travel up a tunnel that resembles the birth canal. The long, telescopic machinery the fossilized alien sits in is phallus-shaped, and the egg that Kane finds could be interpreted as an ovum. All this imagery is not surprising since Giger's art is often of a sexual nature; however, this theme may have gone unnoticed by audiences because of the film's effective chills.

The film presents a version of birth that might seem almost empathetic with that of the woman's experience: the alien bursting from Kane's chest is reflective of the intense pain that a woman experiences during natural child birth (a birth without anesthesia).

The other main theme of the film deals with blue-collar workers faced with extraordinary circumstances. With the exception of Ash the science officer, all the characters are working class, even the officers. There is also the notion of a corporation that puts profit before the safety of their workers. Ripley hints that the company probably wants the creature for its weapons division. To acquire it, the company makes the lives of the crew members expendable. This may be reflective of the economic culture of the 1970s when millions of blue-collar jobs were lost as American corporations shut down factories and other production facilities in favor of cheap, overseas labor.

Also important is the confusion of artificial with organic. The initial stress laid on life cycles and processes eventually eases off once the alien births. After it escapes, much weight is given to visually confusing its smooth head with metal piping and its spindly, bristling legs and tail with wires, chains, and grates. This theme is further explored with the computer system "Mother," the realization that Ash is an android, and that his mission constitutes regarding humans as accessories, or mechanisms, by which the alien is preserved. Alone, this idea is already immensely interesting, but coupled with the birth imagery it becomes quite frightening; it calls into question the very point of reproduction, the nature of "humanity," and even being alive.

It may be interesting to some viewers that the name of the ship in Alien is the "Nostromo" This is a reference to a work of the same name by Joseph Conrad, an author visited earlier by Ridley Scott in his movie The Duellists. In Nostromo, a silver-mining corporation entrusts a dangerous cargo (silver—dangerous because revolutionaries want it) with an audacious anti-hero called Nostromo, tasking him with protecting it from the revolutionaries. It is possible that this could be linked with the idea of blue-collar workers facing impossible odds as mentioned above. Given that the alien cargo is eventually destroyed just as the silver is betrayed in Nostromo, one could draw parallels between the eventual corruption of Nostromo and the "corruption" of Ripley, perhaps making an argument in favor of disloyalty to evil corporate overlords.

Alien film - Influence

• Aside from the creation of the Alien franchise and launching the international careers of Sigourney Weaver and Ridley Scott, the box office success of the film spawned a cycle of imitations, including Xtro, Inseminoid, and to some degree John Carpenter's The Thing.

• Along with The Brood, the film is held up as launching the body horror sub-genre of horror film. Also the film's cramped, claustrophobic sets have become the de facto norm for horror movies set in space.

• The film's gender politics have been subject of much examination and it has been linked to wider cultural idioms such as the experience of abjection defined by Helene Cixous.

• The film's representation of the ship's crew has also been hugely influential, as for the first time in a blockbuster science fiction film, space travelers are depicted as blue-collar company employees rather than highly empowered agents of a quasi-military structure such as in Star Trek. (This was also a hint of this in the earlier Silent Running.) The film Outland borrows much of this premise, and across the genre the aesthetic of Alien for future technology became the norm in the following decade.

• The distinctive "bio-mechanoid" style of H.R. Giger, made famous by this film, has been copied and referenced in sci-fi film and television so often that it has become a design motif in its own right. Famous examples of Giger-inspired design include Independence Day, The Matrix, and Star Trek's Borg.

• In addition to movies, Nintendo's Metroid videogame series is noticeably influenced by the movies of the Alien series. To commemorate this influence, one of the game's perennial villains is named Ridley, in honor of Alien director Ridley Scott. Also, Konami’s Contra saga has many enemies that have an astounding resemblance to the aliens.

• In the computer game Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment, the Zerg faction is similar to the Xenomorphs in many ways. In a five-mission demo version of the game, supposedly a prequel to the retail version, the Zerg are even referred to as Xenomorphs.

