DVD Review: Alien

Alien. 117 minutes (Director's Cut 137 minutes). Rated M. Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Dan O'Bannon

Thirty years after its original release, Ridley Scott's Alien remains one of the most influential films of the contemporary science fiction genre – not to mention a terrifically thrilling film in its own right. Alien firmly belongs in the era of impressively resourceful and imaginative filmmaking – free from the now familiar obsession with computer generated imagery which, at worst, has replaced the artform's intrinsic storytelling value with a catalogue of eye-popping visual effects and little else.

The commercial towing spaceship Nostromo's return to earth is interrupted by a mysterious transmission from a distant planetoid (LV-426). The crew, awoken from hyper-sleep by 'Mother' (the ship's computer), are surprised to find that the Nostromo has been been redirected to investigate the origins of the distress call. Landing on the environmentally hostile LV-426, Warrant Officer Ripley (a 30 year-old Sigourney Weaver in her feature film debut), eventually deciphers the signal as some kind of warning while, at the same time, the crew discover a derelict alien spacecraft that has crashed onto the planetoid's surface. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Alien's lasting effectiveness is powered by Ridley Scott's commitment to telling us a fantastic story and his uncompromising vision for how his film should look and feel. Unlike today, when much of a film's visual effectiveness is added courtesy of computers, every detail of what appears onscreen in Alien needed to exist in front of the camera as the film was being shot. This included not only a range of immensely detailed sets, special effects, models and miniatures, but also the massive Nostromo set (constructed to precise NASA specifications), which was built as one massive system of complex passageways and chambers – complete with a floor made up of upside-down milk crates painted silver.

Scott, too, relentlessly drove his outstanding cast to levels of extreme emotional and physical discomfort – heightening the real sense of apprehension, claustrophobia and panic among the Nostromo's increasingly fearful crew. The Swiss surrealist H R Giger's Alien design (based on his lithograph Necronom IV), not only radically departed from the human-like alien designs of past science fiction films, but also provided the film with its wealth of startling, other-worldy visual originality. 

The success of Alien resulted in James Cameron's Aliens, Alien 3 (abandoned by director David Fincher) and Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet), while Alien vs Predator (2004) and Alien vs Predator – Requiem (2007) succeeded in achieving nothing but compromising (and ending) the series in a flurry of tacky exploitation. Ridley Scott has recently announced that he has commenced work on a prequel – Alien 5 – in 3D. Given that he has expressed disappointment with how the series was left to die a slow and artless death, it will be fascinating to see how Scott approaches his return to a story that began his, now, illustrious career.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.