Alien Movie Analysis

Many people come to harm in the movie Alien directed by Ridley Scott. The movie thrives on the tension and the harm that come to the crew members that audiences grow to love. Much of the physical harm in the movie follows the idea of body horror, or horror that manipulates the body in strange, unusual, and often disturbing ways. The audience gets to see creatures attaching to people’s faces, aliens bursting out of someone’s chest. The physical harm in the movie was inspired by things that already make audiences very uncomfortable. There is also a sense of mental or emotional harm throughout the movie. The crew continues to fall apart amongst themselves, they fight with each other more often than they do the alien. The lessening of the crew's morale was a large factor in how all but one of them ended up dead. They were unable to work together, giving the alien ample time to hunt them all individually. The movie Alien highlights the harm done to the crew through both the physical violence and threat of the alien as well as the mental and emotional harm that they all come to at the hands of each other.  

When the crew first encounters the aliens, the face-hugger attaches itself to Kane who was observing the eggs. The crew decides to bring him aboard the ship to try and remove the organism. At this moment, the crew is not the only ones who are being harmed, but the alien is as well. They try to detach the alien by cutting off its limbs, only to discover that its blood is a form of corrosive acid. The alien has evolved to the point that any harm done to it will result in harming others around it. They mention in the film that if they try to take it off without detaching the limbs, that it would likely take Kane’s face off with it, once more showing how the creature has evolved to be the ultimate killer. The fact that the alien has evolved to such a point shows how harmful and dangerous it is. The alien is able to blend in with the surroundings of the ship, to the point where the crew fails to notice it a few times leading to either death or near death. The creature is a lingering threat that the crew must face. The creature’s influence over the harm the crew comes to is mostly based on survival. The alien needs the crew, either to eat them for substance or to use them as incubators for more of it to be created. It is the ultimate hunter, able to find them wherever they are, as shown when Lambert and Parker die due to making too much noise. The fact that it is acting primarily on survival makes it that much more dangerous and harmful to the crew. It is acting based on instinct, it has the time to wait for them to come to it. The crew has to work together to try and stop it, something that they are unable to do.

The crew is unable to act as a unit to kill the alien, harming their chances of survival. The crew actively ignores Ripley, that act itself being the reason the alien was able to get aboard the ship. Ripley tries in various moments of the film to try and get the crew together to come up with a solution for them all to get out alive, though they all continue to disvalue her thoughts, leading to them all dying. When Dallas crawls through the vents as Lambert gives instructions, he does not listen to what she has to say, leading to him coming face to face with the alien and dying. Parker tries to sacrifice himself for Lambert, who stands still and watches him die, only to die with him seconds later. The crew acts out against each other repeatedly, all of this harming their chances at survival. They actively choose to go against what others are saying, also harming the morale of the crew, another factor that leads to most of them ending up dead. Then there is Ash the android. Ash’s goal was to keep the organism alive no matter the consequences, even if that means losing the crew in the process. He knows that harm is likely to come to these people, but since he is an android with orders, he shows little care for the impact that the harm will have on them. His function is to make sure the organism survives, he has no care for whom he will have to get rid of in the process. His harm almost functions as protection for the alien, it is his only mission. Whether the crew realizes it or not, he is actively working against them and harming their chances of survival. He lets the crew in at the beginning, ignoring Ripley and allowing the alien on the ship, he works with Dallas to remove the face-hugger, trying to do it in the least harmful way to the creature but the most harmful way to the crew, he actively tries to kill Ripley by shoving magazines into her mouth to suffocate her. Ash acts as the alien’s biggest advocate, he assists the creature in killing the crew in order for it to survive. Ash’s harm to the crew was also a factor of manipulation that worked to divide the team. He not only physically harmed the crew, but he mentally separated them so that they would not be able to stand together, leading to their demise.

Throughout the movie, the harm is never exactly alleviated. When trying to remove the face-hugger, they discover that it is more dangerous than they initially thought it was with its acidic blood. They are unable to remove it and therefore resort to waiting for it to do something itself, which only results in the alien being incubated in the man’s body. When he is believed to be okay, the audience watches him die in a painful and gruesome way. Later on, when looking for the alien, we watch two other characters die by its hands. The only sense of relief we get from the overall harm that we are seeing is in the end when Ripley believes she blew up the alien with the Nostromo, only to discover the alien aboard the escape shuttle with her. The harm throughout the film is not alleviated until the very end of the movie when Ripley signs off and goes to sleep. Even then, the Alien movies are a series, so it’s questionable to believe that any of the harm that the alien does really gets alleviated. It is a constant threat to Ripley, something that she continues to face for many years to come. The threat of the alien is a constant reminder of the harm that it has committed and that it remains capable of committing.