Alien

Alien
Introduction
Directed by Ridley Scott, the science fiction horror classic, Alien (1979) has become extremely well known for its ultra-realistic settings and scenery, with gritty real-life connotations, adding a believable essence to this entirely fictional world. Although the film follows the plight of a towing ships crew, heading towards Earth pulling its cargo, in their fight for survival, the real star of the film is in fact the Alien, a Xenomorph, which was played by an actor wearing a suit and designed by H. R. Giger, along with several other aspects of the film. The resulting creature is a combination of Gigers Necronom I and V paintings after Ridley Scott was introduced to his work in the book Necronomicon and was interested in the biomechanical style, even though Giger wanted to create the designs for the alien from scratch. Though the alien becomes the main aspect of the film, the plot depicts the story of the crew of a towing vessel, heading towards Earth, pulling its cargo of mined ore from a distant world, but when the on board computer, referred to as mother, wakes them from their hyper sleep, they discover that they have not reached their destination, but have been diverted to another world, due to a faint transmission, suggesting there is an undiscovered intelligent life-form on its surface. Under obligation to investigate, and against the wishes of two of the crew members, who are constantly complaining Figure 1. Alien. (1979). about the unfair payment contracts, they detach their vessel from the cargo and travel to the worlds surface. On arrival to the surface, the ship becomes damaged preventing their departure, several of the crew, the Captain, Dallas (Tom Skerritt), the Second in Command, Kane (John Hurt), and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) leave the ship to find the origin of the transmission, as the two engineers, Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), repair the damage under the supervision of the science officer, Ash (Ian Holm), and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). While the vessel is being repaired, the three crew members who left the ship discover the source of the transmission before Ripley, convinced Ash is not running diagnostics on the signal, is able to discover the transmission is a warning, an enormous alien spacecraft that

Alien has crashed on the world. Unsure of what the consequences may be, Dallas and Lambert are rather eager to leave and return to the vessel, but Kane, portrayed as the true explorer, wishes to inspect the ship further, discovering the carcass of a gigantic extra-terrestrial being with a large hole in its chest, as if something broke out from beneath its skin. Intrigued by a hole in the floor, revealing another level, Kane is lowered into a seemingly endless storage chamber containing unusual leathery objects, which turn out to be some form of egg, as one opens and an unknown creature, a face-hugger, leaps out and attaches itself to Kanes face. With absolutely no idea what to do, the two remaining crew members return to the only place they know is safe, their ship, with Kane and the creature still attached to his face, but expecting to be let straight in to save Kane, Ripley refuses access to them following the quarantine specifications of the company, stating that they must wait 24 hours to observe the situation before any of the crew can return aboard. Unfortunately for Ripley, Ash is already at the airlock when they arrive and, disobeying Ripleys orders, allows the other members to come aboard by opening the airlock doors. After several hours with the creature attached to his face, and an attempt by the other crew members to remove it, the creature simply detaches itself and crawls away before dying, but unbeknownst to the crew, the creature has deposited an unknown object into Kanes chest, which erupts out through the skin, even with the other actors of the scene not knowing what is happening, making almost genuine. their reactions
Figure 2. Alien. (1979).

With the new creature, the Xenomorph, now loose aboard the ship killing the remaining crew members one-by-one, there is the revelation that the detour of the vessel was planned by the company they work for in order to collect one of the creatures and return it to Earth so the company could study it, but we also discover that Ash is a form of android tasked with assuring the creature reaches Earth, even if the crew are all killed. Destroying Ash, the remaining crew members, Ripley, Parker and Lambert, devise a plan to abandon the ship using the small shuttle and destroy the alien by using the ships self-destruct mechanism, but as they gather several items in preparation to leave in the shuttle, Parker and Lambert come face to face with the alien, being torn to pieces before Ripley can find them. The final remaining crew member, Ripley boards the shuttle and escapes the blast radius of the atomic explosion from the cargo ship, but discovering the alien aboard the shuttle as she begins to relax, she places on a space suit and blasts the creature out of the airlock door before burning it, attached to a wire, in an engine of the shuttle.

Alien

Analysis
With the film set in a fictional world beyond the stars, there are still many aspects that contribute to the overwhelming realism of the scenes of Alien, including the set based scenery and the extraordinary use of audio, embracing the audience into the world of Alien. This immersing of the audience is creating through the senses, utilizing the visual and audible attributes of the film. These aspects of the film, along with the physical appearance of the alien character and the technique in which it is created, suggest extremely sexual connotations, even though they may not be obvious at first, greatly reflecting the work and designs of H. R. Giger. Although a fictional science fictional world, with technologies currently non-existent, the film emits a great sense of realism, through several attributes, but the two that contribute to the ambience the most are the sets and the use of audio. Unlike the majority of science fiction films, Alien appears to portray the futuristic genre as a very unclean and gritty mechanized era, connoting a cold industrial time, representing the average common man, working to make a living, with the characters portrayed as intergalactic truckers, replete with baseball caps, faded denim and attitudes as bad as their Hawaiian shirts (Mackinder, 2003). This style of character implies that all aspects of the human world have become intergalactic with everyone contributing to humanities existence. Along with the individuality of the characters on the ship, the realistic feel to the film is extensively enhanced by the real-life sets, where the characters interact with all their surroundings and each other, convincing the audience the places are actually in existence. Although the coldly mechanical (Bozzola, s.d) environments are a gritty futuristic style, there are also connotations in the film of the cultural background during the 1970s, such as the relationship between corporate capitalism (Bozzola, s.d), represented through the actions of the company that the crew work for. While the physical attribute of the scenery adds to the realism of the film, another aspect that greatly effects the films realistic qualities is the use of the audio, as several scenes of the film contain overlapping and muffled (Mackinder, 2003) dialogue, eliminating the essence of a perfectly timed script, extensively improving the realistic qualities of the film.
Figure 3. Alien. (1979).

