Through the two
movies that we have watched from director Ridley Scott, I sense a fondness
for the foreign. Just as Blade Runner
presented an unknowable future on earth, so Alien
shows this same future universe in the midst of outer space, a place renowned
precisely because there is an unlimited amount of unknown. From its very onset, Alien takes on an aura
of darkness, and very little light or clarity is clearly discernible. The
opening scene shows a cluttered and dirty space ship, in which there are many
randomly tossed objects throughout. This “retro-industrial” spaceship is a
scattered set with many blind corners – in which an attention to detail was
given not to make the spaceship perfect, but to make it imperfect and
disordered. Not to mention that the title of the movie, and what the movie
itself revolves around, is “Alien,” which is a word that can be defined as
foreign, unfamiliar, and strange.
The question that
then rises in the movie is what do we do with the unknown? Do we go on a trek
to discover and study it? Do we fear it? What if it is perfect? What if it is
absolutely horrendous? Surely, jumping headfirst into the unknown can bring on
emotions of anticipation, anxiety, and even curiosity. When the spaceship lands
on the foreign planet, the one word that comes to mind to describe it is
darkness. This unfamiliar planet is cold, dark, and filled with a white layer
of smog, making it difficult to make out any clear images, because if we could
see any light or objects, that would probably ruin the mood of fear and
uncertainty presented as a recurring theme in the movie.
The tendencies of
fear and the unknown are that the more that we think about them, the more
likely it is that their presence will grow in our lives. The progress of
science has been a never-ending desire of discovering the mysterious – it is about
organizing the disordered and cluttered.
Alien presents to us a growing
obsession with this “perfect” creature that is to be taken back to earth to be
studied. As we follow the alien throughout the film, we easily realize that its
image begins to literally grow larger, and the crewmembers become increasingly obsessed
with finding it. Perhaps the alien grows larger as a representation of its
presence becoming more important in each character’s life – they are fearful,
or revenge-seeking, or just merely curious – and they allow this unfamiliar
alien to overcome them – literally and figuratively… but mostly literally.
Surely, the
unknown is something that is fearful. The alien essentially kills all of the
crewmembers, sparing one survivor. While watching the movie, I felt
anticipation the entire time, considering the next victim in this utterly
chaotic plot. This film combined those feelings of fear and anticipation that
accompany what is unknown – doing so by making us feel these feelings directly.
It reminded me of the drive of human nature to make sense of the vast world
around us, a quest that is sometimes accompanied by dire and dangerous consequences.
The role of the alien environment, in all of it's mysteriousness, is interesting when compared with the evolution of the environment aboard the Nostromo. Initially, the dark, windy, alien atmosphere is full of strange, random bursts of vapor. As the the Nostromo falls into the chaos of the rampaging organism, the interior atmosphere of Nostromo begins to mirror that of the planet. Due to the botched landing, sporadic bursts of vapor comes through the piping on the Nostromo, and when Rippley triggers the ship's self-destruction the ship is over-run by vapor. Strangely enough, it evens appears to be raining in the scene where Brett meets his demise. As the film progresses, the atmosphere aboard the ship becomes more and more alien.
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