Alien

Other mistake: When Ripley is trying to deactivate the self-destruct mode, the instructions she follows on the container are actually just the French interpretation of the instructions she read to activate self-destruct before.

Jack Vaughan

Other mistake: The voice of Mother saying the self-destruct sequence has been activated is heard before Ripley pushes the red button of the last of the four mechanisms used for that purpose. (01:35:58)

Other mistake: In the opening bridge sequence when the Nostromo's computer wakes up, text is displayed on the monitor. The scene cuts to a shot of the reflection of the text in a helmet's visor. The reflected text should be reversed, but it is not. (00:02:00)

Other mistake: When Dallas is in the air vent, his and the alien's location are both being tracked with the movement sensor held by Lambert. Whenever he crawls, his movements match up with the sensor. As he climbs down the ladder, his movement on the sensor goes downwards as it keeps in sync with Dallas himself and also shows that anything sensed on the sensor would be lower down on the sensor's monitor if someone or something was located on another level of the vent. The shot after Dallas says "Am I clear Lambert? I want to get the hell out of here" shows the monitor on the sensor and we can see the alien approaching Dallas on the monitor, with both Dallas and the alien on the same level on the air vent. Dallas then climbs down another level, and it is that the alien was in fact a level below Dallas. The problem with this is, if the alien was approaching Dallas from below, then the monitor should have showed the alien to be a few spaces below where it was on the monitor and not the same level as Dallas. (01:12:55 - 01:13:55)

Casual Person

Character mistake: When Ripley interfaces with Mother for the first time and sees the special order, an instruction reads as "Insure return of organism" rather than "Ensure return."

More mistakes in Alien

Parker: It's a robot. Ash is a god damn robot.

More quotes from Alien

Trivia: Ripley abruptly yelling at Parker to "Shut up!" is not in the script. Fans and industry gossip have long speculated that this was Sigourney Weaver breaking character in frustration and she was in fact telling Yaphet Kotto to "shut up" so she can finish her lines. The sequels 'Aliens' and 'Alien 3' both feature scenes where one of the normally cooler-headed protagonists suddenly snaps at a ranting character to "shut up!" in apparent reference to this moment. (01:16:50)

TonyPH

More trivia for Alien

Question: A bit puzzled as to why Ash tried to kill Ripley by stuffing a rolled up magazine in her mouth when he could have strangled her in seconds.

Answer: I believe this was another subtle way for the film to depict that Ash was malfunctioning or at least not fully processing correctly and having problems. It was showing a brutal savagery to his motions as well as an artistic choice for the moment.

Quantom X

Answer: This is just one possibility among many, but Ridley Scott suggested Ash may have been developing latent sexuality that he was not equipped to handle through his programming, and perhaps not physically either; his use of a rolled-up magazine may have come about because he was not constructed with a penis (I had to stop myself from making a pun about "hardware").

TonyPH

I always wondered about this. It always struck me as a little Freudian. Also, notice the picture of the topless lady on the wall - an interesting detail when combined with the phallic paper.

Jack Vaughan

More questions & answers from Alien

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