• The movie's advertising tagline, "In Space, No One can Hear you Scream", is frequently spoofed, often with the word "Scream" replaced with "Laugh".

• In Viewtiful Joe 2, the last level features enemies similar to the Xenomorphs.

• In the final level of Conker's Bad Fur Day, the protagonist Conker fights a Xenomorph while wearing a powersuit.

Alien film - Alien Special Edition a.k.a. Director's Cut 2003

October 29, 2003, saw Alien re-released in cinemas as a Ridley Scott Director's Cut. It restores many—but not all—of the deleted scenes that have already appeared as bonus materials on previous laserdisc and DVD releases of the film, and makes some interesting deletions from the original cut. However, unlike the Star Wars "Special Editions", it does not appear as if any of the film's original special effects footage has been digitally enhanced (though the film's original negative did undergo some digital cleanup and restoration).

Ridley Scott has stated that he did not really think that Alien required this tweaking, and that the term "Director's Cut" was used for marketing reasons only (and inconsistently as well). In the Alien Quadrilogy materials, he goes out of his way to state his preference for the original: "rest easy, the original 1979 theatrical version isn't going anywhere". He recut the film himself, only after viewing the studio's attempt to do so; a version that he felt was "too long" and ruined the film's pacing. In his filmed introduction for the Director's Cut on the Alien Quadrilogy set, Scott can barely conceal his contempt for the whole exercise.

A brief rundown of the restored footage or cut scenes, in the order that the scenes appear:

• The Nostromo crew listening to the alien transmission

• The scene in which Ripley asks Ash if the alien transmission has been analyzed by Mother, in which Ash replies “No”, has been cut. Instead Ripley is simply seen playing with the computer console and sitting down while 1 and 0 are displayed on the computer screen.

• Lambert slapping Ripley for refusing to let them bring Kane back aboard the ship

• Some dialogue deleted during the scene where Ripley confronts Captain Dallas in the corridor over letting Ash keep the dead alien facehugger. Dallas' lines about the Nostromo's original science officer being replaced by Ash at the last minute have been removed. This is an interesting deletion as it removes a bit of foreshadowing that all is not as it seems with the character of Ash.

• A handful of shots added to Brett's death scene, including one where the alien can clearly be seen dangling from above, and another where Parker and Ripley rush into the room just after Brett has been grabbed.

• A brief sequence showing Dallas querying the ship's computer, Mother, about his odds of killing the alien, and getting no reply, before he enters the ventilation ducts, has been cut.

• A portion of the film's most famous deleted scene—Ripley discovering the alien's nest and the bodies of Dallas and Brett—has been restored, though the Director's Cut does not include Ripley's lines to the dying Dallas ("What can I do?" and "I'll get you out of there.") before she kills him with the flamethrower.

• A quick extension of a shot as Ripley discovers the alien blocking the path to the shuttle; the alien is shown staring at Jones the cat in his catbox, then it swats the catbox out of its way. This extended shot has actually never been shown before, even on DVD.

• The Director's Cut also deleted snippets of footage here and there that is not readily apparent upon first viewing:
  • Ripley gaining entry to Mother was longer
  • An almost unnoticeable cut as the last three surviving crew members round a bend in the corridors of the ship

Both the Special Edition and the original theatrical version are included in the Alien Quadrilogy boxed set, which was released on December 2, 2003.

Alien film - Feature films within the same storyline

Prequels

• Predator (1987), directed by John McTiernan
• Predator 2 (1990), directed by Stephen Hopkins
• Alien vs. Predator (2004), directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Sequels

• 1986: Aliens, directed by James Cameron
• 1992: Alien³, directed by David Fincher
• 1997: Alien: Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

There is also a rumored Alien 5 movie. Although it was said that the script is, for the time-being, too violent to appeal to any major group, Ridley Scott had said on occasion that he would be open to directing the film. However, when interviewed in 2005 after the release of Alien vs. Predator, Scott stated that the franchise had been wrung dry and was no longer interesting to him. However, another interview has stated he is regaining some interest and that the fifth film might happen after all.

