1979 20th Century-Fox Directed by: Ridley Scott; Written by: Dan
O'Bannon Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright,
Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 116 Minutes The Nicsperiment Score: 10/10
Dozens of light years
beyond our solar system, the commercial space tug, Nostromo, on its way
back from a deep space mining trip, is pulled out of hyperspace by Mother, its
central computer, after Mother detects a distress signal. The crew is awakened
from stasis, surprised to find they aren't returning to Earth, but instead, are
approaching the Zeta Reticuli system. Because of a company policy stating all
distress signals must be investigated, the ship disconnects from the oil
refinery it's dragging through space, and touches down on the barren,
godforsaken planetoid from which the signal emanates. Three of the seven crew
members leave the ship in search of the signal, only to discover a massive alien
craft that seems to have crashed down many years before. Back on the
Nostromo, just as the landing team discover a strange clutch of eggs on a
lower deck of the seemingly abandoned ship, Nostromo's Warrant Officer,
Ellen Ripley makes a discovery of her own: the message from the alien craft
isn't an S.O.S., but a warning to stay away. Soon, the landing team returns, one
incapacitated with an alien lifeform attached to his face. Ripley tells the landing crew they will have to quarantine for 24-hours because of the apparent alien
infection, but the ship's Science Officer, Ash, lets them onboard.
The Nostromo crew attempt removing the hand-like alien from
their fallen comrade's face, but find to their dismay that not only can they not
do so without killing him, but that the little alien bastard has acid for blood.
Soon, through a horrific series of events, there's a murderous, devious, and
huge alien moving throughout the ship, picking off the crew one by
one. What follows will defy human comprehension, breaking not only the
Nostromo crew's bodies, but their ill-equipped minds.
* * *
I first watched Ridley Scott's Alien on a late high school
night in the late 90s. I'd heard of the film's instant classic status throughout
most of my life till then, and was excited to finally experience
Alien for myself. That night, Alien aired on the Encore Channel,
which, long before its merging with the Starz Channel, showcased movies from the
previous three decades, unedited, on basic cable. Even now that we approach the mid-2020s, and I approach my
mid-40s, I think that the vast majority of films I've seen came from late-night
Encore Channel airings while the rest of my family (and most other people in the
Central Time Zone) slept. Of all those Encore Channel viewings, Alien may
have been the most formative. The thought of being trapped with a hostile,
incomprehensible alien in the middle of deep space was certainly part of the
effect, but the ending hit me hardest of all. After surviving the alien attack,
Ripley's reward is to drift through the void of space alone, possibly forever.
This was the exact moment the concept of nihilism was introduced to my mind, and
I've found that throughout my lifetime, that concept has perhaps been my
greatest nemesis.
Thanks a lot, Ridley!!!
Alien immediately informs viewers of its intentions. The opening
shot is of a sun being obscured by a massive planet, shrouding the viewer in
darkness, as a strange, incomprehensible series of white characters slowly take
form at the top of the screen before finally spelling the film's title in a
bizarre, alien font, Jerry Goldsmith's creepy music beneath the
bizarre sound of the derelict ship's signal. The nihilistic themes are
immediately presented here through the imagery of a cold, uncaring universe
that cannot be understood, where actual communication is impossible. The crew
of the Nostromo soon approach this planetary system thinking they
are moving toward a signal calling for help when it's actually urging them to
stay away.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
The bleak, corporate lines of the ship are barely less hopeless
than the void of deep space
Visual metaphors abound
The camera first moves over the cold, vast exterior of the
Nostromo and accompanying rig, before moving inside and throughout its
seemingly empty halls, as the lights begin to come on, as if the ship itself is
awakening. The camera pans past two drinking bird figures on a countertop, and
while these do a lot to create the "space trucker" vibe of the ship and crew,
they also serve as symbols, aimless figures moving perpetually, brought to
life long before by unseen hands to no meaning or purpose--or perhaps they symbolize the constancy of the natural order, which will soon be interrupted.
The camera then finally rests upon the crew, slowly awakening from their
stasis pods, shrouded in pure white like newborns, blissfully unware of the
unimaginable evil that awaits them. Kane, the ship's company executive, played
by John Hurt, wakes first.
