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.
TonyPH
30th Aug 2018
Alien (1979)
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").
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.
5th May 2017
Alien (1979)
Question: Is there ANY reason the smaller "lifeboat" ship (think they call it the Narcissus) Ripley evacuates into at the end, couldn't have been used as a lander to travel down to the planet in the beginning too (simply leave the Nostromo in orbit, with or without skeleton crew)? It seems, actually is, much less likely to be damaged in the initial landing, and, for that matter, much easier to take off afterwards (being much less massive). It also would have provided one more layer of quarantine containment for the people who stayed in the lander (who may or not be all the other four, in fact one would probably be just fine (Ripley manages the Narcissus just fine at the end), and it would have been a lot faster for the singleton to simply put on their own spacesuit if/when trouble is encountered, and in so doing, preserve their own personal uncontaminated space). The three explorers and the lander guard could simply see to trouble in Narcissus' sickbay-laboratory, without tainting the three back in the mothership, give Kane first response while taking him up to the main lab on the ship, while giving the orbit people warning to put on their suits/have some form of mobile quarantine ready for him.
Answer: It's not apparent whether the shuttle is capable of landing at all, much less launch itself back into space afterward even if it could.
Chosen answer: The small "lifeboat" ship was not equipped for the entire crew's long-term survival. As they are in deep space, there is no where close for them to land. They would just be adrift in space, as it takes years to travel from one destination to another. To survive long voyages, the crew needs to be in hibernation. The small ship would be a last resort in the hope that any survivors would be found before they died of starvation and/or lack of oxygen.
2nd Nov 2020
Alien (1979)
Question: The Alien brings Brett and Dallas back to its nest alive in order to create more Aliens. It seems that Brett had died in the process but Dallas is still alive. How then would the alien impregnate them without facehuggers complete with an egg?
Answer: It's possible that Brett was the only one being turned into an egg and that Dallas was merely stuck to the wall to be the eventual facehugger host.
Dallas is more than just merely stuck to the wall. He is in physical agony, his eyes appear to no longer work properly, and he has barely enough strength to muster more than a couple words. And the words he can get out are him pleading with Ripley to end his suffering.
Rather than burning Dallas to death it would have been more humane to let him blow up with the ship.
Perhaps so, but Dallas was pleading for his suffering to end right then and there. It appeared that the burning was no more agonizing than what he was going through, which means he must have been in immense pain already.
Answer: Actually the alien was using Brett and Dallas to make new facehugger eggs. The scene, only shown in the Director's Cut, shows Brett partway through being turned into an egg and Dallas in what appears to be the very beginning of this process. This scene was cut from the theatrical release and as such, James Cameron did not include this feature of the alien lifecycle in the sequel. Cameron showed the eggs are laid by a queen and the franchise has continued with this approach since Aliens and has never revisited the idea that alien eggs are created from the bodies of humans. Since this scene only appears in the Director's Cut, its status as canon remains in question. However, some fans reconcile this by theorizing that in the absence of a queen a single alien can use human bodies to create more facehuggers.
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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.
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