The director's cut of the movie contains a continuity gap with James Cameron's Aliens. In the sequel, we learn that the eggs containing the facehuggers are laid by an Alien Queen, who is protected by drones and warriors. However, in the director's cut version of Alien, we see that the captured Brett and Dallas being slowly transformed into eggs when Ripley comes upon them as she races for the shuttle. (Even in the theatrical version of Alien, we don't actually see either Brett or Dallas being killed; we just assume they have been when the Alien grabs them.) When asked about this later, James Cameron replied that since the released film version of Alien omitted these scenes, he did not consider them canon and did not feel bound by them. [This can actually work in either the theatrical version or the director's cut. It's possible that the drones, not being capable of laying eggs themselves, can somehow change a living creature into an egg when faced with a situation where a queen is not around (the first egg created would become a queen, most likely). This would help the propagation of a species with such limited capabilities for growth. Kind of like some frogs have spontaneously changed gender when in a situation where there was a disproportionate number of one gender over the other.]

In the scene were the Alien attacks the man with the flamethrower in the vents, You can slightly see the clothes of the person who plays the Alien. [I have watched this scene over and over again. At no point can you see his clothes.]

When the ship explodes, you "hear" the explosion. Space is a vacuum therefore you would not hear the explosion. [This is a commonly accepted mistake. Almost all sci-fi movies add the sounds of explosions and lasers to enhance the movie, to make it more exciting. If you have space battles without the sounds, it would be boring, even though it would be accurate.]

At the beginning of the film when they come out of their hibernation chambers, they all get up and are walking fine and a couple of characters are clean shaven. Surly if they were in the hibernation thing for many years they would have grown excessively large beards and also would have been very unstable when walking. Just like in real life where astronauts find it difficult to walk on their return to earth. [The hibernation chambers, as the name implies, slows down the body's systems to an extremely low ebb - as we see at the beginning of the second film, Ripley, who has been in hibernation for 57 years, doesn't appear to have aged in the slightest. As such, no beard growth would have occurred. With regard to muscle wastage, the crew needs to operate the ship effectively within hours of awakening, which wouldn't be possible if they couldn't stand up. As such, we can assume that the hibernation chambers were capable, in some way, of preventing this from occurring.]

The 'chestburster' alien that rips open Kane's chest and escapes is about the size of a 500ml beer can, plus the tail and legs, right? Regardless of how inactive it was, there is absolutely nowhere in the human body that such a creature could hide. It is larger than a human heart. It could not hide in Kane's stomach or esophagus without causing a huge, incredibly painful blockage, and there are no other 'spaces' anywhere where it could go. Where was it hiding, then? It could not hide in the abdominal cavity because its phenomenal rate of growth means it must be eating something - and the only thing available is Kane himself. I think he'd notice. [The Chestburster could easily fit inside a human torso, tumors larger than the creature are not uncommon in cancer patients without being visible on the outside. As for Kane not feeling any discomfort when it grows, perhaps the creature secretes some sort of painkiller into his system in its growth phase. That would be a key evolutionary adaptation to allow the Aliens to be born in the first place. Furthermore, it could simply be tapping into Kane's energy reserves (fat and some muscle) the same way Kane would if he was burning energy instead of actually eating the host.]

Why is Lambert the only crew member who managed to get covered in blood? There was even blood on the wall in the background, all the other members were in close around the table and yet their clothes were clean, Parker was even holding on to Kane's arm when the Alien burst out of Kane and yet he also managed to stay clean. [It's a directional blood spurt that happens to fly in Lambert's direction as the Alien forces its way out. Only the wall behind her gets covered in blood, all the other walls are clean. After the spurt, Ash steps in front of Lambert, so the wall behind him is bloody as well, but it's the same wall.]

On DVD version: In the part where the chestburster has bursted and is looking up at the crew you see a drop of blood fall onto it's head. This is after all the blood has finished being sprayed everywhere. [Have you ever sprayed water on a ceiling. It will eventually drip off. The same thing happened with the blood. It dripped off the roof above the table.]

Near the end of the movie Ripley gets into a pressure suit to hide from the alien. During the scene, they cut to a close up of Ripley's face several times. In some shots, you can see the glass of the helmet she's wearing, in other shots, her face is uncovered. [That's not the glass from the helmet. It's the glass from the door she's standing behind. Sometimes we view her from inside the closet, and sometimes we view her from outside.]

In the opening scene we see a bobing bird on the table. These birds require a wet beak to work thus the glass of water. We find out that the crew is half way home when they are awakened. Later we find that they are 10 months from home therefore the bird has been bobing for 10 months and the water has not evaporated after 10 months. [They were heading back *toward* Earth. They had not been traveling for ten months already; they still had ten more months to go. We don't know how long they had been in "the freezers."]

