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    Space Oddities Film Review: Alien: Alien Is A 1979 Horror Science Fiction Film Directed by Ridley Scott. The Story Was

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    Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction horror film Alien follows the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo. While responding to a distress signal from a remote planet, three crew members discover a deserted alien spacecraft holding thousands of eggs. One of the eggs hatches a parasite that latches onto crew member Kane's face. Back on the Nostromo, the creature causes Kane to fall ill before bursting from his chest. It stalks and kills the crew one by one as the lone survivor, Ellen Ripley, works to defeat it. Praised for its visuals, Alien created iconic designs for its sets, alien creature, and in starring Sigourney Weaver as the strong female lead Ripley.

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    Space Oddities Film Review: Alien: Alien Is A 1979 Horror Science Fiction Film Directed by Ridley Scott. The Story Was

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    AlexEdmonds
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    Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction horror film Alien follows the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo. While responding to a distress signal from a remote planet, three crew members discover a deserted alien spacecraft holding thousands of eggs. One of the eggs hatches a parasite that latches onto crew member Kane's face. Back on the Nostromo, the creature causes Kane to fall ill before bursting from his chest. It stalks and kills the crew one by one as the lone survivor, Ellen Ripley, works to defeat it. Praised for its visuals, Alien created iconic designs for its sets, alien creature, and in starring Sigourney Weaver as the strong female lead Ripley.

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    Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction horror film Alien follows the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo. While responding to a distress signal from a remote planet, three crew members discover a deserted alien spacecraft holding thousands of eggs. One of the eggs hatches a parasite that latches onto crew member Kane's face. Back on the Nostromo, the creature causes Kane to fall ill before bursting from his chest. It stalks and kills the crew one by one as the lone survivor, Ellen Ripley, works to defeat it. Praised for its visuals, Alien created iconic designs for its sets, alien creature, and in starring Sigourney Weaver as the strong female lead Ripley.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    192 views4 pages

    Space Oddities Film Review: Alien: Alien Is A 1979 Horror Science Fiction Film Directed by Ridley Scott. The Story Was

    Uploaded by

    AlexEdmonds
    Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction horror film Alien follows the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo. While responding to a distress signal from a remote planet, three crew members discover a deserted alien spacecraft holding thousands of eggs. One of the eggs hatches a parasite that latches onto crew member Kane's face. Back on the Nostromo, the creature causes Kane to fall ill before bursting from his chest. It stalks and kills the crew one by one as the lone survivor, Ellen Ripley, works to defeat it. Praised for its visuals, Alien created iconic designs for its sets, alien creature, and in starring Sigourney Weaver as the strong female lead Ripley.

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    Space Oddities Film Review: Alien

    Figure 1

    Alien is a 1979 horror science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott. The story was written by Ronald Shusett and Dan OBannon who also wrote the screenplay. Starring Sigourney Weaver as the lead female, Ripley and at a running time of 117 minutes it is still considered one of the scariest movies in science fiction/horror history. Plot: A crew of seven are awoken from hyper-sleep upon their journey back to Earth in the deep space towing vessel Nostromo to attend to an SOS call from a distant planet. When exploring the planet three members of the crew discover a seemingly deserted spaceship which is the supposed source of the transmission. When ascending in the craft one of the members, known as Kane, finds a large room with thousands of strange eggs, when examining an egg a little too closely it hatches and the parasite creature within it latches on to his face leaving him unconscious. The crew take him and decide to head back to the Nostromo and continue their return to Earth. Whilst in the infirmary aboard the ship the science officer, Ash examines Kane and it becomes apparent that the parasite will not come off. However eventually it does and the victim seems well and everything is fine but what the crew doesnt know is that the parasite has planted another life form ready to burst out its victims chest at any moment. When it does the crew try immediately to kill it but it scurrys off into the air shafts, growing bigger by the minute the Alien picks off the crew one by one in all kinds of different gruesome ways until finally the courageous Ripley is left to defeat and be rid of the monstrous creature for good. After setting the ships self-destruction sequence and saddling into the escape pod she believes the creature is dead along with the Nostromo until she discovers that it has stowed away on the escape pod with her. In a desperate need to stay alive she hatches a plan to open the airways and release

