Alien(1979)- Technology and Alienation

After the big success of Star Wars in 1977, the film market heralded another revival of science fiction movies. However instead of following suit like other science movies, Alien (1979) forged a new path by instilling horror elements into the concept of aliens. And later, a series of related movies like Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992) and Alien Resurrection (1997) spun off it as their exemplar predecessor. Although it was not the pioneer in films about killer creature in space, the transformational effect this film held upon latter alien-themed movies is deserved to be explored.

First and the most important of all is the core idea of this alien, and the rest is all dressing and embellishment upon this core idea. In an interview on elements of Alien (1979)

, Scott remarked that if it was not for this original and shocking creature on Giger’s Necronom IV,

the whole architecture of plot will collapse on itself. In that time when digital effect was not ripe enough for a fantastic construct of an alien, the idea must be used to the extreme by the dynamics of screenplay. It can be seen that Scott invested a lot of time and the utmost deliberation in building this atmosphere in order to complement this alien. One of it was the internal structure of the spaceship. The opening shot took the audience to a brief view of crisscrossing corridors, piles of machines, entangled pipes and cluttered screens. That gave people an inhumane, mechanical and claustrophobic feeling. In Great Movie Alien, Roger Ebert commented that “the greatest strength of Alien (1979)” was its pacing, its building step by step, wielding magic of silence and tamper with the delicacy of suspense, to a final macabre scene. And it can be confirmed later when crews internal conflicts were strengthened by closing corridor doors, and horrifying atmosphere were created when Dallas crawled into a cramped duct to drive the alien out. The mechanical setting, oppressive darkness and delicate screen shot (where alien never appeared in its entirety) further enhanced the scaring effect of the alien.

Moreover, this concept stood out by its disturbing implications. In Alien, Brian Eggert discovered that the haunting feature of this film resides in the amorphous shape of the alien from “parasite Facehugger to embryo Chestbuster to predatory Alien attacks its victims on multiple levels”. It was argued that the Facehugger, the initial form of this alien connoted psychological disturbance of pregnancy. After unleashing the monster from an egg, Kane was attacked and bound to the alien. They shared the same breath and could not be separated from each other which again implied the joint state of life experienced in pregnancy. And then after getting enough nutrition from its host, this alien burst out of his stomach and became independent. Therefore, it is inferred that the main horror in this scene is human’s self-awareness of their fragility to outside influences. There was no firm defense against evils. They lurk in the dark, catch people unawares and enter into their body without any interference. And what scares them most is that they are forced to give birth to these monsters. Stephen Mulhall said in his philosophical analysis of this movie(On Film), “Horror is the title I am giving to the perception of the precariousness of human identity to the perception that it may be lost or invaded, that we may be, or may become, something other than we are, or take ourselves for.” What mirrored this apprehension is the identity of Ash. As the plot pushed forward, Ash the scientific counselor was found to be an android when he tried to sacrifice all crews in order to preserve the alien for weapons. First, there was a true all-killing alien in the spaceship and then there came to be an android when all thought him to be their own kind. This invasion into their familiar cognition of their surroundings ran parallel with the invasion into personal bodies. In other words, they alienating once familiar environment bit by bit until the crews were desperate and insane. Someone in the movie said, “This place gives me creeps.” These creeps in fact reflected the pervasive alienation in this movie. And this alienation was reinforced by the ever changing shape of this monster. The crews could never get any hold upon what was going on there.

Finally, there is another thread running through the whole plot. That is the internal conflicts between human life and scientific significance. At Ash’s insistence, crews had to respond to that distress call so that they could gather significant scientific results from that expedition. And that brought the alien into this spaceship. After they found the grave danger in this monster, they tried to get rid of it by freezing Kane which was denied by Ash at the excuse of saving Kane’s life. And when Ripley tried to find a method to kill the alien, her efforts was again stopped by Ash since preservation of this alien ranked above the importance of crews’ life. This alongside with claustrophobic mechanical setting in the beginning and the alienation of both environment and bodies, pointed to the true theme of this movie -Technological Alienation. Alien which was discovered by science was rather a perfect form it had craved for. Ash said when he was headed, “I admire his purity, unclouded by conscience, remorse and delusional morality”.

Therefore, this alien was indeed a representation of technology or science ardor which robbed people of conscience, remorse and morality, anything they deemed to be the essentials of human. This was the nightmare, the perception of precariousness of human identity. By the way, if the original picture Necronom IV is scrutinized close enough, it is more like a robotic machine rather than a living creature.

Resource Cited

Historical Resource:an interview on elements of Alien (1979),  the clip from the movie, Giger’s Necronom IV

Journalistic Resource: Great Movie Alien by Roger Ebert ,  Alien by Brian Eggert

Academic Resource: Stephen Mulhall’s On Film