Top 10 Unanswered Prometheus Questions: C.C.C Issue #62

Top Ten Unanswered Prometheus Questions

Prometheus was not exactly the Alien prequel that fans were expecting, and it ended up dividing audiences. Some people loved it, some people hated it, but across the board, everyone agreed it gave us a lot more questions than it did answers—so many, in fact, the studio actually used it as a selling point for the blu ray. “Questions will be answered”, it said on the cover. 

While I appreciated a lot of the mystery within the film, I also hoped many answers would come in a sequel. The sequel comes out next week in the form of Alien: Covenant…except, from the couple trailers I’ve seen, it doesn’t appear to be gearing up to answer many of the big Prometheus questions.

I don’t know if Alien: Covenant will satisfy my curiosity or not, but in the meantime, here are the top ten questions Prometheus posed and didn’t resolve, most of which I really want to have addressed, either in Covenant or another sequel down the line.  

Spoilers ahead for Prometheus, by the way. 

10. Was Vickers an android?

This question doesn’t even matter anymore, since she got flattened by the falling Engineer ship, but I still wonder about it. It’s never confirmed in the movie whether Vickers, the skeptical Weyland representative, was a synthetic product of Peter Weyland’s or a biological product. In the third act we find out Weyland is her father, but hey, that doesn’t mean Vickers is his naturally-born kid. Back at the beginning of the movie he says the android David is like the son he never had, and then it immediately cuts to a shot of Vickers, who looks pissed.  Maybe he made Vickers, too, but she’s more advanced than David? 

 

It’s a question that’s been raised and debated by many fans, but I have no doubt now that she was an android. I won’t get in to all the extensive reasoning and evidence I have to support it, but perhaps the most-crucial piece of info comes from director Ridley Scott himself, who was asked if there would be an android in the movie, way back when they were still filming in Iceland in 2011, and Mr. Scott answered with this: “There may be two.” 

Now look, Ridley Scott says a lot of stuff, so maybe he was just messing with us. But if you watch Vickers carefully, there’s plenty of things that seem to indicate she very well could have been an android, from the way she dresses to the way she interacts with David. This is actually my favourite unanswered question from Prometheus. It doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t greatly affect the story, but it’s a fun guessing game to play, and is logical if look at it from either way. Writer Damon Lindelof said she wasn’t, but I don’t believe him. I’m okay with not having a firm answer. This is one mystery I’m content to have left as a mystery.  

9. What is the Deacon? 

Unlike the whole Vickers thing, this one I’m not okay having left unexplained, and it seems like that’s the way it’ll remain forever. At the very end of Prometheus, an alien bursts from the dead Engineer’s body. It was nicknamed the “Deacon” by director Ridley Scott, and has also unofficially become known as the “Protomorph” because it very clearly is not the same type of creature (Xenomorph) as seen in the original Alien films. So what is this Deacon thing? 

What we do know is it had a much more complicated life cycle than the original xenomorph. It started as black goo being ingested by Holloway, who then impregnated Shaw with an alien fetus, which grew into a giant facehugger-type thing (called the Trilobite) and then impregnated an Engineer, which spawned the Deacon. The creature’s story was continued in the comic series Prometheus: Fire and Stone, but as for the film world, it makes one screech at the end of Prometheus before it cuts to black, and that’s it. 

When I watched Prometheus for the first time and saw this thing at the end, I thought it was the perfect way to end the movie on a disturbing, sequel-setting-up note. But now I watch it and just feel like the writers forgot they were supposed to be making an Alien movie so they added this as a last-minute tag just to remind viewers “don’t worry there are aliens out there!”. It seems we won’t be going back to LV-223 in Alien: Covenant, and there are no intentions to return there anytime soon in any other sequels, so therefore we’ll probably never see the Deacon again.

8. Why did David infect Holloway? 

What really sets the events of Prometheus in motion is when David takes a drop of the mysterious black goo from one of the urns in the temple and puts it in Dr. Holloway’s drink, thus infecting him and making all the other bad stuff happen. But why did David do this? There actually is a bit of an explanation. 

We find out later that Peter Weyland is on board the ship and still alive, and David must take orders from him, so we can infer it was Weyland who instructed David to infect Holloway, presumably to see what effects the goo would have on him. But this isn’t confirmed, and there are still additional questions left from David’s act, such as the issue of Holloway having intercourse with Shaw. Did David know they would have sex that night for sure? Did he know that Shaw would become pregnant with an alien squid baby? If so, what was the point of that? 

