Being in her underwear at the end was actually Sigourney Weaver's idea. Only she wanted to be completely naked. She liked the idea of being totally vulnerable with nothing to protect her against the alien.
I remember seeing Star Trek "Into Darkness" with Doctor Marcus in her underwear and reading a few comments they exploited. Then years I read she loved it. She has no issue with it at all she's happy she did it. Then I turned off the liberal in me and was like You know what, she's right. She's freaking beautiful, it won't last, why would you feel ashamed or exploited or bad about it? It makes her feel good she's showing off something a lot of woman wish they had or were or looked like. I know Sigourney Weaver modeled too, so I'm sure being in her underwear as her idea, was because she loves herself and how she looks. What is it with liberal feminists trying to make them feel inferior for something as simple as feeling happy because they look good. There's no logic to it. Except envy or jealousy. Something I never hear people get Called out for yet it's huge. Look at all the people ripping on the rich and privilege. It's just envy. They wish it was happening to them. So, I see the contradictions. They talk crap about people who "got it", yet ask for a raise at work, accept higher paying jobs, which translates as slowly becoming privileged each step, yet they public shame the rich. It's disingenuous. Secretly, they all wish they had those priviliges.
@@seansersmylie Might want to expand on just what was not true? Not sure about Weavers end of it but the Fox execs didnt want an R rating so nixed the full nudity, the early script had a sex scene with Ripley and Dallas, which is why theres the feeling of a relationship or feelings between the two characters.
@@NZBigfoot There is an interview with Ridley Scott where he talks about that scene. In it he says he regrets shooting it in her underwear as it was cheap titillation or something to that effect.
@@asian-americanwithanopinio8954 The problem isn't people looking good, or being sexy, or presenting themselves in scant or no clothing. The problem is when it's forced on people who don't want to do it. If Sigourney wanted to do this, more power to her. I do think the tiny panties looked silly, but then, they apparently weren't something she'd even intended to wear. In fact, I think most feminists would agree with you here, that there's nothing wrong with sexuality or the free expression thereof. (Remember the "free the nipple" campaigns, by way of example?) The key word there being "free", as in not forced.
My favorite bit of trivia for Alien: In the start of the movie, where the crew take their stations and try to contact Earth, each actor was told to keep a certain light lit or unlit by pressing a button on their console, and each button they pressed affected another actors console lights. It was to give a good sense of actually working there instead of pressing random buttons.
The Nostromo is a massive ship, a towing vessel that brings a whole ore refinery in tow. The refinery alone is basically the size of giant factory-A ship that large likely is on the verge of having its own weather. Hence the water dripping on Bret right before his forlorn death.
There is a cheesy 1950's style SF movie "It, The Creature from Beyond Space" which generally has the exact same plot as "Alien". It scared the bejabbers out of me back when I was a kid, stalking and killing the crew of a spaceship one-by-one on a voyage back to Earth from Mars.
It's true. There's also a Mario Bava film called "Planet of the Vampires", from which much of the look of this film were derived. Blend the two and you have "Alien". All art is derivative.
4:30 "I do think that having them all sleep at one time is ill-advised." Yeah, if that was just a nap, or even a night's sleep, but they were supposed to be cryogenically sleeping for 20 months. Each way. That's over 3.5 years of sleep so they don't need to eat or drink and they don't age, but most of all, they don't go insane staring at the walls for 40 months.
As someone who just discovered this channel, I’ll say two things: 1. Fun reaction to watch and great commentary afterward. 2a. A reaction to Aliens will definitely get views, as many find it superior to this (not myself, but I understand why there is a divide). 2b. I fall into the camp who will HIGHLY recommend the director’s cut of Aliens. The small amount of superfluous footage is worth wading through for the extra story development IMO.
Watch the theatrical cut first. Then watch the director's cut. There's a reason there was editing. It gives away too much too soon and also ruins the pacing.
About them all being asleep at one time, keep in mind that they are not astronauts. They don't explore space. They are workers on a mining ship. They hibernate, fly out to the job site, work, then hibernate again for the trip home. It's a big part of what makes this movie work so well. These are working class people dealing with an alien life form in deep space and they aren't trained or equipped to handle either thing.
All the water raining down is from the Air filtration system, which is the big thing hanging from the ceiling. Water is produced by condensation in the system and the system itself would have a humidifier system to add or filter off 'x' percentage of the airs moisture. That's why the Alien is in there, all the air conduits lead to that room. From that hub it can travel a lot of the ship.
Great reaction. The ship that landed on the planet is the only ship. It's a towing vessel, like a semi truck. The big part that they detached from is their cargo.
The self-destruction procedure for the ship takes a long enough time to carry out to prevent someone from thinking when they see a simple big red button in the middle of the dashboard: "Hey, what is this thing for anyway? Let's test it!" 🤔
I am so happy the algorithm suggested your channel to me. Really good reaction/commentary. I think this channel is going to go far. Keep up the excellent work!
34:44 in one of The Expanse books there's a bit about how no matter how much we (humans) might try to prevent it, we eventually bring rats with us everywhere we go. I like to think that's true in this universe as well and is one reason they keep a cat on the ship.
I think the chains are for loading payload. I think the room is raining because the rough landing damaged the cooling system. Dallas said we can take off without that.
Hannah, I thought you did really well for someone who doesn’t watch horror movies. Next should be the Director’s cut of Aliens. It’s a lovely musical/romantic comedy that I know you’ll enjoy. You’ll be whistling along and tapping your foot! 😊For a change of pace, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I'm not a horror fan either, but I find that f they slide a sci-fi or fantasy skin over the film, I can actually watch it and enjoy. Whether it's an alien slasher on a spaceship or a magical demon possession of a girl that requires at least two priests to stop, so long as it is in some parallel universe of fantastical happenings, I can tolerate and even love 'em. Thanks for being a reactor, I appreciate seeing these films again through your perspective. Salud and good fortune!
Other scifi films from this era that I think you'd enjoy: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Terminator," "Blade Runner," and - only if you like your scifi on the schlocky side - "Logan's Run." And if you are willing to go with thriller / horror a bit more, perhaps try "Jaws," "The Shining" and "The Exorcist." "Silence of the Lambs" is a classic, but from a few years later.
It's influence by Star Wars in that movie made huge amounts of money, so every studio went looking for a Space Movie of their own and this was probably the most successful. Alien heavily influenced movies that came after it. A way to do space movies that are a bit more gritty than SW.
I hope to see a first time reaction to The Thing (1982) please because The Thing (1982) to me is the only other sci-fi horror movie to ever rival Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) the greatest sci-fi action and horror movie ever created as well:).
G'day Wren , tis only me again fellow film nurd 🤓 I'm currently watching a movie called " The Navy V.S. The Night Monsters 👾 " 1966 , The Aliens in this have Acid blood Alien is first found in Antarctica so there is a The Thing Vibe also , Very cheesey 🧀 , I'm watching it on Tubi anyway back to the movie for me
G'day Wren , Just as I was about to sit down for my tea 🍽 you popped up and I watched the Alien film with you , I've seen the movie umpteenth times but it's good watching with differing people's eyes 👀 viewpoints , I look forward to the next movie reaction thank you
38:55 "on the one hand the CGI doesn't hold up the best." You're young, you're forgiven... :) One day, long ago, before you were born, there existed a time when CGI didn't exist. "CGI" is not just a word that means "cool stuff on the screen". It literally means "Computer Generated Imagery". It wasn't until the 1990s that any computer existed on the planet, combined with the technology and the artistry, to make a scene or even something in a scene through CGI. That's why Terminator 2 (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993) were so amazing - no audience had ever seen anything like that. Before the 1990s, movies like this one had to do "goofy practical effects". Aliens are either puppets or people in suits. Fire is really burning, explosions are really exploding, and every other cool thing you see was actually done, right there on the set, filmed by the camera, not added by computers in post.
"Alien": A youngster is boarding the "Nostromo." What will she make of this "old, slow-moving, character-centered, no-CGI" movie? I saw "Alien" in the same ex-Cinerama theater where I'd seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "Star Wars" (1979) and would see "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981). 4:16 As I understand this world, it's an acronym: MU/TH/UR. The Company is sending a freighter crew to "do science" on an unexplored planet! 6:15 The "Nostromo" is a space tug, the "big ship" is an automated refinery, that's processing their raw cargo. 8:38 The Space Jockey, a mystery for decades. 10:07 Second Officer Kane = Zapp Brannigan.
I, too, saw it in a first-run theater with a 70mm print and 6-channel sound back in the day. Ditto several of the other big-budget films you saw. Man, those were the days, before everyone watched movies on itty bitty screens. Oh, the progress we've made.
