Alien (film)

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Alien
Image:Alien movie poster.jpg
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Dan O'Bannon,
Ronald Shusett
Starring Sigourney Weaver,
Tom Skerritt,
Veronica Cartwright,
Harry Dean Stanton,
John Hurt,
Ian Holm,
Yaphet Kotto
Produced by Gordon Carroll,
David Giler,
Walter Hill
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date May 25, 1979
Runtime 117 min. ; 116 min. (director's cut)
Language English
Budget $11,000,000
IMDb page

Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, is an extremely popular and influential science fiction/horror film that spawned several sequels and imitators. Although the title characters are the highly aggressive extraterrestrial creatures (Xenomorph is the proper name of this species), the real connecting thread is 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 is especially notable as the first major American film series with a female action hero.

There are just seven human actors in the movie: Tom Skerritt (Captain Dallas), Sigourney Weaver (Warrant Officer Ripley), Veronica Cartwright (Navigator Lambert), Harry Dean Stanton (Engineering Technician Brett), John Hurt (Executive Officer Kane), Ian Holm (Science Officer Ash), and Yaphet Kotto (Chief Engineer Parker).

The film's visual imagery was designed by H.R. Giger, for which he won an Oscar.

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

Contents

Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The eponymous alien creature is a lethal predator with consistently exotic abilities and physical attributes, and which reproduces by parasitizing living victims. The plot device of the alien having acid for blood was created in order to prevent the Nostromo's crew from being able to kill it easily with firearms—the spilled blood would have eaten through the ship's hull. On the other hand, a flamethrower proved to be a suitable weapon, even though they have a limited firing range. 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 has 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 "dispensable." Ripley — as the sole survivor of the Nostromo — initiates the ship's self-destruct sequence, escapes in a shuttle craft, and finally destroys the alien by blowing it out of the airlock into open space.

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 sub-plot 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.

Production

O'Bannon wrote the original treatment in 1976 while staying with Ronald Shusett after the film version of Dune (directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky) he had been working on 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, Moebius, 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 would be a flop.

With Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope a box office hit Fox gave the film the go ahead with an $8 million budget - much higher than the writers had originally pictured. 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. Another Star Wars alumnus Carlo Rambaldi produced 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.

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.

Influence

  • Aside from the creation of the Alien franchise and launching the international careers of 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 visual style has also been hugely influential, as for the first time in a Science Fiction film space travellers are depicted as blue collar company employee drones rather than highly empowered agents of a quasi-military structure such as Star Trek. 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.
  • 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, have many enemies that have an astounding resemblance to the aliens.

Prequel

Alien Quadrilogy

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 no longer interested him. However, another interview has stated he is regaining some interest and that the 5th film might happen after all.

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.

Alien

The USCSS Nostromo, a towing vessel hauling an enormous ore refinery and 20 million tons of raw ore with a crew of seven (including Captain Dallas and Warrant Officer Ripley) is returning to Earth from Thedus in the year 2122. During the return voyage, the ship’s computer (called Mother) intercepts a non-human transmission from planet 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, 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.

Aliens

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, except a single survivor, a young girl nicknamed Newt, are dead. 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.

Alien³

However, 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 facehugger was cut by Ripley's hypersleep chamber cover 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. Fiorina 161 is inhabited by only a small number of extremely violent and dangerous offenders.

Shortly after Ripley is rescued from the escape vehicle, it is discovered that she is the only human survivor of the crash. Meanwhile, at the rescue site, a colony dog is 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. As such, Ripley convinces the inmates that it is vital they kill the aliens (including the one inside her) before the company ship arrives.

After the alien is destroyed using a lead smelter, Ripley sacrifices herself to prevent the company from harvesting the queen embryo from her body, as such saving countless human lives. The sole survivor of Fiorina 161 is Prisoner Morse, whose future fate is unknown.

Several small changes to the plot were present in the Alien 3 Special Edition. It was an ox rather than a dog that was impregnanted. The xenomorph was temporarily captured, placed inside the toxic waste dump site and was released by Rains who was killed by it. In this edition, the Alien queen embryo was shown on the cat scan, but not in the last scene when Ripley sacrifices herself. There is also significantly more interaction between Warder Aaron and Ripley. The footage added approximately 17 minutes to this film, like the Aliens Special Edition before it, which had 22 minutes added.

Alien: Resurrection

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 re-discovered 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 vessel. 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.

Spin-offs

Spin-offs include comics, novels, and computer games.

The Special Edition AKA 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.

Here is a brief rundown of the restored footage in the order the scenes appear.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
  • The Nostromo crew listening to the alien transmission.
  • Lambert slapping Ripley for refusing to let them bring Kane back aboard the ship.
  • Some dialogue deleted during the scene where Ripley confronts Dallas in the corridor over letting Ash keep the dead alien face-hugger. 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.

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

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.

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

External links


Alien movie series
Alien | Aliens | Alien³ | Alien: Resurrection
Cross-overs
Alien vs. Predator
Relating to the Alien universe
Bishop | Ellen Ripley | LV-426 | Nostromo | The Derelict | United States Colonial Marines | Weyland-Yutani | Xenomorph | Yautja
Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Alien_%28film%29.html"


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