ALIEN (FILM)

'''Alien''' is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott. The film's title refers to the main antagonist, a highly aggressive extraterrestrial life-form, which infects one of the crew members of the spacefaring towing vehicle ''Nostromo'' and threatens the crew after hatching from his body.
''Alien'' became a critical and a box-office success and a cultural phenomenon, spawning a Hollywood franchise of literature, video games, merchandise and three official sequels. The film launched actress Sigourney Weaver's career. By featuring a strong heroine the film itself also proved unconventional (by Hollywood standards) for the action genre. While the Alien (referred to in spin-offs as a ''xenomorph'') proved a popular aspect of the film, the story of Ellen Ripley became the thematic thread that ran through the series. Together with films like ''Halloween'' and the films by David Cronenberg of the 1970s^[1] ''Alien'' was a central work in the development of the body-horror subgenre.^[2] Publicity for the film used a tagline which became famous: ''In space no one can hear you scream.''
Sequels to the film are ''Aliens'' (1986), ''Alien³'' (1992) and '' (1997). The new century saw a possible end of the ''Alien'' franchise in favor of the crossover films ''Alien vs. Predator'' (2004) and the upcoming '' (2007).

Contents

Plot (original 1979 release)

Cast

Main cast

Other cast

Inspirations

Production

History and early versions

Pre-production

The alien

Set design and construction

Music

Official soundtrack releases

Bootleg releases

Influence

In film

On television

On video games

Gender politics

Merchandising

Awards and accolades

Special Edition (2003)

The cocoon scene

Spin-offs

References

Footnotes

General references

External links

Plot (original 1979 release)

The ''Nostromo'', an interstellar commercial towing-vehicle with a crew of seven, is en route from Thedus to Earth transporting 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,^[3] while monitoring the ship's operations. The ship drops out of hyperspace, and "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.
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 (''see'' Space Jockey). 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, somehow breaks 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 can't 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 can only cease 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.
After the ship's repairs are finished the crew leave the moon and decide to have one last meal before they re-enter hypersleep. During the meal Kane begins to choke and convulse until an alien creature bursts through his chest. The creature then scurries away, and 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.

The crew realizes that the alien uses 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 is not found. Ripley queries Mother for advice on destroying the alien, but in the process discovers that "The Company"^[4] 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 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, but this time the alien is nowhere in sight. Ripley takes off with the ''Narcissus'', and the ''Nostromo'' explodes. While preparing for hypersleep Ripley discovers that the alien has hidden itself inside the shuttle. She succeeds in donning a spacesuit. Then she blasts the alien out of the shuttle's airlock with a grappling-gun and blows it away from the ''Narcissus'' into space using the ship's engines. The film ends as Ripley and the cat enter hypersleep.^[5]

Cast

Main cast

Name	Job	Sex	Played By
A. J. Dallas	Captain	Male	Tom Skerritt
Ellen Ripley	Warrant Officer	Female	Sigourney Weaver
J. M. Lambert	Navigator	Female	Veronica Cartwright
S. E. Brett	Engineering Technician	Male	Harry Dean Stanton
G. W. Kane	Executive Officer	Male	John Hurt
Ash	Science Officer	Android (male)	Ian Holm
J. T. Parker	Chief Engineer	Male	Yaphet Kotto

In several interviews it was reported by supporting actress Veronica Cartwright that the film crew kept details of the scene, in which the chestburster was to emerge, secret from all actors except John Hurt.^[6] Over the years this had become a famous piece of ''Alien'' lore. However, on the recent ''Alien Quadrilogy Box'' DVD set actor Tom Skerrit debunks this legend and reports that he witnessed John Hurt "setting the scene up" with the film crew. He states that "they all read the script" and basically knew the whole scene, but that they didn't anticipate the intensity of the special effects, especially Cartwright, who didn't expect to be sprayed with blood and whose reaction to the chestburster was not acted, but a genuine display of shock, disgust and horror.
John Hurt reprised his famous death scene from ''Alien'' as a parody in the film ''Spaceballs'', groaning in despair: "Oh no! Not again!". In ''Spaceballs'' the chestburster emerges and begins to dance and sing a musical number to the song ''Hello! Ma Baby''.