I think this was influenced a bit by the original starwars.. but this was the FIRST "space truckers" movie... it did the really "lived in, falling apart" scifi - before this is was mainly all "shiny and clean" like imperials of star wars, or 2001 space odyssey. Its sorta odd how you (and many younger reactors) are able to sorta predict what is coming - but this really is just a "locked room horror" which had been done scores of times before, and has been done countless times since. It was only different because of the setting and alien. The base plot is a solid b-movie. But the cinematography and effects (and visual storytelling) elevate it to a classic status.
Good observations. The original story had Ripley and Dallas as lovers, but that part of the characters were discarded. The cat Jones was for companionship, a bit of home in the ship, but since ancient times cats were kept on sailing ships as good luck. They hunted vermins and kept the crews safe from disease. Except Jones was just outmatched by the Xenomorph. In the novel, Lambert had the most horrific death. Impaled by the tail up her a… and ripped apart. Both Parker and Lambert were ‘shredded’ and jammed into the vent as food. In a deleted scene Ripley in trying to escape from the Nostromo, found the alien’s nest. Brett had already morphed into the beginnings of an egg. Dallas was still alive, but was already morphing into an egg. Dallas begged Ripley to kill him. Ripley used the flamethrower to kill Dallas and destroy the nest. That deleted scene is somewhere on TH-cam. I spoiled the movie for myself in 1979 as I was moving to Canada and would miss the movie entirely. I bought the book to read on the plane. Arriving in Canada I bought all the visual books, behind the scenes, etc. I finally saw the movie in Toronto where they were experimenting with cineplexes. The theater was smaller than my living room. The film quality was a poor copy of a VHS film. It wasn’t until DVDs that I really saw the film for the first time. I loved every versions of this film.
Also, Dallas was somehow protective of Ripley because besides him she was the only properly qualified officer to run the ship. That's why he did not take her with the exploratory team.
16:30 "I know it's the late 70s but smoking on a spaceship seems like a really bad idea." First, US airplanes allowed smoking until 1988 (and the largest airplane is tiny compared to the Nostromo), and some US states allowed smoking indoors in workplaces and bars until around 2010. Why? The adverse effects of secondhand smoking were still not really understood, definitely not in the 1970s, but smoking is relaxing for the people who do it. Having your labor force being calm and chill but not doped into uselessness has definite advantages. So worksties pushed hard to keep smoking legal even after info about dangers of secondhand smoking were understood. Second, any spacecraft from a tiny Apollo capsule to a giant interstellar starship like the Nostromo must filter the air to remove CO2 from the humans breathing all day long. So the filters already exist to constantly filter and recycle clean air. Having crew members smoke just means changing the filters a little more often. Every 12 days instead of every 14 or something like that. That might cost a little money for extra filters, but having edgy, agitated crew members by not letting them smoke is far more risky in the long run. Besides, their parent company probably sells them the cigarettes at enough profit to pay for the extra filters.
The design of the Alien, the alien ship and the "space jockey" are all the work of german artist H R Geiger who works with bio-mechanical and sexual themes. It's iconic and unsettling for several reasons. There's a lot of intentional birth trauma and other biological trauma themes - the "Mother" computer room is intended to resemble the womb, with the user in a foetal position. The "vehicle" in the room when Bret dies is one of the feet the ship uses to land, and the water is condensation caused by the changes in temperature. Good choice of movie! A lot of the look and feel of the Expanse was based on Alien and Aliens - the grungy, industrial, utilitarian nature of the ships. The Canterbury and the Nostromo are very much siblings. Alien is a great example of fear of the unknown, too. Very Cthulu-esque in that the fear comes from the idea the universe is larger, and stranger than we'd known. Which would seem to make prequels exploring the past and origin of the Alien very silly. Prometheus, I'm talking to you. I watched these films on VHS, and I think we lose something with the increased picture quality - getting a better look at the Alien makes it a bit less fascinating. Check out the disco remix of the soundtrack, done (I believe) by the same people who remixed the Star Wars theme. th-cam.com/video/vdcOVjbP1TY/w-d-xo.html The "limited space, cast picked off one by one" thing predated alien, it was pitched as a "haunted house in space" movie
You did well with this, I've seen people react very badly to Alien, it really is top-tier horror sci-fi. I did get some amusement from the way you were so nonchalantly eating a chocolate egg during the Egg scenes. I strongly recommend Aliens too. It belongs more in the action genre than horror, and it has one of the greatest most fist-pumpingly "YESSS!!!" scenes ever filmed. But stop there, there are no other movies in the franchise.
"Alien" is essentially a haunted house story set in space. The cigarette smoking was to give a "working-class" vibe to the crew. Ditto the grimy, dark mood of the sets (see also cigarette smoking in Ghostbusters). There's a law of diminishing returns with sequels, exceptions being made the first two Alien films and the first two Terminator films, both of which were directed by James Cameron. In both cases an argument could be made that the sequels are actually superior to the originals. I think they are just different. Apples and oranges. In the case of Cameron's "The Abyss" and "Aliens" I actually somewhat prefer the director's cut, since the omissions clarify the plot and were only removed by the studio to shorten the run time (If a film is too long, the theater can't run it as many times per day, meaning they can't sell as many tickets and as much concessions!). What I, too, despise is something like the constant fiddling with things, like the first "Star Wars" films, by the addition of gratuitous CGI. Sometimes the original un-"improved" version is no longer even available, except in old physical media form. That's not what I saw in the theater! It isn't the work of the young, enthusiastic, risk-taking George Lucas. It's the work of the aging, wealthy, complacent Lucas who thought that Jar Jar Binks was funny and the Galactic Senate interesting. Always give me the original unless you can show compelling reasons for tinkering with it! Or at least don't remove the original from circulation. In one case, a removed scene was put back into "The Exorcist" because they could now digitally remove the wires that made it look too fake to use. OK, I'll go along with that. But removing a scene from "The French Connection" because Disney though people might be offended by racist language. That we cannot allow! I think the Mona Lisa might look better if we brightened her smile just a little. What do you think?
I didn't care for the director's cut because, for me, including the scene of the alien's nest seemed to be an attempt to explain something which didn't need to be explained.
If you enjoy the earliest Dr Who episodes you might like a BBC TV series called Quatermass and the Pit. I know the BBC put out a high res version but I don't know if it's on streaming services. There's also a movie version made by Hammer Films.
In the U.S., the movie title was changed to "Five Million Years to Earth". It would come on once every couple years on Chiller Theater on Columbus, Ohio television back in the mid-to-late 1970's, and I would never fail to watch it.
