The Standard for all Sci-Fi afterwards

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2002)

I originally saw Alien only a few years ago, after I had seen special-effects laden knockoffs like "Starship Troopers" and even the last two films of the Alien franchise, and I was blown away. Ridley Scott's bleak characterization of corporate-controlled space travel strips away all the romantic, swashbuckling ideals that "Star Wars" had laid down only a few years earlier, and H.R. Geiger's horrific set and creature design created a terrifying new vision for moviegoers. To say that the movie starts off slow is an understatement: Scott drags out his film for the first hour or so, giving us little to sink our teeth into and emphasizing again and again the concept of "space truckers" rather than "space explorers". The crew dresses casually and follows no set protocol: we see that these are not zealous scientists, but real people trying to make a buck and get back to their families. However, when the crew is enticed by a tidy explorer's payment to examine a strange distress call, the film picks up into an eerie, gut-wrenching exploration of a derelict spacecraft carrying very hazardous cargo.
*** SPOILER'S WARNING*** Of course, the true turnaround event of the film is John Hurt's classic "chestbursting" scene. Legend has it that the cast of the film had no idea what was going to happen, as Scott wanted all of their reactions to be authentic, and they are nothing if not that. The race of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley against both time and the creature at the end of the movie keeps the viewer absolutely glued to the screen, and just when we thought it was safe to go back in the airlock, we're given a skillfully maneuvered twist ending that directors like M. Night Shyamalan are still using for last-minute scares. The inclusion of Weaver as the heroine in a movie like this was a slap in the face to both sci-fi and horror traditions. As is evident with Carrie Fisher in "Star Wars" and Shelly Duvall in "The Shining", damsels in distress were the moviemaking rage when "Alien" was released; we were provided instead with a cool, collective leading lady who used every instrument at her disposal to save herself and, of course, her cat. While "Aliens" was a fantastic, although very different, sequel, the remaining films in the franchise have been disappointing at best (God-awful at worst). The original, though, set a standard for sci-fi horror, and film in general, that is still looked up to today.