Ironically, the camera focuses on the first to die, while the lone
survivor can't be seen
Waking to a nightmare
The movie then immediately creates a lived in feeling, by crossfading to
the newly awakened crew sitting around the dinner table, slowly turning up the
volume as they eat and talk in a naturalistic dialogue that was mostly
improvised by the cast. Immediately, the set, the clothing, the actors
themselves, all of it feels real. There's an argument about financial bonuses
between the captain and the ship's two engineers, Parker and Brett, who are
only paid half what the rest of the crew makes. The crew then discover that
the Nostromo
isn't arriving at Earth, but at Zeta Reticuli, and that if they don't investigate
the signal per "company" rules, all of their financial shares will be
forfeited, bringing the conversation about bonuses to a temporary close.
It's all fun and games...
until an alien shoves its second jaw through your skull
The source of the signal is a world whose atmospheric composition is
described by Ash as "primitive." It's an awful, inhospitable and dark place, populated by harsh, barren rock, high winds, and small volcanic plumes,
referred to derisively by the crew as a "ball." As the ship detaches from the
mining rig, it's interesting to note that the umbilical connecting the two
closely resembles the facehugger alien to which the audience will soon be
introduced, and the jutting rocks as the ship descends appear similar to the
fully formed alien introduced later in the film. It is also important to note
the appearance of Mother, the ship's central computer, to whom the ship's
Captain, Dallas, speaks to by text and keyboard shortly before the landing.
Mother is a womb-like room, bathed in amniotic electronic light, essentially
designed to nurture the crew...or at least that's what the crew thinks.
Death Mother Archetype Personified...er Computerfied
Dallas, Kane, and the ship's female pilot, Lambert, dress in bulky
spacesuits and set out on the ball, as four crew are necessary to pilot the
ship and must stay aboard, according to company protocol. That company, only
referred to by name briefly on the ship's monitors (and a couple beer cans),
is Weyland-Yutani, a massive and highly powerful multinational-conglomerate, more fully fleshed out in later films in the Alien franchise. The first clue that
something is amiss with the order, though, comes when Ash, the ship's science
officer played by Ian Holm, is a bit dismissive of the ship's difficulty at
translating the distress signal. Ripley, played by a fresh-faced Sigourney
Weaver, discovers through investigation that the message is actually a
warning to stay away. However, Ash, keeping a close eye on the landing party on the
ship's monitors, says it's too late to warn them. As the sun rises and the
weather clears slightly, the massive alien craft comes into view, a sort of
half-ring with towering, phallic parapets, and three opening entrances in the
center that are unquestionably vaginal in their design. I guess I should say
this now: Alien is full of sexually charged imagery, and the central
event is a rape and resulting interspecies impregnation. I plan on getting
into all of it, and if you don't want to, this is probably the place to pull
out.
I feel like this Ridley Scott guy might be good with visuals
Lovecraftian Landscape
First glimpse of the ship
(Insert Austin Powers "THAT'S A PENIS!" GIF)
It's not just that Scott's visuals are aesthetically pleasing,
it's that they're also loaded with meaning
As the camera pulls far back into the planet's sky, the landing crew look infinitesimal as they enter the massive openings, impregnating the ship with their
presence, giving birth to every horrific thing that follows afterward. As
impressive as the interior sets of the Nostromo are, the stunning
interior of the alien craft lifts the production design to an entirely new
level. The incredible model and practical work, the matte paintings, all of it
comes together to form an environment that feels incredibly tactile, alien,
and real. The ship feels at once like the massive corpse of a living thing,
yet also like the craft of an ancient, highly intelligent alien race, who've
reached a technological level of which humans can only dream. In a massive
chamber, the landing party discovers a giant, humanoid figure, sitting at what
looks to be an enormous pilot's chair, under a massive,
periscope-like instrument. The pilot seems to have been decomposing for
centuries, massive trauma to its ribcage where it appears something exploded
outward from the inside. The landing party then discover a tunnel to an even
larger chamber below. However, as the trio move away, the camera lingers on
the decomposing space jockey's face, artificial light slowly fading until it's returned to darkness.
The image that launched a million viewer theories, at least until
those stupid 2010's movies...
Furthering the nihilistic idea that nothing can be known or
communicated, the crew have no idea who this being is, and they will
never know... the only commonality will be the meaningless nature of
their deaths by the alien's hand, though each individual's death is
a solitary experience that cannot be truly shared
The most terrifying aspect in the design of this massive storage area to
which the tunnel leads is that there are visible doors to other equally
massive chambers, housing God knows what. This chamber, though, houses dozens
of leathery-looking eggs. Kane goes down alone, a pinprick against the massive
sheet of the room, until he reaches the ground and starts to investigate. Kane
at first assumes the eggs are long dead like the space jockey alien up above,
even though the strange blue mist around them seems to give off an alarm-like
sound the closer he gets to them. Goldsmith's music here is strangely
off-putting, as it's almost like the gentle tones of a pleasant discovery, but
with a subtle dark undertone that makes the entire moment feel wrong.
