Alien (1979)

 

Channel 4’s “100 Scariest Moments” list, #4:

 

 

 

Alien

(1979)

 

 

As I write more and more of these essays, I become more sensitive of the meaning of the term “derivative.” Genre fiction is built on a foundation of shared assumptions, but is continually enlivened by works of bold originality. This film, among the most influential in the history of SF, F & H, represents a remarkable example of the intermingling of the explicitly derivative and the boldly imaginative. Its main Scriptwriter, Dan O’Bannon, would later proudly proclaim, "I didn't steal ‘Alien’ from anybody. I stole it from everybody!" and stands as maybe the ultimate demonstration of the old chestnut about the creative process, “Amateurs borrow, true artists steal.”

 

Part of the magic of “Alien” is that the script was not written as much as it evolved. O’Bannon, whose first major credit was the micro-budgeted but now cult-classic SF Comedy “Dark Star” (1974), wanted to play with an idea in that film, hunting an Alien in the enclosed environment of a Spaceship, but to handle the material as a Horror film instead of humorously. By 1975 he had an unfinished sketch of the idea that included “Alien’s” opening scenes: a crew of Astronauts awaken from Cryo-Sleep to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid, they go to the surface where bad things await. Feeding into this was a separate, unpublished short story about Monstrous Gremlins threatening the crew of a B-17 during WWII (some of you may remember that eventually become an episode in the animated feature “Heavy Metal” (1981))

 

O’Bannon then became attached to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s epic SF novel “Dune” (first published in 1965, and this attempt at adapting the novel collapsed in 1976 or 1977); by the time that project was abandoned, O’Bannon had already developed a relationship with members of the abortive production, notably artists Chris Foss, Jean Giraud (better known by the pseudonym Mœbius) and H. R. Giger. Jodorowsky’s epic was planned to be as immensely complex narratively as it was to be visually and may truly have been impossible to realize (someone noted that the script was longer than a phone book and the projected film would’ve had a running time of 14 hours), but what O’Bannon had in his head a simple-and-straight-forward tale that begged to be realized with the same visual richness as the huge-and-impossible-to-capture Space Opera. All three of the above-listed artists later worked on “Alien’s” production design, but Giger has to be credited as the main inspiration for O’Bannon’s ideas coalescing, "His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so, I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster."

 

O’Bannon’s college friend and co-Scriptwriter, Ronald Shusett, is credited with the idea that the Monster would be start as a Larva, planted parasitically in the body of a crew member, and then eat its way out. This likely was taken from A.E. Van Vogt’s short-story "Discord in Scarlet" (1939) but is also a common enough bit of grisliness in Real-World Earth biology. Van Vogt eventually sued, Shusett denied Van Vogt was the inspiration, and it was settled out of court.

 

O’Bannon, on the other hand, is quite happy to detail his influences, I’ll try to keep the list short:

 

·       “It, the Terror from Beyond Space” (1958) an ambitious but poorly Directed low-budget film SF the shares a lot of plot points with this movie.

 

·       Then there’s the early sequence in “Alien” when the astronauts find an abandoned spacecraft and the skeleton of a giant Extraterrestrial, this was lifted pretty directly from Mario Bava’s “Planet of Vampires” (1965).

 

·       While pitching the project to various studios O’Bannon and Shusett described the film as, “‘Jaws’ in space.” The latter may have been intended as sardonic, but the then-almost-finished story shared with Spielberg’s movie (1975) a small and unprotected cast of characters trapped in an isolated man-made environment, playing cat-and-mouse with something super-aggressive, animalistic, and with lots of teeth.

 

B-movie legend Roger Corman was approached by O’Bannon and Shusett, but a more lucrative deal was to be found with Brandywine, a production company with ties to 20th Century Fox. As promising as that deal was, there was some dissatisfaction with the still-evolving story so two more writers being added, David Giler and Walter Hill (both were more famously Producer/Directors). Though O’Bannon has been openly hostile towards both, he suspected they hoped to push him out of the project, they did contribute the very important Android subplot, which O’Bannon hated but Shusett loved. Eight more drafts would be written, and the final, distinguished by not only the Android but more naturalistic dialogue, was pen-to-paper Giler and Hill’s labor, but the Writers Guild of America awarded O’Bannon sole credit for the screenplay.