Alien film - Quadrilogy plot-summary

Following is a plot summary for the entire Alien series. For additional plot details, see the movies' specific pages or The Alien Universe Timeline.

The USCSS Nostromo, a towing vessel hauling an enormous ore refinery and 20 million tons of raw ore, and with a crew of seven (including Captain Dallas and Warrant Officer Ripley) has set out from Thedus on its return to Earth in the year 2122. During the return voyage, the ship’s computer (called Mother) intercepts a non-human transmission from the moon LV-426. Mother, according to Weyland-Yutani (“the Company”) protocol, alters course and wakes the crew from hypersleep in order to investigate the transmission.

Upon investigation of the transmission source, a derelict alien ship, Executive Officer Kane becomes infected with an alien embryo. On orders of Captain Dallas, Kane is brought back on board and treated by Science Officer Ash, an android. The crewmembers return to the Nostromo from LV-426, hoping to return to Earth as soon as possible. After a brief period, an alien emerges from Kane and proceeds to kill all crewmembers except Ripley. (Ash, the android, was terminated by the other crewmembers after his attempted murder of Ripley, an action he took in defense of the alien species.)

Ripley activates Nostromo's auto-destruct sequence and escapes in the shuttle. The Nostromo and its cargo are destroyed in a series of explosions, but Ripley soon discovers that the alien had also entered the shuttle. Half-dressed and nervously singing "Lucky Star", Ripley kills the alien by blasting it out of the shuttle's airlock and burning it with the shuttle’s jets. Ripley sets the shuttle's course for Earth and returns to hypersleep.

In the year 2179, after 57 years drifting in space, Ellen Ripley is found and rescued. Upon recounting the events of the Nostromo and LV-426, she is informed that a group of settlers has recently moved to LV-426 and created Hadley's Hope, a space colony. After dismissing Ripley’s claims as ridiculous, the Company (specifically Carter Burke) sends colonists to the derelict ship to investigate Ripley’s report of an alien species. Shortly thereafter, contact is lost with the colony. In response, the Company sends Ripley, a group of Colonial Marines, and Carter Burke to investigate LV-426 aboard the vessel Sulaco.

Arriving at LV-426, Ripley and her companions soon discover that aliens have overrun the colony and that all settlers are dead, except for a young girl nicknamed Newt. The rescue team becomes trapped in the settlement, where they are hunted by hundreds of aliens. Their mission is further complicated by Ripley's discovery that Burke is under orders to bring one of the aliens back for the Company's bio-weapons division.

Eventually, all aboard the Sulaco are killed, except Ripley, Newt, Corporal Hicks, and Bishop (an android), who escaped LV-426 shortly before the colony was destroyed by the thermonuclear meltdown of the facility's atmosphere processor. The Sulaco’s course is set to Earth, and the crew enters hypersleep.

The Aliens Special Edition added approximately 17 minutes to this film. Several small additions to the plot were presented, including:

• Ripley has a daughter and learns of her death upon arrival at Earth.
• The events taking place on LV-426 immediately before infestation.
• Extra battle scenes involving the marines' robot sentries.

While the queen alien was briefly onboard the Sulaco, she laid at least one egg. One alien facehugger emerged during the crew's hypersleep and impregnated Ripley with an alien queen embryo. The cover of Ripley's hypersleep chamber cut the facehugger, and the release of its acidic blood caused a fire onboard, which led to the Sulaco jettisoning an escape shuttle towards a penal colony planet, Fiorina 161, inhabited only a small number of extremely violent and dangerous offenders. Upon rescue from the escape vehicle, the rescuers discover that of all the humans, only Ripley has survived the crash. Meanwhile, a colony dog becomes impregnated with an alien embryo, shortly after which an alien emerges from the dog and begins hunting and killing inmates.

