@Geff said:

Alien (1979) was never intended to be a blockbuster movie it was never for meant for the mainstream summer movie audience. You can see this from the slow methodical pacing of the movie. It became a cult classic because of the obvious quality of the film.

The creature in Alien, the one we now know as the xenomorph, was a product of the nightmares of H.G. Giger. Giger used to have terrible nightmares and he used the content of those nightmares as the models for his artwork. If you look at Giger's artwork, they are deeply disturbing, often depicting rape, both vaginal and anal. These images give a deep sense of bodily violation.

The reason the creature is so compelling is exactly because of this deep sense of violation it conjures. The facehuggers grasp onto your face and forcibly inserts itself into your throat, reminiscent of oral rape, and then impregnates you. The xenomorphs forcibly penetrates your body with its mouth penis with teeth.

The creature depicted in the original film is very much a collaboration between Ridley Scott and H.G. Giger. Scott even recounts in an interview that the creature was originally intended to have eyes. But, during modelling, prior to the addition of the eyes, Giger looked at the eyeless creature and he preferred it, that's why we have the eyeless creature.

As compelling as the creature is, Alien (1979) is not solely about the alien. The alien in the movie is not the primary antagonist. The primary antagonist is Weyland-Yutani and order 937. Ash, the hand of Weyland-Yutani, breaks quarantine law and he disobeys the direct command of the the senior officer in order to let Kane into the ship. Ash says that he forgot Ripley was the senior officer in that situation, but forgetting is impossible for an android. Order 937 is the reason for all of Ash's actions.

Weyland-Yutani already knew about the creature prior to the events in Alien (1979), they already knew that it is the perfect biological lifeform. People get confused about this because they combine Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) in their heads. In Aliens (1986) Weyland-Yutani somehow doesn't know anything about the creature eventhough order 937 had the very specific motive of obtaining the creature. Ripley has to convince Weyland-Yutani's board of the existence of the creature eventhough she had read order 937 and she never even mentions order 937 during this meeting, it's absurd! Maybe she had selective amnesia. Ripley, who second officer on a commercial ship in Alien (1979), somehow becomes a badass. She volunteers to go encounter the aliens again. God's sake...

Cameron completely went against the will of the creators of Alien (1979) when he made Aliens (1986). He never, even once, consulted H.G. Giger during or prior to the making of the film. He later publicly apologized to Giger for hijacking what, unwitting to the original creators, became a mainstream franchise. The blame doesn't fall on Cameron however. Production companies saw the cult following that Alien gathered and they saw profit opportunity. They reframed the sequel as a mainstream action title and recruited mainstream action movie director James Cameron (at the time his film repertoire was The Terminator and Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (lol)).

It seems like apt justice that the Terminator franchise was hijacked from Cameron. He gets a taste of his own medicine.

I was just going to say that. All of it.

You beat me to it.

@Halberstram said:

I was just going to say that. All of it.

You beat me to it.

Glad I saved you the effort.

I was thinking: Today this would be the equivalent of Michael Bay making a sequel to Moon (2009).

You seem to be confused. It was Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett who conceived the life cycle of the alien, not Giger. Only when it was time for the producers and Scott to move ahead did O'Bannon suggest Giger, whom he worked with on the ill-fated Dune project by Jodorowski, design the alien itself. Many of the ideas for the creature were also suggested to Giger by O'Bannon.

To claim that Cameron somehow violated the intent of the original is silly. Hill and Giler, who rewrote O'Bannon's script and who introduced W-Y and Ash, shepherded the franchise after the first movie. If anything, Alien would never have existed without the involvement of their company, Brandywine, and they--not Giger, Cameron, or even O'Bannon--oversaw the directions the other alien movies took.

The regret that Cameron had is that he hadn't given Giger the proper credit when Aliens was released. He did make changes to the look of the creatures and introduced an entirely new Queen. But to lay the twists and turns at Cameron's feet is ridiculous.

Ha! That would be a travesty of a film.

I'm thinking an army of Sam Rockwells fighting an army of Kevin Spacey bots... all in slow motion, of course.