My theory is it’s just like in Aliens, how Burke wanted to smuggle xenomorphs back to earth by trying to get Ripley and Newt impregnated and then put them in cryo sleep. David says to Shaw they can’t remove her fetus and the best course of action is for her to go back into cryo sleep. Sounds to me like Weyland at least wanted a specimen to take home, if he couldn’t find eternal life from the Engineers, but I’m completely speculating here, and a flaw to this theory is Weyland doesn’t seem to care when Shaw removes the fetus.   

Back to David infecting Holloway, it’s not properly explained what the motives were regarding this act. Was David instructed by Weyland? Did either of them know what would happen? Was it an experiment? I’m not really sure, but again, like the question about Vickers, it doesn’t really matter anymore. 

7. Why was no one briefed on the mission?

This question is more to do with poor writing than something purposefully posed by the script. I don’t know how I never noticed this the first couple times watching the movie, but seriously, how stupid is it that some of the scientists don’t even know why they are on this expedition? Vickers says her company paid a trillion dollars for this mission. You don’t just drop that much money on an exploratory mission and then not tell your whole team what it’s even about! 

Here’s what we learn by the end: Peter Weyland wants to find the Engineers so he can possibly find the secret to living forever from them, and Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway want to meet the Engineers so they can learn why they made humankind. But some of the crew don’t even know that they’re looking for an alien race at all. 

After everyone wakes up from cryo sleep, they have a little meeting, and a digital Weyland comes out to tell them a bit about what’s going on, then instead of explaining everything, hands it off to Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway, who educate the others about their theory on the Engineers making humans and whatnot. How was this not discussed at all until this point? The geologist character doesn’t believe their theory, which is fair enough, but he just goes along with it like, yeah, whatever, I’m here to study rocks, that’s all. The two guys who help fly the ship make bets on what their mission is all about, too.

You could assume Weyland was trying to be secretive for undisclosed reasons, but to me it feels like the screenwriters wanted an easy way of explaining everything, so they just made it so the mission parameters weren’t disclosed yet, that way the characters could explain it to those who didn’t know and, by default, explain it to the audience. It felt lazy and illogical. Even Shaw and Holloway question Vickers about a secret agenda they don’t know about, which leads me to my next question…  

6. Why did Peter Weyland pretend to be dead? 

This is once again an example of terrible screenwriting. First, let me give some back story. In the original script for Prometheus (titled Alien: Engineers), Peter Weyland was barely in it; he never even left earth. But in the rewrite by Damon Lindelof (who is frequently blamed for some of the dumber aspects of the final film, and rightfully so), Weyland became a much more important character. Ridley Scott cast Guy Pearce in the role, and makeup effects were applied to make him look old (when in reality he was only in his 40’s). But in the end, young Peter Weyland was cut from the movie entirely, so what we’re left with is old Peter Weyland played by an actor less than half his actual age who is so heavily covered in makeup he looks plastic. It was a poor decision, I think, but isn’t so terrible-looking that it takes me out of the movie. 

With that explained, let’s get to the question at hand. As I mentioned before, in an early scene the crew are welcomed by a hologram of Peter Weyland, who says if they are watching this, it means he’s dead. This is completely negated when, in act three, it’s revealed that surprise! Weyland was alive and onboard the whole time!

This reveal falls completely flat for a couple reasons. First of all, no one reacts. No one even seems to care. I mean, yes, people are dying and turning into weird mutated beings and there are piles of dead Engineers and killer worm monsters, fair enough, but still, you think they might be a little more surprised to find out the head of the company who allowed them to go on this expedition in the first place was secretly there? And another issue: why did his presence have to remain secret? There’s no clear reason I can see, except Damon Lindelof wanting to have a big twist/reveal moment, and this was all he could come up with. As far as I’m concerned, the question of Weyland concealing his presence has no answer, it’s nothing more than a plot hole. 

5. What is the black goo?

 

Unlike some of the other questions on this list, there’s a pretty clear answer, as found through varying sources, but here’s a brief explanation from the Alien wikia page:

“Chemical A0-3959X.91 – 15, also known as Agent A0-3959X.91 – 15 and referred to colloquially as the ‘black goo’ or ‘black liquid’, is an extremely potent and virulent mutagenic pathogen, composed of millions of small micro-organisms, that was manufactured by the Engineers as a biological weapon, presumably for military purposes.” 

