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Crew somewhat underwhelmed by the discovery of first Alien Life form

posted 8 years ago by simonhicks23
19 replies | jump to latest

Just re-watched Alien after a number of years and noticed something which was slightly odd in that when Kane, Dallas and Lambert first discover the space jockey they seem slightly underwhelmed. Dallas says in a very matter of fact manner 'Alien life form, obviously been dead a long time, fossilised, looks like its grown out of the chair' which seems underplayed if this is the very first discovery of advanced alien life in known human history.

Whilst humans may have discovered microbial life by that point in the future there is no indication that any advanced alien life has ever been discovered. Kane seems the most amazed and excited by the discover. Perhaps they were all in shock as to their discovery and it hadn't quite sunk in yet, but surely they knew they were discovering something no other human had laid eyes on before and would go down in history as the first humans to discover advanced alien life, with all the riches and fame that would no doubt come with it.

At least the rest of the movie's portrayal of the crew has near documentary style realism unlike the terrible prometheus prequel with all the over acting, adolescent dialogue and over the top set pieces.

Minor quibble with what still is possibly the greatest serious sci-fi and horror movie ever made. The rest of the movie is like a big budget art movie by todays standards with the slow build up, attention to detail, starring mostly gritty middle aged actors, classical score, realistic sets and tone etc.

[–] dgfan 8 years ago

It might kind of come across that way but when you watch that scene again there's a lot going on in it. They've just encountered an alien ship that they don't know what to make of and then on top of that there's this giant fossilized alien skeleton inside. It's kind of one of those things that the mind can only take in so much at once. It was already a very creepy atmosphere to begin with and at least one of them just wanted to get out of there. Maybe not as much as Lambert was but Dallas did seem to be at least a little uneasy about it.

[–] roland-rockerfella 8 years ago

We don't know that was the first alien that Humanity had encountered. Also keep in mind that these characters are truck drivers who just want to get home and are doing this gig against their will, their not explorers who go looking for this kind of thing.

[–] GreatWhiteApeofBarsoom 8 years ago

I wish the Space Jockey had been in the novelization so Alan Dean Foster could have expanded on the scene. That's a noteworthy flaw in the book.

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[–] DrAndreiSmyslov 8 years ago

The rest of the movie is like a big budget art movie by todays standards with the slow build up, attention to detail, starring mostly gritty middle aged actors, classical score, realistic sets and tone etc.

It came very close to be much less than that. 2Oth Century Fox's only interest in the Alien script was to push out something quick and cheap to profit on the coat tails of the Star Wars craze. Scott convinced them the project could be much bigger than a quickie B-movie project and the studio eventually approved a bigger budget. Scott gets jabbed a lot, more so for recent stuff like Prometheus, but no Scott, there would be no Alien 79 as we know it today.

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One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces.

[–] henrimaine 8 years ago

I prefer to think that it was humanity's first contact with intelligent aliens, although the movie does not explicitly say so. The main reason for the crew's lukewarm response was that they were basically just some uneducated workers who cared more about having a beer in front of TV, rather than discovering new life forms.

[–] roland-rockerfella 8 years ago

These people flew starships between the stars, they were hardly uneducated. However I get your point that they were probably not remotely interested in discovering new life forms, they just wanted to get home after a long haul job.

[–] SCY385-1 8 years ago

I think that what we saw in that scene was more controlled fear than anything. Dallas, Kane, and Lambert are not explorers. They are hauling a load back to Earth and that's all they are supposed to be doing. Like Parker said they didn't sign on for this kind of duty. So when they are confronted with it they aren't going to have the same level of enthusiasm that a trained explorer would. When they walk into that ship they are already on edge. Then they see a giant whatever it is with it's chest blown out. Anybody would be afraid in a situation like that, but they have to keep their wits about them. They are in deep space and no one is coming to help them. Basically my opinion is that the fear of the unknown outweighed the awesomeness of what they found because what they found was actually pretty scary.