    the creature into space, although it did not go quite as planned she still succeeds in killing it. Before entering hyper sleep for her journey back to Earth she makes a recording stating that of all seven members, she is the last and only survivor of the Nostromo vessel. Although Alien is classed in the science fiction genre it is arguably, essentially a haunted house film. A motley group of people trapped somewhere in a horrible place with suspicious behaviours lurking about while some nasty creature or person or supernatural being picks them off one by one is gruesome ways until the final person is left who has worked out the beings methods and defeats it with a winning victory. Although this storyline has been used many times it still remains to send chills down the audiences spines and creates great tension as they never know when the being will strike.
    - Any film, good or bad, rests its weight on a good story, and you cant get much better than this. As Ridley Scott says, its the ol Ten Little Indians gambit in space. We follow this group of hapless homo sapiens as they wind through their beehive of technology, getting picked off one by one. - D. Demoss, 2003

    Figure 2

    In terms of the look of Alien, there is no other film that looks like it. For starters there are only two sets; the spaceship and the desolate plant. Which are both very real and there are no super imposed elements anywhere, this generally helps the audience interact with the film because arguably makes the audience feel like they are their running with the actors and feeling their fear as the run through narrow corridors barely able to see anything in front of them due to all the smoke and steam. The reason why there was so much smoke with in the film is because there were many faults within the set which needed covering up but inadvertently this creates a better mood to the film as it makes seem creepier and more mysterious.
    - Alien" is simply...badass. From its epic opening sequence of unfolding letters in its simple title to its fading final moments on space, "Alien" is a hellish ride of atmospheric tension, low key energy, isolation, and simplicity. Scott ably uses the mechanical and dark settings of the ship (and its one other set - a desolate planet surface) to craft such a claustrophobia and lonely feeling that by the time the Alien actually pops up - no pun intended - we are already substantially creeped out and sympathetic for our rather loosely cast together crew. - M. Reifsheider, 2011

    Again looking at the visual aspects of the film the design of the alien itself it like no other in film history and there is an interesting reason for this. The inspiration for the

    aliens design comes from bizarrely enough, genitalia of animals and humans. This very unique design and odd approach is why the character is so well known and stays in the mind of viewers which is what Scott wanted. On a side note the actor within the suit was 6ft 7inches tall, Bolaji Badejo who Scott himself spotted in a bar, he was exactly what he has intended for his alien.

    Figure 3

    As well its stunning look and bizarre inspirations Alien is also one of the first films to feature a female action hero. In the film Ripley is seen as just one of the crew until she is the only one remaining. With her experience fighting the creature till it is finally dead for good subsequently leads to her becoming the high authority on how to deal with them. In modern film making whenever a vision of a female heroin occurs Ripley is always the biggest inspiration and the starting point with her dominant attitude and good looks.
    -Even today, on those rare occasions when a woman takes the lead in an action/adventure movie, she is typically measured up to Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley. - J. Berardineli, 200-

    Figure 4

    Bibliography Quotes Demoss, 2003, Available at: http://chosis.coldfusionvideo.com/ Review: http://chosis.coldfusionvideo.com/2003/12/alien-1979/#.UIoLjMWCkrk [Accessed online 25th October 2012] Reifschneider, 2011, Available at: http://bloodbrothersfilmreviews.blogspot.co.uk/ Review: http://bloodbrothersfilmreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/alien-55.html [Accessed online 25th October 2012] Berardineli, 200-, Available at: http://www.reelviews.net/movies.php Review: http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=395 [Accessed online 25th October 2012] Illustrations Figure 1: http://www.clickformedia.co.uk/?p=1091 Figure 2: http://www.clickformedia.co.uk/?tag=film-studies Figure 3: http://www.aliensvspredatorspectrum.com/forum/index.php?topic=46.0 Figure 4: http://www.philippalmer.net/2010/02/02/sff-heroes-ripley/

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