Nerd’s Eye View: An Alien Movie Review

The movie then takes about 30 seconds (that’s not an exaggeration) to go away from the infirmary to show us a shuttle, only to have us go back to the infirmary to see the face hugger has finished abusing MB and has crawled away to bask in the afterglow.  Or to die, whichever happens first.  Ripley, Ash, and the captain look for it, it falls on Ripley, and then lies there.  Feeling “safe to assume it isn’t a zombie”, Ash is given permission to study it, sans alien peen.  Seriously, it’s not something you should look for, but after hours of deep throating a guy, it is noticeable by its absence.  Did it break off in Monster-bait’s mouth or what?  They never say.

Anyway, Ripley questions the captain on how he is trusting Ash with this life form instead of destroying it.  He tells her that Ash has been given final say on all science matters and, despite it being abnormal, doesn’t question it because it’s what the company wants.  He then tells her, after getting a status report, that the ship is fixed enough to leave and he wants them on the way home.  So they say goodbye to the planet and start getting ready to head to Earth.

While sharing a meal, presumably before going into cold sleep, Ash calls them all down to the infirmary, AGAIN, to find that Monster-bait has woken up and is seemingly unhurt despite the acid blood, melted helmet, face tearing, and tail choking all mentioned before.  They ask MB what he remembers and, since the only thing he does remember is being smothered, they make the unspoken decision not to tell him about how the face hugger wouldn’t accept that no means no.  Instead, they just tell him they’re going back into stasis.  Monster-bait says he can’t face cold sleep on an empty stomach and asks for one last meal before taking the big sleep, which makes the next scene EXTRA ironic.

The crew are all gathered around the table, eating when MB has a fit.  He falls on the table, chokes, shakes, and grunts, then gives birth to a bouncing baby alien that tore a hole out through his chest.  You know, I’d have thought a person might have felt an additional weight in his chest or maybe a 2ft long monster moving around in there, but I guess that’s just me.  Anyway, shocked by this miracle of life, no one does anything as it runs away like Speedy Gonzales, though Angry-black-mechanic did threaten to stab it with a spork before Ash said not to touch it.

Finding their shipmate dead and themselves trapped on a ship with a dangerous unknown alien, they eject the body of Monster-bait a la Star Trek 2, and try to figure out what they’re going to do next.  Now keep in mind that they went back to space early.  All this happened in less than the speculated 25 hours.  If only there was something that could of kept Monster-bait off the ship for that timeframe…some rule that would have protected them from being exposed to Alien creatures that might harm them…something like, I don’t know, quarantine protocols!

That being said, to the movie’s credit, they never have Ripley say, “I told you so.”  Everyone just starts trying to handle the situation.  And how do they decide to stop this lethal, incredibly quick being?  Decades into the future, what have they designed to subdue this deadly creature?  Given that the company has rules requiring them to investigate dangerous situations, what did their benevolent employer provide them with to protect themselves?  Cattle Prods and a Net.  This will end well.

Splitting into teams of three, Ripley and the mechanics take a tracking device and attempt to capture the little bugger.  The tracker works on micro changes in airflow, which somehow means it can detect something moving inside a locker.  Getting themselves set, they open the locker and find…a CAT!  Yeah, there’s a cat on the ship.  Did I not mention that before?  That’s because the movie doesn’t either.  It never speaks about the cat and only shows it twice, once eating on the table when they first wake up, and again, lying on the deck before Ripley figures out the signal is a warning.  Clearly the cat adds atmosphere to the story and isn’t just a plot device, right?  Right.

Anyway, the cat is scared for no reason we can see and tries to run.  They catch it in the net, but Kinda-stupid-white-mechanic lets it go because it is not a flesh eating monster (except when it comes to mice).  Angry-black-mechanic explains to him why that was kinda stupid (hence the name) because now they may end up tracking it again instead of the alien.  The other two send him off by himself to get the cat.  Now here’s a spoiler: he doesn’t get the cat.  He does, however, get a glimpse of the alien…for about 3 seconds before it kills him.  The alien is now man sized and has switched from face raping to face eating via a little mouth full of teeth that shoots out of its larger mouth full of larger teeth.

We next see the remaining five gathered around a table.  Ripley and our now only mechanic must have caught sight of the kill off screen as they tell the rest that the alien is big and that it is using the air shafts to move around.  Captain-dumb-decisions comes up with a plan that is, of course, dumb.  He apparently doesn’t realize he makes dumb decisions and continues living up to his name for the next ten minutes:  he suggests that they drive the alien in to the airlock and blast it into space.

Now some of you may be saying, “Hey, that sounds like a good idea to me!”

Oh, it’s a great idea.  It’s how he does it that’s stupid.  Despite the alien being made of silicone and resistant to “adverse environmental conditions”, despite it being large enough and strong enough to drag a grown man into the air shaft with it, and despite the fact that it eats FACES, he goes in after it alone.  Think about that for a moment.  He goes into a place with no lights, where he can’t even stand up, let alone run, and with nothing but a flashlight and a flame thrower that shoots a puff of fire for about 3ft.  As you can figure out, this does not go as planned.

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