Alien

Alien is highly regarded as one of Ridley Scott’s best films and really one of the cinematic greats of all time.  Scott’s portrayal of a science fiction fantasy world, complete with real live sets and not the digital overhaul we see in action films today, give Alien a richness that is hard to come by now. 

We open on a wide sweeping shot of the Nostromo, a spaceship that is grossly out of proportion to the number of crewmembers it holds.  This shot sets off an ominous tone to begin the film and we get an unsettled feeling in our stomach that impending doom is upon the characters we are about to meet.  Scott toys with symbolic imagery as the crew starts to awaken from their scientifically induced slumbers, and their awakenings seem to resemble a religious rebirth.  The way they crawl out of their womblike sleeping chambers to greet a new and unknown world is extremely prophetic because they are about to encounter a new life force.  The Nostromo as a setting could be discussed in a paper all its own.  It is equipped with everything its seven passengers need as well as all of the proper equipment for performing commercial industrial work in space, but all of the machinery subtracts from its ability to comfortably hold humans.  It is an extremely sterile and metallic living environment that the humans try to make more hospitable by adding a cat to the mix, thus creating a sense of comfort and normality within a space that is so foreign (the movie is name Alien after all).  Nostromo becomes a character in Scott’s eyes when he gives her a name (Mother) and has the characters address her directly as if she were a real physical being.  She is the omnipotent overseer of the crew that holds the ability to understand the technology that is so indiscernible and protect the crew from outside forces.  It is not until the crew makes the human error of exploring their curiosities of the outside world that we see Mother failing as the ultimate protector.  Scott’s means of addressing technology and machinery as a theme of Alien parallel Lucas’ metaphorical imagery of cars and overwhelming technology seen in both American Graffiti and THX 1138. 

Scott, though unlike Lucas, addresses other societal issues such as gender related equality.  The clear protagonist in Alien from minute one is Ripley portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, but typically especially during the time that this film was produced, men would play this front running role.  Ripley is an ambiguous name, sounding a lot like one a male would use, but her character is definitively feminine.  She is required to make tough decisions based on logic and not emotion, a bold move for Scott to make considering women were believed to be so rash and unreasonable.  We first see her sense of morality and value based judgment when Kane is attacked and she makes the decision to follow protocol even at the risk of losing Kane’s life.  Her rigid personality is part of Scott’s ability to give her agency and not exploit her for her feminine form.  It is not until the very end that we see Ripley undress and reveal her true femininity, it is preserved throughout the film in order to realistically convince the audience that she is of equal intelligence and capabilities as the men on board.  She obviously overcomes any gender stereotypes that may have constrained her by being the sole survivor of their mission despite the alien following her onto the safety pod and having to deal with the alien within an enclosed space face to face and hand to hand. 

Scott explores the alien as a foreign object, character, and piece of their environment in depth.  It is difficult to make the argument that the alien is a real character, probably less so than Mother, but the alien is rather a product of their environment that facilitates fear and an element of unknown into their human world.  Throughout the film each human struggles to accurately and efficiently bond with Nostromo, yet the alien fits into this atmosphere much more easily than any of the humans did in their time on board.  It is a dark creature that blends with the metallic structures of the ship, and in the end there is a literal visual blending of the alien and the ship when it hides from Ripley is very nearly plain sight.  The alien’s ability to morph and mold itself into their space is representative of the fact that even though the humans inhabit the spaceship, it is still a foreign setting to them.