Not quite what I remembered

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2012)

I saw Alien as a kid and I recalled it being extremely scary. Many years have gone by and I recently watched it again. It fell short of my memories.
It's not that it isn't a good film. It's "fine." The main issue I have is that the characters are 99% hollow. They have absolutely no development, so why would we care if they live or die? The only people we get to know at all are the two mechanics on board. They complain back and forth with each other about how many shares they are getting, etc. Other than that we don't know or care anything about anyone else. I'm not even sure that we know what jobs most of the other crew members have.
Also, that alien sure as heck did grow fast. It went from the size of a squirrel to the scale of a large man in like 30 minutes. And that was without eating anything. And by the way, Ash said he was ordered to bring the species back and that the crew was expendable. Why in the world didn't he just freeze the facehugger while it was on the random crew member's face? The mechanic even suggested it.
Like I said, it's not a bad movie it's just not very extra special. Scott seems (as usual) obsessed with sets and not much else (for another example watch Blade Runner or Prometheus).