Hey, Wren! This is one of the greatest and most influential horror films of all time! I prefer the original THEATRICAL CUT you saw because I feel it's paced better and lacks a scene which contradicts the sequel. However, the Director's Cut boasts a moment when Veronica Cartwright smacks the cr@p out of Sigourney Weaver which definitely SHOULD HAVE BEEN in the Theatrical Cut! Despite preferring the Theatrical Cut for the first movie, there is ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION that you must watch the SPECIAL EDITION with longer runtime of the sequel, "ALIENS"!!!!!!! There are critical additional scenes that add context to the movie and it is the version director James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver themselves prefer. Director Ridley Scott kept the entire cast in the dark about the famous CHESTBURSTING scene except for John Hurt. Their reactions were absolutely genuine and mirrored the audience's response! Veronica Cartwright got sprayed by fake blood and fell over backward. They only filmed the scene twice. It remains one of the most ICONIC IN CINEMA HISTORY! The PACING is deliberately slow at the beginning to acquaint the audience with the ship's geography, to demonstrate authentic-looking space travel and maneuvers, to familiarize the audience with the crew, to establish the threat posed by the creature and to generate suspense with the mystery of the derelict craft. There's a lot of rich character humor and foreshadowing in those crew interaction scenes as well as a subtext about this future society being a corporate dystopia. "Alien" is set in the year 2122. This movie and "Star Wars" changed the future aesthetic from antiseptic cleanliness to lived-in, worn-out dinginess. The smoking aboard ship is meant to intimate that the specialized rigor and exoticism of space travel has been reduced to a layperson's workaday grind. The Swiss artist, H.R. GIGER, who designed the xenomorph, tapped into insectoid and reptilian features that evoke primal fear. His artwork is very bizarre, erotic and has a distinctive look called Giger-esque. The final product is an iconic movie monster that is pure NIGHTMARE FUEL! The creature's life-cycle and biology is explored throughout the series. By the way, the alien's retractable inner jaw is found in nature in a deep-sea fish! THE WEYLAND-YUTANI COMPANY is an international conglomerate involved in robotics, interstellar travel and terra-forming. They have a stake in every colony world and are basically the 22nd-century version of the British East India Company of the 17th- to 19th-centuries. They are a ruthless corporation looking to exploit or weaponize the xenomorph for profit regardless of the negative consequences. The Company is the TRUE VILLAIN of all the Alien movies. In the "AvP" films, you actually meet the company founders before their merger, Mr. Weyland and Ms. Yutani. This crew is not a group of explorers, scientists or colonists. They're just SPACE TRUCKERS hauling rocks. This was a First Contact situation they were wholly unqualified for. Hence, all the bumbling and bad judgment calls. Their chief concerns were company policy and pay inequity. Ripley was the only one with the willingness to make difficult command decisions that would have saved all their lives except for Kane's had she not been undermined by Ash. Of course, Ash was privy to a secret corporate mandate. Like most Captains, Dallas had an inherently CALM DEMEANOR. By minimizing the situation, it prevents both him and the crew from panicking. You can tell he's very worried because he seeks counsel from Mother. He also acknowledges his culpability for the predicament by preventing Ripley from volunteering to go into the shafts and by shouldering that burden himself. He accepted this task not even knowing if fire would be effective! His last act is a rather valiant gesture and I always feel bad for him despite his initial missteps. Parker is MY FAVORITE supporting character! Yaphet Kotto played him to the hilt! He's the blue collar EVERYMAN who just cares about payday and who enjoys deliberately antagonizing his superiors but ends up sacrificing himself for a fellow employee. He's also the only one who made a move on the chestburster before being stopped by Ash! Some viewers strongly believe the alien raped Lambert! This is nonsense. The PREHENSILE TAIL probably drew her closer to itself so it could mouth-punch her with the retractable jaw. Those viewers aren't mistaken for perceiving phallic eroticism, though, as that was Scott's intent. The giant elephant-headed alien pilot of the derelict spacecraft is one of the GREAT MYSTERIES of the franchise. Was he a zoologist, a bio-warfare specialist, an exterminator, a trader in exotic organisms, a waste disposal tech or a trucker like Ripley's crew? No one knows. Sigourney Weaver became a FEMINIST ICON because of this movie. Ripley is one in a long line of strong female characters that have been showcased in sci-fi and fantasy dating back to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars, in 1912! There's not a man I know who wouldn't follow Ripley into hell. You must see the SPECIAL EDITION of "Aliens" and the ASSEMBLY CUT of "Alien 3" because those versions greatly enhance both films. If you intend to see the "ALIEN vs. PREDATOR" films, then you need to acquaint yourself with the PREDATOR franchise. The first is an action classic with Schwarzenegger. Danny Glover's underrated urban-set "Predator 2" features some memorable set pieces. Dark Horse comics explored the crossover concept inspiring Hollywood to make two crossover films with moderately successful to excellent results. They're fun and exciting guilty pleasures with the second one, "ALIENS vs. PREDATOR: REQUIEM", being particularly lean and mean. There is also a "PREDATORS" film produced by Robert Rodriguez that is definitely worth a look. "THE PREDATOR" (2018) REBOOT, however, should be considered extremely optional as it nearly killed the franchise! "PREY" is an excellent 18th-century-set prequel to the original film that was released on Hulu! The Alien films have a RICHER SUBTEXT while the Predator films are more ACTION FARE but they're both fun sci-fi thrillers. Below is a VIEWING ORDER and an INTERNAL CHRONOLOGY: INTERNAL CHRONOLOGY: 1719 Prey 1987 Predator 1997 Predator 2 2004 Alien vs Predator 2004 Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (Unrated) 2010 Predators 2018 The Predator [EXTREMELY OPTIONAL] 2093 Prometheus [OPTIONAL] 2104 Covenant [OPTIONAL] 2122 Alien 2142 Alien: Romulus 2179 Aliens (Special Edition) 2179 Alien 3 (Assembly Cut) 2379 Alien Resurrection (Director's Cut) [OPTIONAL] VIEWING ORDER: Alien Aliens (Special Edition) Alien 3 (Assembly Cut) Alien Resurrection (Director's Cut) [OPTIONAL] Predator (1987) Predator 2 Predators Prey Alien vs Predator Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (Unrated) Prometheus [OPTIONAL] Covenant [OPTIONAL] Alien: Romulus The Predator (2018) [EXTREMELY OPTIONAL]
Kane was an idiot. That’s what he gets for being such a little go getter-As soon as they sighted the alien spacecraft, they could’ve returned to their ship, and just said-We found an alien spacecraft, it’s been investigated to the best or our ability to do so safely. We’re coming home. Going in the craft, dumb. Going into the egg chamber, deeply stupid. Wonder what Ash would’ve done if the away team refused to enter the alien ship?
After Star Wars was the biggest hit since Gone With the Wind 20th Century Fox picked the Alien script to cash in on sci-fi mania. This is my favorite horror film (The Exorcist, Silence of the Lambs are close). The horror is a blend of fears: birth, rape, body horror, the dark, corporate fascism, being trapped, man vs nature & more. Early scripts had Ripley hook up with Captain Dallas or with Lambert but romance was dropped. Look at the set design for the scene where Ash attacks Ripley. Fried EGGS and porn images are on the wall as Ash shoves a porn magazine in her throat. Strong women characters such as Ripley & Princess Leia were very timely in the late '70s. Not as much in the Reagan era. Always a smart take from you Keep it up!
Still the best in the franchise in my opinion, everyone goes wild for 2 but i find 2 took the movies and lore in a direction away from what made 1 so good, still one of the greats of its time. Although i prefer the type of movie 1 is compared to 2... if only the deleted egg scene was kept in the theatrical version (although it does mess with pacing)... the theatrical wasnt necessarily better, it just the extended version potentially changes alot of things that come into play in the sequels, alot would be different if they had gone with the extended theatrical. Alien was the first movie of its type i saw as a kid in the early 80s... age 8. From things like deleted scenes and the novelization the movie was going to have alot more sexualisation in it (which you picked up on) but it got dialed back alot (especially given the aliens designer, Geigers, other work and designs). Lambert was technically violated by the alien, although its never out right said so only intimated with her face down on the crates and the bare leg with blood running down it, not to mention the noises she was making we hear over the comms as Ripley is rushing to get to them... must admit, Ripley in her tighty whites was for this young kid a bit of an awakening... maybe not the best movie to show an 8 year old thinking back on it. The Nostromo was basically a Space long haul Truck, the crew were truckers with long hours and poor pay (well poor for space work), great at their jobs but with no experience or training for what was basically a complete unknown situation. Jonesy was much like the cats on old naval vessels he was pest control, rats and other similar lifeforms on a space ship would be very bad indeed... its also intimated in other material that the crew was rather familiar with each other, if you know what i mean, much like mixed gender crews on naval vessels are today.
Sexual undertones, the "face hugger" impregnates Kane, in a way designed to make most men watching feel really uncomfortable. The crew sleeping quarters, where Kane attacks Riley has posters of naked women stuck on the Wall and the magazine he uses is a sex magazine, all designed to make the viewer feel violated.
0:48 Neither do I! that's why I saw this movie for the first time last year! 39:29 My thoughts exactly too! Yeah, the Android was a surprise. and on the lack of clothing in the end, it may have been minimalistic, but was is sexual? I think not. 32:41 They don't make them as they used too! I think this type of storytelling would be too slow for a cinematic release today, and I think that's a little sad. 34:25 I think the reason why we think this is our modern connection to space travel, where every ounce is counted on the rockets sent up in space, and where everything is very expensive, and must have a reason for being there, functional or scientific. I think that's why you reacted to the dripping of water too. I think the casualness of the water, the cigarette and there being an animal along for the ride (if I remember correctly, there was a rat on the bridge too) is there to indicate that this is not something special, long travels in space with hibernation is very common, and the resources on the ship does not have to be rationed to the last drop. it tells us, this is more like a trucker transport than the scientific explorations we are used to from our time and reality. thanks for bringing us along on this ride!
"There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you" - The Doctor th-cam.com/video/T5jSRtwk6iM/w-d-xo.html
Oddly enough, I watched this when it came out and we all commented that her underwear were very large. Different times I suppose, it's all grey shapeless sports stuff nowadays 😁
"Better Version" .. it all depends. A "Director's cut" is usually what the director really wanted and those can be quite good, while the original theatrical cut is what the Studio thought would be better.. but they never dare go out on a limb. In the case of "not Star Wars movies" most "Director's Cuts" only has material made at the same time that simply weren't included.
Unless you are talking about "Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Special Edition". The studio threw money at Spielberg to film new scenes a year after the films release, because they thought people wanted to see the interior of the Mothership. IMO, it was a terrible idea, and poorly executed. You can tell it's not the same Dreyfus that we see entering the ship from outside - he'd added several pounds - and the quality of the film was different than the original film used in the production. It looked too clean. OTOH, the final version of CE3K DID include some scenes that were cut from the original theatrical release, but also cut some scenes. Nothing major, more like just shortened them a bit.