Something moves within one of the eggs and Kane bends to get a closer look.
The egg slowly opens, and the film again showcases its tactile nature to
reveal an interior that the special effects team crafted from the lining of a
real cow's stomach...something that would probably now be done by CGI. There's
even a strange viscous fluid that drips upward from the egg, against gravity,
furthering its feeling of otherworldliness and wrongness. To further hammer
home the sexual aesthetics here, storied art designer, H.R. Giger, originally
designed the inside of the eggs to have, in his words "an inner and outer
vulva," which the producers ordered to be slightly toned down. Suddenly, a
hand-like creature bursts from the top of the egg, burns through the glass of
Kane's helmet, and attaches itself to his face.
Chamber of Horrors
Maybe don't look inside
...
Dallas and Lambert rush back to the ship, carrying an incapacitated
Kane. Ripley, currently the highest ranking officer on the ship with Dallas
and Kane outside of it, won't let them onboard, insisting that the ship must follow
quarantine protocol. In another film, Ripley's legalism in the situation might
be portrayed as villainous, but here she represents order and right, so when
Ash disobeys Ripley's order and opens the door, he seems villainous instead. And now, the alien has come aboard. Kane is taken out of his suit and placed on a table
in the medical bay. The grotesque facehugger creature has latched into Kane's
flesh, wrapped its tail around his neck, and shoved a phallic-like proboscis
down his throat. Any attempt to remove the facehugger results in it pulling
off the flesh on Kane's face, and the tail tightening around his throat. When
Ash attempts to cut through one of the facehugger "legs" with a laser, the
created wound spurts out acid that burns through two levels of the ship's
deck. This small organism seems to be structurally perfect, and impossible to
remove. The crew have no choice but to leave it be. I love the way the sound
of the wind howling outside the ship is faintly heard during these scenes in
the medical bay...it's like the crew are in a forlorn mansion, far out on some
distant, isolated, and haunted English moor, giving the film an air of gothic horror along with the inherent cosmic one. There's also an interesting, brief closeup of a bracelet on Parker's wrist, mimicking the way the alien's
tail is wrapped around Kane's throat.
Abominable
The practical effect of the acid burning through the ship decks is
the kind of fun that's missed today
With little to do while Parker and Brett work on repairing the ship, the
crew retreat from the medical bay, and Ripley confronts Ash. He strangely
doesn't make eye contact with her until the conversation grows extremely
tense, then he looks up disdainfully and says that opening the door was a risk
he was "...willing to take" as the ship's science officer, and that
Ripley should stay in her lane. It's also noteworthy that when Ash notices
Ripley has walked into the room, he quickly turns off his computer screen like she's
caught him watching pornography, and he promptly shuts the door behind her
as she walks away. Concurrent with this conversation, Dallas has retreated to
the shuttle to listen to classical music and think. After a short time, the
facehugger vanishes, and when Ash, Dallas, and Ripley look for it in the
medical bay, its corpse falls from the ceiling onto Ripley's shoulder. A
dissection reveals the facehugger's acidic blood is now neutralized, and also
that the inside of it looks really gross, as the effects wizards created it
out of sheep's intestine, among other grotesqueries (apparently, it stank!).
And then Kane awakens.
One final joyous moment
Kane (Cain in the Bible is the first murderer) is disoriented and
starving, having no memory of what happened to him, outside of saying he had "some
horrible dream about smothering." It's worth noting that Kane is portrayed by
John Hurt, easily the most decorated actor in this production, who'd won
multiple BAFTA's and received an Oscar nomination before Alien was
released, and won a best actor Oscar the next year for
The Elephant Man. Thus, it is quite surprising then that exactly
halfway through the film, Kane dies an incredibly gruesome death. Just after
Alien finally presents the crew a small victory, as they're able to launch
the Nostromo back into space from the ball, they receive the second
victory of getting Kane back, and they all sit around the dinner table having
one last jolly meal together before they get back into their stasis pods and
go home. In timing that, given the themes and subject matter of the film, has
to be intentional, Parker makes a joke about cunnilingus and suddenly Kane
starts gagging and spasms violently on the table. Kane seems to be in immeasurable pain
as blood begins to pool on his shirt. Suddenly, his torso explodes,
drenching the crew in blood and viscera. From the ruins of Kane emerges a
ghastly being, a dark child, the rough beast, its hour come round at last,
once slouched toward Bethlehem, now born.
