Alien (1979)

1 stupidity

★★★★☆

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright

Stupidity: The Nostromo essentially is a detachable ship attached to a mining platform. After it returns and docks with the platform, much of the movie occurs in the platform section and not the Nostromo itself. The supposed reason they can't just blow up the ship is that the shuttle can't fit everyone. Why couldn't they just lure the alien into the platform, seal the ship, and then use the ship itself to escape? They could then blow up the platform to kill the alien.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Dallas tries to flush the alien out of the air ducts and is presumably killed. Lambert suggests fleeing in the shuttle, but it cannot support 4 people. Ripley decides to continue with Dallas' plan, but before she does so, accesses Mother and finds out Ash was ordered to help bring the alien back alive. When confronting Ash with this, Ash attacks Ripley and is revealed as an android. The survivors then decide to go with Lambert's plan because now there are only 3 people. There is no error here.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Mistakes

Continuity mistake: In the shot of the alien's tail wrapping around the back of Lambert's legs right before it kills her, the floor is different to what it was before, there is water suddenly falling from the ceiling when there wasn't before and her trousers have changed from white to blue. This is because that shot was originally intended to be used when Brett was killed.

THGhost

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Quotes

Ripley: Micro changes in air density, my ass.

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Trivia

Trivia: The original budget for Alien was supposed to be $4.2 million, but was then doubled to $8.4 million after Ridley Scott impressed 20th Century Fox with the storyboards he made.

Casual Person

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Questions

Question: Question about the Director's Cut of the film. The scene where Brett is looking for Jones has been altered slightly - when he looks up at where the water is dripping from, you can actually see the Alien hanging motionlessly from one of the chains. Has Ridley Scott given an explanation as to why he added this new dynamic to the scene? It's easy enough to speculate why, but a link to an 'official' explanation would be appreciated.

Answer: According to the commentary on the DVD, Ridley didn't add this scene to the original cinematic release because he thought it revealed the true horror of the Alien too soon in the film. The scene is quite early in the film and he thought revealing the fully matured Alien at that time would reduce the viewer's fear.

I had watched Alien several times before I noticed the Alien hanging there.At this point the Audience have no idea what the Alien looks like, they're looking at pieces of science fiction equipment put in by the production crew that they can't relate to, so for all they know the Alien could just be a piece of kit hanging there.