Coming up with a more audacious title for a science fiction film than Alien would be tricky. Perhaps the only candidates are Science Fiction Film or Space: The Movie. From the earliest previews, the message of Alien was clear: all previous cinematic depictions of extraterrestrials are jokers and this Alien is the only alien, and yes, we only need one alien to convince you of that.
But the reason this movie is so great isn’t because of the singular Alien, or even the iconic design of the monster. The real monster here is the brilliant unfolding of the narrative. Just when you think you know what the hell is going on, something pops out (literally) and changes everything.
It’s nearly impossible to approach Alien without prior knowledge of it. Like The Wizard of Oz or Casablanca, there are certain things everyone knows without having seen it. They know Sigourney Weaver is a badass, and they know a thing pops out of some poor dude’s chest and that it’s pretty gross. I recently was lucky enough to attend a midnight screening of Alien in New York City with two people who had never seen it (or any of its subsequent sequels) before. Watching it in this way, through their eyes, was fantastic because in the ensuing conversation, I realized what is so perfect about the narrative structure: it’s not obvious.
Sure it’s hard to acknowledge this now, but like an unconventional short story or novel, Alien doesn’t make it clear who its main protagonist is right away. Ripley has almost equal screen time with all the other characters as the film begins. The world-building of Alien—at least initially—is close to zero. All we know is some folks are on a spaceship called the Nostromo and they’re a mining operation. Everything else we pick up as we go along. The expansive universe of Weyland-Yutani and the various conspiracies involving the Aliens aren’t as central to this film. They’re relevant and rendered totally important, but like all the elements of this movie, not overshadowed by too much attention.
So when does Ripley become the main character? When she becomes the squeaky wheel, the one person at her job who doesn’t want to throw the safety regulations out the window. When Kane (John Hurt) is brought back to the ship with the face-hugger creature on his face, Ripley demands they all follow the rules and not come inside. This is what the rules are for, right? It’s not that Ripley is some kind of hard-ass corporate stooge, it’s just that she doesn’t really want to do the go-with-the-flow thing for the sake of it. Which is what makes the character and the movie so wonderful. Though great and effective horror conventions are employed to maximum scary effect in this movie, the movie itself doesn’t feel all that conventional. The story structure, at least for a movie like this, is fairly original. There was never anything like it before, and few to rival it since.
The plodding, ominous, overly-deliberate pace of the first half of the film puts the audience in a great place to be totally shocked, exhilarated and freaked out by the fast-paced and horrific second half. Without this kind of creepy initial slowness, the rapidity of the Alien’s rampage on the ship wouldn’t be as keenly felt. This kind of gradual reveal is parallel to the character of Ripley herself. It’s not like we start the movie with her being extremely rude or in-your-face about everything. Instead, like a real person who feels that they’re the odd-man-out, she slowly emerges as the bravest person aboard. One of the nifty little tricks employed to help further this point is the fact that Ripley never screams the famous horror scream. We’d later find Sigourney Weaver was capable of it in Ghostbusters, but here in space, no one can hear Ripley scream—because she’s way too preoccupied with killing the monster.
Outside of the story and great cast, something else Alien has going for it is how damn great it looks. Though it’s not fair to do this because the movie can stand on its on merits; all one has to do is take a look other sci-fi movies of the 70’s that aren’t Star Wars to see proof of this. Logan’s Run came out just a few years before Alien. Can you imagine that? Sure, the budgets and companies that worked on the projects were different, but considering how wonderful Alien looks by comparison it becomes shocking to think about. Hell, this movie came out the same year as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which again, from realistic production standpoint, looks like a joke next to Alien.
Maybe this argument doesn’t hold much water and I’m already hearing cries of apples versus oranges, but when you watch Prometheus and then you watch Alien right away and realize how good it still looks, the enduring popularity of the film becomes obvious. Even Star Wars doesn’t look as timeless as this movie. Sure, some of the chunky keys on the spaceship and the all greenscreen of the computer interface seem a little hokey; I still think there’s an element of realism to all of it. Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was planning, but Alien still looks—to me anyway—like a future we’re moving towards.
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see, but extending the Alien movie franchise will reveal what many of us have feared for years: the first Alien film is really just a dramatized documentary.
One final, important note on the brilliance of Alien. It takes some guts to call your movie Alien and have aliens reproduce through implanting themselves in human beings. It’s another thing to reveal a member of your all-human crew to be a murderous robot. The scene in which Yaphet Kotto’s Parker yells “Ash is a goddamn Robot!” may be one of my favorite lines in any movie, ever. Because really, at that moment, we didn’t know robots existed in this universe, and the fact that the movie is getting away with that is truly something special.
This article originally ran as part of Tor.com’s 2012 “Countdown to Prometheus” series.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com. He is the author of the book Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths and is a staff writer for Inverse.com. He lives in New York City.
I love this movie. Maybe its me, but I far prefer a single (relatively) weak antagonist against a group of normal people instead of the action-movie sequel of hordes of villains against a superbly equipped group of superhuman soldiers.