Other cast

Name	Description	Played By
MU-TH-R 182	''Nostromo's computer (voice; female)	Helen Horton
The Alien	Extraterrestrial	Bolaji Badejo
		Percy Edwards (Alien vocalizator)
		Eddie Powell (Alien stunts)

Inspirations

Many 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 science-fiction horror films.^[7][8][9]
Dan O'Bannon has over the years expressed clear views on the exact sources.^[10] 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."^[11]
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.
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.^[12] Philip French suggests another non-science-fiction parallel: Agatha Christie's ''And Then There Were None''.^[13]

Production

History and early versions

After completing ''Dark Star'' (1974) Dan O'Bannon wanted to take some of the ideas (such as where an alien hunts a crew through a ship) and make them into a science-fiction horror film, at that time provisionally called ''Memory''. He also worked on ''Gremlins'' (released in 1984), which features gremlins getting loose aboard a World War II bomber and wreaking havoc with the crew (the ''B-17'' segment of the film ''Heavy Metal'' (1981) used a significantly altered version of this original story). Screenwriter Ronald Shusett contacted O'Bannon about collaborating on projects. Although Shusett wanted input on a script that would later become ''Total Recall'', they decided to focus on the lower-budget ''Memory''. However, O'Bannon got drafted in to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation of Frank Herbert's ''Dune''. Although this came to nothing he did meet H.R. Giger, Chris Foss and Moebius on set and a lot of their work together led to later developments when production of ''Alien'' started in earnest.¹⁰ For Giger's well-recognized influence see below. Foss' spaceship designs remained unused (some later appeared in some of his books) but Mœbius's designs for the ''Nostromo'' spacesuits made it into the final film.¹⁰
When O'Bannon returned to America, broke, after the ''Dune'' film project collapsed, he ended up sharing a flat with Shusett. Shusett suggested mixing in elements of ''Gremlins'' and how the alien got on board. He said: "It screws one of the crew. Something jumps up at his face, grabs hold of him and shoves its seed down his throat, then later it bursts out." Ron Cobb had worked on the designs for ''Dark Star'' (and would later provide the bulk of the designs for ''Alien''); he offered the idea of the creature's acid blood stopping the crew from simply blowing it up. These various ideas came together in the O'Bannon and Shusett script ''Star Beast''.¹⁰ At this stage the title loomed as the main problem. Casting around for a better name, O'Bannon noticed the number of times the word "alien" occurred in the script, and so he adopted this for the film's title.¹⁰
The original script bears many resemblances to the film as actually produced, yet with significant differences. The spaceship — designed with a low-budget production in mind — originated as a small craft, initially a galactic coastguard-like ship and then a commercial vessel, called the ''Snark''.¹⁰ In the original script, the ship has an all-male crew, including the Ripley character (though the script's "Cast of Characters" section explicitly states that "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women").¹⁰ Actor Tom Skerritt originally won the role of Ripley, but later, in the course of developing the script, character re-casting made Ripley a woman, because producer Alan Ladd, Jr., and script-doctors Walter Hill and David Giler had heard rumors of Fox working on other titles with strong female leads.¹⁰
The script recounted how, after responding 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. They lower Kane into the structure, where he finds a chamber with a breathable atmosphere. An altar-like structure houses the alien embryo-eggs, and a hieroglyph depicts the alien's lifecycle.¹⁰ This concept survived 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 re-surfaced in the Aliens vs. Predator computer game and in the 2004 film ''Alien vs. Predator''.
Apart from the disappearance of the pyramid, the final script changed the story's pacing. The impregnation occurred around the mid-point in the film, with a long, slow build up of tension reminiscent of the atmosphere generated in ''At the Mountains of Madness.'' It also ended with an Alien egg seen clinging to the bottom of the escaping shuttle, a detail that survived various drafts and disappeared only in the final version dated June 1978.¹⁰
The original cut of the film also included a scene where, after the attacks on all her fellow crew-members, Ripley heads towards the shuttle, then stumbles across a room where she finds her barely-alive friends cocooned in mucus. Although editing removed this scene from the final theatrical cut, the idea emerged later in scenes in ''Aliens'', ''Alien Resurrection'' and ''Aliens vs. Predator''.

