Depends On Your POV

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2017)

There is no question that Ridley Scott's "Alien" is a landmark film in the history of science fiction cinema. However, your overall enjoyment of the film will likely depend on whether or not you can fling yourself back to the late 1970s.
For a basic plot summary, "Alien" sees the crew of a future commercial spaceship stumble upon an alien creature so horrifying that it defies description. After worming its way aboard the ship, the grotesque alien proceeds to wreak havoc on vessel and crew alike.
Put simply, there are two primary trains of thought regarding the greatness of this movie (both of which include strains of the truth):
1. As a stand-alone film, the movie isn't all that great. There is no context, no character development, and the "landscape" (while perhaps creative in its sparseness) is quite bleak. The special effects are also quite dated, and (in retrospect) the plot has now been done so many times in so many different forms that it has almost become a cliché of itself.
2. Despite lacking in overall plot and effects, "Alien" does (without a doubt) contain some of the most seminal scenes in cinema history. It was (to my knowledge) the first film to really perfect the "killing-machine space organism" plot line and bring it to the mainstream. Plus, the scenes with the alien that are now so well-known are still shocking/provocative all these years later. If you saw this movie in the theaters in 1979, you were likely blown away by it.
Thus, very likely your overall impression of this movie will be determined by whether or not you can suspend time for about two hours. If judged by today's standards, this movie falls a bit flat. However, if seen in the context of its contemporaries, it is truly groundbreaking.