Alien - how did this do so well?

MakeEmLaugh

I watched Alien again recently. It is astonishing that this film was the sixth highest grossing film of its year in 1979 (to put that in context, the sixth highest grossing film of 2014 was X Men: Days of Future Past). By the standards of modern cinema – particularly big budget sci-fi or fantasy cinema – Alien is an extraordinarily slow film.

It takes so much time to introduce so much as a plot, and there is zero exposition in the film. Today's films (I went to see Ant-Man recently, for example) are wall-to-wall exposition, but in Alien, the characters, who are trained pilots of a spaceship, speak as we would expect them to speak. Much of their dialogue is unintelligible. We grasp in bits and pieces of what is going on – they are awoken from their hibernation halfway through a trip back to earth. A neighbouring planet has sent out a distress signal. They learn, upon arriving on the planet, that it was not an SOS signal, but a warning signal.

If you were raised on cinema made 1985 onwards, which spoon-feeds its audience, then Alien might be a genuinely hard film to follow. What is great about the film is how – like Jaws – it balances being a monster movie with a character study. The characters of Lambert, Parker, Dallas, Ripley et al are all sketched in just enough to give the sense of their being a backstory and history and tension between them.

Parker and Brett's arguments with the more senior levels of staff over bonuses and their contracts could have come from another, more straightforward dramatic film, like Paul Schrader's Blue Collar (which also starred Yaphet Kotto). The scene in which Ripley argues with Ash over his decision to allow Kane onto the ship without proper 24 hour quarantine is wonderfully written and acted.

The film has held up so well.

Youngblood.III

Great build up of tension imo...in my top 5 of all films I've seen.

Milly33

Oh the shame, the shame do not say such things.. Now you can say he last one that was fairly shocking but Alien how very dare you!! tut tut

Kermit.de.frog

Also shows you don't need CGI shoved in your face every 5 minutes to have not just a good horror movie but just a good movie.

MakeEmLaugh

Milly33 wrote: »

Oh the shame, the shame do not say such things.. Now you can say he last one that was fairly shocking but Alien how very dare you!! tut tut

I didn't say it was bad, just that it was extraordinarily slow by modern standards, which it is. I wish audiences today had the attention span needed to watch a film like Alien

strelok

MakeEmLaugh wrote: »

I didn't say it was bad, just that it was extraordinarily slow by modern standards, which it is. I wish audiences today had the attention span needed to watch a film like Alien

i dont think they actually read your post, they just saw the title

Milly33

Sorry yes strelok is correct i was doing two things at once, and didn't really read it all properly it was just the shock of someone thinking Alien was bad sent my mind into overdrive haha.. my apoligies OP... Todays films most defiantly would not stand up against it.. Shame they don't release more beauts like this...

Second Toughest in_the Freshers

/thread

Mint Sauce

Alien is one of my all time favourite movies, if not my favourite. Yes its slow, theres only a few characters in it, you rarely see the Alien, but thatswhat makes it so good, because even after upteen viewings you are in suspence the whole time.

Ardent

Mint Sauce wrote: »

Alien is one of my all time favourite movies, if not my favourite. Yes its slow, theres only a few characters in it, you rarely see the Alien, but thatswhat makes it so good, because even after upteen viewings you are in suspence the whole time.

Very much why Jaws still holds up wonderfully today.

DublinWriter

The imperative for Holywood for the past five years has been to get into the very lucrative Asian marketplace with global releases.

This effectively means less dialogue for non-English speaking markets and more explosions.

Harry Palmr

DublinWriter wrote: »

The imperative for Holywood for the past five years has been to get into the very lucrative Asian marketplace with global releases.

This effectively means less dialogue for non-English speaking markets and more explosions.

The grauniad ran an article on how trailers are tweaked to suit various markets sensibilities. I noted BTL that the ones for Russia and China must consist of little more than explosions and fists fights!

As for Alien its a film of its time, I've been watching a lot of flicks made in the 60s and 70s recently and the difference in content, tone and pacing must be jarring if you have been raised on modern movie values.

Hrududu

I only saw Alien for the first time a few years ago and couldn't believe how different it was to films out today. I loved all that talking over each other and speaking to each other like actual people do. There were several scenes where characters were having entire conversations about things that were nothing to do with the plot. Which I loved. You get so used to films where people wait to deliver their lines of dialogue, and every line is supposed to advance the plot that it was a real breath of fresh air to see something like that. And for me, that bit of realism about how they behaved with each other made the tension even better when everything kicked off.

