You have to realize they had all those lingering shots back in 1979 so we could admire how great the sets and special effects were. Thirty years later, people watch the movie and wonder why they didn’t cut away to hide how terrible the sets and special effects were.
I watched The Raid last week. I don’t think it would be your kind of movie.
Oh, my other question was: the place where Brett gets killed, what was that place? It’s like a large, hollow room, with lots of pipes and such. There seems to be a giant hole in the ceiling from which dangle pipes and chains, nearly filling the center of the hole. Around the edges of this water drips almost like rain. In fact we even see brett take off his hat and look up into the water and sort of wash his face.
Why is there such a leaky, drippy place on a spaceship?
On the soundstage.
I wondered about that myself. Not a vital plot point and a headscratcher from a technical/reality standpoint.
From somewhere on the web:
It’s not a spaceship, it’s a chemical refinery flying through space. Since I actually work in a chemical plant, I can confirm that there are, indeed, leaky drippy places all over the place. Condensation from the steam used to heat everything, mostly.
In a space refinery, that’d be even more of a problem (the heat losses you’d get sending a refinery through space, oy vey!). Of course, gravity would be even more of a problem, but the Nostromo seems to have a uniform “down” with no need for centripetal acceleration, and if they’ve got that level of technology you’d think they’d have thought to use heat tracing instead of steam tracing and efficiently collected all their other process condensate, but… eh.
you only see one molting because they only find one skin, just like the complaints that it grows so big and so fast without food this one is at least a little silly, can you imagine how not terrifying the Alien would have been if we spent 20 minutes of the movie watching it eat cheerios and shed skin in order to reach that size? the ship was huge, as in massive, as in friggin big, there are plenty of places to hide and more than likely plenty of things to eat for a creature with steel teeth and acid for blood.
As someone else said, it was a freighter run by a company as inexpensively as possible, not a shiny Enterprise.
CJ Cherryh wrote use that theme. The equivalent of a tramp steamer. I would imagine that was condensate from the HVAC in the spacecraft.
Its the atmosphere generator of the ship. In Prometheus, there’s a similar kind of place. It has something to do with generating breathable air.
Also makes a great Alien Jungle gym! 
Watch Alien again, Ripley protests loudly for quarantine to be followed but Ash violates it(for obvious reasons we later learn). So it isn’t like they had no concept of quarantine, but that a rogue agent purposely violates it.
BTW I love how slow and ponderous Alien and Blade Runner are.
Both Ripley Scott movies.
Coupla things:
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Yes, I know Ripley didn’t want to violate quarantine. At least someone had some sense - but the CAPTAIN - wanted to, and he had no sense whatsoever. It wasn’t just one rogue agent. Rather, Ripley was the only sane one.
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I certainly wasn’t complaining about it growing to full size. As said, it would have been silly (if amusing) to watch it eat cheerios. However, it was painfully obvious this time around. And I believe originally the crew was going to have to lock it in with their food stores, so there was a way around.
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Thank you for the explanation on the drippy room, especially Lightray, though it does not exactly make me happy to know that real chemical plants have drippy rooms!
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Ridley Scott, I’m pretty sure.
The captain wanted to but cooler heads seemed to be prevailing until Ash opened the door, I can buy that the captain acting out of emotion would violate a rule.
This
I saw the movie as a youngish man when it was first released. It blew me away with it’s gritty realism. I think the disconnect regarding the movie’s pacing and camera work flows from the after-effects of computer games, computer game-inspired action movies, and the "short-attention-span theatre that has replaced much of film making.
When I saw it, I’d already worked on a ship at sea (a scientific vessel, not a commercial one) and I’d lost a cousin in another ship, washed overboard, despite every modern (at the time) safety precaution, including environment suits and alarms. The thought of being isolated in a giant ship, in the case of the movie, a commercial/industrial ship, where a mistake or misstep could be a fatal one, ironically combating boredom and claustrophobia … sets up a palpable tension, and the intense scenes need that tension to produce a contrast within the film. Beautifully done, IMO.
The comparison of the ship’s crew to truckers is probably less apt than the previously mentioned parallel to an oil tanker crew. Regarding weapons, though, every trucker I’ve known carried a gun in the cab. Tanker crews are subject, I would imagine, to Maritime and Union rules, and heavily influenced by insurance requirements. When you look at the current panic generated by politicians and the media regarding guns, you can fairly well predict that firearms will not be allowed on any space vessel, unless it’s a military ship.
I’d seen “It!, The Terror …” in the early 60s, when it was still relatively fresh, and Alien set off all the “rip off” bells at first viewing. I presumed the producer had secured the rights to “It!” It’s a remake, though an infinitely better film.
Regarding the stupid mistakes made by the crew, remember Exxon Valdez? I’ll suggest that when you’re under extreme stress: you’ve been awakened in deep space earlier than schedule and forced by your contract to explore a dangerous alien planet … alien relics … bizarre “eggs” … face-hugger … “chest-buster”. Union miners and teamsters can’t be expected to retain their composure and make perfect decisions under that kind of pressure. They’re not Kirk and Spock.
That’s the coolness of the movie. These people (presumably) couldn’t get a job anywhere but on a refinery ship that requires suspended animation (the next time you see you family and friends, they’re your parents’ age). They are no way going to be psychologically prepared to deal with the events of the plot.
One thing that perplexed me, though I think it was effective in a horror film … why did the lights go out, steam spring from every corner, and some of the lighting turn into strobes as soon as the self-destruct sequence was employed? Seems like the worst time for darkness and distractions.
They did have guns. When Dallas decides to go and investigate the derelict he clearly states “Better break out the weapons” and there are scenes where you can see pistols strapped onto the outside of their spacesuits.
Presumably they didn’t use them because blasting a hole in a alien critter full of acid inside a spaceship would be bad. Better to try and drive it with cattle prods and flame.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Alien#Rexim-Favor_.26_Webley_Junior_Mk.II
Right, right, right … my memory, a terrible thing to waste. Good eye! I guess they could have lured the thing back into the hold or outside to shoot it. Hey, for all they knew, it would spit acid if shocked or exposed to fire. But, I’m glad you remembered the guns … I guess they were in the Emergency “Must Explore Alien Intelligence” Kit.
Indeed, and no big deal. But:
Did the intelligent people offer conjecture on why the creature wasn’t affected by bullets, electricity or radiation? If you’ve got a possibly insane mass murderer on-board do you really give him run of the ship? How about just taking out one of those ladders that connect the levels? I think one of the corpses was entirely drained of water and oxygen, but it didn’t change in appearance. You know the creature can’t take fire, and yet you don’t try to burn it? I think that a crewman hypothesized that since the creature came from a world with little oxygen it would be vulnerable to vacuums – which does not follow. It took a long, long time for the crew to come up with the obvious answer.
The characters weren’t interesting, and the sorta romance was just odd.
Alien, like Star Wars, doesn’t translate well to the small screen.
I think it’s plausible. Ripley and the other were talking in the abstract. But it was Dallas who had to make the decision. If they left Kane outside to die, the others could tell themselves they had no choice. But Dallas would have had personal responsibility for letting Kane die.