Was the Alien dying near the end of the first movie?

Ridley's original idea was that it had fulfilled it's purpose to propagate by creating the Dallas and Brett eggs, and thus expired.

Sequels ditched that idea, but there you go.

Thank you. That is how I lean. That gives a lot more credibility to the egg morph idea.

It really depends on whether the Alien has a limited lifespan (around 24 hours), or whether it's death is connected to reproducing.  If it's the former it reduces the threat markedely.

At which point near the end are we talking about?

On the shuttle.  It's content to just lie there until Ripley flushes it out.

That's what i figured.From my point of view it was bidding it's time until the time was right.

It didn't bide terribly well since it scared the crap out of her when she was standing right in front of it.

Just like the facehugger. Once it accomplished its purpose it just dies.

of course this is just speculation 

In my view,it was hidding  camouflaging itself because it was the only way to get out of there towards other place ,he cant fly a ship,ripley could..so it went dormant bidding its time as ripley was going into stasis.

The eggmorph concept tho prolly had weight on its behaviour scene..and it could have been explained by it but since the scene was deleted,the behaviour stayed the same perhaps with no additional context. It would make sense and be awesome at the time

That's pretty much what i meant,and i agree with Tiago it camouflaged very well with the pipes

this is bad business for the alien....what of its reputation? fill your role and perish? it makes no sense. what then of the queen? she dies when? when everything has been made a host? when theres nothing left to make babies with? no noit makes perfect sense. they say its a weapon after all. now i see....my eyes...they open

Bad for $

I would be inclined to agree with Tiago... its the same response i would have put.

We dont know the Life Span of the Xenomorph, Alien was based of Star Beast and those Organisms had a long life Span... but Alien was only based off it and changed a lot of the ideas.

The Xenomorph is refereed to a Weapon, its likely to be a Engineered Weapon and Experiment and for the purpose of a Weapon a Short Life Cycle would be ideal.

The Alien full cut cycle.. if the Xeno was intended to die after it creates a Egg.... would be PERFECT as far as a Weapon.

The Aliens addition of a Queen would make a very hard Weapon to deal with....  it would be as far as the difference.. like using Mass Chemical Weapons on a Island you wanted... compared to Nukes.

So who knows really the Life Cycle Age of the Xenomorph.... is it a purpose built Bio-Weapon... where it would die off and leave Eggs to then be reclaimed by some Process for re-use for the Engineers?

Or would it be like wanting to destroy a native environments organic life...  be like introducing Sharks to kill off a high Population of Seals.... you would then be left with how to deal with the Sharks.

So who knows really....

I do believe ridleys' initial concept was it was to die due to it using up its energy by egg morphing brett and dallas. the fact it just killed parker and lambert suggests to me it had done its bit and then its aggressive nature kicked in and was just wanting to wipe out any potential threat to the eggs survival. the fact it even ended up on the life boat raises questions. was this by pure fluke? or did it want off the nostromo and knew ripley was going to leave on it? there were lots of other places it could have gone to have peace to die. depends on how intelligent the xeno is. did it know that the nostrono was doomed and there for the eggs were doomed and it knew it had to get off with ripley to start a new hive somewhere else? staying hidden so ripley wouldn't cancel her escape thus allowing it to find new ground? maybe with the intent that when it was time, ripley would have been the first person it would have egg morphed

From a completely simplistic standpoint, it was quiet on the shuttle, and steam and flames weren't flying everywhere. I'd have gone there if I didn't know English.

don't really think it was all that interested in going after ripley at that point, he was quite happy to have a siesta, she disturbed his nap and he showed his inner jaws as to say 'hey woman, iv been on the nightshift, ill see to u later'

Lol

I read somewhere that Ridley and Sig wanted that moment to be mysterious - bringing up questions as to whether the alien was just watching Ripley in a sexual way.  Originally she & Ridley wanted her to be naked.

I can see why it would be dropped. only way to do that is by letting the audience in on the fact it was there. interesting thought tho and adds to the whole sexual tone and mystery of the xeno

The sexual aspects of the Xeno were never explored in the other movies. That would have added a creep factor of like 25. This species straight rapes EVERYBODY

Vincent Ward's wooden planet had Ripley raped and impregnated by the alien.Of course there are a lot of sexual under tones in the series such as the ones discussed here as well as Lambert's death.

"The sexual aspects of the Xeno were never explored in the other movies. That would have added a creep factor of like 25. This species straight rapes EVERYBODY"

One take on Aliens is, because the sex act has become so corrupted by the Alien, Ripley is gifted an instant family without having to go through the reproductive act.  So it was effectively explored - by its absence.

myrddin....that's exactly how O'Bannon envisaged it, when he and shusett were stuck on how to get the alien on the ship, he said 'the alien fu**s one of them'

Well said S.M. i never looked at it that way before.

The concept of the xeno living only until it is without purpose/drained of lifeforce is interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing this incorporated into future films in some way.

I'm curious now. Could someone clarify whether Ridley intended for the creature to expire as a result of fulfilling it's purpose or alternatively if it was a result of expending it's lifeforce on egg morphing?

I think it simply had a limited life span, and did everything it could to reproduce in that limited span.  But don't quote me.

my take on interviews is yes. as ridley was going with the morphing concept he had the xeno expend all its energy with the egg morphing process. it would, in a perfect situation, go off somewhere to be alone and die. it had done its part, it had created eggs that would lay dormant till disturbed and then there could be 2 xenos or 1 xeno and a queen. that's why I like both queen and morphing concepts. morphing for such situations like the nostromo, limited hosts so no need for a queen to keep producing eggs that wernt needed yet create eggs to lay dormant till more hosts were available and then a queen for situations such as hadleys hope or on a planet with an abundance of hosts

Xenos having a expiration date is effective as weapon. They clear the planet eggmorph the hosts and die leaving the cycle opened fppr another adventure.

A4 tho showed us they dont expire,now if its because theres still hosts around them or not remains to be seen

However..what do they eat or comsume to stay alive?

Every living organism needs to eat or consume something. 

What were they feeding them on a4?

if they were engineered then it would make sense to have them only live so long. in A4 they were more a cross breed remember so some things may differ

S.M

I see. If that's the case, I suppose it would be difficult to incorporate the concept into top tier canon at this point. Alien only told the story of the xeno over the course of a day. With the subsequent films (mostly Aliens and Alien Resurrection), they appear to stick around for much longer.

It really is a shame Ridley didn't work with Cameron on the second film. I'd imagine a stronger baseline for continuity in xeno characteristics could have been established which would have perhaps created a sense of obligation in the other films to abide by such a foundation.