Pre-production

O'Bannon and Shusett almost completed the sale of the film to Roger Corman. However, at the last minute, a friend, Michael Haggerty, said he could get them a better deal; and thus they 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.¹⁰ A single tagline promoted the script to studio executives: "''Jaws'' in space".^[14]
Hill and Giler re-wrote the script, making it more action-oriented, adding the character of Ash, and rewriting much of the dialogue. They also introduced a motherhood theme, though the detail of Ripley going back for the cat originated in the period of the male Ripley-character.¹⁰ These changes caused tension between O'Bannon and the other production members that lasted through the making of the film. Parts of O'Bannon's scripts appear on various DVD releases, with the full early version presented on the ''Alien Quadrilogy''.
At this stage, a hiatus occurred in the production, as the studio expressed alarm at the prospect of committing to a new science-fiction film in the pre-''Star Wars'' era when such films remained a rarity.^[15]
When ''Star Wars'' 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, Ridley Scott replaced and revised many of the design-elements before principal photography started at Shepperton Studios in England. Giger, brought in from Zürich (Switzerland), set up at the studios along with Ron Cobb as a type of artist-in-residence. (Giger kept a diary through the production which became the basis for his book ''Giger's Alien'').^[16]

The alien

Swiss painter and sculptor H. R. Giger designed the alien creature's adult form and the alien architecture. The designs feature the creative use of bones in the architecture (the set constructors used real bones in making the interior of the alien ship). Giger received an Academy Award for his work on the original film. The design of the creature with strong Freudian sexual undertones and multiple phallic symbols, while simultaneously presenting an overall feminine figure, provided a compelling androgynous image, conforming to archetypal mappings and imageries in horror films that often redraw gender lines.^[17]
The adult alien appears predominantly black in color, similar in cast to heavily tarnished silver. In keeping with Giger's blending of biological and mechanical life-forms, some shots reveal a metallic patina. It has an elongated shiny head with no eyes. (Some production stills reveal a human skull used in the sculpture beneath its translucent anterior shell). Below, the jaw holds the razor-sharp metal teeth. The mouth houses a tongue-like body part with a second mouth on the end. On the alien's back stand four curved black pipes (Giger designed these for the purpose of breaking up the back). Apart from this, the alien has an anthropomorphic form, with two legs and two arms, its hands each armed with six long, black, razor-sharp claws. The "blood" of the creature, a powerful acid, also serves as a natural defense mechanism.
The slime of the costume would eat through the paint, so it needed repainting every day.^[18]
Giger's original design for the alien facehugger changed, as it resembled a twisted rubber chicken and looked more comical than scary.

Set design and construction

Michael Seymour worked as the film's production designer. John Mollo supervised the costumes, including the distinctive spacesuits, and Carlo Rambaldi produced the crucial mechanical effects for the title-alien's head. The team of Brian Johnson and Nick Allder — who had worked on '' and ''Space 1999'' — headed up special effects. 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 green-line computer displays. The thin layer of mist that "notified the eggs" came from smoke and a pulsating laser, which the film crew borrowed from the band The Who.
According to the behind-the-scenes documentary ''The Beast Within: The Making of 'Alien', the film crew built the spaceship set in one piece. To move around the set, actors had to navigate through the hallways of the ship. Toward the end of the shoot, many members of the cast and crew recalled walking inside the set alone as a very unnerving experience. Some maintain that such emotions come across on the screen.
Some shots outside the ''Nostromo'' on the planet use children in spacesuits (specifically Ridley Scott's and the cameraman's children) as stand-ins in order to make the spaceship's landing-legs seem larger. Ridley Scott says in the director's commentary on the DVD, "This shot here, actually is three children made in miniature spacesuits... who were my two sons and the cameraman's son... I had small costumes made for them so the landing legs looked bigger..."^[19]
Ridley Scott re-used the Nostromo's and the shuttle's computer graphics, specifically the ''PURGE''-screen, for the computer screens inside the ''Spinner'' hover cars in his film ''Blade Runner''.
Other filming has re-used the set. In particular, the BBC One series of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' re-used some of the ''Nostromo'' hallways, as well as other parts of the set. These appear most prominently in the scenes set onboard the Vogon Constructor Fleet.¹⁰
When the BBC science-fiction sitcom ''Red Dwarf'' moved production to Shepperton Studios it used some surviving ''Nostromo'' hallway sets from ''Alien'' in Series 5, most notably in the episode "DNA" (as revealed on the DVD commentary).