That pretty much answers my question. Except it doesn’t. 

The rules regarding the goo are not concrete and easy to follow like the life cycle of the xenomorph. The urns (A.K.A vases, A.K.A ampules (why does everything have to have so many different names?)) start to leak the goo because of a change in atmosphere and the goo gets on some worms in the soil, which turns the worms into albino snake-like creatures called Hammerpedes. But then, when scientist Millburn is hit in the face with the acid blood of the Hammerpede as well as the black goo, he mutates into a savage zombie-like monster. And then, when Dr. Holloway ingests the goo, he just mutates and gets sick. And poor Dr. Shaw gets impregnated with the Trilobite from him. 

So basically the one rule is there are no rules? 

Fans have analyzed this movie to death, so there are some possible explanations for how it works, exactly, but the whole point of my question really is, if this black goo was some kind of mutagen, then why were the Engineers using it as a weapon? When the black goo “got out” and “turned on them”, as Captain Janeck says, what happened, exactly? Did the black goo kill them? Did they mutate from it? The black goo is perhaps the best example of the way Prometheus created more questions than answers. 

4. What is all the stuff in the temple?

This is a multi-part question that all has to do with the room that became the central focus of the movie’s marketing campaign: a dark chamber with the giant metallic head of a humanoid in the center. Two of the characters in the movie ask what the deal is with the giant head. It can be inferred to function as some kind of statue meant for worshipping, but whose head it is (a particular Engineer, another deity, or a generic representation of their race) and its exact purpose isn’t explained. 

On the floor around the head are many of the ampules, which I already covered, but why are there ampules both in this seemingly ceremonial chamber as well as the cargo hold of the ship, located in a different part of the temple? In addition to the strange giant head, there are murals on the wall, which provoke more queries. In one mural is what looks like the xenomorph. This is the only glimpse we get of an actual xenomorph in the whole movie. Or is it a xenomorph? Some fans have speculated the creature on the wall looks more like the Deacon that appears at the end rather than a traditional xenomorph, which is definitely in the realm of possibility. But does that mean the Deacon has existed in the past, before the whole infecting Holloway and impregnating Shaw fiasco? Why is there an Alien on the wall? Do they worship it? Revile it? How long ago did they make it? 

In front of the mural is a green crystal. What does it do? What purpose does it serve? Dr. Holloway makes a point of going over to it, inspecting it, and then he says “This is just another tomb.” 

I’m sorry, what? You got that from looking at an Alien painting and a green rock? 

Another briefly shown mural on the ceiling depicts an Engineer looking down and holding what could be an Alien or another Engineer or something else entirely. And then, just to mess with us, the ceiling mural changes when David touches the black goo. Why did this happen? This one room is nothing but a giant riddle, and the worst part? I bet Alien: Covenant will not have any answers about anything in it.   

3. What happened in the opening scene?

In the opening scene, an Engineer approaches a waterfall with a ceremonial cup that has some black goo in it, he drinks the goo as a U.F.O hovering overhead takes off, then the Engineer’s body breaks down on a molecular level and he falls into the water, where his DNA restructures. 

What the hell? 

There’s no clear explanation given for what exactly is happening here, but let me try to offer some interpretation. For a long time I just assumed this planet was earth and this was the cockamamie explanation for how humans evolved, but there’s nothing to actually indicate that this is earth. It could be any planet at any point in time. But that still doesn’t really help explain why human DNA is the same as Engineer DNA (among many other things). It seems like this act of drinking the black goo in the cup is a ceremonial thing, but it’s not really clear whether the Engineer knew he was going to melt down from drinking it and thus was sacrificing himself (the more common notion) or if he was perhaps betrayed somehow and this was an accident. What the hovering U.F.O has to do with anything, I don’t know. 

I have a feeling we might get some vague information from Alien: Covenant that could be used to fill in the blanks on what’s happening here, but I doubt we’ll ever get a proper explanation. It was a very mysterious and intriguing way to start Prometheus, but to never come back around to it with any kind of explanation was rather frustrating. The biggest questions about this scene, for me, are to do with what’s in the cup and who is flying the U.F.O. Is the stuff in the cup a variation on the same black goo found on LV-223? Is the U.F.O. an earlier model of the ship we see the Engineer’s flying later? Or is it another species entirely? 