Ashes of the Old World
You can really see Parker's humanity and his care for Kane in this
moment, as he struggles the hardest to help
Meanwhile, Lambert gets it worst...well, except for Kane. This is
the authentic reaction of Lambert actress, Veronica Cartwright, as
she wasn't expecting to be splattered with blood.
They don't make movies like this anymore
It is easy to understate just how disturbing this scene is for a first
time viewer who has no idea what is coming, particularly one not desensitized
to horrific shocks and violence. This moment is a violation-- of the human body, of all
decency, of cinematic convention, of all moral and meaning. Kane did nothing
to hurt anyone, an alien lifeform raped and impregnated him, and the child fed off his
body, then ripped it to shreds in the birthing process. The nature of this beast is made apparent in its first moments. It's not just a wild,
thoughtless, bloodthirsty creature. The awful, phallic-like, rat-sized child,
thick membrane throbbing on the side of its head, looks around the room with
its eyeless face, sizes up each of the remaining crew members, then lets out a blasphemous howl and runs away to the unseen bowels of the
ship.
Nietzsche's Übermensch incarnate
If the drinking birds symbolize the perpetual motion of the natural
order, it's ironic and likely intentional that they stop the moment
the alien is born
After a moment of frozen shock, the crew's next act of moral decency may be what condemns
the majority of them to death. Instead of immediately tracking the creature
down and eliminating it, they take a moment to hold a brief funeral for Kane.
It is a cold and godless funeral--for how could god exist in the same universe
as this creature--and no one replies to Dallas' "Does anyone want to say
something?" before Kane's body is blasted out into the cold, uncaring void of
space. The remaining six crew members then split into two teams, trying to catch the alien creature in a net to throw it out of the airlock. Ripley,
Parker, and Brett find themselves on the receiving end of perhaps the film's
best jump scare, when their motion tracker takes them to a cabinet from which
Jonesy suddenly jumps, startling the bejesus out of everyone. It's here
that Ripley makes her biggest misstep of the film, asking Brett to go grab the
cat (so it will no longer mix up the signals on their tracker), instead of
having the entire group go together. Brett follows Jonesy to a large
mechanical storage room that's essentially designed like the interior of of
some strange, gothic, steampunk cathedral. Strange golden discs hang from the
wall, numerous chains hang from the ceiling, and water falls down in
mysterious rivulets. Brett fails to grab Jonesy, but does find a strange husk
of shed skin on the floor. He then looks up, takes off his cap in penitence,
and in the visual equivalent of a baptism, stands under one of the streams of
cascading water, and lets it run over his head. Then, a creature the
size of a full-grown man with a long, bulbous head comes down, and before a
brief uncomprehending look from Brett, fires a piston-like set of jaws into
Brett's head, catechizing him in a new faith, before rapturing him into the
unseen ceiling. Cut to a creepy shot of Jonesy's eyes, looking out from his
hiding place.
An unholy temple
The old has passed away; behold, the new has come
In the name of nothing
Witness
The remaining five crew members come together in shock. "It's like a man, it's big," Parker exclaims, to which Ash responds, "Kane's son." Between Ash's
phrasing and the crew's lack of comprehension at what they are witnessing, it
suddenly becomes clear that the alien itself defies comprehension. In its
presence, language and science become highly mutable to the point that they
lack any meaning, thus positing the alien as the very embodiment of
nihilism. Dallas asks Mother what they should do, and even she, with all
of her intelligence and powers of calculation, says the situation does not
compute. As the ship seems to head toward a void between the stars, the
quintet try to cobble together a plan. It's decided that someone will go up
into the ceiling ducts with a flamethrower and try to flush the alien out into
the airlock from there. Ripley volunteers, but Dallas shuts her down, denying her attempt
at heroism, though it's not clear that she would have any more success
than Dallas, who insists he'll go. The following sequence is one of the most
tense in the film, the ducts highly claustrophobic, and again a huge triumph
for the production design team, even to the harsh scraping sound when the ducts
open and close. The sound design's main focus, though, is on Dallas'
breathing, as he slowly begins to panic and grow disoriented. At one point, he
comes across and touches the slime the alien has been leaving throughout the
ship, but in some strange denial, says through his radio mouthpiece that he
doesn't see any sign of the creature. As Ash sits emotionless, if slightly
amused, Lambert begins to panic, telling Dallas there's a signal on the motion
sensor moving straight toward him. Dallas turns in one direction and sees
nothing, though the pilot light from his flamethrower casts just enough
illumination behind him to reveal a crouched figure. As Dallas suddenly turns
in realization, the alien is revealed in all its awful splendor, and over the
sound of Lambert's panicked screams and the creature's own inhuman shriek, it
springs toward Dallas with its palms out, not attacking so much as
presenting itself.