Music

Ridley Scott's vision of the film was partially influenced by Isao Tomita's synthesizer arrangement of Holst's ''The Planets'', especially by the movement "Mars: Bringer of War", and at one point in pre-production Tomita was seriously being considered to also write the original score for the film.^[20] These plans were however dropped, and Jerry Goldsmith was hired to compose the film music. Instead of aiming at a typical 1970s science-fiction score utilizing synthesizers,^[21] the composer's music reflects the film's underlying horror-film genre with its use of bleak orchestrations, most notably in the higher woodwinds, oscillating string textures and bizarre, sometimes savage sounds, especially from the brass section, which his orchestrator Arthur Morton created from the orchestral palette with various modern compositional techniques. Goldsmith also composed a main theme in the romantic style that barely appears in the finished film. A short passage from ''Eine kleine Nachtmusik'' by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also plays as ''source music'' during the scene, in which Dallas spends some time alone relaxing in the shuttle ''Narcissus''.
Director Ridley Scott and editor Terry Rawlings became quite attached to several of the preexisting cues that they had used for the temporary score while editing the film. As a result Scott and music editor Robert Hathaway moved around much of Goldsmith's score, re-edited cues and rescored several sequences. In some parts of the film the temp score remained in place:^[22] segments of four monaural cues from Goldsmith's 1962 score for ''Freud – The Secret Passion'' appear in the film,^[23] and the final minutes of the Adagio of Howard Hanson's ''Symphony No. 2 "Romantic"'' replaced Goldsmith's music for the concluding moments of the film's showdown as well as the complete music for the end credits. As a result Goldsmith's original soundtrack LP represented more the original score he wrote than what ended up appearing in the film.
As an additional feature the initial ''20th Anniversary Edition'' DVD of ''Alien'' included both an isolated music-only soundtrack that restored the cue order originally envisioned by the composer, resynchronizing the cues to their appropriate places, as well as a second isolated film music soundtrack with the rescored and rearranged cues from the official 20th Century Fox release of the film, while the full production soundtrack played between music cues. In the final DVD release most of the scenes showing the ''Nostromo'' exterior and all of the sequences from Howard Hanson's second symphony ("Romantic"), some of which went along with them, have disappeared for reasons unknown.
The original film score by Jerry Goldsmith was conducted by Lionel Newman, who also received main title credits, a practice that had become unusual by the time of the film's release. The music was performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra. The soundtrack CD of ''Alien'' is now out of print. Over the years several bootlegged copies of Goldsmith's score appeared on the market, among them a Spanish two-CD release with all used and unused cues including the retained temp score, and an archive bootleg that also included alternate takes from the recording sessions.
In 1980 Jerry Goldsmith's film music for ''Alien'' was nominated for the Golden Globe Award (Best Original Film Score), the Grammy Awards (Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special) and the ''Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music''.

Official soundtrack releases

#Original soundtrack (Fox Music, 1979; LP; 10 tracks)
#Re-issue of the original soundtrack (Silva Screen Records, 1987; CD; 10 tracks)
#''The Alien Trilogy'' (Colosseum, 1996; CD; 13 tracks, incl. 7 tracks from the original ''Alien'' soundtrack)
#''20th Anniversary Edition'' DVD containing two isolated music tracks: a) the original score and b) the alternate music track (Fox Home Entertainment, 2000)
In addition several compilation re-issues and re-recordings of some of Goldsmith's music for ''Alien'' were released.^[24]