Maybe an even better question is, does any of it matter? 

2. What was the Engineers’ overall plan? 

This is the question Dr. Shaw and the severed head of David are left with at the end of the film. “First they created us,” Shaw says, “then they tried to kill us. I want to know why.” 

Yeah, so do I, Shaw. So do I.

Shaw and David know that 2000 years ago the Engineers on LV-223 planned to exterminate earth using the black goo, and somehow, the goo got out of control. Most of them all died, someway, but a few locked themselves in one of their ships and went into cryo sleep (presumably waiting for the goo to go away?), and then all the events of Prometheus played out. What Shaw and David don’t know is why the Engineers wanted to destroy earth after they apparently created us in their own image, so Shaw’s plan is to find where the Engineer’s come from and get some information.

This journey for answers is what I presumed the Prometheus sequel would show us, and I think that was going to be the plan originally, but alas, it seems Alien: Covenant is telling a very different story. So when will we get the Engineers’ full plan disclosed to us? Probably not in Covenant. This leads me to the biggest question still left at the end of Prometheus…  

1. Where did the Alien come from?

Oh, right. The whole point of the movie Prometheus existing, or so I thought, was to answer this question. And yet, it didn’t even come close. 

So…what happened, Ridley Scott? You were supposed to tell us the origins of the creature from Alien in a single movie, and now it has expanded to how many movies? 

Actual article headline: “Ridley Scott has six more Alien sequels in mind”

Now here's an updated headline: "Ridley Scott teases two Alien: Covenant sequels, not four"

So I guess he doesn't know, either? I’m highly skeptical all of these movies will be made. 

We had Prometheus, which I enjoyed as a stand-alone sci-fi adventure, but it was a far cry from the simplicity and pure horror of the original Alien, and now instead of following up Prometheus with a similarly-styled film, the sequel is going back to more of an original Alien feel, which I think is great. But, now it’s an Alien movie again, instead of an Engineer movie. So clearly we aren’t getting a firm answer on where the Alien came from, because it seems like it’ll already exist at the start of Covenant and, as far as I can tell, it already existed at the start of Prometheus, too. Therefore we have to wait until the next movie to find out where it came from? Or will it be the next movie? By then I’m not sure I’ll even care anymore. 

What I liked the most about Prometheus was how much mystery it maintained while also exploring something I had barely given any thought to: who that guy in the chair was in the original Alien. I loved learning about who the Engineers were and a bit of what they were doing with the black goo and mutation and creation of life and whatnot, but now in Covenant, it doesn’t seem like we’ll get much more of that. Obviously the black goo has something to do with where the xenomorph came from, but what, exactly? Instead of further exploring it, the sequel now just seems like a distraction from the main question. 

Let me make it clear that yes, I am very excited for Alien: Covenant. I just wish Ridley Scott was following up more closely on what he established in Prometheus. He himself even said he didn’t think the xenomorph was scary anymore and that’s why Prometheus became the movie that it did, but now I see a sequel with Alien right in the title and the xenomorph in all the trailers and I wonder, does he even know what story he’s trying to tell anymore? At what point will we see the Engineer ship full of xenomorph eggs crash-land on LV-426, or will we see it at all? Hopefully, by the time this overindulgent and overelaborate story of prequels is over, we finally have an answer to where the Alien originated, otherwise, what was the point of any of this? 

Alien (1979) vs. Aliens (1986): Movie vs. Movie Issue #7

Alien (1979) vs. Aliens (1986): 

which one is better?

Alien and Aliens are two of the greatest films ever to feature extraterrestrial creatures (as well as two of my favourite films of all-time). Though Aliens is a direct sequel, it was helmed by someone completely uninvolved with the original (James Cameron, who wrote and directed), and as a result, ended up being quite different from the first film. In fact, Aliens is more of sci-fi-action-thriller, as opposed to Alien, which is both sci-fi and horror. But, despite being fairly different from the original, Aliens is also considered one of the best sequel films of all-time. 

Fans of the series and general movie-goers agree, Alien is a classic film, and Aliens is the only other entry in the franchise to come close to being as good or better than it. But is it better? Which film is the best?