Seek and ye shall find
With Dallas and Kane gone, Ripley takes charge. Her first instinct, now
that she has clearance, is to talk to Mother, whose pulsing electronic lights
slowly breathe as Ripley enters. After having to pull some figurative teeth,
Ripley finally discovers that the massive computer hasn't been forthcoming,
and the Nostromo was actually taken off course because of a special
order from the company. That order states:
Special order 937: NOSTROMO ROUTED TO NEW CO-ORDINATES. INVESTIGATE LIFE
FORM. GATHER SPECIMEN. PRIORITY ONE. INSURE RETURN OF ORGANISM FOR ANALYSIS.
ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY. CREW EXPENDABLE.
What a performance! I am just going to assume at this point that
Weaver can make her nose bleed on command.
Mother has abandoned and essentially aborted her children to make way for her new
offspring, an abominable child. The company values a destructive, nihilistic
being over the lives of its own employees. This information seems to shatter
Ripley's psyche. A grinning Ash, knowing this was the situation all along,
steps out of the shadows. It's important to note that although Ash and Ripley
are soon to have a violent confrontation, Ripley's nose has already begun to
bleed, the knowledge she has received so traumatic and philosophically odious
it effects her body like a physical assault. However, the scene gets even more
horrific. When Ripley tries to run off to tell Parker and Lambert what's been
happening, Ash traps and attacks her. First, Ash pulls out a large chunk of
Ripley's hair with a disgust either for her femininity, her humanity, or both.
After easily physically overpowering Ripley, Ash then throws her onto a bed in
the ship's living quarters, surrounded by pornographic images taped to the
wall, near a stack of pornographic magazines. The clinking sounds of a solar
system mobile seem to catch Ash's attention, then he stares maliciously down
at Ripley's prone form, and seems to ponder her figure, as his fingers twitch. Ash then grabs one of the magazines, rolls it into a cylinder-shape, and crams
it down Ripley's throat, as the nude models on the wall look on.
I don't know what Ian Holm was channeling to conjure this
performance, and I don't want to know
The second of Alien's three sexual assaults, this one by a being compensating for his lack of genitalia with an outside physical object
Parker and Lambert run in, and Ash overpowers them too. Finally, Parker
grabs a metal tank and rams it into the side of Ash's head, whereupon Ash's
head tears from his shoulders, and everyone is drenched in a white geyser of
blood that is intentionally designed to look like semen. Parker, in shock,
shouts, "It's a robot! Ash is a goddamn robot!" Ash's body continues to
struggle, until Lambert finishes it off with a cattle prod. What follows is, in
my opinion, the most disturbing scene of the film. For context, this is a film
that includes an explicit rape (the alien facehugger impregnating Kane), a
symbolic rape (the alien-worshiping Ash imitating his god and unleashing his pent-up rage against Ripley, by creating a phallus with the pornographic
magazine and cramming it between her lips), and in just a few minutes, an
implied rape that's far more horrific than the previous two combined. However,
this scene of a disembodied android head talking turns out to be the most
morally repugnant and unsettling moment of Alien.
I don't think people realize how messed up this movie actually
is
Against Parker's wishes, Ripley reanimates Ash's severed, white
blood-soaked head, to interrogate the android for further information. Ash
confirms he has been working against the interests of the crew all along,
following the secret company order to retrieve the alien being and return it
to the company at all costs. It's ambiguous whether the company has had any
previous experience with the alien's species or if they even have a full
picture of just what exactly it is. Maybe they heard and decoded the alien
"distress" signal and intuited something dangerous and possibly useful to
their interests awaited there. This latter option seems the most likely.
Whatever the case, the alien is now safely aboard the ship, headed back to Earth,
and the expendable crew are all likely soon to be expended. Parker can't get
over the fact that the company could care less about their lives. Ripley asks
the most pressing question, "How do we kill it, Ash?There's got to be a way of killing it. How? How do we do it?" "You can't," Ash answers. "Bullshit," says Parker. Ash responds "You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect
organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility." A disgusted Lambert intuits "You admire it," to which Ash replies
with the most disturbing line of dialogue, at least as pertains to my own
personal belief system, I can think of:
"I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse,
or delusions of morality."