Bootleg releases

#"Limited library archival pressing" (Soundtrack Library, 1999; CD-R; 32 tracks; allegedly including alternate takes from the recording sessions)
#''Alien: First Release of the Complete Score from the Stereo Master Tapes'' (Total Sound, 2000; CD-R; 21 tracks; assembled from the production of the ''20th Anniversary Edition'' DVD)
#''Alien: Banda Sonora Original del Film y Temas Rechazados'' (Memory Records, 2001; 2-CD release; 25 + 21 tracks; including rejected cues, temp score cues and bonus material)
#"Director's Cut bootleg" (Nostromo Enterprises, 2006; 2-CD release; 30 + 25 tracks; in most parts a re-assembly of preceding bootlegs and official releases and compilations, including remasters from the production of the ''Alien'' special edition DVD and the soundtrack for Iwerk's ''Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright'' by composer Richard Band)

Influence

In film

Roger Ebert called ''Alien'' (and John Carpenter's ''Halloween'') "the most influential of modern action pictures". He went on to say that many of "the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking", including the re-make of ''The Texas Chainsaw Massacre''.⁹
Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "almost every horror film since ''Alien'' has ripped it off in some way, but most of the imitations have focused on details."^[25]
In 1980, Italian director Ciro Ippolito made an unauthorized sequel called ''Alien 2 sulla Terra''.
Commentators point to ''Alien'', along with ''The Brood'' and other films (''see above''), as launching the body-horror sub-genre of horror film. Also, the film's cramped, claustrophobic sets have become the ''de facto'' norm for many science-fiction films and horror films set in space, which also changed visual aesthetics in otherwise slick science-fiction franchises such as Star Trek, e.g. in the depiction of the Borg environment. ''Alien's representation of the ship's crew has also had a huge influence. For the first time, a blockbuster science-fiction film depicted space-travelers as blue-collar company employees (or "space jockeys") rather than as highly empowered agents of a military-styled entity (such as in ''Star Trek'' or Star Wars). (A hint of this also appeared in earlier films such as ''Silent Running'' (1971) and John Carpenter's 1974 film ''Dark Star''.) Apart from the dark aesthetics the film ''Outland'' (1981) borrows much of this premise, as did the British TV science-fiction comedy ''Red Dwarf'' (which also appropriated a good deal of the aesthetics), and across the genre the aesthetic of ''Alien'' for future technology became the norm in the following decade.^[26]

On television

On the DVD commentary for ''The End'', the first episode of the British science fiction series ''Red Dwarf'', Doug Naylor, Rob Grant, and Ed Bye cite ''Alien'' as an inspiration for the show.

On video games

The aliens in ''Contra'' greatly resemble the Alien. Also, one of the bosses in the original game has close echoes of the Space Jockey.
The game ''Xenophobe'' features creatures very similar to the Alien, including acid blood and a facehugger. Also in ''Starcraft'', the head of he creatures known as Hydralisks resembles the alien's skull.
The ''Half-Life'' modification '' Natural Selection'' features some points that nod towards the ''Alien'' universe. For example: it features alien enemies named "Xenoforms", the soldiers resemble the United States Colonial Marines from '' Aliens'', and several in-game maps resemble those from the Alien franchise. Also, the headcrabs in ''Half-Life'' resemble the face huggers of the ''Alien'' universe.
The game '' Duke Nukem 3D'' includes several references to ''Alien'', including nearly identical eggs from which face-sucking creatures emerge, and resin-encased humans who whisper "Kill me."

Gender politics

Analysts have examined the film's gender politics and its influence on the subsequent development of the leading heroine in Hollywood film,^[27] also noting that the film's narrative broke with the prominent custom of repressing female roles in science-fiction films, since the woman, representing nature, biology and sexuality, normally functioned as an antagonistic, ridiculing signifier of science and technology.^[28] The non-traditional reinterpretation of the female lead in ''Alien'' is commonly seen as a necessity, since only a female, i.e. natural entity was capable of successfully fighting the anti-technological, biologically reproducing and overly sexualized xenomorph in a science-fiction environment. Nevertheless, the character of Ripley remains a prime example of the ''final girl'', an archetype of many horror film plots, signified by purity, virginity and ''gender fluidity'', meaning a subsequent masculinization in the course of the story.
The film received some academic attention and was also linked to wider cultural idioms, especially those popular in the 1970s and 1980s such as abjection.^[29] James Kavanaugh criticized the film's "internally overdetermined and contradictory construction" in disguising humanist ideologies as feminism.^[30] Film critic Kathleen Murphy called Kavanaugh's analysis an assaulting, "academically approved gobbledygook".^[31] Several academic theses on the film, which were developed over the following years, were republished in the book ''Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema''.^[32]
James Cameron's 1986 sequel ''Aliens'' revived academic interest in the ''Alien'' film series, because he had deviated from the individual and progressive 1970s model of the film heroine and had presented a conservative, maternal and familial interpretation of the character Ripley, while simultaneously and consequently mirroring this development with the introduction of the maternal alien queen as an adequate opponent.