Looking back, it's kind of absurd that the Alien wasn't discovered hosting in Kane's body prior to its bursting out of its chest. The facehugger was enveloping his face for quite some time and the medical equipment aboard the ship determined that it was shoving something down his throat. Once it falls off of him, the rest of the crew didn't conduct a thorough examination of him to make sure he's fine before sitting down with him to dinner? [Ash knew the alien was there all along. When Ripley gets access to Mother she reads Special Order 937 (I think) which states that Ash's prime directive is to bring back any alien lifeform. That is why the android was put on board at the last minute and why he was so unhelpful.]

Haven't people in the future learned from the Titanic disaster? Every ship nowadays has enough lifeboat capacity for everyone. Why doesn't the Nostromo? [There are numerous reasons why. The Nostromo is not a passenger ship but a deep space cargo ship. The Company cares more about cargo than employees and every lifeboat takes room and resources away from cargo. Having no escape route would be good incentive for the crew to fix a problem rather than abandon ship. And as seen in the second movie Ripley's Shuttle takes 57 years and blind luck to be discovered.]

In the scene directly after Brett is killed by the alien, when they cut to the crew discussing it Parker seems to discuss the alien like he has seen it but I am not aware of any scene where Parker sees the alien. He makes numerous comments about how huge the creature is. How did they even know that Brett is dead let alone the size of the creature? [In the Director' Cut, Parker & Ripley arrive in the bay just after Brett has been taken and find themselves standing under the chains with blood dripping down on them. So they know he's dead. As to comments about the Alien's size, that's probably assumptions about what could drag a grown man up that shaft and dice him. Plus one of the deleted scenes (included on DVD-version) shows Brett's killing more graphically, and as rushing to the scene Parker sees him being grabbed by the now man-size Alien up somewhere. He even gets his shirt splattered with Brett's blood.]

After Kane has volunteered to be in the first group to go out, Dallas says "you too Lambert". After she replies "swell" Dallas says "I'll break out the weapons" - where are the weapons that Dallas is referring to? Why could these not have been used to arm the crew, when the Alien was loose on the ship instead of trying to hunt for it in the air shafts with a solitary flame thrower? [If they shoot the Alien its blood will leak everywhere, and the blood is highly corrosive so it would go through the floors and potentially breach the hull of the spacecraft. They are trying to herd it with the flamethrower once they realise it is afraid of fire.]

When the crew come upon the space traveler in the derelict space craft one of them says he is fossilized. For fossilization to occur the tissue must be replaced by minerals from surrounding materials. That is why fossils are found in the ground. When the creature dies it must be covered with dirt or mud before it decomposes. Over time the minerals in the dirt replace the tissue. But the space traveler is sitting in the pilot chair, completely open to the environment and not covered with anything. Either the crew member is wrong or the writers were. [The crew are the equivalent of merchant seamen, not paleontologists, so perhaps this error could be attributed to ignorance on their part even if the writers screwed up. The term they should have been looking for was 'mummification' or perhaps 'skeletonization'.]

When the Alien emerges from Kane's chest, Lambert is splattered with blood, yet when the Alien runs across the table, you can see that Lambert is clean. [Just after the Alien has burst out Kane, Lambert does have blood on her shirt, Parker picks up a piece of cutlery and is about to attack the Alien, just as he does this, Ash moves forward with his right arm outstretched and says "Don't touch it" At this point Lambert was behind Ash and you can see she still has blood on her shirt, the next shot cuts in with the Alien moving across the table and that is the end of the scene, Lambert was not wearing a clean shirt as the Alien moved across the table.]

If you look at the opening sequence of the Alien film, where the ship "awakens" and begins turning on computers, you will notice a coffee cup that appears and disappears in front of the computer terminal. [There are two terminals].

The alien face hugger sacs were apparently suspended and filmed from below, then the film inverted to give the appearance that the sacs were rising up from the floor. When the crew discovers the sacs in the alien ship, a closeup shot reveals liquid running up the side of the sac and then "dripping" up into the air. [This is intentional. The field in which the eggs are kept is supposed to protect the eggs, therefore not a typical gravity field (or else they would not have survived the crash of the derelict ship) and no other gases, other than what would be needed to keep the eggs in stasis.]

In the beginning, when they are trying to take the creature off of Cane's face, acid squirts out and leaves a hole in the floor. Later, when Ripley and Dallas go in to look for the creature, Ripley looks under the table and you can see a clear shot of the floor, but there is no hole. [In fact you can see that it has been covered with an upside down plastic tray.]

The alien is growing much faster than it devours victims, at times even becoming maybe ten times bigger without killing at all. [Its metabolism is almost certainly massively different from humans', and in the novel they find rations that have been broken open and eaten - probably applies to the film, too].