I was lucky enough to see Alien on its initial run, and yes, everything you mention is true. But there was (and remains) one huge Ripley-related flaw, and the sold-out audience I was in that long-ago night felt it: we were totally with Ripley right up until the point she went back for the cat. You could feel the audience’s empathy snap free, and from that point on we watched, but we weren’t involved the way we had been. It has nothing to do with not caring about animals; it’s about priorities.
I have a question. How original do you think Alien really is? In the article it is stated (Quote: “The story structure, at least for a movie like this, is fairly original. There was never anything like it before, and few to rival it since.”) But there is an argument missing here, isn´t there? I mean, sure, the setting and the designs are very original. But the plot? A monster killing everybody one by one. The characters? Female action hero, yes. But Psycho, Star Wars, Halloween did that before. (And what did they turn Ripley into in the second film? They turned her into a mother).
I´m asking this because I read these endless complaints nowadays. Complaints about how people like Ridley Scott are not original anymore. That they only milk the cash cows of movie franchises. But Alien wasn´t a brain fest either, was it? It is brilliantly executed. But everything it does was already there before, wether in comics (Moebius), book-form or story structure.
Time was ripe. The genre took off. Two years after Star Wars – it was the right place and the perfect moment. A lot of it happened by chance. H. R. Giger getting a contract. Moebius being influential. Ron Cobb.
Today, we, the fans, judge every new movie on wether it is original or not. I think we should return to judging films on their execution.
“It! The Terror from Beyond Space”, at least, had done this sort of thing before in the movies, all the way back in 1958. When the 6 or 7 yo me saw this at 1 am in the late 60s, it scared the bejesus out of me :D
@3: “It! The Terror from Beyond Space”, had done this sort of thing in a movie all the way back in 1968. When the 6 or 7 year-old me saw it as the midnight movie in the late 60s, it scared the bejesus out of me :D
So, delay made me think my first post vanished, sorry
@3 AT: It’s a weird, kind of paradoxical thing, actually. At one level, Alien is really just the Beach Ball subplot of Dan O’Bannon’s student collaboration with John Carpenter, Dark Star, stretched out and played straight (no one said, “I thought you were cute” to the poor unloved xenomorph, so sad…). And that itself was building on a number of old SF B-movies and SF stories (including an A.E. van Vogt story from the Golden Age of SF that was similar enough for van Vogt to sue the production and the producers to feel better settling the suit out of court than fighting it).
And yet….
And yet Alien still feels like nothing that came before it, in much the same way that Star Wars felt like something completely new and different despite being a whole bunch of old stuff pureed in the blender of George Lucas’ head. Alien was weirdly subversive in all kinds of ways, it didn’t look quite like anything else that had hit movie screens before, it was stuffed with symbolism and imagery that would have just a few years previously been impossible to get into a film (or at least an American film distributed by a big-name Hollywood studio), and threw a total curveball in killing off the story’s ostensible hero (the handsome captain, played by one of the most recognizable members of the cast) and making the protagonist out of a stereotype-defying female character played by a then-unknown actress.
It’s weird, because I think you hit some valid and inarguable points and yet I also think Britt is absolutely right that this was something totally unconventional, genre breaking, and unique. You can pick it apart and see where all the pieces were made, sure; but Alien is one of those creations that transcends its parts.
@2 Exact opposite for me. When she went back for that cat, it sold me that hers was the only character who deserved to survive. YMMV.
What I like most about this movie, besides the production design, is the cast and how they interact with each other. They really do seem like coworkers, or “space truckers.” And because the story is fairly simple with a deliberate pace, that allows the characters some breathing room for those interactions to take place.
“Right.”
@2 – Yeeeahhh. I think you’re in the minority there, actually. Most people consider going back for the cat to be a hugely human and sympathetic thing to do. People do stupid things for beloved pets (or even strange cute animals they happen to run across) every day.
@7. Eric: Thank you for reminding me. I forgot how subversive the film indeed was back in its release year and the subsequent period of time. I was, in a way, talking about criticism. The mistake I made, at least in my opinion, was to try and slap Alien down a bit in order to get a more open-minded and positive reception for upcoming films like Alien: Covenant. This is not necessary. They both can be great in its own regard.
But what you said, all the revolutionary impacts a film like Alien had – you cannot critique a film based solely on this, right? These are things coming from the outside, no filmmaker can plan them or lay tehm out, no matter how smart he or she may be. Same with looking into the future – it´s just not possible.
But we have to base our perception on something here and now. The fact that there are so many flat and mindless reviews out there for films like Prometheus and now Alien: Covenant just tells me, when it comes to reviewing a work of art – stick to the few things you actually can say: How you felt watching it. If you personally had fun with it (or not). And how it is executed.
Everything else … time will tell.
A lot of reviewers of said prequels – they complained so loud about the lack of Xenomorphs in Prometheus. Now they scream the loudest about too many Xenomorphs in Covenant. It is stupid, I say. Reviewing nowadays can change the course of how a film is made, which direction it takes. We, the fans, should not listen to all this too much – and neither should the filmmakers, for that matter. In the end, how can you do something subversive and exciting if you are not following your own path?
The worst reviews are those in which the reviewer thinks he understood everything in the first place, thus remains bored of anything – and therefore understands nothing at all. It is harmful and narrow-minded.
(Goes without saying that I really love the Alien Rewatch articles here).