Escape Velocity

A curated Collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction Media

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Alien is a science fiction horror film. Halfway their trip back home, the crew of the commercial space tug Nostromo is woken from their cryosleep by a mysterious transmission from a nearby meteorite. They decide to check it out and a small party discovers an old stranded spaceship and a field of alive eggs. Should they touch one of them?

Passepartout_Alien

The first time I saw this movie was with my father. He was a huge fan of the alien franchise, especially of the first two movies, and it would not surprise me if he has had a Ripley-poster above his bed when he was young. I loved the thrill of this horror movie with its heartbeat-score and flickering, disorienting lights, crawling under a blanket and against the safe body of my father.


When I watched this movie recently, I was afraid my nostalgic memory of it would fade and make way for a sober view of a decent, but dated movie. But I was wrong! It held up way better than expected! It was slow-paced, as many films of more than 40 years old feel, but it suited the film. From the first scene on the tension established, the camera slowly panning around while the music made unmistakably clear something ominous would happen. Yet, technically nothing problematic happens for the first hour or so. We get the time to get to know the characters with no one clearly being the main character. And even when they meet the alien, they still have not passed the point of no return. And then, finally, shit goes down.


Just a side note to end this review: it is always fun to see how old movies imagine future technology. As for Alien, it apparently could imagine humanity flying huge distances in space with massive mining ships, but we would still have tiny computer screens with MS-DOS interface and terrible quality video and sound transmissions. And an incredible amount of steam!

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