I hear what you are saying about director's cuts. For me it's a mixed bag. I think Lucas did a seriously poor job. But theatrical releases can sometimes be seriously mucked with by those other than the creatives behind the movie. So the theatrical release is not at all what the director intended, so when they get a chance to put their vision out, it sometimes can be the better version. I'd say that both Aliens and Alien 3 (if you were to watch this one) are better in the extended cuts. I think I remember hearing you say you didn't like Blade Runner. I'd be interested in what cut of it you saw (there are, I think, five of them). I'd be interested in seeing you react to either the original or the Final (whichever you didin't originally see) and then go on to react to the sequel, which was an awesome movie unto itself.
I hope you watch the SPECIAL EDITION of ALIENS. And only the first 2 Alien movies are any good. You can stop after that and save yourself from wasting your time.
Nice reaction I enjoyed Your speculations and analysis. Even though you made some guesses it turned out to be wrong you left them in which shows me your actual reactor not someone just hamming it up for views. I'm definitely looking forward to your reaction to Aliens, and suggest you skip Alien 3 If you want to keep your enjoyment of the franchise. The movie is a real bummer. Regarding Jonesy the cat three cats for used in the shooting of the movie. He even has his own Wikipedia page en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonesy_(fictional_cat) 26:51 I have a guess and it's entirely my opinion as to why the alien left the cat alive. In space you don't just have a cat carrier you have an environmental unit perhaps a sealed box that isn't open to the outside but has its own interior environment. And all the alien could see something moving around inside it couldn't smell or sense it in any other way So it let it be And I said this is just a guess take it or leave it.🤷🏼
"better at it now than I was.. 10 years ago"... You mean when you were around 10 ish? 😅 You should give Aliens ago to. It's a very worthy sequel - the others tho.... The ships literally had different designers to make them feel like they came from different worlds. HR Geiger has since become a bit of a phenomenon.
*Giger Also, Giger did cover art for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's "Brain Salad Surgery" album, as well as "Giger-fying Debbie Harry (of Blondie fame) for the cover art of her solo album.
BTW in the original script it didn't specify a gender for the character Ripley. This meant finally a female actor didn't need to be saved by a make actor! Also she didn't need to be overtly aggressive, she could actually be a smart competent person with compassion. Fun Fact To make the outside elevator of the Nostromo look bigger, they used 3 children in spacesuits instead of 3 full sized adults
28:30 "I was just thinking there was a remarkable lack of sexualzing the women, but now we get her in the tiny underwear." And we got more than one man in his underwear too. None of it was 'sexualized". None of it was even sexy. The point was to make her as vulnerable as possible. Naked and afraid. Too vulnerable. We NEED to save this vulnerable person because she's too exposed and weak to save herself. But wait, then she DOES save herself, from an ultimate position of weakness. It's contrasting two extremes. Not done to excite the audience - i'm not excited in this scene; I'm afraid for her. It's done to earn our sympathy and compassion. Now, if she'd been having sex with another counselor right when Jason pops up and murders them both, then yeah, that's sexualization. But that's a different movie.
Don't forget to get the "special edition/extented cut" for its sequel called "ALIENS" (1986) which is even better and is as scary and stressful than the first one ;)
There might be a divide here - horror can be divided into "gore/splatter", and "suspense/fear". I think you will be great with the suspense side... but a lot of more modern horror leans too far into the whole gory stuff... Ohh. just had your final thoughts - look into "H.R. Giger" - he's the designer of the alien and the alien space ship - there is a LOT of sexual/horror imagery in his art... He's famous for it. It was all designed to be unsettling and to prod at the whole sexual/reproduction/powerless emotions..
James Cameron's sequel, "Aliens," is the last quality film in the franchise IMHO. The rest go from ho hum to outright garbage. I would simply stick to the two classics.
Everyone has their right to their own opinion. I think the first to movies were almost perfect, and the following movies were good Sci-Fi fun, but just less than perfect.
The "found ship" is explained more in the prequel "Prometheus" where you will find out more about that Skeleton and perhaps how the Company knew the Xenomorph existed. However ALIENS will give your more about the Xenomorph. BTW back in the day, a "Robot" was a Tin Can Man until Ash! The idea a Robot could be such a perfect copy of a human just blew our minds. See "Robbie" the robot in "Forbidden Planet" Annoyingly Alien is called a "SciFi Horror" which it's not really. If you want something more of a "SciFi Horror" try "Event Horizon" 😉
You keep meta analyzing this from your vast knowledge of horror tropes. But let's take that one step deeper, meta-meta analize it. These crew don't know this is a horror movie, despite your repeated jokes that Ripley does. They are supposed to be real people living real lives and they aren't in any genre at all. A bad writer might make them ACT like they know this is a horror movie. A good writer makes them act like real people would really act. 17:17 "Don't split up. Oh, he's going to die." No, he really isn't. He's looking for a cat. Somewhere on this ship is a tiny weird alien not much bigger than a hamster. What's the worst it can do? A bite from that wouldn't even hurt as much as a bite from a chihuahua. In real physics, chemistry, and biology, a creature that small cannot grow to be as large as a horse in a single day with no food. That isn't even good sci-fi. It's pure fantasy. An actual horse is born 50x bigger than that alien and needs 3 years to reach full growth, during which time it eats many tons of food each year. Physical laws of conservation of matter and energy make it literally impossible for this alien to grow new cells, blood, acid, mouths, chitin, etc., without taking in matter (food) and converting that matter to its growing body (cells, etc.). This conversion takes tons of energy (converting one hydrogen atom to a helium atom produces enough energy to kickstart a nuclear explosion). Luckily bodies do it much more slowly so there are no explosions other than those generated by methane... So Brett has nothing to fear - unless he's in a magical sci-fi realm where a monster can ignore physics, chemistry, and biology and just become huge in a few hours. Poof. Magic. Now, if the writers made him act afraid, that would be bad writing. But they didn't. He behaves like a normal person in a world without magical monsters that ignore natural laws. That's good writing. So, on meta-meta analysis, he SHOULD split up because that's the realistic thing for humans to do in a situation like this.
i hope you realized how derivative expanse was of this movie. especially the early seasons . that is a good thing about expanse. imo once expanse ran out of things they can loot from others, they ran out. and expanse became a hipster fantasy full of ignorant prejudices typical of modern west's ruling ideology
@@MattNolanCustom if you don't know, you don't know. but out of pity, will give two examples. a small escaped group holding parties in luna, while billion on earth are left to suffer, think (in good faith with show never doubting them) rest envy them and want to destroy them because rest don't have what they have . sound familiar? if it doesn't ,that is your ignorance. throughout show thinks battles and history can be driven and decided by personal melodramatic factors and rousing speeches by self righteous preachy good guys(like the modern west which focus on narrative and imputed personalities over reality), and after season 2 show is totally immune to exploring inherent hypocrisy of these preachy main characters( with guy who killed ship full of doctors trying to spread facts about a health event , preaching later , again in good faith, to a villain about how he will follow the due process of justice instead of vigilantism ).
Being in her underwear at the end was actually Sigourney Weaver's idea. Only she wanted to be completely naked. She liked the idea of being totally vulnerable with nothing to protect her against the alien.
I remember seeing Star Trek "Into Darkness" with Doctor Marcus in her underwear and reading a few comments they exploited. Then years I read she loved it. She has no issue with it at all she's happy she did it. Then I turned off the liberal in me and was like You know what, she's right. She's freaking beautiful, it won't last, why would you feel ashamed or exploited or bad about it? It makes her feel good she's showing off something a lot of woman wish they had or were or looked like. I know Sigourney Weaver modeled too, so I'm sure being in her underwear as her idea, was because she loves herself and how she looks. What is it with liberal feminists trying to make them feel inferior for something as simple as feeling happy because they look good. There's no logic to it. Except envy or jealousy. Something I never hear people get Called out for yet it's huge. Look at all the people ripping on the rich and privilege. It's just envy. They wish it was happening to them. So, I see the contradictions. They talk crap about people who "got it", yet ask for a raise at work, accept higher paying jobs, which translates as slowly becoming privileged each step, yet they public shame the rich. It's disingenuous. Secretly, they all wish they had those priviliges.
That isn't true.
@@seansersmylie Might want to expand on just what was not true?
Not sure about Weavers end of it but the Fox execs didnt want an R rating so nixed the full nudity, the early script had a sex scene with Ripley and Dallas, which is why theres the feeling of a relationship or feelings between the two characters.
