Corrected entry: 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.
Corrected entry: 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? (01:08:10)
Correction: 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.
Corrected entry: Several scenes on the story boards and in the script did not make the final cut of the film. Some weren't even filmed at all. Some of these scenes included a sexual encounter between Dallas and Ripley, who have their moment spoiled in horror when Kane's corpse, which they ejected hours before, drifts in front of their view and bangs into the window. The other more controversial scene that was not even filmed, but only hinted at, was a 'rape' scene involving Lambert and the Alien. The Alien sliding its tail between Lambert's legs was originally intended to be the start of a bizarre sodomy/rape sequence, but director Ridley Scott thought better of it and decided not to film that scene. The only inclination of the alien sodomizing or raping Lambert left in the film is the fact that her corpse, which we only get a brief glimpse of hanging from the ceiling, is stark naked.
Correction: When Lambert was killed by the Alien you heard her on the intercom and the sounds she was making certainly sounded like she was being raped.
Corrected entry: When talking to 'Mother' the characters never seem to type enough keystrokes to account for the wording of their questions on the computer screen.
Correction: Who's to say in the future they don't have "short hand" software for quick typing?
Corrected entry: In the very beginning before anyone is awakened, there is a scene where a computer "wakes up". Between two shots of the computer's console, a coffee cup appears on the right side in the second shot.
Correction: Those were two different screens, one with pieces of paper glued around him, and one is without them. There was a personal helmet in front of each screen.
Corrected entry: In the rapid closeup sequence in which the alien kills Parker (Yaphet Kotto) by biting him right in the face, a freeze-frame viewing indicates that, at the point of impact, a honeydew melon was used to absorb the bite. Now a honeydew melon has a white external rind, and Kotto is a black actor. Why couldn't the SFX guys, at least, have painted the melon to match Kotto's complexion? This production error is, well, in your face. (01:33:35)
Correction: Parker's false head was not a melon but a plaster-cast head with a wax forehead. Inside was pigs or sheep brains. Here's a picture of the effect after filming Parker's 'Head Bite': http://alienseries.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/9298_472602889446159_1350005568_n.jpg.
Corrected entry: When Ripley goes down to check out how Brett and Parker are doing with the repairs, she says: "Don't worry Parker. (pause) You'll get whatever's coming to you." In the short pause between these two sentences, you can hear Ripley say something like "You have". It seems to be a wrong line which has been deleted, but not properly. (00:22:05)
Corrected entry: 1. As captain, why send yourself, the only other pilot (Cain) and the weakest and most timid member of the crew (Lambert) to investigate an unknown and possibly dangerous planet? The better selection would have been Cain, Ripley (whose duties as warrant officer seem to be unclear) and one of the engineers, Bret or Parker. 2. Are we really to believe that the chain smoking and slightly built Lambert could help Dallas carry Cain's limp, space suit laden body thousands of meters, across rugged terrain back to the Nostromo? 3. The Nostromo can navigate itself to Earth through deep space - a navigator is not needed. 4. The Nostromo is just a 'tug' so why does it need a science officer and a lab filled with science equipment? 5. All the elaborate buttons and switches on the bridge and med lab have no labels or designators - how does the crew know what they're turning on or off? 6. Dallas makes two flippant decisions. First, to take off from the planet with needed repairs still underway. And second, to remove the face-hugger from Cain's face even thought it might kill him.
Correction: All character decisions, not movie mistakes. But there are some valid explanations: 1. Lambert's technical abilities were needed to decipher the alien equipment. 2. Lambert carried the lighter end (feet-end of the stretcher), and they likely made several rest stops. 3. Another character decision. 4. A science station doubles as sickbay and is needed in case they run into alien unknowns (like the situation in the movie). 5. Well trained people don't need labels on buttons. For example, expert typists can use a blank keyboard. 6. Not flippant decisions, the ship was able to take off and trying to remove the face-hugger was a calculated risk.
Maybe the normal tugs owned by the company don't have a fully equipped science station, but the company would make sure this one did due to the nature of their mission.
It's more than a tug boat. It's a refinery that processes ore.
No, Nostromo is a tug towing the refinery, which is not part of the ship. The vessel detaches from the latter when they touch down on LV-426.
Corrected entry: The scene where the facehugger's acid blood eats through the medical bay's floor was done with actual sulphuric acid stained yellow.
Correction: It actually wasn't. A polystyrene mock up of a floor panel was made and doused with petrol, which dissolved it. Nothing as dangerous and unpredictable as real acids were used.
Corrected entry: 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. (01:15:30)
Correction: I have watched this scene over and over again. At no point can you see his clothes.
Corrected entry: When the ship explodes, you "hear" the explosion. Space is a vacuum therefore you would not hear the explosion.
