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Alien (1979) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

They knew because its beacon repeated every twelve seconds. Most likely the company heard and deciphered the beacon some time before the events of the story, and decided to re-route the Nostromo to the same area. We know this information because, in the film, Ripley discovers Ash with a series of secret directives from the company. The company replaced the old science officer with Ash to enact their plan of protecting the dangerous life form. They knew that the Nostromo would pick up the distress signal too, and have to respond to it. The company knew it could trust Ash because they programmed him to do what was necessary at any cost.

No. There are several reasons for this:

1) The two ships look nothing alike; they have completely different shapes and designs.

2) The Predators look nothing like the dead alien creature ('Space Jockey') found inside the derelict. The dead creature is several times larger, has a large proboscis and lacks the typical Predator mandibles.

3) It is unlikely that the ship would just happen to crash on LV-426 (the planet from ''Alien'' where the derelict is found), which is located far away from Earth.

4) In the sequel AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem, the Predator ship crashes on Earth, reducing chances of it being the derelict from Alien to zero.

It was most likely stress. It was an extremely stressful environment. It seems Ripley has a weak nose wall, because director David Fincher used a similiar situation during the Alien 3 funeral scene, where her nose bleeds.

Although such a rate of growth is quite unheard of in Earth's fauna, we should bear in mind that this particular life-form is extra-terrestrial, and therefore not necessarily subject to conventional wisdom about growth and development. Perhaps the Alien is a physiologically simple creature, with all body structures present at 'birth,' when it bursts out of its host, and all that is needed is that it cells quickly replicate and grow in size. The latter might be realized by drinking water and eating enormous amounts of nutrients, for both energy and building blocks. Such rapid cell division would nevertheless require lots of energy, and this may account for its very short lifespan (the creators of Alien intended the creature to be aging very rapidly throughout the movie, becoming darker and finally dying at the end); the creature's body invests all its energy in becoming functional as quick as possible, rather than longevity.

A sex scene between Dallas and Ripley was in the script, but was not filmed. Subtle hints that Dallas has feelings for Ripley are shown throughout the film, as he is very protective of her. When Ripley, Ash and Dallas are searching for the facehugger in the medical lab, it falls on Ripley's shoulder. Dallas immediately jumps infront of her to protect her and she clutches onto him. Also, when Ripley volunteered to go into the air ducts, Dallas insisted on taking her place, which ultimately led to his demise.

No, it wasn't raining, and it wasn't Alien drool. It was condensation. Down near Brett it appeared quite hot, as he was sweating. As we all know, heat rises, so it could have caused some frost or ice to melt high up on the ceiling. Also, the giant lights that Brett looked up at could have given off a lot of heat.

Dan O'Bannon's intended life cycle was that the Alien would move from egg, to facehugger, to warrior. In fact, artwork by H.R. Giger himself depicts the entire sequence in a mural that was created for early drafts of the film. (See here. See the section near the end entitled, "INTERIOR - DARK STORAGE ROOM.") The transformation from warrior to egg, while not specifically depicted in the mural, was detailed in Dan O'Bannon's original screenplay.

This reproductive cycle was the writer's intended method of reproduction, at least at this stage of the Alien franchise. Later, James Cameron, who both wrote and directed the sequel, Aliens, decided to take the reproductive cycle in a different direction. Since Mr. O'Bannon ceased involvement after the first film, it's up to the moviegoer to determine whether or not they feel the addition of the Queen to the life cycle belongs within the original writer's vision.

The cocoon sequence, involving the transformation, was filmed but was dropped from the final cut because the director, Ridley Scott, felt that the sequence interrupted the pace of the film. He believed that the inclusion of this sequence interfered with Ripley's attempt to exit the ship, and would have unnecessarily slowed the picture down. The cutting of the cocoon sequence was an attempt by the director to keep tension in the final minutes of the film, not an attempt to alter the intended life cycle.

Ridley Scott himself has stated that he considers the original cut of Alien to be the definitive version, with the controversial transformation scene (in the Director's Cut) as a bonus for fans who had asked for it over the years. A popular hypothesis among fans is that "transforming" humans is a behavior the Alien falls into if a queen isn't available to make eggs.

