Truly Groundbreaking.

Rating: Null/10 (31 May 2003)

ALIEN may or may not be one of the greatest sci-fi films, but, it is unequivocally, the most influential one in the past 25-30 years. Since its release in 1979, there are only a handful of films in the genre that even come close to matching its impact.(and even those films borrow somewhat from the storyline of Ridley Scott's film) Yes, I do admit that it is shy of being an absolute perfect motion picture,(ie. the story drags a bit at the beginning, not a whole lot of time spent on character development)it still succeeds in spite of its few shortcomings. Stylish, atmospheric, gritty, graphic, nightmarish, and sometimes shocking, ALIEN was like no sci-fi/horror film made before. The characters were not the conventional good guy/bad guy portrayals seen in so many other films. They were flawed, vunerable, regular, everyday folk, trying to do their regular, everyday jobs, who were thrown into a terrifying and hellish predicament. So there really wasn't a whole lot of time to delve into how the crew interacted with one another or who was romantically linked with who. The soundtrack complimented perfectly with the dark tone of the film. Mr. Scott was wise enough to know that you don't need loud, jolting music all during the film to frighten your audience. Let the visual scare the h**l out of em'. And man did it ever. Add a great ensemble cast, shake up the audience's expectations of who will save the day, who will make it and who won't,and you have a film that to this day that has few, if any, equals within its genre.