Mizu_Ger

The opening scene of the ship waking up is beautifully shot, edited and scored. As the OP says, there's no need for long exposition. It's allowed to unfold at it's own pace and gives the opening a great sense of wonder.

Sad Professor

Interestingly the film received a lot of bad reviews at the time and was heavily criticised for its “cardboard” and “lifeless" characters.

https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/bad-alien-reviews/

ancapailldorcha

Exposition is over-rated IMO. I'm reading a fantasy series at the moment where there is barely any and it's fantastic to be treated like an adult rather than a child. I still remember Tony Stark saying about 3-4 times at the end of Iron Man 2 that he could only use the lasers once along with a notification on his HUD and thinking "Is this really necessary?"

Harry Palmr

Sad Professor wrote: »

Interestingly the film received a lot of bad reviews at the time and was heavily criticised for its “cardboard” and “lifeless" characters.

https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/bad-alien-reviews/

Getting stick from Pauline Kael should be a badge of honour! Its not that she was always wrong but boy she had very narrow parameters about what constituted quality. The critics don't really attack the quality of the production only its tone and content. It was considered pretty "ikky" at the time and obviously its massively derivative. No one would say otherwise.

The other thing is that sometimes films get better appreciated over time.

e_e

Sad Professor wrote: »

Interestingly the film received a lot of bad reviews at the time and was heavily criticised for its “cardboard” and “lifeless" characters.

https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/bad-alien-reviews/

We're seeing similar this year with the utterly superb Blackhat getting panned.

The thing that annoys me with modern critics and audiences is that we're still stuck on this idiotic notion that the plot is the thing that matters and that everything else is more or less secondary. When Alien, Blade Runner and 100+ years of great cinema has shown us that if anything the opposite is the case.

Mickeroo

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Exposition is over-rated IMO. I'm reading a fantasy series at the moment where there is barely any and it's fantastic to be treated like an adult rather than a child. I still remember Tony Stark saying about 3-4 times at the end of Iron Man 2 that he could only use the lasers once along with a notification on his HUD and thinking "Is this really necessary?"

Malazan?

I agree, I watched Ant-man yesterday and even though I enjoyed it a lot there was a part in the finale where he exclaims out loud what he needs to do as if the audience didn't pick up on it when it was blatantly foreshadowed Chekov's gun style earlier in the movie, there's no need for that level of spoon feeding. They characters may as well have been saying "Hey remember that really specific situation that was described earlier in the movie, well this is just like that!".

ancapailldorcha

Mickeroo wrote: »

Malazan?

Yes!!

It could do with a bit more though.

Mickeroo

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Yes!!

It could do with a bit more though.

I haven't started it yet but my GF is 4 books in and says it's very good, but yeah I keep hearing there's not much in the way of explaining what's going on!

ancapailldorcha

Mickeroo wrote: »

I haven't started it yet but my GF is 4 books in and says it's very good, but yeah I keep hearing there's not much in the way of explaining what's going on!

There isn't but Erikson is a man who rewards perseverance if nothing else. There's a great thread over in Sci-Fi & Fantasy about it.

DavidRamsay99

Alien is basically a remake of 2001 A Space Odyssey with the malevolent HAL replaced by the alien creature and a diabolic android.
James Horner actually used Khachaturian's Gayane Adagio as the basis of his soundtrack for the sequel. Kubrick used the same music for the introductory scene to the Jupiter mission.

johnny_ultimate

While the form and pacing of Alien remain unique and captivating, I think its success is easy to understand. In an era that saw many of the most defiantly challenging mainstream films ever produced, Alien was surely an easier sell than many of its contemporaries. It is after all a monster film, a sci-fi film and a horror film - reliably and historically three of the most commercially viable genres. Its plot is so simple and reliant on some of the most primal human instincts (fear, survival), that it's incredibly easy to understand and be drawn into despite the minimal exposition and overlapping dialogue. Even looking at the top grossing films of 1979, there are a number of films that could be considered much more unlikely hits. It was also born a little before the birth of the modern blockbuster - those restrictively expensive things that made studios more risk averse.

That's not to say there aren't radical aspects about Alien. It is an incredibly methodical piece of work, its remarkable pacing deeply embedded into everything from the camera movements to the soundtrack. It boldly explores the primal emotions, drama and symbolism of its concepts with utter conviction. And yes it should in many ways be considered a stark and delightful antithesis to many modern blockbuster trends (although that's also a narrow analysis that fails to reflect the fact that, when you take the wider cinematic landscape into account, there are countless radical and formally challenging works being made that are far, far less accessible than Alien). But even with its uniquely considered pacing, vividly symbolic design, and Scott's impeccable directorial handiwork, many of the film's pleasures are about as widely-appealing as you could get. That the artistry and accessibility are not mutually exclusive is, naturally, a lesson one would like more modern studios to learn.

