Alien
Chad'z rating: **1/2 (out of 4 = OK)
1979, R, 117 minutes [1 hour, 57 minutes]
[science fiction]
starring: Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Tom Skerrit (Dallas), Yaphet Kotto (Parker) Ian Holm (Ash); written by Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett; produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill; directed by Ridley Scott.
>From the title alone, "Alien" doesn't sound too appealing because it's so generic and boring. It's the epitome of a sci-fi title, and not surprisingly, this is the epitome of a sci-fi movie. It takes place in the distant future and in outer space, there's lots of advanced technology and slimy aliens, and it tries to use both intelligent reasoning and barbaric violence to solve problems - guess which method dominates?
The film opens in a dark, dismal manner as it establishes its setting of a giant spaceship on its way back to Earth. Where it's coming from and what its crew's mission is we never really find out, which is the film's first major flaw. The first half hour is a tedious exercise in mood - all we get is sci-fi jargon that is nearly impossible to comprehend as nothing said nor done seems to lead to anything. However, I admired the bleak art direction - it is full of intricate detail and is just as Gothic as Medieval cathedrals. This helps to create a chilling mood, but is ultimately unable to save the film from its screenplay.
We quickly meet our characters, but we're not given many clues as to who these people are or what their purpose is. They all have radically different personalities, and almost none of them seem like they should be on a such a high-tech, important ship.
First there's Tom Skerrit as Dallas, the stern leader who likes to bark orders. Then there's Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, a strong-willed officer who doesn't think the crew follows procedure correctly. Two other generic characters include Yaphet Kotto as Parker, who tends to be exploited since he's the only black character, and Ian Holm as Ash, the obsessed scientist who values research over human life. The rest of the crew consists of another scientist, a frail woman who worries and screams a lot, and another guy who doesn't do much of anything.
The crew has been awoken from "hibernation" (the same technique used in "2001") to investigate a signal coming from a nearby planet. Of course they check it out and end up coming back on board the ship with an alien larvae attached to one of the crew members. Ripley had warned them this could happen, and since she's the main character who's never wrong, it creates a somewhat suspenseful atmosphere due to the fear of the unknown. The problem is, it takes almost 45 minutes for the film to raise this kind of interest.
And just as the film becomes thrilling and intriguing, it essentially turns into a horror flick as an alien creature runs amok throughout the ship. One by one the characters are killed off in the most predictable of ways. It's a dark ship with lots of hiding places and no one is smart enough to hunt the alien with a partner?
There is a fair attempt to balance the mindless cat-and-mouse game with a subplot when we learn one of the crew is actually a robot and it would willingly sacrifice the others to study the alien. There's some dialogue like, "How do we kill it?"/ "You can't, it's a perfect organism." For such a superior being, this alien never shows signs of intelligence. Its size and composition certainly isn't any kind of advantage. And why must it hiss, drip slime, and eat people?
I would say the film goes downhill from the mid-point on, but it never really goes uphill enough to come down. Everything stays on the same level, which isn't terribly low, but never gets very high. It does a satisfactory job in terms of general storytelling, but falls short with its specific attempts at characterization, suspense, and shock (the last act proves this).
"Alien" is rich with atmosphere in all respects, but takes the easy way out by becoming another thriller. What's most disappointing is the fact it never really had to.
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