@@NZBigfoot There is an interview with Ridley Scott where he talks about that scene. In it he says he regrets shooting it in her underwear as it was cheap titillation or something to that effect.
@@asian-americanwithanopinio8954 The problem isn't people looking good, or being sexy, or presenting themselves in scant or no clothing. The problem is when it's forced on people who don't want to do it. If Sigourney wanted to do this, more power to her. I do think the tiny panties looked silly, but then, they apparently weren't something she'd even intended to wear.
In fact, I think most feminists would agree with you here, that there's nothing wrong with sexuality or the free expression thereof. (Remember the "free the nipple" campaigns, by way of example?) The key word there being "free", as in not forced.
The ship that lands on the planet IS the Nostromo. The part left in space is the refinery.
👍✌️
I love the small detail of how John's hands are still twitching afterwards.
Brilliant.
My favorite bit of trivia for Alien: In the start of the movie, where the crew take their stations and try to contact Earth, each actor was told to keep a certain light lit or unlit by pressing a button on their console, and each button they pressed affected another actors console lights. It was to give a good sense of actually working there instead of pressing random buttons.
The Nostromo is a massive ship, a towing vessel that brings a whole ore refinery in tow. The refinery alone is basically the size of giant factory-A ship that large likely is on the verge of having its own weather.
Hence the water dripping on Bret right before his forlorn death.
Great observation they do say he's in a cooling tower.
There is a cheesy 1950's style SF movie "It, The Creature from Beyond Space" which generally has the exact same plot as "Alien". It scared the bejabbers out of me back when I was a kid, stalking and killing the crew of a spaceship one-by-one on a voyage back to Earth from Mars.
It's true. There's also a Mario Bava film called "Planet of the Vampires", from which much of the look of this film were derived. Blend the two and you have "Alien". All art is derivative.
4:30 "I do think that having them all sleep at one time is ill-advised."
Yeah, if that was just a nap, or even a night's sleep, but they were supposed to be cryogenically sleeping for 20 months. Each way.
That's over 3.5 years of sleep so they don't need to eat or drink and they don't age, but most of all, they don't go insane staring at the walls for 40 months.
As someone who just discovered this channel, I’ll say two things:
1. Fun reaction to watch and great commentary afterward.
2a. A reaction to Aliens will definitely get views, as many find it superior to this (not myself, but I understand why there is a divide).
2b. I fall into the camp who will HIGHLY recommend the director’s cut of Aliens. The small amount of superfluous footage is worth wading through for the extra story development IMO.
Watch the theatrical cut first. Then watch the director's cut. There's a reason there was editing. It gives away too much too soon and also ruins the pacing.
About them all being asleep at one time, keep in mind that they are not astronauts. They don't explore space. They are workers on a mining ship. They hibernate, fly out to the job site, work, then hibernate again for the trip home. It's a big part of what makes this movie work so well. These are working class people dealing with an alien life form in deep space and they aren't trained or equipped to handle either thing.
They’re crew, not workers. They don’t mine ore nor do they process it. They just steer the ship.
All the water raining down is from the Air filtration system, which is the big thing hanging from the ceiling. Water is produced by condensation in the system and the system itself would have a humidifier system to add or filter off 'x' percentage of the airs moisture. That's why the Alien is in there, all the air conduits lead to that room. From that hub it can travel a lot of the ship.
I now know what Katee Sackhoff looked like when she was younger, and smarter like you.
Thank you for your ever more interesting analyses.
I thought the same! If anyone ever needs a young Katee Sackhoff for film/TV...
@@hardwiredhate We know where to find it...
Great reaction. The ship that landed on the planet is the only ship. It's a towing vessel, like a semi truck. The big part that they detached from is their cargo.
The self-destruction procedure for the ship takes a long enough time to carry out to prevent someone from thinking when they see a simple big red button in the middle of the dashboard: "Hey, what is this thing for anyway? Let's test it!" 🤔
I am so happy the algorithm suggested your channel to me. Really good reaction/commentary. I think this channel is going to go far. Keep up the excellent work!
The sequel "Aliens" is considered one of the best sequels ever made (right alongside Terminator 2). 🤟😎
34:44 in one of The Expanse books there's a bit about how no matter how much we (humans) might try to prevent it, we eventually bring rats with us everywhere we go. I like to think that's true in this universe as well and is one reason they keep a cat on the ship.
Yes, I do believe the correct title for this series of films is "Everyone Listen to Ripley".
I think the chains are for loading payload. I think the room is raining because the rough landing damaged the cooling system. Dallas said we can take off without that.
Hannah, I thought you did really well for someone who doesn’t watch horror movies. Next should be the Director’s cut of Aliens. It’s a lovely musical/romantic comedy that I know you’ll enjoy. You’ll be whistling along and tapping your foot! 😊For a change of pace, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The "Big" ship isn't the ship, it's the cargo.
Great reaction!!! You're adorable, Wren!! ✌️
I'm not a horror fan either, but I find that f they slide a sci-fi or fantasy skin over the film, I can actually watch it and enjoy. Whether it's an alien slasher on a spaceship or a magical demon possession of a girl that requires at least two priests to stop, so long as it is in some parallel universe of fantastical happenings, I can tolerate and even love 'em.
Thanks for being a reactor, I appreciate seeing these films again through your perspective. Salud and good fortune!
Other scifi films from this era that I think you'd enjoy: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Terminator," "Blade Runner," and - only if you like your scifi on the schlocky side - "Logan's Run."
And if you are willing to go with thriller / horror a bit more, perhaps try "Jaws," "The Shining" and "The Exorcist." "Silence of the Lambs" is a classic, but from a few years later.
It's influence by Star Wars in that movie made huge amounts of money, so every studio went looking for a Space Movie of their own and this was probably the most successful. Alien heavily influenced movies that came after it. A way to do space movies that are a bit more gritty than SW.
Dunno about a movie, but the first written work with "personnel countdown" was Agatha Christie's "And then there were none".
I hope to see a first time reaction to The Thing (1982) please because The Thing (1982) to me is the only other sci-fi horror movie to ever rival Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) the greatest sci-fi action and horror movie ever created as well:).
G'day Wren , tis only me again fellow film nurd 🤓 I'm currently watching a movie called " The Navy V.S. The Night Monsters 👾 " 1966 , The Aliens in this have Acid blood Alien is first found in Antarctica so there is a The Thing Vibe also , Very cheesey 🧀 , I'm watching it on Tubi anyway back to the movie for me
IF I remember correctly, I think that there were three different cats that played Jonesy.... It was a long time ago,,,
I think there were at least 3 cats playing Jones.
Of note; The Expanse borrowed heavily from Alien in the show's asthetic and stlye. Truckers and oil rig workers in space
Also, in The Expanse, the Rosi burning up the Hybrid in the drive plume after luring it out of the cargo hold was a nod to the ending of Alien.
The haunted house becomes a space ship. This film generated a lot of low budget horror space movies which continue to this day.
G'day Wren , Just as I was about to sit down for my tea 🍽 you popped up and I watched the Alien film with you , I've seen the movie umpteenth times but it's good watching with differing people's eyes 👀 viewpoints , I look forward to the next movie reaction thank you
The influence for both this and Star Wars is an earlier film called Dark Star which really pushed the lived in universe look.
There were actually 4 cats used for Jones.
38:55 "on the one hand the CGI doesn't hold up the best."
You're young, you're forgiven... :)
One day, long ago, before you were born, there existed a time when CGI didn't exist.
"CGI" is not just a word that means "cool stuff on the screen".
It literally means "Computer Generated Imagery".
It wasn't until the 1990s that any computer existed on the planet, combined with the technology and the artistry, to make a scene or even something in a scene through CGI.
That's why Terminator 2 (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993) were so amazing - no audience had ever seen anything like that.
Before the 1990s, movies like this one had to do "goofy practical effects".
Aliens are either puppets or people in suits.
Fire is really burning, explosions are really exploding, and every other cool thing you see was actually done, right there on the set, filmed by the camera, not added by computers in post.
Thank you young lady for this video!
"Alien": A youngster is boarding the "Nostromo." What will she make of this "old, slow-moving, character-centered, no-CGI" movie? I saw "Alien" in the same ex-Cinerama theater where I'd seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "Star Wars" (1979) and would see "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981). 4:16 As I understand this world, it's an acronym: MU/TH/UR. The Company is sending a freighter crew to "do science" on an unexplored planet! 6:15 The "Nostromo" is a space tug, the "big ship" is an automated refinery, that's processing their raw cargo. 8:38 The Space Jockey, a mystery for decades. 10:07 Second Officer Kane = Zapp Brannigan.