It isn't even that the alien has no conscience or remorse. Morality has
to be recognized and understood for one to consider it a delusion. Later films
have clouded just what the alien species in this series are, as opposed to how
they were originally conceived and portrayed in this first film. The second
film essentially just posits them as thoughtless bugs. The first film does
not. Based upon its specific actions in the film and Ash's observation, the
alien is a sadistic nihilist who seems interested in reveling in the crew
members' pain and terror, just as much as it does murdering them. It defies
comprehension. The movie isn't even clear as to why the alien is killing off
the crew, as Scott removes any scenes that would make this explicit. It isn't
eating them, sometimes it hides their bodies, sometimes it leaves them for
others to find. If it sounds like I'm reaching too hard with the "delusions of morality" line, then it is disturbing enough that Ash, a being created by humans to
act as a human, finds morality to be a delusion and instead identifies more
with a sadistic alien. And whether the alien understands that what it is doing
is wrong according to its victims' system of morality or not, it appears to be
drawn to and enjoy the actions that most acutely violate that system of
morality. Parker says he's heard enough. Ash asks for a final word.
Ripley grants it. "I can't lie to you about your chances," Ash says, "but... you have my sympathies." He then provides the most wicked and sadistic smile of which Ian Holm is
capable, and considering Holm's prowess as an actor, it is quite wicked and
quite sadistic, saying the opposite of his words, essentially "You have no sympathy from me, and in my last moment, I am relishing the
pain and terror I know you're about to endure." In a move that's slightly satisfying, but overall impotent, Parker grabs
his flamethrower and burns Ash's head into oblivion.
If anyone wins in the film, it's Ash
***
The remaining trio decide to set the ship to self-destruct and escape
the Nostromo in the shuttle. Parker and Lambert go to get coolant for the
shuttle and Ripley goes to find Jonesy (no cat left behind). I love that
Ripley puts her hair up like she is going to war. Parker and Lambert hastily
load the coolant, as a shadow appears on the wall. The alien then reveals
itself, ignoring Parker completely, as it slowly approaches Lambert, leering
at her as she freezes in terror. Parker begins to yell for Lambert to get out
of the way, as he can't reach the alien with the flamethrower without
burning her too. The alien continues to ignore Parker, until Parker runs forward in
an attempt at heroism, whereupon the alien slaps him with its tail, rushes forward
to pin him against the wall, then thrusts its second jaw through his skull. It
then turns back toward Lambert, approaches slowly, and reaches out its arms to embrace her. The film then cuts to a shot of Lambert's foot, as the
the alien's tail curls around her ankle, then slides up her leg, around her
thigh, toward her crotch, then cuts to Ripley, running down the
hallway, hearing the attack on the radio, as Veronica Cartwright unleashes some of the
most disturbing screams heard on film, which degenerate to a catatonic,
rhythmic gurgling, before her one final, horrific, piercing scream is cut short. Ripley
finally reaches the room and utters a sound of psyche-cracking revulsion, as
she finds Parker sat against the wall, bent over in deathly penitence, while
Lambert, pants removed, hangs from the ceiling, blood running down her legs. Before it seems like I am
grasping at straws to make this entire film about rape, Veronica
Cartwright herself has confirmed that Lambert is raped by the alien.
Rape and sexual defilement in general are major aspects of this film. However,
while a large majority of the film is an allusion to sexual assault, these
allusions are only a part of the film's larger nihilistic themes.
Scott's incredible visual artistry is not only beautiful, is not
only thematically rich, but also contains depth of perspective--is
this tracking shot the alien's POV?