 

Still, the film couldn’t get greenlighted until after the success of “Star Wars” (1977). Suddenly this script, years in the making and conceived as a low-budget B-movie, had a potential for being an ambitious major release. O’Bannon was angling to Direct, but 20^th Century Fox wanted something more than a B-movie, and reached out to the above-mentioned Hill and at least three others, all of whom rejected the project. Finally, Director Ridley Scott accepted the job.

 

Scott had earned critical praise for his first feature, “The Duelists” (1977), a historical costume-drama that was so far removed from “Alien” that it is more likely his most attractive feature was his deeper background in set design, notably in SF TV shows. A bit unusual among major SF Directors (as Scott would be recognized from this film onwards) he was a non-Writer and in some of his later films this proved a demonstrable failing, but he also has a uniquely powerful visual sense that empowered him to display an unrivalled approach to world-building. This is an essential element of every great film Scott’s made since, whether it be SF, Road Picture, Policer, or Historical Epic. Scott created detailed storyboards for “Alien” which so impressed 20th Century Fox they doubled the budget and then approved even more for the rewritten and reshot climax. This expanded budget not only granted Scott more options on-screen, it also freed him to flesh-out design before shooting. The conceptual artwork for this film is among the most impressive in the history of cinema.

 

With the exception of “The Duelists,” which was a bit of an Art-House film, Scott has shown a career-long commitment to popular cinema, but always with it was a conviction that it must serve the intellect as much as the gut. How different it would’ve been if Corman got the project -- Corman has gifts for sure, and some of his films have displayed intellectual ambition, but he’s got a B-movie heart and most of his biggest successes have been with unapologetically dumb (he often stated that the only film he lost money on, “The Intruder” (1962), was a Social Message movie that was his product that the New York Times most praised). Scott deliberately played against the B-movie and embraced Hitchcock (but did so without a homage-scene). Hitchcock was always articulate about the mechanics of the thriller and offered one especially famous example that applies here:

 

There’s a bomb under the table. If the bomb goes off, it’s action BUT if it doesn’t, it’s suspense.

 

This film has seven Characters, six of whom die gorily, that’s action. But in the unfolding, the obscuring shadows and ambient sound were so much more potent than the spilled blood, and the movie takes its time before delivering the gore-goods (plus some of the blood-letting was trimmed before release), that’s suspense. Not since “Psycho” (1960) had B-material received such a thoughtful presentation.

 

Despite being most famous for a legendary gag-inducing “chest-burster” scene, “Alien” triumphs mostly because of its sustained atmosphere, a direct consequence of it landmark artistic design. The artists listed above all contributed great things: Foss had long mastered the creation of the illusion of massive-scale technologies through abstract shapes and surface textures so that comparison-elements (like a tiny human standing in the fore-ground) were unnecessary. Giraud, involved in the project only a few days, influenced the costume design, especially the much-imitated space suits. Giger was more important still, not only because of his terrifying exotic Alien, but putting his surrealistic and perverse mecho/sexual (or as Giger put it, ‘biomechanical’) stamp on all non-human technologies encountered. Maybe Scott’s key production design masterstroke was to leave all the most important elements of alien-ness to one distinct stylist, Giger, while creating stark contrast by giving almost all of the human technologies and environments to another, equally distinct, stylist, namely Ron Cobb.

 

The importance of Cobb’s work was equal to that of Giger’s and eclipsed that of Foss and Giraud. One truly distinctive aspect of this film is that it is set on a Spaceship in the far future, but there’s little cleanliness and no “Competence Porn,” meaning this isn’t a future belongs only to a carefully-vetted elite in pristine environments like “Star Trek” (TV series first aired 1966) or “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)). This is a Blue-Collar Space film where the astronauts wear faded denim, baseball caps, even a garish Hawaiian shirt. Andrew O'Hehir wrote that it was "a film about human loneliness amid the emptiness and amorality of creation. It's a cynical '70s-leftist vision of the future in which none of the problems plaguing 20th century Earth — class divisions, capitalist exploitation, the subjugation of humanity to technology—have been improved in the slightest by mankind's forays into outer space."

 

This aesthetic was a carry-over of “Dark Star,” which Cobb had also been part of, and Cobb’s fame would gel when he worked on the cantina scene in “Star Wars.” Scott, the former set designed, wasn’t much of a SF Fan at the time, so he was freed of many visual pre-conceptions. Cobb’s art work gave Scott an environment tangible and functional-appearing. When the sets were built for the Earth-ship Nostromo, its three decks were entirely in one piece, the various rooms connected via corridors. To move around the sets the actors had to navigate through the hallways of the ship, adding to the film's sense of claustrophobia and verisimilitude.

 

O’Bannon envisioned Giger’s role in the production long before he even pitched the developing script, but Giger was brought into the pre-production process late, O’Bannon had to lobby for him. Probably because Cobb was already in the same country as everyone else, he was brought in from the very beginning and his synergy with Scott proved remarkable. (Cobb submitted a few early concept drawings of the Monster, eventual known as a “Xenomorph,” but these were set aside as soon as Scott saw Giger’s work.) Giger had wanted to design the creature from scratch, but Scott saw Giger’s book, “Necronicom” (1977) and had fallen in love with the paintings “Necronom I” and “V” and insisted to Giger, a sculptor as well as a painter, that he follow their form.

 

Giger, of course, got the name “Necronicom” from the “Cthulhu Mythos” created by author H.P. Lovecraft (series of related short stories, the first published in 1928). A number of Critics has discerned in this film an atmospheric influence of a specific Lovecraft tale, “At the Mountains of Madness” (1931) or as David McIntee put it, "not in storyline, but in dread-building mystery." Giger, discussing O’Bannon’s script, stated, "I liked it particularly because I found it was in the vein of Lovecraft, one of my greatest sources of inspiration." By the time the film franchise reached its ninth-installment, “Prometheus” (2012), “At the Mountains…” influence was not merely presented atmospherically, but overtly in various plot-points.

 

Giger and Cobb were the two artists that the film brought the most fame. Ultimately, Cobb’s influence was greater, his designs are now the default of what a future Spaceships are supposed to look like. Plenty have “borrowed” Giger’s designs, but when they do, Critics always note it derisively. When Cobb’s influence is on display, it’s casually accepted because his vision of Nostronomo seems the only choice.

 

As this film is bluntly anti-“Star Wars,” its distinction among that era’s SF films was all-but guaranteed. I did a Google search of all SF films for the years 1978 & 1979, there was a total of 64. Of these, 47 were Earth-based narratives. Of those set in Outer Space or significantly on another planet, ten were obvious “Star Wars” rip-offs, and among the remaining seven films, some horse-shoed “Star Wars” elements into unrelated narratives, like the cute robots in “The Black Hole” (1979). Of the 17 Space films released in those two years, almost all except “Alien” are now long forgotten. As different from “Star Wars” as “Alien” is, they both share a “lived in” aesthetic, but the important difference is that “Star Wars” had a “Buck Rogers” ambition (first novel appearing in print in 1928, first appearing as a film in 1933, and in 1979 the franchise reappeared as a “Star Wars” rip-off) so with “Star Wars” the “lived in” aesthetic was merely an affectation, while with “Alien” it was central to all the proceedings.

 

The characters are not drawn with great psychological depth -- they had quickly sketched personalities and then spent the rest of the film in reaction, not development, mode – but also with potent realism and their interactions early in the film provided a perfect roadmap to how each individually dealt with the crisis later. A very nice touch is that each had very distinct dialogue mannerisms, and manner of speech established the crew’s hierarchies far more their stated rank.

 

Harry Dean Stanton plays Brett and Yaphet Kotto is Parker, his direct supervisor, so we have a White man was subordinate to a Black man, then a new idea in cinema, especially in a context when the subordination is demonstrated and casually accepted rather than talked about. Both are engine-room Grease-Monkeys, so both on the bottom of the larger pecking order, and sound like perfect equals as they curse their mutual Superiors, complain about delays, and worry about their cut of the profits.

 

Ian Holm plays Ash, the Science Officer Ash, of higher rank but also of an elitist class that makes him half-outside the hierarchy of command. He distinguished himself from all others by casually dropped lines like, "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions.”

 

Then there was Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley, the third in command, so most of the men were subordinate to a woman, also unusual, especially as it was demonstrated without being a subject of discussion. Her sentences were economical and declarative, she was like a walking, talking, Occam's razor. While Ash would discuss the Xenomorph this way, “[It’s a] perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility…I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” Ripley was cut-to-the-case with “How do we kill it?”

 

Ripley’s command potential was obvious even before the death of the quite capable Captain, Dallas, played by Tom Skerritt. Early in the film, Dallas effortlessly melded the easy-going and dedicated, convincing us all he was supposed to be the film’s hero; his dying before the third act was a real shocker. Skerritt was the first Actor approached by the producers, but he turned the film down as it was then a B-movie without a Director; he changed his mind later when Scott signed-on and the budget radically increased.

 

It was Ripley that would ultimately prove to be the film’s hero, and her part that proved hardest to fill. Weaver was the last to be cast, and in fact auditioned inside the half-finished set of the Space Ship Nostromo. At the time she had far more stage than screen experience and her prior roles were generally of privileged women of a slightly haughty type. Here, Ripley clearly is not a product of privilege, and the haughtiness is transformed into toughness. Ripley would prove a landmark example of the female Action Hero, and now one of the most famous characters in the history of cinema.

 

To demonstrate how ground-breaking “Alien’s” treatment of female characters was, I must refer to the “Bechdel test,” which first entered literature in 1985 but did not become popular among film critics until the 2000s. The test is simple: Does the film have at least two female characters who are given names? Do they talk to each other? Do they have a conversation about any subject other than men?

 

It first appeared in an episode of Alison Bechdel’s comic-strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For,” as the two characters in the strip were discussing this movie. After one character explained the criteria, the other said, “That’s pretty strict,” and the first replies, “No kidding. The last movie I was able to see was ‘Alien.’”

 

“Alien” passes though it is from a time when this evaluation wasn’t considered; meanwhile about half the films released these days still don’t live up to the criteria.

 

Not only did “Alien” inspire the “Bechdel test,” but also created the “Save the cat!” script-writing rule.

 

During the film’s climax, when Ripley the sole living human and the Xenomorph still hunting her, she interrupts her own survival plan and risks her life to rescue the ship’s pet cat, Jones. Screenwriter Blake Snyder used this scene as the central theme of his Script Writing Manual “Save the Cat!” (2005). Snyder coined phrase to describe the moment where a movie hero does something that wins audience affection and empathy; in “Alien” it served as a counterpoint to how steely and humorless Ripley was for the rest of the film. Snyder credited this scene for (partly) explaining why “Alien” was a success while the lack of a similar scene was why “Laura Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001), was a Box-Office disappointment.

 

“Alien” didn’t want to, but shared a remarkable number of structural elements with the most risibly formulaic of all Horror sub-genres, the Slasher Movie. That formula was codified with “Black Christmas” (1974), became immensely popular with “Halloween” (1978) and was already mind-numbingly cliché by the time of the release of “Friday the 13th” (1980). The obvious similarities between “Alien” and the Slasher film were mostly unnoticed until years later (no reviewer snarkily wrote, “Michael Myers in space”) because the richness of the texture erased all the formulaic baggage. Subtle elements buttressing the illusion realism in the Characterization were key in distancing “Alien” from a Slasher and virtually all other Monster Movies. The cast (read designated victims) in Slasher films are often absurdly young (the Victims in “Black Christmas” and “Friday the 13th” were college age, “Halloween” was about High School students), but “Alien” was about working adults at work.

 

As convincing as the realism was, it was also largely false; this SF film’s Science and internal logic was often weak. The film’s tag line, “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream,” is considered among the best in Hollywood history, but in the film itself, the vacuum of Space is actually pretty noisy, which is impossible.

 

Further, the idea that the Xenomorph would hunt humans for food is biologically dubious, and that it would continue to do so after its first nutritionally incompatible meal even more so. True, there was a scene cut from the film that tried to addressed that, and that cut scene would be worked into the sequels, provided the franchise’s most essential plot idea -- the larval Xenomorph genetically adapts itself to its first host, so its digestion was wired to whatever new environment it found itself in, and continued its adaptation by using some of its victims not for food but continuing the reproductive adaptation. Maybe that is also Scientifically dubious, what kind of environment would create the specific pressures so such a trait to evolve through random selection? Well, if you stick with the series long enough, all the way to “Prometheus,” they address that too.

 

Then there was the Android/Corporate Conspiracy subplot, which was quite effective, but made no sense because using the crew of the Nostronomo as unwitting bait for the Xenomorph can’t be made logical -- why didn’t the evil Corporate Overlords send in Space Marines instead? Well, that became the plot of the first sequel, “Aliens” (1986). Also, again, “Prometheus,” a prequel, tried to clean up that mess.

 

But the story’s logical unfolding made invisible all of its illogics. Key here is that we got to see the Xenomorph grow and metamorphoses, like a caterpillar to butterfly or tadpole to frog. First there was the quietly-waiting, leathery, egg; then out jumps the face-hugger that inserts the larva in the doomed host; then the nasty worm (or chest-buster) that eats its way to freedom; and then, finally, the semi-Humanoid form that dominates the film’s cat-and-mouse confrontations. Humanoid was all but inevitable, it is very hard to have an actor in a costume look like anything but a Humanoid, yet here the design is extraordinarily exotic, more exotic than that of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) which was likely the finest such Monster to pre-date it.

 

“Alien” is a film without Romance (a relationship between Dallas and Ripley was cut from the story before filming) but ripe with sexual imagery. Giger’s visual obsessions made that inevitable, but it was in the script as well, and O'Bannon deliberately chose to explore the male fear of penetration; this was apparently a reaction to the cliché misogyny of the Horror genre. The Xenomorph’s first victim, Executive Officer Kane, played by John Hurt, is orally sodomized by the face-hugger, and then dies as a direct result of the unwanted pregnancy. The fully mature Xenomorph is a nightmare of multiple, dangerous, phallic appendages, and most of the victims of these extensions are male (having the majority of the victims be male was another strike against Horror’s misogyny). The famous cut scene concerned Dallas and Brett being forced to serve its life-cycle, driving this idea home even more.

 

The sexual imagery extends beyond the Xenomorph; when Ash proves a Villain and tries to kill Ripley, he rolls up a pornographic magazine (wow, print media in the Far Future!) and shoves it in her mouth to choke her. Though that is definitely way to kill a person, it is decidedly inefficient, so the suggestion of oral sodomy association was undeniably of paramount importance. This film can’t be called homophobic (there aren’t any apparently gay characters) but the male script-writer, who boldly gave us such an unusually potent female hero, does cleverly exploit homophobic paranoias without ever indulging in shameful hate-speech.

 

Though “Alien” is as far removed from classic space-movie “2001…” as was it was “Star Wars” there’s a notable similarity between these two cinema landmarks. Both were initially dismissed by many critics but embraced later. That isn’t uncommon, but these two share an unusual distinction in how quickly the turnabout came about, basically the critical establishment warmed to these films, not in retrospect, but even before the first-run was through. A notable difference was that in “2001…” critics didn’t like being confused by the new narrative language, here critics didn’t like the sense of the familiar.

 

Among the hostile reactions:

 

"An overblown B-movie... technically impressive but awfully portentous and as difficult to sit through as a Black Mass sung in Latin... Alien, like Dawn of the Dead , only scares you away from the movies."

(Michael Sragow, “L.A. Herald Examiner”)

"Occasionally one sees a film that uses the emotional resources of movies with such utter cynicism that one feels sickened by the medium itself. Alien... is so 'effective' it has practically turned me off movies altogether... The movie is terrifying, but not in a way that is remotely enjoyable."

(David Denby, “New York Magazine”)

“A horrid film, skilful and studied in its nastiness, and there is little the cast can do to mitigate its manipulative horror... those with the stomach for indulgent nastiness may go and gibber.”

(“Film Illustrated”)

“Empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery can not disguise imaginative poverty.”

(“Time Out”)

“A sort of inverse relationship to “The Thing” (1951) invites unfavourable comparisons.”

(“Sight and Sound”)

“Space-age horror film reverts to 1950s formula story, but adds stomach-churning violence, slime, and shocks.”

(Leonard Maltin)

"…basically just an intergalactic haunted house thriller set inside a spaceship [and among a recent crop of SF films that were one of the] real disappointments"

(Roger Ebert)

 

Not only did the over-all response improve, but some specifically hostile reviewers reversed their stances (very unusual), notably Maltin, and Ebert:

 

Maltin, “That happened on its 25th anniversary, when Ridley Scott retooled it ever so slightly and reissued it to theaters. And so there was actually a major theatrical reissue. I went to see it and I realized I’d been wrong.”

 

Ebert’s re-evaluation was just as dramatic, “One of the great strengths of ‘Alien’ is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps.” Ebert’s re-evaluation seemed motivated, in part, by increasing disgust with the death of the auteur theory and increasing crassness of the Hollywood aesthetic, “A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ [2003] which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.”

 

Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "Almost every horror film since Alien has ripped it off in some way, but most of the imitations have focused on details — a slimy killing-machine monster that is both vaginal and penile; the dripping, cavernous interiors of the Nostromo; those immensely influential H. R. Giger 'biomechanical' designs — and missed what you might call the overall Zeitgeist of the film."

 

“Alien” has generated more rip-offs, over a longer, sustained, period of time, than “Star Wars.” The first I’m aware of, the Italian schlock-fest, “Alien Contamination,” came within a year. Its story was mostly Earth-based and featured a Xenomorph-derivative creature that behaving oddly like the head of a South American drug cartel. The film company initially tried to title it “Alien 2” but 20^th Century Fox’s lawyers nixed that. Soon, Roger Corman, who missed out on making this picture, Produced and/or Directed no less than least three “Alien” rip-offs of his own, two of which, “Forbidden World” (1982) and “Dead Space” (1991) reused footage from “Battle Beyond the Stars” (1980) which was his own “Star Wars” rip-off.

 

Then, of course, there were the film’s legitimate sequels. The first, “Aliens” was seven years later and completely remarkable, expanding on the initial ideas, retaining essential elements (mostly the claustrophobia) but accelerating the pace (more action than suspense, but then it was more a War film than a Horror movie) without ever devolving into foolishness. It used the famous cut scene from the original as the backbone of its plot, and there are many who consider the sequel superior to the original, a rare statement.

 

The next two films (released in 1992 and 1997) refused to take the logical next step (either humans going to the Xenomorph’s home world, or the Xenomorph coming to Earth) and instead kept the stories in enclosed man-made environments, obviously playing to series’ already established success with claustrophobic mazes but mostly because of financial pressures. It was clear the studio was holding the franchise’s creative development back and forcing it to eat its own tail. “Alien” was still profitable, but clearly not viewed as something to have faith in/be committed to.

 

Like all successful genre franchises, “Alien” appeared in other media, and the comic book company with the rights, Dark Horse, was lucky enough to also have the rights to another SF franchise, “Predator” (first film 1987). They published a very successful “Alien vs Predator” series (first story in 1991) the next two films after that (released in 2004 and 2007) which were nearly unwatchable; most of the story, intelligence and dynamism of the comics had disappeared. Notably, the Xenomorph had finally made its way to Earth (in the present day as opposed to the future), but instead of expanding the landscape, they were set almost entirely (first film) and then significantly (second film) underground.

 

More than thirty years later, Scott returned to the troubled but still beloved franchise with “Prometheus.” A long evolving project (more than a decade was lost as the crossover-films derailed his pursuit of it), this prequel was hugely ambitious, but lost the elegance of the simple narrative framework of the first two (and clearly best) films. I’m a fan of it, but most admit that the ambition for “complexity” degenerated into “muddled mess.”

 

There has been (to date) one more film, “Alien: Covenant” (2017). It was well made, but disappointing, because though we finally made it to the Xenomorph’s home world, it was little more than a remake of the first film.

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLamj-b0I8