I’ve gone back and forth on this question many times over the years, but now it’s time to fully analyze both movies and determine which one is superior, the sequel or the original. Step aside, Predator, it’s time for Alien vs. Aliens!

Plot: 

For a long time, I always thought of Aliens as having a totally different sort of story than Alien, but really, if you break down some of the big plot points, the stories for both movies are quite similar.

Alien is a straight-forward story about seven crew members aboard the commercial spacecraft Nostromo, who are instructed by the company they work for to investigate an S.O.S on a desolate planetoid (later named LV-426 or Acheron). There, they find a strange derelict ship filled with alien eggs, one of which hatches a facehugger that attaches itself to crew-member Kane. The android science officer, Ash (they don’t know he’s an android yet, spoilers!), lets them back on board, and Kane spawns a chestburster, which quickly grows into a full-sized alien (the species has become known as the xenomorph, thanks to a quick line of dialogue from Aliens) and hides in the ship. 

The crew try to hunt it down and kill it, but they’re no match for the superior creature. It comes down to just Flight Officer Ripley, who self-destructs the ship in an effort to terminate the xenomorph and gets away on the shuttle (along with Jones, the cat that lives onboard), but the creature stows away on the shuttle with her. She manages to get rid of it using the airlock and a spear gun (for what reason is a spear gun on board? Don’t question it), then goes into hyper sleep. That’s basically the entire movie boiled down to 203 words. 

Aliens is quite a bit more complex. I won’t even try to give a full summary, but essentially it’s about Ripley joining a team of marines on a mission to investigate why the company (now called Weyland Yutani) lost contact with a human colony that had been established on LV-426 during the intervening years between the Nostromo’s investigation of the planetoid and Ripley’s rescue from the shuttle 57 years later. What the marines find is not just one xenomorph, but a whole hive of them. The team becomes trapped in the colony and have to escape, and it comes down to just Ripley once again, only this time instead of having to rescue a cat and reach a shuttle before a ship explodes, she has to rescue Newt, the only survivor from the original colony population, and reach the drop ship (piloted by the android Bishop, who isn’t evil like the first movie’s android) before the reactor in the colony explodes. And instead of fighting a single Alien like in the first movie, she fights a Queen Alien in a power loader suit, to the same results as before. 

What makes Aliens seem so different from Alien is not so much the story content but more to do with the differences in scale and character dynamics. Aliens is Alien but on steroids. More aliens! More people! More action! And that last one is the other major difference, the action element. 

This is why it makes it hard to compare the two movies. Alien isn’t an action movie, so it can’t be faulted for having less-impressive action compared to the sequel. In contrast, can’t Aliens therefore not be faulted for being less scary than Alien? This is where it gets tricky, because no, Aliens is not as scary as Alien overall, despite having the same horrific creature in greater numbers.  

Let me break down a key scene to show how Aliens is absolutely on par or better than Alien (in terms of being scary and exciting), purely on a scene-to-scene basis. A scene that stands out to me as being exceptionally terrifying is when Newt and Ripley are trapped in the room with two facehuggers, and Ripley has to figure out a way to get help before the facehuggers implant them with chestbursters. We, as audience members, perfectly understand the stakes here, the sense of urgency and fright. Then, to add to the tension, the room is full of shadows and random clutter, so the facehuggers have lots of places to hide. And then, to top it all off, Ripley sets off the sprinklers, so there’s falling water and a red emergency light, which makes the scene look about as scary as possible. 

In the first movie, the facehugger just jumped straight into Kane’s helmet, then held on to him for a while, then dropped off. It was creepy looking and disgusting, but that was it. This time, the facehuggers are a real known threat, and they end up being way scarier for a longer time than the single one ever was in the first movie. But let’s consider the scene where Kane is attacked by the facehugger more carefully. The first time we see it, we don’t know what’s going to happen when that egg opens up, and the whole scene plays out very slowly, we’re peeking into the egg along with Kane…then BAM. It leaps out so fast we don’t even see it clearly and it makes for one of the best jump scares of all-time. But is this scene scarier than the one from Aliens? It could be argued either way. What’s better about the facehugger scene in Alien is how simple it is, and that’s the key factor here: simplicity.      