Having no effect on the realism of the film, the designs of H. R. Giger, the alien and the alien ship in particular, seemingly create very sexual connotations throughout the film, with the biomechanical appearance of both, reflecting Gigers style of paintings, but several aspects

Alien of both the alien and the ship seem to create different sexual connotations. Appearing as a fleshy, yet mechanical, organism, the alien greatly implies the sexual connotations through its actions, especially the techniques in which it kills, using its long mouthed protruding tongue and tail to pierce the humans flesh. In one particular scene, where the alien kills Lambert, it stands peering at her face-to-face as the audience views its long tail snake between her legs and up into her body (Mackinder, 2003), while it can use its protruding tongue to disembowel by violently thrusting (Mackinder, 2003). These sexual connotations are not just simply reflected through the alien and the alien ship, with several orifices that, could be said, resemble the vaginal opening of the female reproductive organs, but also through the actions of the crew during a particular scene, as Ash attempts to suffocate Ripley by forcing a magazine in her mouth. This scene of the film almost replicates the situation where Kane has the face-hugger attached, with an unseen tube down his throat, as the scene is thought to make men in the audience feel sexually violated (Parks, s.d), as it connotes rape and sexual violence. Another scene in the film that may suggest sexual connotations is the end sequence, where believing she had finally killed the alien, Ripley prepares to enter the hyper sleep chamber, stripping down to her underwear, which may create connotations of vulnerability, or it could be a comfort to the men of the audience, as she plays a very strong heroine throughout the film, but I feel that it most likely to be the former.

Figure 4. Alien. (1979).

Conclusion
With many other films of the franchise, such as Aliens (1986), Aliens 3 (1992), and Alien: Resurrection (1997), of varying quality, the sexual connotations and realist styling of the film start to become diluted, as the audience experiences different aspects of the worlds featuring in the films, as the first sequel, Aliens, follows the story of Ripley returning to the same world they discovered the original alien, as she escorts a squad of marines who are sent to investigate the disappearance of the members of a terraforming colony on the worlds surface. The connotations of the first film are greatly diminished as the focus of the film is aimed towards Ripley and the marines, as the audience may remember the aliens appearance from the previous film, as they fight to survive and attempt to escape the deadly creatures.

Alien The entire franchise of films depicts the adventures of Ripley, as she somehow endlessly finds herself facing off with the aliens on many occasions, ending up in an intergalactic prison in the third film, this time with a dog becoming the victim of a face-hugger, as the resulting alien begins killing each of the inmates and the guards. The fourth film, set even further in the future than the events of the previous films, Alien: Resurrection depicts the scientific study of the alien species, only successful due to the discovery of Ripley, in a hyper sleep, with the growing embryo of a queen alien inside her, but when the scientists remove the creature, saving Ripley through an operation, the queen rapidly grows and, along with several worker aliens, the type staring in Alien (1979), escapes their captivity, wreaking havoc aboard the ship. Whereas the sexual connotations are greatly diluted, the sense of realism is still present throughout all the films, with the styles of the scenery and the technique for the alien creatures. Although many techniques have been developed between the films, the setbased scenery is a common part of the franchises atmosphere, contributing to the realism of the films, even though based in a fictional world with untrue events. This is an aspect of film which is often lost during modern film production, creating many fictional worlds and characters with CGI, which can only create a certain amount of realism, in comparison to the highly realistic traditional techniques of set building and costume. Though possibly considered an outdated b-movie to a modern audience, Alien shows many attributes of a modern class film, from good quality visuals and a clear narrative, but it can also be said to surpass many modern films in several aspects, such as its realism.

Alien

Illustration List
Figure. 1. Alien. (1979) [Poster] At: http://www.impawards.com/1979/posters/alien.jpg (Accessed on 25.10.2012). Figure(s). 2, 3, & 4. Alien. (1979). From: Alien, Brandywine Productions & Twentieth CenturyFox Productions. Directed by: Ridley Scott. [Film Still] United States of America: Brandywine Productions, & Great Britain: Twentieth Century-Fox. At: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQg6sVeAVG8 (Accessed on 25.10.2012).

Bibliography
Mackinder, Adrian. (2003). Alien (1979): Movie Review. At: http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=111 (Accessed on 22.10.2012). Parks, Kelly. (s.d). Alien 1979. At: http://www.feoamante.com/Movies/Alien/alien.html (Accessed on 22.10.2012). Bozzola, Lucia. (s.d). Alien: Critics Review. At: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-criticreviews/alien/ (Accessed on 22.10.2012).