Alien is a Sci-Fi, Horror film, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Tom Skerritt as Dallas and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. Alien takes place in a distant future in the year 2122. The crew of a commercial towing ship receive a what they believe at the time time may be a distress signal and go to investigate. They end up on a moon and see a crashed ship and a crew member goes down to investigate. He discovers hundreds off what appear to be eggs, and is attacked by some form of parasite. When he returns to the ship, the parasite is now attached to his face, and when Dallas and Ash try to cut it off its face, it bleeds acid, and puts a hole in the hull of the ship. Then in an iconic scene, the crew member awakens and begins to feel sick and starts convulsing. The crew holds him down in an attempt to calm him, and a small parasite breaks through his abdomen, and leaps out onto the table, and runs off. Little did the crew know, this small parasite, would grow rapidly into a murderous specimen.
After it grew its sharp teeth, and long dagger-like tail, it began to pick off the crew one by one. Our likely protagonist at the time, Dallas, is one of the first to be killed, which is a bold move for the movie, as killing off the main character cam change the direction of the film, which it did in this case. The story began to focus on Ripley, as she was now in charge of the crew and their decisions. They wanted to leave the ship and get in the escape pod, but all three of them wouldn't have been able to fit. So they decide to stay and fight the alien. This plan backfires very quickly, as two crew members are quickly killed. This leaves Ripley as the last one alive on the ship.
She makes the quick decision to self-destruct the ship, and escape on the pod before it explode, getting her to safety and killing the alien. This went relatively smoothly aside from almost getting caught by the alien, but she made it to the pod and got out with a few seconds to spare, and watched the ship explode from a safe distance. While watching in class, I felt as though the movie couldn't end this way. It felt cheesy that after the alien managed to decimate the crew when they were together, that one person alone was able to kill it. And sure enough as I said that, the alien popped up on the escape pod. As all hope seemed lost, Ripley, somehow stays calm and collected and turns up the heat (literally) on the alien and begins to burn him. She lets the alien creep towards her and at the last second, Ripley opens the door to the pod and the vacuum of space begins to suck everything out of the pod, including the alien. Smartly, Ripley had strapped herself down to the seat to prevent her from being ripped out of the ship. With the alien now dangling outside of the ship, he is disintegrated by the pod's engines, and is killed.
All in all, the ending still had a cliche feel to it. But reflecting on it, this whole idea of "who's gonna die next" or "lone survivor" was partly made popular from this film. After understanding this, I can look at the film in a new light. I believe that it was an a very captivating film. At times it had me on the edge of my seat, wondering what's going to happen next. For the time, the special effects were quite good, and scenes from Alien have stood the test of time and are iconic.
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