The first film in the increasingly vast alien Legend is still the best, at least in my opinion. While Ridley Scott’s more recent entries have continued to expand the series’ saga with varying degrees of success, what stands out to me most is how good he was at the beginning. When we meet Ripley, Dallas, Brett, Parker, and the other members of Nostromo, the first thing that strikes us is the reality of their lives as workers serving a company that has exploited them for low wages and Happy to mess them up. The aliens stalking the crew and wiping them out one by one is chilling, but what really makes it resonate is the larger theme of capitalist sex, made so economical by the wonderful line “First priority – make sure the organisms are returned for analysis” The theme is conveyed effectively. All other considerations are secondary. Crew members are expendable.
But the theme, no matter how well executed, is never enough to give a movie its soul. No, what makes alien The stellar cast naturally embodies the uniqueness of their characters – with Sigourney Weaver in a star performance, of course, but also Tom Skerritt, Halliday Harry Dean Stanton and the wonderful Yaphet Kotto – as we know them from the film’s opening scenes, which Scott lovingly directs with such natural, believable The way they interrupt each other and talk to each other is a rare thing in American movies after the 1970s. Also like Spielberg’s great white shark four years ago, alienThe power of things often lies in what is invisible and left to our imagination. Compared to many movie locations, Nostromo feels incredibly lived and worked in, naturally conducive to providing ample hiding places for the aliens stalking the hapless crew. Later films in the series are more intense, more elaborate, and more expensive, but the tightly focused humanity and horror of the series’ predecessor is still arguably the best the series has ever produced.
——Caroline Pettit