I, too, saw it in a first-run theater with a 70mm print and 6-channel sound back in the day. Ditto several of the other big-budget films you saw. Man, those were the days, before everyone watched movies on itty bitty screens. Oh, the progress we've made.
I think this was influenced a bit by the original starwars.. but this was the FIRST "space truckers" movie... it did the really "lived in, falling apart" scifi - before this is was mainly all "shiny and clean" like imperials of star wars, or 2001 space odyssey.
Its sorta odd how you (and many younger reactors) are able to sorta predict what is coming - but this really is just a "locked room horror" which had been done scores of times before, and has been done countless times since. It was only different because of the setting and alien. The base plot is a solid b-movie. But the cinematography and effects (and visual storytelling) elevate it to a classic status.
Good observations. The original story had Ripley and Dallas as lovers, but that part of the characters were discarded. The cat Jones was for companionship, a bit of home in the ship, but since ancient times cats were kept on sailing ships as good luck. They hunted vermins and kept the crews safe from disease. Except Jones was just outmatched by the Xenomorph. In the novel, Lambert had the most horrific death. Impaled by the tail up her a… and ripped apart. Both Parker and Lambert were ‘shredded’ and jammed into the vent as food. In a deleted scene Ripley in trying to escape from the Nostromo, found the alien’s nest. Brett had already morphed into the beginnings of an egg. Dallas was still alive, but was already morphing into an egg. Dallas begged Ripley to kill him. Ripley used the flamethrower to kill Dallas and destroy the nest. That deleted scene is somewhere on TH-cam. I spoiled the movie for myself in 1979 as I was moving to Canada and would miss the movie entirely. I bought the book to read on the plane. Arriving in Canada I bought all the visual books, behind the scenes, etc. I finally saw the movie in Toronto where they were experimenting with cineplexes. The theater was smaller than my living room. The film quality was a poor copy of a VHS film. It wasn’t until DVDs that I really saw the film for the first time. I loved every versions of this film.
Also, Dallas was somehow protective of Ripley because besides him she was the only properly qualified officer to run the ship. That's why he did not take her with the exploratory team.
16:30 "I know it's the late 70s but smoking on a spaceship seems like a really bad idea."
First, US airplanes allowed smoking until 1988 (and the largest airplane is tiny compared to the Nostromo), and some US states allowed smoking indoors in workplaces and bars until around 2010.
Why?
The adverse effects of secondhand smoking were still not really understood, definitely not in the 1970s, but smoking is relaxing for the people who do it.
Having your labor force being calm and chill but not doped into uselessness has definite advantages.
So worksties pushed hard to keep smoking legal even after info about dangers of secondhand smoking were understood.
Second, any spacecraft from a tiny Apollo capsule to a giant interstellar starship like the Nostromo must filter the air to remove CO2 from the humans breathing all day long.
So the filters already exist to constantly filter and recycle clean air.
Having crew members smoke just means changing the filters a little more often. Every 12 days instead of every 14 or something like that.
That might cost a little money for extra filters, but having edgy, agitated crew members by not letting them smoke is far more risky in the long run.
Besides, their parent company probably sells them the cigarettes at enough profit to pay for the extra filters.
The design of the Alien, the alien ship and the "space jockey" are all the work of german artist H R Geiger who works with bio-mechanical and sexual themes. It's iconic and unsettling for several reasons. There's a lot of intentional birth trauma and other biological trauma themes - the "Mother" computer room is intended to resemble the womb, with the user in a foetal position.
The "vehicle" in the room when Bret dies is one of the feet the ship uses to land, and the water is condensation caused by the changes in temperature.
Good choice of movie! A lot of the look and feel of the Expanse was based on Alien and Aliens - the grungy, industrial, utilitarian nature of the ships. The Canterbury and the Nostromo are very much siblings.
Alien is a great example of fear of the unknown, too. Very Cthulu-esque in that the fear comes from the idea the universe is larger, and stranger than we'd known. Which would seem to make prequels exploring the past and origin of the Alien very silly. Prometheus, I'm talking to you.
I watched these films on VHS, and I think we lose something with the increased picture quality - getting a better look at the Alien makes it a bit less fascinating.
Check out the disco remix of the soundtrack, done (I believe) by the same people who remixed the Star Wars theme. th-cam.com/video/vdcOVjbP1TY/w-d-xo.html
The "limited space, cast picked off one by one" thing predated alien, it was pitched as a "haunted house in space" movie
You did well with this, I've seen people react very badly to Alien, it really is top-tier horror sci-fi. I did get some amusement from the way you were so nonchalantly eating a chocolate egg during the Egg scenes.
I strongly recommend Aliens too. It belongs more in the action genre than horror, and it has one of the greatest most fist-pumpingly "YESSS!!!" scenes ever filmed. But stop there, there are no other movies in the franchise.
i love your accent this movie scared the shit out of me the first time i saw this
Gotta react to aliens. The second movies is epic. Its amazing.
Ever since Kubrick's 2001 computers tend to be called mother since HAL was male and psychotic.
"Alien" is essentially a haunted house story set in space. The cigarette smoking was to give a "working-class" vibe to the crew. Ditto the grimy, dark mood of the sets (see also cigarette smoking in Ghostbusters). There's a law of diminishing returns with sequels, exceptions being made the first two Alien films and the first two Terminator films, both of which were directed by James Cameron. In both cases an argument could be made that the sequels are actually superior to the originals. I think they are just different. Apples and oranges. In the case of Cameron's "The Abyss" and "Aliens" I actually somewhat prefer the director's cut, since the omissions clarify the plot and were only removed by the studio to shorten the run time (If a film is too long, the theater can't run it as many times per day, meaning they can't sell as many tickets and as much concessions!). What I, too, despise is something like the constant fiddling with things, like the first "Star Wars" films, by the addition of gratuitous CGI. Sometimes the original un-"improved" version is no longer even available, except in old physical media form. That's not what I saw in the theater! It isn't the work of the young, enthusiastic, risk-taking George Lucas. It's the work of the aging, wealthy, complacent Lucas who thought that Jar Jar Binks was funny and the Galactic Senate interesting. Always give me the original unless you can show compelling reasons for tinkering with it! Or at least don't remove the original from circulation. In one case, a removed scene was put back into "The Exorcist" because they could now digitally remove the wires that made it look too fake to use. OK, I'll go along with that. But removing a scene from "The French Connection" because Disney though people might be offended by racist language. That we cannot allow! I think the Mona Lisa might look better if we brightened her smile just a little. What do you think?
I didn't care for the director's cut because, for me, including the scene of the alien's nest seemed to be an attempt to explain something which didn't need to be explained.
If you like 70's sci-fi, perhaps you'd be interested in Solaris (1972).
If you enjoy the earliest Dr Who episodes you might like a BBC TV series called Quatermass and the Pit. I know the BBC put out a high res version but I don't know if it's on streaming services. There's also a movie version made by Hammer Films.
In the U.S., the movie title was changed to "Five Million Years to Earth". It would come on once every couple years on Chiller Theater on Columbus, Ohio television back in the mid-to-late 1970's, and I would never fail to watch it.
Hey, Wren! This is one of the greatest and most influential horror films of all time!
I prefer the original THEATRICAL CUT you saw because I feel it's paced better and lacks a scene which contradicts the sequel. However, the Director's Cut boasts a moment when Veronica Cartwright smacks the cr@p out of Sigourney Weaver which definitely SHOULD HAVE BEEN in the Theatrical Cut!
Despite preferring the Theatrical Cut for the first movie, there is ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION that you must watch the SPECIAL EDITION with longer runtime of the sequel, "ALIENS"!!!!!!! There are critical additional scenes that add context to the movie and it is the version director James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver themselves prefer.
Director Ridley Scott kept the entire cast in the dark about the famous CHESTBURSTING scene except for John Hurt. Their reactions were absolutely genuine and mirrored the audience's response! Veronica Cartwright got sprayed by fake blood and fell over backward. They only filmed the scene twice. It remains one of the most ICONIC IN CINEMA HISTORY!
The PACING is deliberately slow at the beginning to acquaint the audience with the ship's geography, to demonstrate authentic-looking space travel and maneuvers, to familiarize the audience with the crew, to establish the threat posed by the creature and to generate suspense with the mystery of the derelict craft. There's a lot of rich character humor and foreshadowing in those crew interaction scenes as well as a subtext about this future society being a corporate dystopia. "Alien" is set in the year 2122.
This movie and "Star Wars" changed the future aesthetic from antiseptic cleanliness to lived-in, worn-out dinginess. The smoking aboard ship is meant to intimate that the specialized rigor and exoticism of space travel has been reduced to a layperson's workaday grind.
