Still Scott's finest movie

Rating: Null/10 (23 September 2003)

I have this little theory... that talented filmmakers often do their best work (notice I said talented?) with their first couple of features. If the talent shows any promise, the film gets noticed, makes money, wins a few awards. When you've got nothing left to prove, you lose that hunger that drives you for success, the hunger that only lets you get 3 hours of sleep each day, the hunger that gives you that attention to detail over every little thing. "Alien" is truly the work of an artist obsessing over every little detail and nuance. The set design, cinematography (Adrian Biddle, one of the great british cameramen), special effects and visual effects (considering it was the late '70s) are all top notch.
Scott, who ironically would come to be known in the 80's for his cleverness with chiascuro (thanks to such insipid tripe as "Legend" and "Someone to Watch Over Me"), willingly settled into his director-for-hire mode that he remained in until breaking out with "Gladiator", truly a stunningly epic film, despite the limitations of the screenplay which was basically a revenge or die story.
"Alien" takes it time, long and leisurely, setting up the character development, the arc of the plot, and slowly turns up the intensity to the scary climax. The film has aged somewhat, due in no small part to Cameron's sequel "Aliens", which owes more to Heinleins novel "Starship Troopers" than it does to Scott's "Alien".
This film has haunted my imagination since I first saw this film when I was 13 years old... The cinematic themes of dark betrayal, such as the corporation of the film essentially using the crew of the Nostromo as a "mule" for the Alien, were still new to me. Perhaps I had too much time on my hands, but I often would think about how Ripley said if they had brought the creature on board, then they would all have had to spend time in quarantine upon their return to Earth. Then, in a dark moment of mabacre creativity, I realized perhaps the company had created the alien through genetic engineering themselves, sent it out to that planet, and then planned to use the Nostromo crewmembers to bring back the Alien species to Earth to use as a form of biological warfare. It kind of puts a neat twist on the film, since they never did explain where exactly that crashed spaceship (The "space jockey" creature) came from.