Merchandising

''Alien'' became the first R-rated film to have a merchandising line aimed at children. The children's products released included various toys and models based on the creature and on its egg, jigsaw puzzles, a board game, a Viewmaster-style movie reel, and even a storybook, all of which rate as collectible today. Most notably, Kenner Products released an 18-inch Alien figure, impressively made (for its time) with articulated parts including the retractable jaw and glow-in-the-dark cranium. However, the toy did not sell well, probably because its target demographic failed to recognize it and parents deemed the toy too frightening for children.^[33]
No models of the ''Nostromo'' space-vessel reached the market.
Toy-lines for R-rated films would not become common until the 1990s.^[34]
At the time, Kenner's decision to do a toy-line based on ''Alien'' came before the release of the film. Due to their success with the other 20th Century Fox film, ''Star Wars'', Kenner Products admittedly acted on the assumption that Fox would produce another space-adventure film: their research failed to ascertain that the horror-oriented ''Alien'' would target adults.

Awards and accolades

''Alien'' won the 1979 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and also received a nomination for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.
^[35]
The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA named it the Best Science Fiction Film of the year and Ridley Scott Best Director, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
^[36]
In 2002, the United States National Film Registry deemed the film "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and inducted it into its collection.
^[37]
In 2007 ''Empire Magazine'' named the "chestburster" scene in ''Alien'' the greatest 18-rated movie moment ever as part of its 18th birthday issue.^[38]

Special Edition (2003)

October 29 2003 saw the re-release of ''Alien'' in cinemas as a ''Ridley Scott Director's Cut''. This release restored many but not all of the deleted scenes, which had already appeared as bonus materials on previous VHS, laserdisc and DVD releases of the film, and made unobtrusive deletions to the original. The new release also added some minor visual effects to the film: a shot of the sunrise on the moon, lights on the helmets of Dallas, Lambert and Kane moving under a natural arc on the alien moon as well as a field of stars in the background, when the ''Nostromo'' synchronizes its orbit around the moon.
Ridley Scott stated that ''Alien'' didn't require this tweaking and drew attention to the use of the term "Director's Cut" for marketing reasons only (and inconsistently as well). In the ''Alien Quadrilogy'' DVD 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 re-edited the film himself, but only after viewing the studio's attempt to do so. He has characterized the studio's initial version as "too long" and felt that it ruined the film's pacing.
The ''Alien Quadrilogy'' boxed set released on December 2 2003 includes both the Special Edition and the original theatrical version. Because many of the scenes from the original release were slightly shortened and the editing discretely accelerated to conform to modern film audiences' viewing habits, the ''Special Edition'' actually runs a full minute shorter than the original 1979 theatrical release, although whole new scenes were added.