Upon learning about the alien on the planet, the company sends a "rescue ship" to Fiorina 161. However, it quickly becomes clear that they care only about capturing the alien, not about saving the inmates. In these circumstances, Ripley convinces the inmates to kill the aliens (including the one inside her) before the company ship arrives.

After the destruction of the alien using a lead smelter, Ripley sacrifices herself to prevent the company from harvesting the queen embryo from her body, saving countless human lives in doing so. The fate of the sole survivor of Fiorina 161, Prisoner Morse, remains unknown.

The Alien³ Special Edition added approximately 17 minutes to this film. Several small changes to the plot were presented, including:

• An ox, rather than a dog, was impregnanted.
• The Xenomorph was temporarily captured, placed inside the toxic waste dump site, and subsequently released by Golic who was killed by it.
• The alien queen embryo was shown on the cat scan, but not when Ripley sacrifices herself.
• There is also significantly more interaction between Warder Aaron and Ripley.

200 years later, around the year 2379, Ripley is cloned several times by a United System Military scientist using blood samples from Fiorina 161 that were rediscovered in the year 2356. Upon successfully cloning Ripley, whose DNA had intermingled with the alien species her body was hosting, an intact alien species is successfully developed in and extracted from her abdomen.

In the year 2381, a small ship manned by smugglers called the Betty brings several kidnapped space-travelers, still in hypersleep, to a secret USM research vessel called the USM Auriga. The reason for the kidnappings is unknown to the smugglers, but they later discover that the travelers are to be impregnated with alien embryos at the hands of the USM scientists. The experiment quickly runs amok when the aliens break loose and begin killing everyone on the ship. While chaos ensues, an android, Call, changes the course of the ship, which is heading to Earth as per default emergency procedures, to crash land in an attempt at destroying the aliens onboard in the process.

The Auriga crashes into southern Africa and explodes, presumably killing the aliens onboard. A few survivors managed to escape the Auriga before its crash landing, using the Betty. The survivors were Ripley’s clone (#8), Call, and two members of the Betty crew, Johner and Vriess. The Betty lands safely on Earth near Paris, France. Ripley and Call contemplate their next move.

Alien film - Spin-offs

Spin-offs include comics, novels, and computer games. Note for example the novelization by Alan Dean Foster. The Aliens have also appeared in numerous crossovers featuring Predators, Superman, Batman, WildC.A.T.s, Green Lantern, and many others.

Alien film - Trivia

Alien has the distinction of being the first R rated film to have a merchandising line aimed at children. Among the children's products released were various toys and models based on the creature and its egg, jigsaw puzzles, a board game, a Viewmaster style movie reel, and even a storybook, all of which are considered collectible today. Most notably, Kenner released a 12" Alien figure. It was impressively made for its time and had articulated parts including the retractable jaw and glow in the dark cranium. However, the toy did not sell well due to the fact that the demographic it was aimed for would most likely not recognize it. Parents also deemed the toy too frightening for children. Toy lines for R rated films would not become common until the 1990s when such films (such as the Alien sequels) were more easily accessed by younger viewers.

The scene where the alien Chestburster emerges from Kane was so violent that it caused some people watching the movie to faint, and others vomited.

An urban legend says that Sigourney Weaver keeps one of the alien "egg" props in her house.

-An alien chestburster appears in the 1986 Colin Baker 'Doctor Who' story "The Trial of a Time Lord" as the Sixth Doctor looks at the chestburster in Dr. Crozier's laboratory. Also, an alien egg appears in a glass case in the 2005 Christopher Eccleston 'Doctor Who' story "Dalek" in the underground museum of Henry Van Statten and can be seen as the Ninth Doctor and Rose leave the TARDIS and when the guards storm in past the TARDIS.

See also

Xenomorphs

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Alien film", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki