January 25, 2012Seeing as Ridley made the the first film, 'Alien', I feel as though he can take the story in any direction he likes. And seeing as none of us has the ability to crawl inside his head and examine the particulars of what he thought about the SJ in 1979.....we can't say whether or not that was then and is now anything other than what Ridley says it is and the only example of that is in the Filmophobia article....
"I think one of the reasons why I’ve never gone back to science-fiction, even though I’ve often noodled around, thought about it, looked for story, looked for material, is that there’s a nice purity to the original Alien. It’s fairly pure. And this one does actually raise all kinds of other questions, because if someone could, a being, could be as monstrously clever to create something like we experienced in the very first one – I always figured it’s a weapon, and I always figured that [the ship in the first Alien] was a carrier of weapons. Therefore, who is that, inside that suit? That wasn’t a skeleton, that was a suit. And if you open up the suit, what do you get inside it? And why were they going, where were they going?"
While I agree that Ridley has a propensity to mislead, there's no reason to believe that this suit statment is an out and out lie. In this article, he makes a point of not just saying it's something in a suit, but saying it twice...with emphasis.
Considering that we have little to no idea exactly how this suit concept works functionally, I don't feel the need to worry about the particulars of why it "seems" to have a mouth in 'Alien', or worry about it being a suit at all. WE KNOW ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT THIS STORY........there's no reason to panic about what we know so little about......and since Ridley has said, "That wasn’t a skeleton, that was a suit," then Ridley has my benefit of the doubt to unfold this story in whatever direction he likes...
And a simple concept here...since the implication is that he has always looked at the SJ as being a suit and he's largely the architect of the movie we all love so much....then maybe it isn't such a strecth to accept the possibilty that just maybe, he knows what the hell he's doing with the whole suit concept...we can all just back the hell off, maybe let it play out and see where goes......I think, after a movie as fantastic and darn near perfect as 'Alien'....we as fans owe him that much, for cryin' out loud.