@AlienFanatic said:

You seem to be confused. It was Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett who conceived the life cycle of the alien, not Giger. Only when it was time for the producers and Scott to move ahead did O'Bannon suggest Giger, whom he worked with on the ill-fated Dune project by Jodorowski, design the alien itself. Many of the ideas for the creature were also suggested to Giger by O'Bannon.

To claim that Cameron somehow violated the intent of the original is silly. Hill and Giler, who rewrote O'Bannon's script and who introduced W-Y and Ash, shepherded the franchise after the first movie. If anything, Alien would never have existed without the involvement of their company, Brandywine, and they--not Giger, Cameron, or even O'Bannon--oversaw the directions the other alien movies took.

The regret that Cameron had is that he hadn't given Giger the proper credit when Aliens was released. He did make changes to the look of the creatures and introduced an entirely new Queen. But to lay the twists and turns at Cameron's feet is ridiculous.

Sorry, let me restate. Hill, Giler and James Cameron hijacked the "franchise".

They introduced W-Y and yet they forgot all about order 937. They forgot that Ripley is a commercial flight officer, not a badass prototypical action hero. They transformed the xenomorph into a generic murder and no longer a rapist murderer. And worst of all they made the series into an uncomplex action/slasher horror series that focuses on the aliens as the antagonist rather than Weyland-Yutani.

Well, Ripley did say during the hearing that they were under company orders to land on LV-426. Presumably the people she was dealing with there, weren't in the loop with the top-secret bio-weapons division? They might have thought it was part of her making excuses for blowing up their ship. And in 57 years the bad people had plenty of time to cover things up. Many of them were probably no longer alive, even.

I find it more puzzling that, in the 57 years between Alien and Aliens, the company knew what was there, yet nobody else went looking until Burke sent the colonists out to the crashed ship.

@Knixon said:

Well, Ripley did say during the hearing that they were under company orders to land on LV-426. Presumably the people she was dealing with there, weren't in the loop with the top-secret bio-weapons division? They might have thought it was part of her making excuses for blowing up their ship. And in 57 years the bad people had plenty of time to cover things up. Many of them were probably no longer alive, even.

I find it more puzzling that, in the 57 years between Alien and Aliens, the company knew what was there, yet nobody else went looking until Burke sent the colonists out to the crashed ship.

Yeah, who knows these things... Atleast there weren't any stupid scientists, so Aliens was perfect, am-I-right?

Not perfect, including for reasons like I mentioned. But it has way fewer problems - especially really obvious problems - than Prometheus which leads to Covenant.

@Knixon said:

I find it more puzzling that, in the 57 years between Alien and Aliens, the company knew what was there, yet nobody else went looking until Burke sent the colonists out to the crashed ship.

well, think of how lomg it has been simce we last visited our moon...

Anyway, I think we discussed it on the Aliens board, but Cameron is entirely at fault for turning Aliens into a funny action movie with a kid relationship at the centre... Aliens: The Disney edition...

Yeah, I busted a gut laughing during Aliens.

Not.

What is it that's supposed to make it a "funny" movie? You think military people don't use "dark" humor all the time? And there wasn't really so much of THAT in the movie either.

And Newt was clearly supposed to be a fill-in for Ripley's own daughter who had died, as well as the crew members she'd been with before that all died. Which gave her motivation to keep fighting against the aliens.

@Halberstram said:

@Geff said:

Alien (1979) was never intended to be a blockbuster movie it was never for meant for the mainstream summer movie audience. You can see this from the slow methodical pacing of the movie. It became a cult classic because of the obvious quality of the film.

The creature in Alien, the one we now know as the xenomorph, was a product of the nightmares of H.G. Giger. Giger used to have terrible nightmares and he used the content of those nightmares as the models for his artwork. If you look at Giger's artwork, they are deeply disturbing, often depicting rape, both vaginal and anal. These images give a deep sense of bodily violation.

The reason the creature is so compelling is exactly because of this deep sense of violation it conjures. The facehuggers grasp onto your face and forcibly inserts itself into your throat, reminiscent of oral rape, and then impregnates you. The xenomorphs forcibly penetrates your body with its mouth penis with teeth.

The creature depicted in the original film is very much a collaboration between Ridley Scott and H.G. Giger. Scott even recounts in an interview that the creature was originally intended to have eyes. But, during modelling, prior to the addition of the eyes, Giger looked at the eyeless creature and he preferred it, that's why we have the eyeless creature.