The Swiss artist, H.R. GIGER, who designed the xenomorph, tapped into insectoid and reptilian features that evoke primal fear. His artwork is very bizarre, erotic and has a distinctive look called Giger-esque. The final product is an iconic movie monster that is pure NIGHTMARE FUEL! The creature's life-cycle and biology is explored throughout the series. By the way, the alien's retractable inner jaw is found in nature in a deep-sea fish!
THE WEYLAND-YUTANI COMPANY is an international conglomerate involved in robotics, interstellar travel and terra-forming. They have a stake in every colony world and are basically the 22nd-century version of the British East India Company of the 17th- to 19th-centuries. They are a ruthless corporation looking to exploit or weaponize the xenomorph for profit regardless of the negative consequences. The Company is the TRUE VILLAIN of all the Alien movies. In the "AvP" films, you actually meet the company founders before their merger, Mr. Weyland and Ms. Yutani.
This crew is not a group of explorers, scientists or colonists. They're just SPACE TRUCKERS hauling rocks. This was a First Contact situation they were wholly unqualified for. Hence, all the bumbling and bad judgment calls. Their chief concerns were company policy and pay inequity. Ripley was the only one with the willingness to make difficult command decisions that would have saved all their lives except for Kane's had she not been undermined by Ash. Of course, Ash was privy to a secret corporate mandate.
Like most Captains, Dallas had an inherently CALM DEMEANOR. By minimizing the situation, it prevents both him and the crew from panicking. You can tell he's very worried because he seeks counsel from Mother. He also acknowledges his culpability for the predicament by preventing Ripley from volunteering to go into the shafts and by shouldering that burden himself. He accepted this task not even knowing if fire would be effective! His last act is a rather valiant gesture and I always feel bad for him despite his initial missteps.
Parker is MY FAVORITE supporting character! Yaphet Kotto played him to the hilt! He's the blue collar EVERYMAN who just cares about payday and who enjoys deliberately antagonizing his superiors but ends up sacrificing himself for a fellow employee. He's also the only one who made a move on the chestburster before being stopped by Ash!
Some viewers strongly believe the alien raped Lambert! This is nonsense. The PREHENSILE TAIL probably drew her closer to itself so it could mouth-punch her with the retractable jaw. Those viewers aren't mistaken for perceiving phallic eroticism, though, as that was Scott's intent.
The giant elephant-headed alien pilot of the derelict spacecraft is one of the GREAT MYSTERIES of the franchise. Was he a zoologist, a bio-warfare specialist, an exterminator, a trader in exotic organisms, a waste disposal tech or a trucker like Ripley's crew? No one knows.
Sigourney Weaver became a FEMINIST ICON because of this movie. Ripley is one in a long line of strong female characters that have been showcased in sci-fi and fantasy dating back to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars, in 1912! There's not a man I know who wouldn't follow Ripley into hell.
You must see the SPECIAL EDITION of "Aliens" and the ASSEMBLY CUT of "Alien 3" because those versions greatly enhance both films.
If you intend to see the "ALIEN vs. PREDATOR" films, then you need to acquaint yourself with the PREDATOR franchise. The first is an action classic with Schwarzenegger. Danny Glover's underrated urban-set "Predator 2" features some memorable set pieces. Dark Horse comics explored the crossover concept inspiring Hollywood to make two crossover films with moderately successful to excellent results. They're fun and exciting guilty pleasures with the second one, "ALIENS vs. PREDATOR: REQUIEM", being particularly lean and mean. There is also a "PREDATORS" film produced by Robert Rodriguez that is definitely worth a look. "THE PREDATOR" (2018) REBOOT, however, should be considered extremely optional as it nearly killed the franchise! "PREY" is an excellent 18th-century-set prequel to the original film that was released on Hulu! The Alien films have a RICHER SUBTEXT while the Predator films are more ACTION FARE but they're both fun sci-fi thrillers. Below is a VIEWING ORDER and an INTERNAL CHRONOLOGY:
INTERNAL CHRONOLOGY:
1719 Prey
1987 Predator
1997 Predator 2
2004 Alien vs Predator
2004 Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (Unrated)
2010 Predators
2018 The Predator [EXTREMELY OPTIONAL]
2093 Prometheus [OPTIONAL]
2104 Covenant [OPTIONAL]
2122 Alien
2142 Alien: Romulus
2179 Aliens (Special Edition)
2179 Alien 3 (Assembly Cut)
2379 Alien Resurrection (Director's Cut) [OPTIONAL]
VIEWING ORDER:
Alien
Aliens (Special Edition)
Alien 3 (Assembly Cut)
Alien Resurrection (Director's Cut) [OPTIONAL]
Predator (1987)
Predator 2
Predators
Prey
Alien vs Predator
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (Unrated)
Prometheus [OPTIONAL]
Covenant [OPTIONAL]
Alien: Romulus
The Predator (2018) [EXTREMELY OPTIONAL]
Kane was an idiot. That’s what he gets for being such a little go getter-As soon as they sighted the alien spacecraft, they could’ve returned to their ship, and just said-We found an alien spacecraft, it’s been investigated to the best or our ability to do so safely. We’re coming home.
Going in the craft, dumb. Going into the egg chamber, deeply stupid.
Wonder what Ash would’ve done if the away team refused to enter the alien ship?
Please watch the sequel. And stop there.
It's basically a Drop Bear... but in space!!!
After Star Wars was the biggest hit since Gone With the Wind 20th Century Fox picked the Alien script to cash in on sci-fi mania. This is my favorite horror film (The Exorcist, Silence of the Lambs are close). The horror is a blend of fears: birth, rape, body horror, the dark, corporate fascism, being trapped, man vs nature & more. Early scripts had Ripley hook up with Captain Dallas or with Lambert but romance was dropped. Look at the set design for the scene where Ash attacks Ripley. Fried EGGS and porn images are on the wall as Ash shoves a porn magazine in her throat. Strong women characters such as Ripley & Princess Leia were very timely in the late '70s. Not as much in the Reagan era. Always a smart take from you Keep it up!
The Expanse was heavily influenced by this movie!
In space no one can hear you moo.
Still the best in the franchise in my opinion, everyone goes wild for 2 but i find 2 took the movies and lore in a direction away from what made 1 so good, still one of the greats of its time. Although i prefer the type of movie 1 is compared to 2... if only the deleted egg scene was kept in the theatrical version (although it does mess with pacing)... the theatrical wasnt necessarily better, it just the extended version potentially changes alot of things that come into play in the sequels, alot would be different if they had gone with the extended theatrical.
Alien was the first movie of its type i saw as a kid in the early 80s... age 8. From things like deleted scenes and the novelization the movie was going to have alot more sexualisation in it (which you picked up on) but it got dialed back alot (especially given the aliens designer, Geigers, other work and designs). Lambert was technically violated by the alien, although its never out right said so only intimated with her face down on the crates and the bare leg with blood running down it, not to mention the noises she was making we hear over the comms as Ripley is rushing to get to them... must admit, Ripley in her tighty whites was for this young kid a bit of an awakening... maybe not the best movie to show an 8 year old thinking back on it.
The Nostromo was basically a Space long haul Truck, the crew were truckers with long hours and poor pay (well poor for space work), great at their jobs but with no experience or training for what was basically a complete unknown situation. Jonesy was much like the cats on old naval vessels he was pest control, rats and other similar lifeforms on a space ship would be very bad indeed... its also intimated in other material that the crew was rather familiar with each other, if you know what i mean, much like mixed gender crews on naval vessels are today.
Sexual undertones, the "face hugger" impregnates Kane, in a way designed to make most men watching feel really uncomfortable.
The crew sleeping quarters, where Kane attacks Riley has posters of naked women stuck on the Wall and the magazine he uses is a sex magazine, all designed to make the viewer feel violated.
0:48 Neither do I! that's why I saw this movie for the first time last year! 39:29 My thoughts exactly too!
Yeah, the Android was a surprise.
and on the lack of clothing in the end, it may have been minimalistic, but was is sexual? I think not.
32:41 They don't make them as they used too! I think this type of storytelling would be too slow for a cinematic release today, and I think that's a little sad.
34:25 I think the reason why we think this is our modern connection to space travel, where every ounce is counted on the rockets sent up in space, and where everything is very expensive, and must have a reason for being there, functional or scientific. I think that's why you reacted to the dripping of water too.
I think the casualness of the water, the cigarette and there being an animal along for the ride (if I remember correctly, there was a rat on the bridge too) is there to indicate that this is not something special, long travels in space with hibernation is very common, and the resources on the ship does not have to be rationed to the last drop. it tells us, this is more like a trucker transport than the scientific explorations we are used to from our time and reality.
thanks for bringing us along on this ride!