[–] crazyivanova 8 years ago

I don't think it was a case of the importance of the moment of "first contact" being lost on the group of space truckers because they weren't explorers. I think it was more likely that the impact of the moment just left them all dumbstruck. I think they were all fully aware of the implications of what they were witnessing but just too stunned by trying to take it all in to give us that "gee whiz! wow!" reaction you may have expected.

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[–] sevenlilxenos 8 years ago

Kane was excited as he readily volunteered to go searching for the source of the distress beacon. Dallas just wanted to do what was required of him as captain and made sure Ash was recording everything back at the Nostromo. Useless Lambert could care less about finding what appeared to be an alien space ship and didn't even want to go any farther once they saw the U-ship provoking Kane to say "We must go on".

As others have mentioned they were basically just interstellar mineral ore haulers and not research scientists investigating the galaxy for signs of alien life. In juxtaposition Newt's father was quite excited to find the U-ship and was under the impression the find was his. You would think someone as interested in money as Parker and Brett might have mentioned something along those lines once the U-ship was discovered and was apparently abandoned other than the eggs.

[–] crazyivanova 8 years ago

It's been about a hundred years since I read the novelization of the screenplay by Alan Dean Foster but if I remember right, it provides a little background on Kane. He was, I think, a washout from the space military (whatever the Alien universe's version of Starfleet was) which explained why he was always such an eager beaver.

I can only conclude I'm paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate.

[–] sati_84 8 years ago

And the diamonds! Don't forget the diamonds he wanted to find in the cargo haul of the ship.

That was a brilliant touch of the character, I'm sad it did not make it to the movie.

I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you

[–] truther 8 years ago

Think about Armstrong's and Aldrin's communications with Earth as they're bringing the Eagle lander down to the Moon's surface in humanity's very first foray onto an alien surface ever.

They're all business, reading out altitude and speed measurements even as the low fuel warnings are going off around them. Cool customers.

That's the thing about spaceflight (and other stuff like it). You need, by definition, the type of people who are going to keep their wits about them when stuff gets insane. You can't staff your Apollo missions with astronauts who just want to stare at the Earth all day.

Same thing here, for reasons the others have mostly noted already. These were interstellar truckers whose jobs involve long-haul spaceflight. It's self-selective for the kind of people who are going to treat the Space Jockey as just another item on their punchlist.

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[–] simonhicks23 8 years ago

Thats a fair point but Armstrong and Aldrin were military professionals, therefore were selected for their machine like level headed, non emotional personalities. I think if they came across the Derelict on the moon they would have shown slightly more amazement and excitement than that of the Nostromo crew.

Also note the fact that the Nostromo crew were space truckers makes me think they should have responded with more excitement and amazement than a dedicated professional exploration crew, who would be more likely to exhibit the cold, calculating, non emotional behaviour that the Apollo crew's were selected for and much like the Discovery crew in 2001 A Space Odyssey. For example if blue collar workers on an oil tanker came across a distress signal which turned out to be an alien vessel washed ashore on some remote island they wouldn't explore the alien craft without showing some emotion and excitement, they would understand the significance of their find, everything else such as the oil they are carrying is now irrelevant.

Perhaps as some have already said the Nostromo crew were perhaps feeling on edge and creeped out by the extremely alien and threatening Derelict ship. What I can't understand is why they didn't send out Ash with the search party rather than Lambert. You'd think with him being the Science officer he would be best suited to the task of exploring the derelict ship and reporting back to the company. Obviously I know he was overseeing the mission from the Nostromo before losing contact but Ripley or Lambert could have performed these duties just as well. Perhaps Ash was supposed to be on the next search party to explore the Derelict with Ripley after the others had returned but was cut short because of what happened to Kane.

[–] Cognoscente (2497) 7 months ago

Thats a fair point but Armstrong and Aldrin were military professionals, therefore were selected for their machine like level headed, non emotional personalities.

Hence their reactions upon returning to Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI_ZehPOMwI