Sad Professor

Good exposition never sounds like exposition. And if audience is confused by it — good, as they are more likely to assume it makes sense and not start scrutinising it for holes. This is the problem with a lot of modern films: They want the audience to understand the plot. When you look at classic films it’s amazing how many of them have totally impenetrable plots even after multiple viewings. You haven’t a clue what the characters are talking about or why they are doing things half the time and you don’t really care either.

e_e

"I'd rather be confused for 90 minutes than bored for 5 seconds." Paraphrasing but I heard that quote years ago and it stuck with me regards storytelling in movies.

seamus

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

While the form and pacing of Alien remain unique and captivating, I think its success is easy to understand. In an era that saw many of the most defiantly challenging mainstream films ever produced, Alien was surely an easier sell than many of its contemporaries. It is after all a monster film, a sci-fi film and a horror film - reliably and historically three of the most commercially viable genres. Its plot is so simple and reliant on some of the most primal human instincts (fear, survival), that it's incredibly easy to understand and be drawn into despite the minimal exposition and overlapping dialogue.

To a certain extent the era has to be considered too.

The late 70's came the second generation of the modern Horror movie. Hitchcock broke the ground on the modern horror, which brought bigger budgets and A-listed screenwriters/authors into the genre in the 1970s. This lead onto classic horror films like The Exorcist, The Omen, The Shining.
The late 70's/early 80s was undoubtedly one of the golden ages of horror.

There was also a sci-fi revolution properly beginning, with the Planet of the Apes series, Star Wars, Logan's Run, Close Encounters. Improvements in SFX meant that sci-fi was becoming more than just the funny costumes and blinking lights of the original Star Trek, and instead became real, believable worlds and technology.

Alien just landed perfectly in this little nexus, building a great movie encompassing two genres at the top of their popularity, and arguably a crossover that had never been done before in any serious way.

Skerries

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

There isn't but Erikson is a man who rewards perseverance if nothing else. There's a great thread over in Sci-Fi & Fantasy about it.

read the first and every other page they were introducing a new character and my mate said the second book is similar

ancapailldorcha

Skerries wrote: »

read the first and every other page they were introducing a new character and my mate said the second book is similar

That's an exaggeration.

Earthhorse

The industry has totally changed since 1979, it really is as simple as that. The studios invest in their tentpole films which draw the big crowds and there's just less room for other movies to succeed.

That doesn't mean good movies aren't still being made or noticed. To take two examples from the horror genre, I've heard good things about It Follows and Babadook. In sci fi, Interstaller, which I have seen and rate quite highly was the 15th highest grossing film of 2014. And it doesn't exactly go at a mile a minute.

I wasn't around at the time so can't say why Alien might have been successful. Was it good marketing, word of mouth, good reviews? I don't know but it was a very different market back then.

astrofool

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Exposition is over-rated IMO. I'm reading a fantasy series at the moment where there is barely any and it's fantastic to be treated like an adult rather than a child. I still remember Tony Stark saying about 3-4 times at the end of Iron Man 2 that he could only use the lasers once along with a notification on his HUD and thinking "Is this really necessary?"

Had they not done that the internet would have exploded with people asking why he didn't laser everything, along with about 20 explanations of the HUD warning and the energy cell being popped away. It does dumb down films, but the people who watch them and complain about it make it this way.

The mass destruction at the end of MOS has had hundred of hack writers wax lyrical about how awful it was, despite it being fairly obvious in the movie that Zod would have done the same to the entire world without a second thought. I'd hope that the Snyder's plan to address it in the sequel via Batman was planned rather than forced upon them by the twitteratti.

ancapailldorcha

astrofool wrote: »

Had they not done that the internet would have exploded with people asking why he didn't laser everything, along with about 20 explanations of the HUD warning and the energy cell being popped away. It does dumb down films, but the people who watch them and complain about it make it this way.

They could have been more subtle about it like having Tony only mention it once.

Sad Professor

I dunno, explain too much people complain it’s spoon-feeding; explain too little they complain they don’t know what’s going on. For example, most people hadn’t a clue what was going on in Inception after their first viewing, not without aid of diagrams anyway, and that film certainly didn’t lack exposition. In fact, 10 viewings later, everyone complains that it has too much exposition, but nobody thought that after the first viewing.

Convoluted plots requires heavy exposition. You can’t just ignore it and hope the audience will get it — because they won’t.