The idea of being trapped on a ship with no weapons and knowing just one horrific creature is trapped there with you is really scary. I get where James Cameron’s mindset was with the sequel. Okay, one was scary, imagine if there were even more, and the humans did have guns this time, but it still didn’t help! It’s a great concept, and it worked extremely well. But it didn’t make for a scarier or even equally scary concept to the first movie. It was exciting, yes, and still scary, of course, but speaking of the overall plot, no, it wasn’t as ground-breaking or terrifying.

It’s a tough call, especially because I absolutely love the plots of both movies, but there’s just something so satisfyingly simple about the plot of Alien, that I have to slightly favour it. James Cameron had a tough task in trying to live up to the sheer genius of the first movie, and he did a great job. But bigger isn’t always better, in terms of story. 

One point to Alien.  

Characters:

This is where I think Aliens has a leg up on Alien. Both movies have great characters, but let’s break down the casts a bit, starting with Alien.

One of the greatest strengths of Alien is depicting a working-class group of individuals who are meant to be just like everyday people. These aren’t super-intelligent highly-trained astronauts on a daring space mission, they’re just truck drivers in space, a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot when talking about the characters in Alien, but it’s true. They just work for the company and want to get paid, that’s all. 

When everyone first wakes up at the start of the movie and sits around for breakfast, the feeling that these people are co-workers instantly comes across, largely thanks to Ridley Scott allowing the actors to improvise their dialogue. They talk over one another and joke and comment on each other and it all feels real. Brett and Parker talking about the bonus situation, Dallas explaining why they woke up early, and Ripley and Kane asking questions about their new side-mission sets up the movie really skilfully, and from there, we see these folks in their working environment, before things take a turn for the worst and witness them switch from work-mode to survival-mode.

In Aliens, the same sort of switch happens, but there are a few key differences in terms of characterization. The first and biggest one is the advantage of Ripley’s story already having been told. If you saw Alien, then you already know what Ripley has gone through when she’s introduce at the beginning of Aliens, so there is built-in sympathy for her. But even if you haven’t seen Alien, she’s still introduced in a way that new viewers can feel sympathy for her, because as she explains to the board members what happened on the Nostromo and they quickly disbelieve her, Sigourney Weaver’s acting is so strong she makes you buy that this really did happen and they should believe her, so when they don’t, you feel bad for her. 

After Ripley’s reintroduction, we meet the marines along for the journey with her, and get strong impressions of them right away. In Alien there were only seven people, and one of them turned out to be a robot. In Aliens, there’s a robot (but that’s no secret this time), plus Ripley, plus sleazy company worker Burke, plus Lieutenant Gorman, plus the whole squad of marines, and then they find Newt…my point being there are way more characters this time, which means making them interesting and worth caring about it a much greater task. And yet, James Cameron did it. 

In Alien, we don’t get a lot of backstory about any of the characters. It’s more about the immediate threat and them trying to survive, but what’s so brilliant about Aliens is it brings back that immediacy and need for survival while also infusing it with excellent characterization and backstory. We find out Ripley had a daughter, Newt is the only survivor of the colony invasion, the marines have hunted other extraterrestrials before, the lieutenant is inexperienced, private Hudson acts like a badass until shit hits the fan, and so on and so forth. 

What it comes down to, for me, is Aliens has a greater number of memorable characters (Hudson, Hicks, Newt, Bishop, Ripley, Gorman, Vasquez, Burke) compared to Alien. Though both movies have great characters, it’s the wider range offered in Aliens that appeals more to me. 

One point to Aliens.   

Setting:

Even though Alien seems much smaller in scale than Aliens (which it is), both movies actually take place in about the same number of locations. Alien is mainly set on the planetoid/derelict ship and the Nostromo, and Aliens takes place mainly within the colony, but also has Ripley and the marines on the ship Sulaco, as well as the planet’s surface, and the colony is a little more varied than the Nostromo.      

    

Though Aliens has more variety in locations, I don’t find the settings as memorable, overall. The one that really sticks out is the Alien hive, with its absolutely massive scale and intricate details. Everything is wet and shadowy and where one wall ends and a xenomorph begins is impossible to tell. But, the colony and processing station all kind of blends together into an industrial backdrop, which might have been an attempt to replicate the same feeling the setting of Alien evokes, but it didn’t quite work as well as it did in the first film.

