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: What exactly is the space jockey and why haven't we seen it in the other films except its fossilized self sitting in the what I call the laser gun?

Answer: It's another race of space alien that is also subject to infection by the Aliens. This particular one was infected and moved as far as it could from its race's known space and broadcast a warning before it died. The presence of eggs in the hold may indicate that it was a research ship. The race was never used in other Alien movies because it adds a new dynamic to the plotlines: two alien species, locked in mortal combat and neither particularly friendly with humans. In the Alien pseudo-prequel Prometheus we learn these beings are known as the Engineers and have interesting ties with both the aliens and humans as well.

Phoenix

Answer: Other theories, mostly developed in the comics derived from the original franchise, assume the xenomorphs were biological weapons conceived by the Space Jockeys for some interstellar war of theirs. Hence, the crescent-shape derelict was just a bomber, full of eggs and operated by a single pilot to minimize risks of accident with this mostly dangerous cargo. - what just happened though.

AKA, the plot of Prometheus.

lionhead