The cocoon scene

The 2003 ''Special Edition'' also featured the infamous "missing scene from ''Alien''", in which Ripley, before activating the ''Nostromo's self-destruct, enters the Alien's nest on her way to the shuttle. There she finds two of her crew mates cocooned in the creature's hardened saliva, mutating into alien eggs, a lifeless and almost unrecognizable Brett and a dying Captain Dallas, who begs of Ripley to kill him with her flamethrower, which she eventually does, before continuing toward the shuttle.
For the original 1979 release of ''Alien'', Ridley Scott and the film's producers had still opted for a removal of the scene, because they felt that it destroyed the pacing of the film's climax.^[39] The fact that the "cocoon scene" was originally left out allowed James Cameron to extend the xenomorph's life cycle for the sequel ''Aliens'' and to introduce the concept of the alien hive built around the alien queen. Due to the re-insertion of the "cocoon scene" into the ''Special Edition'' of ''Alien'', the factual life cycle canon introduced in ''Aliens'' was breached, because the scene implies that a rogue alien warrior is able to reproduce without the presence of an alien queen.^[40]
This original alien life cycle theory was based on a proposal by screenwriter Dan O'Bannon and was before the release of the ''Special Edition'' only implied in Foster's novelization, where the cocoon (including the victim) slowly mutated into an alien egg that would eventually give birth to a new facehugger.^[41] Some fans considered O'Bannon's theory as canon and criticized James Cameron's revised alien lifecycle in the sequel ''Aliens'', where the alien queen is responsible for laying the eggs, as a disregard of this alleged canon. In a 1992 issue of ''Starlog'' magazine Cameron explicitely answered some of the fans' accusations and questions, stating that a scene missing from a film and its interpretation and intention being known only through a film's novelization would not suffice as canon and be too restricting for him as a storyteller.^[42]

Spin-offs

The novelization by Alan Dean Foster appeared in 1979. It includes dramatizations of most scenes, also the scenes found in the ''Special Edition'' (but notably excluding the "Space Jockey" scene) as well as scenes scripted but never filmed, or filmed but never included in any release version of the film. Notable inclusions are the discovery of the radio-transmitter aboard the derelict, a moment when the surviving crew contemplates taking suicide pills and the detection of the alien by members of the crew, as it searches for food in one of the Nostromo's storage chambers. One of the most infamous episodes however, which was only partially filmed, was a failed attempt to blow the alien out of an airlock, which does not succeed because—by Foster's implication—the character Ash intervenes by sounding the ship's alarm to scare the alien away from the airlock. In addition, the characters Ripley and Dallas become suspicious of Ash's intentions after this incident. For many years Foster's novelization was for fans the only known source on the "missing cocoon scene from ''Alien''" (''see also above'').
Subsequent spin-offs include comics, novels, and computer games. ''Alien'' itself received a comic book adaptation called ''Alien: The Illustrated Story'', published by the ''Heavy Metal'' magazine, soon to be followed by ''Alien: The Movie Novel'', a photographic film novel as well as a miscellaneous behind-the-scenes book called ''The Book of Alien''. However, the franchise didn't soar before the release of Cameron's sequel and the subsequent adaptations by Dark Horse Comics in the late 1980s. The Aliens have since also appeared in numerous comic-book crossovers featuring Predators, Superman, Batman, WildC.A.T.s, Green Lantern, Judge Dredd and others.

References

Footnotes

1. Most notably ''Shivers'', ''Rabid'' and ''The Brood''.
2. Mark Jancovich, ''Horror, the Film Reader'', Routledge 2002, p. 5; for a general overview including further sources, cf. also Daniel Pimley, "Representations Of The Body In ''Alien'': How can science fiction be seen as an expression of contemporary attitudes and anxieties about human biology?", 2003
3. In later ''Alien'' films the moon was identified as ''LV-426 "Acheron"'', located in the Zeta II Reticuli system.
4. The name of the company is not stated in the film. However, some film props like beer cans were printed with the name ''Weylan-Yutani''. It can also be detected on two computer screens. Although the name was almost invisible on-screen, James Cameron used it for the 1986 sequel, changing it to ''Weyland-Yutani''.
5. In a congenial nod toward ''Alien'' only possible in science-fiction films, director David Fincher chose to cite Ripley's final words in ''Alien'' at the end of his film ''Alien³'' (1992) as an incoming transmission after the shutdown of the colony on Fiorina 161, decades after the events in ''Alien'' occured.
6. Cf. e.g. Richard Knight Jr., "Talking with Veronica Cartwright", ''Windy City Times'', November 8, 2006
7.
FutureMovie's review of Alien Adrian Mackinder
8.
A Voyage Interrupted: Alien and Science-Fiction Film Todd Wardrope
9.
Chicago Sun-Times Review of Alien Roger Ebert
10. David A. McIntee, ''Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films'', Telos 2005, pp. 19-28 & p. 39.9
11. Interview with Dan O'Bannon in the documentary ''Alien Evolution'' (Channel 4, 13th October 2000)
12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mysciencefictionlife/A20258336
13.
Guardian Review of Alien Philip French
14. "''A space odyssey'' — Sir Ridley Scott looks back on his classic ''Alien''"
15.
''Alien Quadrilogy'' DVD set

