LogFAQs > #913189435

"What It Is: A lone creature attempts to fend off a spatial incursion as things start to get dicey. Luckily it survives the melee of the film, as well it should have. Everyone likes cats.

Why It Matters: This is a genre kickstarter, pioneering the way for sci fi horror and engineering the sorts of genre staples that have influenced everything from Battlestar Galactica (the remake) to Avatar. Ridley Scott's vision of the future has become a crucial waypoint in our perceptions of science fiction convention.

What I Think: Absolutely fantastic despite a deliberate pace, I'm really enamored with the performance of good ol' Ian Holm primarily. In fact, I've always found androids in the Alien franchise to be vastly more interesting than Xenomorphs. After all, Xenomorphs really don't have much depth to them, but there's really a lot to puzzle over when it comes to the minds of these robotic lifeforms of a sort. I'm vastly more haunted by Ian Holm's severed head than anything else in this movie, although everything else in this film is sufficiently frightening and haunting. The atmosphere is great, taut with unadulterated panic. Great stuff." ~scarlet

"So there's this crew of a mining spacecraft on the outer rim, and they are all chain smokers because they want to die in an explosive oxygen fire.
Anyway, a series of similarly unwise choices leads to an alien life form being taken aboard their ship, and after a rousing speech about sticking together, half of them immediately wander off alone to get eaten.
One of their other bright ideas is that maybe the alien doesnt like hot temperatures (they dont actually have any fucking clue) so the best course of action should obviously be to build flamethrowers and spray them throughout the innards of their ship. It is a miracle that these people managed to survive in deep space for even this long.
Still, its a nice little movie that does all the things it sets out to do, and though it might be just a rather dull 'idiots get mauled by monsters' story it still has an amazing atmosphere that makes it very watchable." ~Karo

"What this movie does the absolute best is its atmosphere. Ill admit that Ive actually never watched this movie before the project and already knowing the nature of the alien did take away a bit of the mystique. Still a great movie even if some of the cast is forgettable." ~JONA

"I have to say, the original film in the Alien series hasn't held up particularly well. It's a rather slow, plodding journey through a confined spaceship with dull backgrounds and characters that don't end up very memorable to me. Of course, coming into this film you already know bigger, badder things are out there and this enemy is in effect a rather typical one that Ripley will literally be faced with hundreds of later on. I still enjoyed it, but yeah, it just feels at times that the pacing is so lethargic and not much is happening. What does happen isn't always particularly exciting either." ~Charon
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"It is too easy being monsters. Let us try to be human." ~Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful