2y ago

What do you think of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979)?

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feminist masterpiece exposing men to the terrifying realities of rape.
The way in which Alien's facehugger eviscerates its prey is rather complicated, but its nature is no coincidence. The creature operates by bursting from an egg and attaching itself to its prey's face, during which it lays eggs down its victim’s throat. After a brief gestation period, the eggs hatch from the user's chest, bursting out in an aggressive, deadly birth. Dan O'Bannon specifically wrote this scene with the male's fear of penetration in mind and wanted the scene to operate as a payback of sorts for all of the times horror films have subjected weak women to male predatory monsters. His goal was to reverse the stigma associated with the sexualized violence against women in horror and turn the idea back on itself. It's no coincidence that the chestburster's birth involves a forceful invasion of male bodied victims and concludes with a phallic entity being born out of a male's chest.
- Interesting, I never thought about it that way. Also I've heard some people say that facehuggers actually give their hosts a type of cancer, which then forms the chestburster
  
  Another interesting aspect of the film is that the literary gender stereotypes are flipped. Ripply is the calm, cool, collected rational hero. She's trained for this, knows the protocol's that will keep them safe, and makes a plan to implement them. The men under her charge are cowardly, emotional, irrational, and need to be saved by her. Ultimately they interfere and get themselves killed. These gendered horror tropes are flipped on their heads.
Personally, it's my favorite horror movie. Everything about it is great: the bleak sci-fi aesthetic of the 70s and 80s, the cruel indifference of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and of course the xenomorph, which is just familiar enough to be horrifying.
I think it's fantastic
It's fine.
It's my favorite movie, i wrote like a 70 page analysis of it during my shitty college film program!
It builds it's atmosphere perfectly, the production design is gorgeous and utilitarian which helps but the performances themselves are what creates the atmosphere of a normal workplace, but in space. It spends time on establishing character relationships in ways that get overlooked, i especially love the bits with Parker and Brett vs the rest of the crew. Feels very above the line/below the line in film crew terms, your working class and your white collar workers.
Every character has a fault of some kind and you can see the exact moment at which things turn for them, when they will not survive. Nothing dramatic or like morally chastising, just simple things like Dallas being unwilling to be a leader until forced, or Brett going along with whatever he's told. It's very subtle and very satisfying, they don't have to hit you over the head with the reasons people die, it just feels inevitable, and it doesn't feel like you're being lectured about idk having sex as a teenager, novel for the slashers of the time.
Also I've never heard anyone else give this take but i think the ending is a perfect encapsulation of fight vs flight. The strong natural impulses of fear and anger in the two last characters to die, prevent them from surviving, while Ripley is able to overcome these to get out alive. I don't think it's coincidence this is the only situation we see two characters dying at once. I think people read the film sometimes as "ripley super is cool and collected and that's why she lives". Ripley is shown at many times to be just as worried angry and fearful as the rest of the crew, like anyone in the situation would be, but when it's time to turn it on she's able to rise to the occasion.
It's a perfect little clockwork box and i used to think ridley scott intended all of it but now i think he just got lucky, the man could not direct a film out of a wet paper bag anymore. People say ridley scott "created alien" like yeah sure but it's also a like lightning strike of maybe the best art team ever assembled, a cast of nothing but killers and a young director who actually had something to prove on a budget. He's certainly proven in the time since he doesn't know what made it work, James Cameron and yes i would even say David Fincher both had better attempts at such in the time since. That long buildup joke in 3 with the two guys unloading the ox carcass and the dude holding up the face hugger and going "what's this" is perfect distilled alien babyee. You need those little workplace conversations and jokes you need to build those real people in the world first before you start offing them. I watched Alien 3 and Alien Covenant back to back and only alien covenant caused me true psychic pain.
press 9 to hear hot takes about the canceled blomkamp alien project
in brief, redditors stop saying Ripley is your favorite female movie character challenge (impossible) (gone wrong)
Funny you brought this up because I was just going back through the franchise for October.
I still really like Alien, it holds up well. The xenomorph actually still looks pretty good by modern standards, a lot of times the older monsters in these movies tend to age very poorly. The aesthetics all hold up really well.
I still can enjoy the rest of the movies in the franchise to some degree (I quite like the newer couple even though I know they are divisive) but Alien stands out in another class.

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