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craigamore
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012'Alien' is my all time favorite film, bar none......as some of you well know, reading my many and varied posts on the subject......I can honestly say that the film is, as my title suggests, Damn Near Perfect......thus implying that it isn't perfect........as difficult as that is for me to say.
Why do I bring this up? Well......there is precious little to talk about at this point..with the lack of new anything we've had recently.....I felt it was time to stir the pot, so to speak, and generate some honest, Geeky, heart felt debating.......
My two objections that I wish they'd fixed or managed to change in this, my favorite film, are as follows:
1 - When Ripley throws the dead facehugger off her shoulder and crawls backward on the floor, God HELP ME, that thing looks so rubbery fake that I can only think one thing, Hello Roger Coreman.....the only thing that salvages that moment is the "reflex action" and the rubber cup of a facehugger filled with all kinds of shellfish and nasty things to make it look real...genius idea, by the way, Ridley....as usual.
And no disrespect to Coreman...the man was brilliant at what he did...B movies....but 'Alien' isn't and shouldn't be a B movie.
2 - As sad for Ridley as I am that Ian Holm's head double shrank...come on man...edit around the thing....that shot of Ripley patting the skin flap down just makes me cringe every single time and the masked cut/jump cut from the double to Ian's head....it bother's me....seriously.
Those two objections may seem silly and nit-picky, but dang it.....The movie is almost perfect in my eyes...it's sooooo close....just those two little tiny things. God help me...I'm obssessed..................anyone else feel that way or have objections/issues of their own?
12 Replies

Guest
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012@craigamore
You are dead on about the cut from the prop head to Ian's head. And with the facehugger, right on as well. Rigor mortis should have set in a little bit there. A fully rigor mortis facehugger was picked up by Hicks in Aliens with his shotgun.
Alien is a great movie, and does stand the test of time. I guess my only gripe with the movie is that you have a commercial vehicle with a crew of 7 and there is only one escape pod for only one person? Help me out, am I crazy?

bigbirdjimmy
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012@craigamore
You are dead on about the cut from the prop head to Ian's head. And with the facehugger, right on as well. Rigor mortis should have set in a little bit there. A fully rigor mortis facehugger was picked up by Hicks in Aliens with his shotgun.
Alien is a great movie, and does stand the test of time. I guess my only gripe with the movie is that you have a commercial vehicle with a crew of 7 and there is only one escape pod for only one person? Help me out, am I crazy?

artyoh
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012The Ash cut [i]is[/i] distracting, but I always wondered where all that biomechanical mass came from, as the chestburster somehow went from the size of a snake to a 7 foot tall humanoid monster in a single molt .....without eating [i]anyone[/i]..............?!

Guest
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012Hmm. Chestburster looks a bit muppet like when it scuttles off the table. Love the rest of the movie though.

Gavin
MemberTrilobite02/5/2012@ Bigbirdjimmy - the escape pod thing kinda goes with the nature of the crew. I remember hearing somewhere, being such a bunch of 'space truckers' they only bought an escape pod because of regulations, so they got the cheapest one they could get, thinking they'd never use it.
@ Artyoh - the molting thing would stand for each and every film, thus it seems that it is a thing the Alien can do - I have even imagined what it would look like, and it isn't pleasant.
My gripe is with the Alien itself - in some scenes it looks cool as hell, but in others it looks lame, such as...
- the peek-a-boo with Dallas in the tunnels (give me a cuddle)
- the lame-o sexy dance it does to Lambert
- falling away from the Narcissus, and the engine effect (yawn)
- the scuffle with Parker, it looks like Yaphet actually rips off some of the suit
Another gripe is the first scene where we see the Nostromo complete with refinery floating towards camera with the description at the bottom of the screen, I think that needs to be re-shot it doesn't even look like its from the same film its that degraded.

craigamore
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012Sorry, Snorky...I have to disagree with you on the alien itself...nothing about it ever bothered me, none of the scene's you mentioned, any of it. In fact, the peculiarities you mention always served to make it the mysterious, foreign and alien creature that it is for me. It shouldn't feel quite right to us.....because it wasn't meant to. And also, we have to remember that human beings are as alien to this creature as it is to us. The way it approaches Lambert and the slow, methodical approach it takes in killing each of its victims is as much a reflection of its curiosity with its prey.
As to the molting....I always liked that the one phase metamorphosis occured out of site of the audience and is that unbelievable...it adds to the mystery and the validity of the unknownable with this alien thing stalking them in the corriders. The more unimagineable and shockingly different it is to the characters in the situation, the more it affects us as the audience, especially when that alien nature is a function of the film's purpose, execution and delivery.

Gehirn
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012The rubbery facehugger never bothered me, I can't imagine how else it's meant to fall when it's dead. I just didn't notice it.
Argh, but that damn shrunken Ash-head was such a shame. I saw what the real one was meant to look like from a bonus DVD and it was so convincing compared to Mr. Smiley face.
And Snorkelbottom, you're opening a whole can of worms now! LOL

Guest
MemberOvomorph02/5/2012I personally think that the alien/Lambert sequence works extremely well. She's frozen in abject terror, as the beast casually glides up to her, its' barbed tail rising slowly up to.....?.... then the cut to Ripley, as she hears some[i] very[/i] disturbing sounds coming from [i]somewhere inside[/i] Lambert .....uh yeah, I thought that was [i]very[/i] psychosexually creepy. In fact, I thought that was the creepiest moment in the entire movie. The kitchen scene is obviously more viscerally shocking, but the sounds coming over that intercom just aren't right.

db
MemberOvomorph02/7/2012Yes, the shrunken Ash head thing ALWAYS bothered me. Even at 19 yrs. of age in the theater... it REALLY bothered me. A cut-away, reaction shot, anything, thrown in there but a hard cut between heads would've been better.
The water spewing from the escape pod engine and bouncing off the lens... THAT too.
The single molt from snake to giant... maybe there were more we didn't see tucked away up in the rafters?
Not much else though... damn near perfect.

db
MemberOvomorph02/7/2012Oh yeah, one more thing about the quick Alien growth rate.
We have species on this planet that do the same thing. For instance:
Archituethus dux (giant squid). Babies have been captured and are perhaps 2-3 cm. long. Within 3 years they grow to over 60 ft. in length. Of course they maintain this accelerated growth rate by becoming eating machines.
Where's the Alien's food source? Maybe it already absorbed all it needed from its host and simply metabolizes it differently than we do... kinda' "supercharged" from birth?

T-Minus-Five
MemberOvomorph02/10/2012Haha -
Yes, the dead facehugger has shuttered me a bit, but nothing like the images of Ash's fake/real face shots.
I always see that scene and think "Oh, brother"... LOL
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