As compelling as the creature is, Alien (1979) is not solely about the alien. The alien in the movie is not the primary antagonist. The primary antagonist is Weyland-Yutani and order 937. Ash, the hand of Weyland-Yutani, breaks quarantine law and he disobeys the direct command of the the senior officer in order to let Kane into the ship. Ash says that he forgot Ripley was the senior officer in that situation, but forgetting is impossible for an android. Order 937 is the reason for all of Ash's actions.

Weyland-Yutani already knew about the creature prior to the events in Alien (1979), they already knew that it is the perfect biological lifeform. People get confused about this because they combine Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) in their heads. In Aliens (1986) Weyland-Yutani somehow doesn't know anything about the creature eventhough order 937 had the very specific motive of obtaining the creature. Ripley has to convince Weyland-Yutani's board of the existence of the creature eventhough she had read order 937 and she never even mentions order 937 during this meeting, it's absurd! Maybe she had selective amnesia. Ripley, who second officer on a commercial ship in Alien (1979), somehow becomes a badass. She volunteers to go encounter the aliens again. God's sake...

Cameron completely went against the will of the creators of Alien (1979) when he made Aliens (1986). He never, even once, consulted H.G. Giger during or prior to the making of the film. He later publicly apologized to Giger for hijacking what, unwitting to the original creators, became a mainstream franchise. The blame doesn't fall on Cameron however. Production companies saw the cult following that Alien gathered and they saw profit opportunity. They reframed the sequel as a mainstream action title and recruited mainstream action movie director James Cameron (at the time his film repertoire was The Terminator and Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (lol)).

It seems like apt justice that the Terminator franchise was hijacked from Cameron. He gets a taste of his own medicine.

I was just going to say that. All of it.

You beat me to it.

Spoilers below

As Knixon pointed out, the little girl Newt gave Ripley some motivation to fight the aliens. I personally believe that Ripley was always a badass, but she just needed to come out of her shell to fully become one. She gradually becomes a better fighter during the course of Aliens, going from taking a ship's control away from Lt. Gorman to taking on the Alien Queen herself. She needed to go back to encounter the Aliens at the colony again because she was haunted by them -- bad nightmare after bad nightmare plagued her every night.

Also, I believe that the artist's name is H.R. Giger, not H.G. Giger.

@Geff said:

....

The blame doesn't fall on Cameron however. Production companies saw the cult following that Alien gathered and they saw profit opportunity.

...

It seems like apt justice that the Terminator franchise was hijacked from Cameron. He gets a taste of his own medicine.

these sentiments seem contradictory?

@Geff said:

The reason the creature is so compelling is exactly because of this deep sense of violation it conjures. The facehuggers grasp onto your face and forcibly inserts itself into your throat, reminiscent of oral rape, and then impregnates you. The xenomorphs forcibly penetrate your body with its mouth penis with teeth.

The face-hugger looks more like a vagina that sits on your face and wraps its legs around your head. If anything is a penis, it's the chest-burster that thrusts itself out.

I wondered about that too. How is it Cameron's fault if "production companies" made the decisions? Made them for both Alien and Terminator, most likely.

@BarkingBaphomet said:

@Geff said:

....

The blame doesn't fall on Cameron however. Production companies saw the cult following that Alien gathered and they saw profit opportunity.

...

It seems like apt justice that the Terminator franchise was hijacked from Cameron. He gets a taste of his own medicine.

these sentiments seem contradictory?

I don't see it as self-contradictory. The hijacking might have been unintentional on Cameron's part, but might have been painful to the original creators especially for Giger who had a significant emotional investment in the creature as it was drawn from his life.

The hijacking of Terminator might also have been an act primarily driven by producers trying to make a quick buck. Cameron gets a taste of his own medicine as he is able to possibly empathize with the same pain. I might have misworded what I was trying to say. Maybe justice wasn't the correct word to use.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

The face-hugger looks more like a vagina that sits on your face and wraps its legs around your head. If anything is a penis, it's the chest-burster that thrusts itself out.

You can say the facehugger is a vagina/penis combo as it does insert a breathing/insemination tube deep down the throat of the victim.