AG Monday
In space, no one can hear you scream.
It’s an understatement to say that Alien is a classic, a genre-defining moment in science fiction and horror. Tom saw it when it was released, and was blown away. Steven just saw it, and…Well, you’ll have to listen to find out! Join us for both our reactions to the movie, some behind-the-scenes facts, and much more.
A truly alien alien! Frights galore! Confined spaces! Containment protocols everyone should follow! Fantastic filmmaking! They’re all here.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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Everything would have been fine had they given John Hurt’s character Ivermectin!!111!!!11
I saw it in 1980-81 at home. Someone bought the tape of it, and I recall watching with my parents and some of my siblings. At the time my English wasn’t as good, and the tape had no subtitles, so I missed a lot of what happens in the first third or so, also about Ash’s interrogation.
The rest, it’s a monster movie. There’s no difficulty in understanding anything about it. Jaws in space, only the people are trapped in the ship with the monster. I don’t care for monster movies, no matter how well made.
I did see the sequels, at least the second and third. Why? because when you go to the movies with friends often, you wind up seeing lots of movies you don’t care to see*. I don’t remember seeing the fourth, but I must have, as I vaguely recall Winona Ryder being in it.
I did not see the crossover movies with predator (nor have seen any of the Predator movies for that matter), nor the prequels or whatever they were, nor the latest film, nor the TV series.
Later, the xenomorph’s life cycle makes no sense.
*It’s not all bad. I probably wouldn’t have seen Back to the Future otherwise, and that was a rather good movie.
Some related trivia:
In the show Mythbusters Jr., they tested the notion that “In space no one can hear you scream.” The conclusion is that if someone is near enough to the person screaming with literally their last breath, they may be able to perceive something, as the cited last breath would carry the sound as it dispersed into the cold, dark, indifferent universe.
In Spanish, the movie was marketed as “Alien: el octavo pasajero.” (Alien: the eighth passenger). In the MAD magazine parody in Spanish, the eighth passenger bit is in the title, with the cat right beside it saying “Ninth.”
The xenomorph’s life cycle involves being laid inside a face hugger, which in turn is inside an egg. We know how the face hugger inserts the xenomorph embryo inside a living host. Then it grow a bit, one assumes, and bursts out of the host’s chest.
This makes no sense.
Laying eggs in living hosts is common. Some insects do it here on earth, but then the larvae eat the host from the inside before bursting out of it (side note: Niven’s Puppeteers do something similar; which is kind of shameful to them because they are herbivores).
The xenomorph does not eat the host, just kills it. So it pretty much incubates inside a host, without taking anything from it, like blood or nutrients. Why a living host, then? What’s the advantage?
Next, we see the juvenile form of the xenomorph move very fast and presumably hide. Then sometime later it’s fully grown and killing the crew one by one. Since the juvenile did not eat anyone before being all grown up, and since no food or other stuff was missing from the Nostromo, how did it get so big? Does it feed on air?
I suppose a tiny xenomorph attacking the crew to eat them would have looked ridiculous, sending the audience into peals of laughter that would totally ruin a monster movie, which is supposed to frighten and horrify, not make people laugh.
So the whole lifecycle is a plot device.
The tribbles in Trek make no sense either. If they’re born pregnant, there’s no genetic recombination. And they’d have one pregnancy*, right? So they’d better spawn lots of juvenile tribbles each.
But at least they ate grain.
*also a sore point with the Ocampan species in Voyager.
@Kathy:
Well, sure, but by that metric we could describe Homer’s Odyssey as being about an ocean cruise! Or “Macbeth” about witches causing trouble!
To me it is one of the “perfect” movies, which I define as a movie knowing exactly what it is and executing it flawlessly. There’s a type of movie whose name I can’t remember, but the archetype is “Stagecoach” where a small group of people are thrown together with some kind of danger threatening them, and the movie is about the people and how they react and reveal who they really are, and that’s how I think of “Alien”. It’s also a master of “show, don’t tell”. Within a few minutes you know tons about the world this takes place in. You know how things have changed, and how they haven’t. The characters are well realized, well acted, and you end up seeing them as real people. I remember sitting in the theater and seeing the giant fossilized alien in the control room chair, a completely different species from the titular alien, and realizing they weren’t going to explain anything about it or how it got there, and what a great choice that was. I recently rewatched it because my daughter saw it for the first time and I was still really impressed.
I’m also a huge fan of “Aliens”, a completely different movie, and maybe even better at “show, don’t tell”. And while I haven’t seen Alien3 since it came out, I remember thinking that the backlash had more to do with it being a very different movie than either of the first two, and that it was really good and interesting in its own way.
I suspect key to the existence of the Alien franchise are the contributions of HR Giger. I do not care for this kind of art, but there is no doubt the man was a master of macabre. Creepy as creepy gets. I would not care to have ever meet the guy, and if he had ever been at my door I would not have let him in, but credit where credit is due. IMO it would’ve either been a flash in the pan or gone nowhere if the creature (and his other gripping, shocking set designery) had been done by a lessor talent.
The first three movies weren’t bad. From there it spiraled down. The new attempt is, I believe, a “all hands on deck” attempt to revive it with a younger generation. They brought in a lot of talent to make that series. Ridley Scott particularly.
@MarkedMan:
Homer’s Odyssey is mostly about that Greek favorite: Hubris.
Or maybe it’s about a minivan. Interpretations vary.
I don’t deny it’s well crafted and made.
But think of it this way: if you got the finest French chef that ever lived who has specialized in making bouillabaisse, who has honed their recipe for years, and they were to prepare one with the best ingredients in the world, and using the best technique, employing the highest levels of skill and talent and care and dedication, I still wouldn’t want to go within ten meters of it.