After reading a thread on the Best Action Movie Evah here at the SDMB, I decided that ALIEN is a movie that I should see. So, I put it on the top of my Netflix queue. The movie wasn’t all it was talked up to be, but it was an entertaining use of 2 hrs.
Anyhoo, what is the alien doing on the shuttle? At the end of the movie, everyone but Ripley, Jonesy*, and the alien are dead. We see Ripley and Jonesy get on the shuttle. Ripley strips down to her skivvies (very nice!) and then the alien hand tries to grab her.
But here’s what I don’t get. The alien appears to be taking a nap in a nook of the escape shuttle. It doesn’t bother getting up to try to tongue punch Ripley a tracheotomy until after she puts on the space suit [sub](gratuitous crotch shot ensues)[/sub] and starts pushing random steam action buttons. What’s it doing there? Was it tired of killing? Was it somehow trapped?
*I think that’s what the cat’s name was. What the hell was a cat doing on a mining ship anyway?
I don’t recall the first film well enough to give a real answer but wanted to let you know that the action movie discussed was Aliens, the sequel. The first film was more of a suspense-horror; the second is a lot of action between Colonial Marines and a nest of aliens. Both excellent, if different, films.
I believe the idea was that the Alien somehow knew or figured out she was leaving, and yes Alien is a genre defining sci-fi Horror movie
you are indeed looking for Aliens and make sure you get the directors cut. the studio release of Aliens was missing some very very nice footage.
I buy that as the reason why the alien was hiding on the shuttle. But after the shuttle left the mothership - why did it continue to hide?
If it wanted to stow away until the shuttle made it back to Earth or got picked up by another ship, it shouldn’t have reached out to grab Ripley - she (nor I, it startled the crap outta me) hadn’t seen it hiding there yet.
Even after it did reach out, it didn’t get up to attack Ripley - it just kinda stayed laying there. That’s the part that confused me.
I just re-watched this movie. Still great after all these years. My take on it is the Alien hid in a pile of tubing in the shuttle. It slowly extricates itself, knowing that Ripely doesn’t have a chance. Why should it hurry?
My mother took my bro and I to the world premiere of Alien at the Egyptian theater in hollyweird way back in the day. There were set pieces like the initial space jockey and model eggs all around the entrance to the theater. To this day, it is the best sci-fi/horror film. Great suspense, chest burster, sigourney in her tighty whities back when she was something to drool over.
My understanding has always been that the alien was just a stowaway and had its hand forced by Ripley. I don’t think it had any intention of killing its pilot to Earth. The proportional brain cavity vs body size would indicate a superior intelligence that wouldn’t take away its only method of getting to a new home.
My read was that the alien was asleep. It’s extendo-mouth was moving out and in slowly, as if it were dreaming. (Similar to the way dogs sometimes “run” in their sleep.)
Ripley was being very quiet, trying not to wake the thing until she got ready to execute her plan to “evict” it from the shuttle.
When she hit it with the blast of steam (or whatever she used), the alien was initially groggy and confused, having just been awakened from slumber.
They’re not soldiers. They’re just regular joes in an industrial job. Alien life may have been considered a myth to them. Of course they’re going to do some stupid things if the deadliest and weirdest animal in the universe suddenly appears on their ship and it’s behaving completely unpredictably.
Plus, it’s a horror movie, and we all know people behave foolishly in a horror movie; it’s the rules.
Correctly or incorrectly, I always assumed that the alien was already full, and it felt it had no reason to hurry its nap. It was kinda-sorta awake, but it knew Ripley wasn’t going anywhere, so it was just biding its time until it was hungry again. Or felt awake enough to drag off some food for the next egg? I never could figure out if the victims were being used alternately for adult alien food and larval food. Certainly it killed some of the victims outright by cracking their skulls - they wouldn’t be much good for suspended animation.
Actually, I think it’s deliberately playing up a parallel between the mining ship in this future universe, and the exploratory and profiteering ships which plied the oceans in past centuries.
I’m surprised it took until Post#12 for the suggestion that the Alien was asleep. This had always been my interpretation. The initial grab for Ripley “scare” I had always seen as an unconscious action during a restless sleep.
They weren’t even interested in discovering alien life. The only reason they investigated the signal was because they were required by law to do so (the penalty being loss of pay).
The novelization filled in some gaps the movie didn’t or couldn’t cover. The juvenile form that burst out of Kane’s chest grew to adult size by devouring the ships entire supply of stored food. Then first Brett and Dallas disappear after encountering the creature. In the novel, Ripley later finds them: they’re turning into alien eggs, Brett nearly completely so, Dallas still half-human and concious. Dallas begs Ripley to kill them, and she does so. Parker and Lambert are killed before they can join Ripley at the escape shuttle- the book implies that they were torn to pieces.
I’m unclear to what extent the adult aliens need organic food other than for breeding purposes. They’re supposed to be bio-mechanical, maybe they can actually tap electric cables for energy.
Sorry - the reason they investigated is because the company thought that the Alien might be useful to their biowarfare department. The whole “distress signal” was a ruse - the company knew it was a warning. The crew were expendable.
The purpose of the ending was to scare the Hell out of the viewer one more time. But Ripley had to win at the end, but not in an obvious way. So plonk the critter in the shuttle, do a surprise reveal, and draaaaaaaaaaaaag it out.
The sequel was fun, but had some seriously idiotic plot holes.
I am not aware of any sequels after that, as any such sequels were so awful that they collapsed into singularities under the nearly infinite weight of their suckiness.
