An Alien Cat Ate My Coworker

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2017)

I know I'm REALLY late to the party, but I finally watched Alien. I can see now why it's so huge and spawned so many sequels. The film was very well put together, which is no surprise considering it was made by Ridley Scott. The sets were great, the atmosphere was great, the music was great. I was thoroughly creeped out by the alien lifeforms - both because they were really ugly and anything parasitic gives me the heebie-jeebies. The main creature alone looked pretty terrifying.
Sigourney Weaver as always was a badass and I really appreciated the grit and strength of her character. She stood her ground against her male counterparts who weren't following the rules and then was ruthless with the monster. It made me happy at the end when she saved the cat. It's not just because I love cats (or because I would also be that person), but because it's important not to consider lower lifeforms any less of a priority than humans. The cat was there, it was alive, and therefore it was worth saving. I don't know if that's what they were going for, but think it is a very good message.
The only real issue I had with this film was that the characters made such blatantly bad decisions in terms of the situation, which were clearly made so the story would work. Of course they shouldn't have brought an unknown alien life form back onto the ship. No, they shouldn't have left it mostly unattended and attached to their crew mate in a room that was wide open. And no, when it went missing they shouldn't have walked into the room with no weapons or no way to trap it, all while leaving the door wide open for most of their search. Then they kept separating to find the creature, with no real plan of what to do when they actually did, aside from sending it out into space. They were already told it was pretty indestructible. I would have liked to see more effort put into the escalation of the story in that respect, but as the end result was so good it's something I can look over. I will definitely be watching the other films.