"There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you" - The Doctor
th-cam.com/video/T5jSRtwk6iM/w-d-xo.html
And by "you", he means England, it's so weird how so many monsters choose that place.
Oddly enough, I watched this when it came out and we all commented that her underwear were very large. Different times I suppose, it's all grey shapeless sports stuff nowadays 😁
"Better Version" .. it all depends. A "Director's cut" is usually what the director really wanted and those can be quite good, while the original theatrical cut is what the Studio thought would be better.. but they never dare go out on a limb.
In the case of "not Star Wars movies" most "Director's Cuts" only has material made at the same time that simply weren't included.
Unless you are talking about "Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Special Edition". The studio threw money at Spielberg to film new scenes a year after the films release, because they thought people wanted to see the interior of the Mothership. IMO, it was a terrible idea, and poorly executed. You can tell it's not the same Dreyfus that we see entering the ship from outside - he'd added several pounds - and the quality of the film was different than the original film used in the production. It looked too clean.
OTOH, the final version of CE3K DID include some scenes that were cut from the original theatrical release, but also cut some scenes. Nothing major, more like just shortened them a bit.
@@jodonnell64 Yes, but that is a "Special Edition", not a "Director's Cut." Special editions can be quite horrible.
"Give man a number and he will try to maximize it." (regarding your concerns about subscriber count :-)
I hear what you are saying about director's cuts. For me it's a mixed bag. I think Lucas did a seriously poor job. But theatrical releases can sometimes be seriously mucked with by those other than the creatives behind the movie. So the theatrical release is not at all what the director intended, so when they get a chance to put their vision out, it sometimes can be the better version. I'd say that both Aliens and Alien 3 (if you were to watch this one) are better in the extended cuts. I think I remember hearing you say you didn't like Blade Runner. I'd be interested in what cut of it you saw (there are, I think, five of them). I'd be interested in seeing you react to either the original or the Final (whichever you didin't originally see) and then go on to react to the sequel, which was an awesome movie unto itself.
great reaction. please do more horror. 😊
I hope you watch the SPECIAL EDITION of ALIENS.
And only the first 2 Alien movies are any good. You can stop after that and save yourself from wasting your time.
Xenomorph? Before you watched the film...
Nice reaction I enjoyed Your speculations and analysis.
Even though you made some guesses it turned out to be wrong you left them in which shows me your actual reactor not someone just hamming it up for views. I'm definitely looking forward to your reaction to Aliens, and suggest you skip Alien 3 If you want to keep your enjoyment of the franchise. The movie is a real bummer.
Regarding Jonesy the cat three cats for used in the shooting of the movie. He even has his own Wikipedia page
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonesy_(fictional_cat)
26:51 I have a guess and it's entirely my opinion as to why the alien left the cat alive.
In space you don't just have a cat carrier you have an environmental unit perhaps a sealed box that isn't open to the outside but has its own interior environment. And all the alien could see something moving around inside it couldn't smell or sense it in any other way So it let it be
And I said this is just a guess take it or leave it.🤷🏼
"better at it now than I was.. 10 years ago"... You mean when you were around 10 ish? 😅 You should give Aliens ago to. It's a very worthy sequel - the others tho....
The ships literally had different designers to make them feel like they came from different worlds. HR Geiger has since become a bit of a phenomenon.
*Giger
Also, Giger did cover art for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's "Brain Salad Surgery" album, as well as "Giger-fying Debbie Harry (of Blondie fame) for the cover art of her solo album.
BTW in the original script it didn't specify a gender for the character Ripley. This meant finally a female actor didn't need to be saved by a make actor! Also she didn't need to be overtly aggressive, she could actually be a smart competent person with compassion.
Fun Fact
To make the outside elevator of the Nostromo look bigger, they used 3 children in spacesuits instead of 3 full sized adults
28:30 "I was just thinking there was a remarkable lack of sexualzing the women, but now we get her in the tiny underwear."
And we got more than one man in his underwear too.
None of it was 'sexualized".
None of it was even sexy.
The point was to make her as vulnerable as possible.
Naked and afraid.
Too vulnerable.
We NEED to save this vulnerable person because she's too exposed and weak to save herself.
But wait, then she DOES save herself, from an ultimate position of weakness.
It's contrasting two extremes.
Not done to excite the audience - i'm not excited in this scene; I'm afraid for her.
It's done to earn our sympathy and compassion.
Now, if she'd been having sex with another counselor right when Jason pops up and murders them both, then yeah, that's sexualization.
But that's a different movie.
Don't forget to get the "special edition/extented cut" for its sequel called "ALIENS" (1986) which is even better and is as scary and stressful than the first one ;)
There might be a divide here - horror can be divided into "gore/splatter", and "suspense/fear".
I think you will be great with the suspense side... but a lot of more modern horror leans too far into the whole gory stuff...
Ohh. just had your final thoughts - look into "H.R. Giger" - he's the designer of the alien and the alien space ship - there is a LOT of sexual/horror imagery in his art... He's famous for it. It was all designed to be unsettling and to prod at the whole sexual/reproduction/powerless emotions..
Can you please react to the horror movie Stigmata Starring Patricia Arquette Oscar winner Please
you're pretty
James Cameron's sequel, "Aliens," is the last quality film in the franchise IMHO. The rest go from ho hum to outright garbage. I would simply stick to the two classics.
Everyone has their right to their own opinion. I think the first to movies were almost perfect, and the following movies were good Sci-Fi fun, but just less than perfect.
The "found ship" is explained more in the prequel "Prometheus" where you will find out more about that Skeleton and perhaps how the Company knew the Xenomorph existed.
However ALIENS will give your more about the Xenomorph.
BTW back in the day, a "Robot" was a Tin Can Man until Ash! The idea a Robot could be such a perfect copy of a human just blew our minds.
See "Robbie" the robot in "Forbidden Planet"
Annoyingly Alien is called a "SciFi Horror" which it's not really.
If you want something more of a "SciFi Horror" try "Event Horizon" 😉
You keep meta analyzing this from your vast knowledge of horror tropes.
But let's take that one step deeper, meta-meta analize it.
These crew don't know this is a horror movie, despite your repeated jokes that Ripley does.
They are supposed to be real people living real lives and they aren't in any genre at all.
A bad writer might make them ACT like they know this is a horror movie.
A good writer makes them act like real people would really act.
17:17 "Don't split up. Oh, he's going to die."
No, he really isn't.
He's looking for a cat.
Somewhere on this ship is a tiny weird alien not much bigger than a hamster.
What's the worst it can do? A bite from that wouldn't even hurt as much as a bite from a chihuahua.
In real physics, chemistry, and biology, a creature that small cannot grow to be as large as a horse in a single day with no food.
That isn't even good sci-fi.
It's pure fantasy.
An actual horse is born 50x bigger than that alien and needs 3 years to reach full growth, during which time it eats many tons of food each year.
Physical laws of conservation of matter and energy make it literally impossible for this alien to grow new cells, blood, acid, mouths, chitin, etc., without taking in matter (food) and converting that matter to its growing body (cells, etc.). This conversion takes tons of energy (converting one hydrogen atom to a helium atom produces enough energy to kickstart a nuclear explosion). Luckily bodies do it much more slowly so there are no explosions other than those generated by methane...
So Brett has nothing to fear - unless he's in a magical sci-fi realm where a monster can ignore physics, chemistry, and biology and just become huge in a few hours. Poof. Magic.
Now, if the writers made him act afraid, that would be bad writing.
But they didn't.
He behaves like a normal person in a world without magical monsters that ignore natural laws.
That's good writing.
So, on meta-meta analysis, he SHOULD split up because that's the realistic thing for humans to do in a situation like this.
What kid pf a review you did like half the movie. DISLIKE
Hello Wren. *boop*
surprised at your low number of views ( as of now). deserve more.
i hope you realized how derivative expanse was of this movie. especially the early seasons . that is a good thing about expanse. imo once expanse ran out of things they can loot from others, they ran out. and expanse became a hipster fantasy full of ignorant prejudices typical of modern west's ruling ideology
@@MattNolanCustom if you don't know, you don't know.
but out of pity, will give two examples. a small escaped group holding parties in luna, while billion on earth are left to suffer, think (in good faith with show never doubting them) rest envy them and want to destroy them because rest don't have what they have . sound familiar? if it doesn't ,that is your ignorance.
throughout show thinks battles and history can be driven and decided by personal melodramatic factors and rousing speeches by self righteous preachy good guys(like the modern west which focus on narrative and imputed personalities over reality), and after season 2 show is totally immune to exploring inherent hypocrisy of these preachy main characters( with guy who killed ship full of doctors trying to spread facts about a health event , preaching later , again in good faith, to a villain about how he will follow the due process of justice instead of vigilantism ).