In addition, the Alien looks to have a hive-based society. With insects there is no "Queen" egg until the workers choose to create one. It could be that the lack of a Queen compels the Alien warriors to create the right circumstances for the production of a Queen, and that the "transforming" is part of preparing a host or producing the correct food source to make a "Queen facehugger."

Another theory is that it doesn't turn people into eggs at all; the cocoons just look egg-shaped. James Cameron might have read the screenplay for Alien, which included the scene of Ripley finding Brett and Dallas cocooned. But as he likely didn't see the footage of it, he made the hive/cocoons look how he wanted, but carried on the basic idea of the aliens cocooning people for food or breeding.

No. In fact, in no drafts of the screenplay are any references to a Queen found. There is no explanation given for the large numbers of eggs in the lower hold of the derelict. It's important to remember that Alien and Aliens were written by completely different writers. Dan O'Bannon, who conceived Alien, did not create the Queen. She was created by the writer of Aliens, James Cameron. As a result, there is no reason to believe that O'Bannon had any part in the conception of that phase of the life cycle, nor were there plans to use such a creature in the film.

There are many theories about how the eggs got aboard the derelict, but these may only be explained in the prequel planned by Ridley Scott. The nature of the derelict and its crew are a mystery, left intentionally unanswered by the original crew that produced Alien. Viewers have proposed various theories, such as:

Theory One: The Queen was likely burst from the derelict's pilot, a.k.a. Space Jockey. He may have been the only crewmember on the ship, so once he died, the ship crashed, leaving the Queen time to lay thousands of eggs, then hibernate, until visitors came.

Theory Two: The Space Jockey was some sort of scientist. He investigated a planet and found the eggs, loaded them onto his ship to examine, and was then impregnated by one. When he came to, not knowing what had happened to him, he took off into space. The alien then birthed, and he crashed with all the eggs intact (no queen present).

Theory Three: Ignoring the continuity with the franchise and speculating on the original idea behind the aliens: the ship had a large crew, who were turned into eggs (as per a theory stemming from the director's cut). This would also mean that Lambert's comment "I wonder what happened to the rest of the crew," was a subtle hint this was the original intention. If this is what happened then, there was never supposed to be a queen, and the Alien itself was the final stage. This theory is extemely unlikely, as the Space Jockey and its species are far too big to turn into little eggs.

Theory Four: The Queen was on the ship, laid the eggs, but died off or was killed in the crash. It said that the Space Jockey had been dead for so long it had become fossilized, suggesting the ship had been there for thousands and thousands of years. (It's suggested the Aliens don't age or die naturally from both the fact that the eggs survived in the ship for all that time and the fact that Ash says "I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. Has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon, which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions."). So a new queen wasn't birthed until Aliens, possibly from Newt's father.

Theory Five: Director Ridley Scott explained in interview that he envisioned the derelict as a sort of carrier for biological weapons; the eggs were intentional cargo, but naturally, something went wrong. This is certainly consistent with the Company's obsession with obtaining a specimen for bio-weapons research.

While this never seen again in the Alien films, we can assume it wasn't part of the Alien hive. It was likely part of the derelict spacecraft. As we know, the eggs don't hatch until someone is in close proximity to them; this mist also reacts when broken. It was likely covering the eggs so they could not detect when someone was in close proximity, therefore keeping them from hatching and impregnating the crew of the derelict.

They never went down to the area where the eggs were kept, never broke the blue mist, and never came in proximity to the eggs. They rescued Kane because he was attached to a winch cable. Once he lost consciousness, all they had to do was reel him in.

In 1979, Ridley Scott made film history with the science fiction/horror movie Alien. The film was re-released worldwide in movie theaters in 2003. This version was later released on DVD together with the old Theatrical Cut. Both versions feature material that the other one doesn't include. Ridley Scott has stated that the Director's Cut is a director's cut in name only, as he was satisfied with his original cut, and instead considers the newer version to be simply an alternate cut, rather than a preferred or definitive version.

A detailed comparison between the theatrical cut and the unrated version can be found here.

A detailed comparison between the director's cut and the theatrical version can be found here.