16.
R0BTRAIN's Bad Ass Cinema: Alien Robert Sutton

17. Lina Badley, ''Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic: Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture'', Greenwood Press 1995
18.
201 Greatest Movie of all Time

19.
20. David Stoner, Booklet commentary for the original ''Alien'' soundtrack CD release, Silva Screen Records, 1987
21. Cp. e.g. some cues from Goldsmith's 1976 score for ''Logan's Run''.
22. Interviews on the "Quadrilogy" DVD release of this film document the viewpoints of Goldsmith, Rawlings and Scott in regard to this situation and why it occurred.
23. Excerpts from ''Charcot's Show'' and large parts of the cue ''Desperate Case'' are heard during the airduct sequence. Also used were excerpts from ''Main Title'' during the acid-spill laboratory sequence and from the cue ''The First Step'' as Ripley searches for the cat on the Nostromo's bridge.
24. See www.soundtrackcollector.com for an almost complete listing.
25.
Alien review on Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

26. OUTLAND (1981): A Film Review Dragan Antulov

27. E.g. Carol J. Clover, ''Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film'', British Film Institute 1992
28. Daniel Pimley, "Representations of the Body in ''Alien''", 2003, p. 7
29. Barbara Creed, "Horror and the Monstrous Feminine — An Imaginary Abjection", in ''Screen'', Vol. 27, No. 1, 1986
30. James H. Kavanaugh, "'Son of a Bitch': Feminism, Humanism and Science in ''Alien''", in ''October'', Vol. 13, 1980, pp. 90-100
31. Kathleen Murphy, "The Last Temptation of Sigourney Weaver", in Richard T. Jameson (ed.), ''Film Comment'', Film Society of Lincoln Center (publ.), Vol. 28, No. 4, July–August 1992, p. 17
32. Annette Kuhn (ed.), London 1990; a second book with further analyses was published under the title: ''Alien Zone 2: The Spaces of Science-Fiction Cinema'' (Annette Kuhn, ed.; London 1999); for a partial overview of available sources see also here.
33.
The History of Unproduced ''Alien'' and ''Predator'' Toy Marc H. Cawiezel

34.
OAFE - Point of Articulation: Get Your "Eek!" On Shocka

35.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Alien search results

36.
Saturn Award: Past Award Winners

37.
Films Selected to The National Film Registry, Library of Congress 1989-2005

38.
Alien named as top 18-rated scene

39. Ridley Scott, Commentary to ''Alien'' on the ''Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition'' DVD; Steve Biodrowski, "Executing ''Alien'': Executive Producer Ronald Shusett details his contribution to sci-fi's scariest movie", ''Hollywood Gothique'', 2006
40. In fan canon the nature of the eggs seen in the "cocoon scene" is therefore stated as unknown, obviously to avoid a canon paradox. (Cp. also this paragraph in the Wikipedia article on the xenomorph.)
41. This original concept was also picked up in an early but eventually omitted scene from the script for ''Alien³'', implying that alien eggs could also directly produce alien warriors without a facehugger as the intermediate stage.
42. James Cameron, "James Cameron's Responses to ''Aliens'' Critics", in ''Starlog'', Vol. 184, November 1992

General references

★ Annette Kuhn (ed.), ''Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema'', New York / London 1990, ISBN 0-860919-93-5

★ Annette Kuhn (ed.), ''Alien Zone 2: The Spaces of Science-Fiction Cinema'', London 1999, ISBN 1-859847-46-3

★ David A. McIntee, ''Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films'', Telos Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-903889-94-4

★ Paul Scanlon & Michael Gross, ''The Book of "Alien"'', Titan Books, 1979/2003, ISBN 1-852864-83-4

External links

★

★

★ Executive producer Ron Shusett on making ''Alien'' - video interviews and transcript, retrieved 2007-06-04

★ An early version of the screenplay at DailyScript.com

★ Final shooting script at DailyScript.com