Alien is considered one of the best sci-fi horror movies of all time. It came out in 1979, and although it is 41 years old, it still holds up, at least for the most part. There were very few parts of the movie that did not seem up to a modern standard, but these were few and far between. The movie also left me with some questions that were not answered, they could potentially have been answered in the sequels after, but I am not that well versed in the Alien universe yet. This movie had great scenes in it as well, and it was excellently filmed and directed. It makes sense that it is still revered as a classic till this day.
The movie was about a crew on a commercial mining ship out in the depths of space on their return trip to Earth, but they received what they thought was a distress call from a nearby planet, that they were obligated to answer. When they landed, a group was sent out to explore, leading to a discovery of a space craft they were unfamiliar with, when they boarded they found a dead alien, and then they found an egg hatchery for other aliens, and one attacks the guy who found it by attaching to his face. They break protocol and bring him back on to the ship, and everything goes downhill from there as the alien rapidly evolves.
One aspect of older movies that always stands out is their long opening crawl. Movies used to go through a whole scroll of credits at the start of the movie as well as the end. So the first five minutes of the movie, there were not even any of the people, it was just very poorly done shots of space, and then establishing shots of the inside of the ship. Other than the long opening credits, there were only a few other aspects that revealed this movies age. One was whenever they tried to show the vast blackness of space with the stars off in the distance, it never looked quite right, it looked closer to a black board with holes poked into it, so that they could put lights in the holes to make it look like space. Then later in the movie when there is an explosion, they make it absurdly big, and the computer-generated explosion is so bad, it almost does not even resemble an explosion. Lastly when the alien explodes out of his first victim’s chest and runs away, that small white alien and its movement looked like a malfunctioning too car that accelerated too fast and almost tipped over. These were only small aspects to the movie, so for most of the movie, it was hard to tell that it was 41 years old.
One of the biggest questions that this movie left me with was what their level of interaction with aliens was previously. Throughout the movie, they never seem to be surprised about any of it. When they find the alien ship on the planet, they shrug off the fact that they have never seen anything like it before. Then when they enter the ship and find the skeleton, they had a similar attitude, oh a dead alien, not a big deal, it is odd that its ribs broke outward though. The guy that finds the eggs does have some level of surprise, but none of them had this extreme excitement and joy that they had found something new. Then once the alien was back on the ship, they did not take many precautions to try and keep it contained until it was too late. They even barely wore any protective equipment after discussing the need for a quarantine, it was just scrubs and flimsy gloves. So it seems like there is some level of precedent of this occurring before, and that is the background knowledge that I want. Also I find it hard to believe that they can have all of this advanced technology, but they are unable to communicate with anyone back on Earth. I find that highly improbable. Some of these people were scientists on board, and they just continually refused to use common sense.
There are two parts of the movie that stand out the most to me. The first was once they had landed on the new planet. The trek to the ship where the distress signal was coming from drew the excitement. Having never seen the movie before, I was on edge as to whether they were going to get attacked on their trip there, or if something was going to jump out. Then they had the camera that had a fed that went back to the ship that they showed where the footage was shaky in the classic home filmed horror aspect that I love. Then the whole discovery after once they were on the ship, it was excellently done. The other scene that had me drawn in was when it was just Ripley and the alien left, and there was the flashing light as she tried to creep around, and the alien appeared around the corner. It is one of the cooler scenes I have seen. That whole end sequence of the last twenty minutes was expertly done, which was probably because it was directed by action director start Ridley Scott.
This movie was great. I definitely would recommend it to anyone, but it is a must watch if you enjoy watching sci-fi movies or are interested in space or aliens. The story is well written, and it holds up very well, even to modern standards. A huge part of the credit has to be given to Ridley Scott for being an expert director, who continually is a part of great projects. Looking at his IMDb, I also noticed that he is scheduled to direct a prequel that will hopefully come out in the near future, if the world goes back to normal at least. The prequel has the chance to answer many questions about the background of what was going on on Earth and how accomplished their space travel was. I gave it a rating of 86.
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