Correction: 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.
Corrected entry: 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.
Correction: 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.
Corrected entry: On the special edition: go to the main menu, highlight special features, press right, and you will get the dossiers for the crew.
Correction: This description vaguely resembles an easter egg from the "Alien Legacy" collection or "20th Anniversary Edition" but the wording for just about everything is a bit off.
Corrected entry: 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. (00:56:20)
Correction: 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.
That would explain why Kane was very hungry when he awoke and asked for something to eat before they went into stasis.
Corrected entry: At the premiere of Alien, religious zealots set fire to the model of the alien, believing it to be the work of the devil.
Correction: Myth. While this verbatim description of the vandalism that destroyed Giger's model is still bouncing around the Internet, blaming "religious zealots, " there is apparently no documented factual evidence to substantiate it. In fact, the only source for the "religious zealot" claim comes from David A. McIntee's 2005 book "Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to the Alien and Predator Films, " which has been criticized for too much opinion, bias and speculation, and too little documented fact. In actual documented accounts, the arson of Giger's models at the Egyptian Theatre is blamed simply on "vandals, " with no mention of motivation, religious or otherwise.
Corrected entry: The newborn alien that bursts from John Hurt's chest is next seen full-grown, munching on a crew member who is searching for Jones the cat. Assuming that it needs to kill to eat, how did the alien suddenly appear full-size without any nourishment?
Correction: In the script, the Alien was caught eating all the crew's food that it could find in one of the food lockers, so it does indeed eat. One of the crew shot their flamethrower into the locker and the Alien then broke through a vent and into the air ducts. Also, the time between Kane dying and Brett dying was at least several hours. In the cuts scenes you see them first searching for the small Alien directly after it emerged from Kane. They then had to put Kane's body in it's shroud; clean up the awful mess in the dining room' perform the funeral ceremony and finally make the cattle prods and motion-detector. All of that would take a fair amount of time. It's not like the Alien grew to full size in only 20 minutes.
Correction: There's one big false assumption there - that the creature kills to eat. The extended cut of the film shows that in at least two cases, members of the crew were taken alive to create new eggs, and in other cases, the bodies are left apparently uneaten. The aliens in the film series have always shown the ability to grow to full size extremely quickly; the mechanism is unknown but it doesn't involve eating other lifeforms as no alien has ever been shown to attack before reaching full growth. The most likely explanation is that the additional mass required is simply taken from whatever the alien finds around it (metal, rock, whatever) and is incorporated into the body structure in some unexplained manner (possibly involving the breakdown of such matter via the acidic blood and its reconstitution in a form that the alien can make use of by some organ within the alien body).
Corrected entry: 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?
Correction: 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.
Corrected entry: When Ash tries to kill the semi-conscious Ripley by choking her with the rolled-up magazine, she begins to gag before the magazine even touches her lips, even though there is nothing in her mouth or throat yet.
Correction: Ripley had the paper to her lips and was about to scream, but the paper was already in her mouth just when she made the attempt.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bret is confronted by the alien in the landing gear bay, we see the alien 'unfolding' from a vent using backward folding bird-like legs. In every other scene the alien has forward bending, human-like legs. (01:07:30)
Correction: You're misidentifying one of two shots. The Alien begins above Bret inside the vent. The tail lowers to the floor first, to act as support for it's bodyweight. The tops of its feet are on the vent's floor at the entrance. Without the tail, it could not hold this position- it would just fall to the floor. It then lowers itself (using the tail), feet remaining on the edge of the vent entrance. When we see the side view of its head slowly lifting, we see its arms lower to reach for Bret. It kills him, then drags him into the vent (his body isn't found when Parker arrives). What you believe are backward knees are either the alien's ankles on the vent edge, or the lowering arms soon after.
Corrected entry: When Ripley is setting the ship's self-destruct mechanism she goes to a panel in the floor. In this panel there are four holes with four screws next to them. When she inserts the first screw she has to manually lift up the cylinder to activate it. It also makes a sound as it is lifted. After she inserts the screw into the second cylinder it cuts to a view in front of her. The cylinder makes the same sound as it raises, but Ripley is not lifting this one. Her arms are doing nothing. When she activates the last cylinder she once again has to lift it up manually by the inserted screw. Based on the design of the mechanism it is apparent that all four cylinders have to be manually lifted, but Ripley does not lift the second cylinder. It lifts itself. (01:35:30)
Correction: She tugs at the first, but this doesn't mean it needs her to. The second rises on it's own, making the same sound. The third is shown having risen without making the sound like the first two as she screws the last one in. She's never shown pulling the third or fourth, and the fourth is never shown rising. There's no consistency between any two of the four, so we don't know if it isn't shown exactly as it's supposed to work.
Correction: 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.