A shadow falls over you
***
***
***
***
There's a reason Ripley spends the rest of her life up until her
final moment traumatized
In this world, the only apparent result of heroism is a swifter death* (a note on the difference between the heroic actions of Parker vs Dillon is found at the end of this piece)
Ripley is alone. It's noteworthy that the alien knows that Ripley is the
last remaining human on the ship, and instead of hiding Parker and Lambert's
bodies as its done with Brett and Dallas, displays them in the
previously mentioned, highly disturbing positions solely for Ripley's benefit,
or simply because it doesn't consider the lone Ripley a threat. The
rest of the film plays like a horrific amusement park ride. As the camera
barrels down the ship's smoke-filled (and later, fire-spout-filled) hallways,
panic-inducing lights flashing and sirens wailing, Ripley sets the ship's
self-destruct, tries to run to the shuttle to escape, finds her path blocked
by the alien, and runs back to turn off the self-destruct. Mother refuses to
honor Ripley's wishes, and in another of the film's slightly cathartic and
humorous, yet highly impotent touches, Ripley screams "YOU BITCH!" at
the homicidal mother and smashes a nearby computer screen. In a great touch,
all of the ship's monitors now display large red X's, as Mother counts down the detonation. Ripley runs back down
the hallway to the shuttle, doesn't see any sign of the alien, picks up
Jonesy's cage, and straps into the shuttle. In a way, up to this point,
Alien has been the anti-Star Wars, the feel bad movie of the
summer, and the Nostromo's explosion puts an exclamation point on this
sentiment. Star Wars ends with the triumphant explosion of the Death
Star at the hands of Luke Skywalker, a massive and cathartic fireball that
launches out an avalanche of sparks to the triumphant tinkle of John Williams'
xylophone. Here, the explosion offers no such satisfaction or catharsis. The
ship evaporates in an enormous, incomprehensible, three-stage flash, whose
final eruption sends out an orange shockwave that nearly destroys the shuttle, before the purple hot remains of the ship vanish into the either, like the Nostromo and all its crew's
struggles never existed. Adding to the Star Wars comparison, that film
(to clarify for the younglings, I'm talking about 1977's A New Hope)
began with an awe-inspiring shot of an enormous spaceship passing before the
camera for so long, the ship feels like it's nearly infinite.
Alien (after the opening title) begins with a similar shot, but that
shot only exists to invoke not awe but dread, as it's not a ship our
protagonists will go up against, but the very one they're aboard. Ridley Scott
astutely uses that opening shot to further the tension in this late-film
sequence. We've seen just how big the ship and rig are. As Mother counts down
the self-destruct, and the shuttle races by the Nostromo's underbelly, does Ripley have enough time to get away from it?
Everyone looks cool with a flamethrower
But Ripley looks especially cool, as does the ship as it's coming
apart around her
Even though I missed it by two years, I miss the 70s
This shot pretty much sums up the entire film
With the Nostromo destroyed, as well as, apparently, the alien.
Ripley strips down to her underwear so that she can place herself and Jonesy
in the stasis pods. However, viewers have likely picked up on the fact that the
alien's presence makes Jonesy hiss uneasily, and the wily cat's struggle
against Ripley is the first clue that something is wrong. Surely enough, as
Ripley prepares the last few switches on the wall, the alien's hand lazily
shoots out from between the wiring. It's the most awful stowaway, bulbous head
fitting in perfectly between the piping and cables. However, the
alien's attitude seems to be "Hey, leave me alone, I'm sleeping." A
horrified Ripley can't tell if the alien is toying with her, if it just wants
Ripley to provide a free ride to Earth and more victims, or if the alien wants
to act upon her the same way it did Lambert. While Ripley's near nude state
might be exploitative in most other films, here it only works to further highlight her vulnerability, especially considering the film's
themes of sexual violation. Ripley backs away to a locker, where she is able to
hide for a moment and dress in a spacesuit. As she slowly and cautiously
carries out the button sequence to open the airlock, the alien looks on
disinterestedly, until it starts to feel the air pressure change, as
highly-charged gasses begin to fire into the wiring. Sigourney Weaver has been
incredible in this film, but never better than in the way she communicates sheer
terror here, breathing rapidly, shaking, trying to catch her breath, talking
to herself, singing to try to comfort herself (adlibbed by Weaver), then screaming as the
alien reaches out for her, just as she opens the airlock and the alien is
blasted out. But the damn thing won't die!
Stroke of genius to show Ripley caring
for Jonesy throughout the film, boosting her lovability
Up against the wall
Nearly catatonic with terror here
DIE NIHILIST
First, the alien grabs the airlock doors and catches itself, somehow
holding its grip against the vacuum of space, then it survives Ripley firing a
harpoon through its gut. The cabled harpoon gun catches on the door, keeping the alien tethered to the shuttle, and it dangles several feet outside, survives just hanging
out in airless space for several seconds before somehow, horrifically, crawling back into the ship
through the engine exhaust vent. However, the quick-thinking Ripley fires off the
engine, blasting out the alien in a hail of white hot plasma, finally getting
the abomination away from her and the shuttle, even if, somehow, it STILL
appears to be alive. Ripley then records a final report for the
Nostromo, announcing that everyone is dead and the ship is destroyed. She then
utters the film's final line (quite lovingly, may I add), "Come on, cat," puts Jonesy and then herself into stasis, and the ship drifts off into the
void of space. END
A survivor
Void drifter
The Void
I hate nihilism. It is the worldview I am most deeply and naturally
drawn to, and I reject it unequivocally. The universe and life often seem
devoid of meaning and actual, true communication often seems impossible.
Everything seems to tend toward chaos, and the universe feels like it is in a
constant state of degeneration. A being whose very blood is acid, who cares
nothing about meaning, morals, and life would thus succeed most in such a
world. Looking at those in power on Earth now, it feels like that type of
being is already succeeding most in such a universe. Alien feels, to
me, like it is about the introduction of nihilism into the world. When Ash
says he admires the alien's "purity," he is describing attributes that are the
opposite of what the word generally refers to, namely an innate innocence and
goodness. The alien rapes and murders people.
Alien features three
antagonists. The first is the company that disregards the crew's lives. The second
is Ash, who not only follows the company's immoral edict, but admires the
alien. The third, and main antagonist, is the alien itself. The
Nostromo crew's baseline for comprehending the three antagonists
shrinks to zero from first to last. The company is greedy. Ash is following
the greedy company's orders, though his admiration for the alien makes far
less sense from a human perspective. However, there is no meaning or
value in the alien's actions, other than the actions themselves. It is a
negative purity, pure nihilism. This is why I still love Alien. It's as
clear a presentation of nihilism as I've seen put to film. When all meaning is
taken away, when language means nothing, you're left with an incomprehensible
monster. The alien is both literally and figuratively the product of the
void. It's what I see all around me in society today: a world that wants to
destroy all meaning, to eliminate the definition of every word ever uttered, a
world where suicide rates among adolescents have doubled in the last 10 years,
despite claims of "societal progress." Nothing is gained in the first Alien
film. Ripley has never faced a nihilistic force like this before, and the only
victory is her survival. Ripley finds a temporary shield against nihilism in
Aliens, a family unit in which she is the uber-mother, a fierce
defender of her adopted child. However, in Alien 3, the finale of
the original Alien trilogy, and the last film in which Ripley is the protagonist, Ripley is stripped of her family. Shield removed,
stuck on a prison planet with yet another damnable alien, in the face of a
nihilistic and uncaring universal void, Ripley wants to die. To make matters
worse, she's been impregnated by an alien, a potent metaphor for the nihilism
growing inside her.
You should watch Alien 3
I've only found one consistently useful tool to knock
nihilism away from the door and it's used to great symbolic effect in Alien 3. In the end, Ripley is inspired by the prison colony's religious leader, Dillon, and finally regains meaning and purpose. Meaning
and purpose are a force just as incomprehensible as nihilism because they are
its antithesis, yet also more than its equal. When Alien 3's prison inmates,
picked off by the alien to a skeleton crew, try to formulate a plan, one of them ponders if the company--yes, the same damnable company--will save
them from the alien. A despondent Ripley replies:
"When they first heard about this thing, it was "crew expendable." The
next time they sent in marines - they were expendable too. What makes you
think they're gonna care about a bunch of lifers who found God at the ass-end
of space? You really think they're gonna let you interfere with their plans
for this thing? They think we're - we're crud. And they don't give a fuck
about one friend of yours that's...that's died. Not one."
Dillon
then offers a plan that will require the utmost bravery from the
inmates, one in which many, if not all of them will die. However, if they
succeed, they'll stop the nefarious company from finally
getting its hands on the alien, and thus stop the proliferation of the horrific alien--and all it stands for on a philosophical level--across the galaxy. The inmates respond to this plan with either anger or
despondency, though their only other option is to give in to nihilism by
waiting patiently for a purposeless death or committing meaningless suicide. And then, Dillon says:
"We're
all gonna die, the only question is when. This is as good a place as any to
take your first steps to heaven. The only question is how you check out. Do
you wanna go on your feet? Or on your fucking knees, begging? I ain't much for
begging! Nobody ever gave me nothin! So I say
fuck that thing! Let's fight it!"
Indeed.
*One may argue that both Parker and Dillon act heroically to the same end. It is true that both act nobly and both are then ripped to shreds by the alien. However, there are key differences in their motivations and philosophical state of mind. Parker has not had time to process the exact nature of what he is up against, and he doesn't seem to have any belief system equipped that would help him to deal with it if he did. Parker acts purely on a protective impulse, and his last moments are spent in abject terror. Dillon knows on a philosophical level exactly what he is up against, he acts according to that knowledge and he spends his final moments in an incredible display of defiance because he has a belief system equipped to deal with the situation. Thus, Parker's death is horrific, and Dillon's death is triumphant.
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