 

The two main settings in Alien are extremely distinct. Beginning with the derelict, it’s perhaps the most alien environment in any movie, and I mean alien in the sense that it truly looks otherworldly. H.R. Giger’s designs are stunning, and that vast room with all the eggs, like a gigantic metallic tunnel, is terrifying. As for the Nostromo, the design is so detailed, I feel like I notice a new point of interest every time I watch the movie. Yes, it often looks all the same throughout like the main setting in Aliens, but that works better to evoke the feeling of being completely trapped and claustrophobic, more so than in Aliens. Both movies have great settings, but Alien has the more memorable, distinct, and effective look. 

One point to Alien.

Creatures and Effects:

This is another tough category, because once again it’s not really a fair comparison. In Alien, there are many eggs, but only one opens up, then there’s one facehugger, one chestburster, and one adult xenomorph. In Aliens (if going by the special edition) there are several facehuggers, two chestbursters (one real, one in Ripley’s dream), dozens of xenomorph drones, and the queen. For quantity, Aliens obviously wins, but which movie has the more convincing creatures, and what about the other visual effects?

Alien had to live up to the high special-effects standards set by Star Wars two years prior to its release, and it certainly did. The shots of the Nostromo moving through space still look convincing to this day. By comparison, the shots of the Sulaco in Aliens look just as good (though there are fewer shots of it compared to the number of shots of the Nostromo) but for whatever reason, the effects for the dropships entering the planet’s atmosphere and landing on the surface have no aged well in either movie, though I would say it looks slightly better in Alien. 

Now for the creature comparisons. The eggs in Aliens look better than the eggs from Alien. In Alien, the one egg’s “petals” open extremely robotically, which I’m guessing was sort of the point, but it looks very stiff, and in Aliens, the eggs open more naturally, plus there are many of them and they all are to the same standard of quality. 

The facehugger in Alien looks pretty damn real. It’s wet, scaly, and breathing, and I think it still holds up today. In Aliens, when the facehugger is shown emerging from an egg in front of Newt in the hive, it’s slow and inferior to its reveal in Alien. But when the facehugger in Alien leapt out of the egg, it was scary because of the way it was rapidly edited and shot. The facehugger itself does very little except sit on Kane’s face and tighten its tail. In Aliens, the facehuggers have much greater movement and, like Stan Winston said in an interview, “it’s a character now.” But I can’t really say one facehugger looked and performed better than the other in this case, because the facehuggers aptly performed their roles in both movies and were equally convincing. 

The chestburster scene was, effects-wise, more advanced in Aliens compared to Alien. There was an equal amount of blood gushing in both, but it was in a darker setting in Aliens, so it wasn’t quite as easy to see, and it was a more violent eruption from the body, like a fist punching its way out. The bursting also happens quicker. But Alien still has the best chestburster scene of all, and not just because it was the first. The scene is perfectly edited (as evidenced by an alternate re-edited version which doesn’t feel as convincing), it occurs in full-light so you see it in all its horrific glory, and I think it still looks pretty believable today. Yeah, it’s kind of funny when the chestburster looks around and screeches then scurries over the table on a very obvious track, but it’s still a little better than the chestbursting scene in Aliens. 

As for the adult xenomorph, this is a big point of contention for fans. Some prefer Stan Winston’s design, with the ribbed cranium and empty eye sockets over H.R. Giger’s smooth dome, but others prefer Giger’s look. Instead of comparing looks, I’ll compare performance. If I’m being honest, half of the shots of the xenomorph in Alien look goofy to me. The ones that stand out badly: when it leaps out at Dallas, when it moves in front of the camera as it’s about to attack Lambert, when it whips around to knock over Parker, and when it tumbles around outside the escape shuttle. 

There are fewer goofy shots in Aliens, though still a few. In general, the xenos in Aliens perform more confidently, and, like the facehuggers, are capable of greater movement. Unlike the facehugger comparison, though, the xenomorph in Alien should have been able to perform its role better, but Ridley Scott chose to cut around it for a reason: it looked like a guy in a suit. James Cameron showed his creatures more because they were simply more convincing.

Beyond just the xenomorph in Alien, there’s the Space Jockey, which doesn’t do anything, but looks incredible and is forever tied to the Alien legacy thanks to novels and comic books and the movie Prometheus. However, it’s the Queen Alien that really makes Aliens rise above Alien in the creature and effects category. She alone, on a technical level, far surpasses anything from the first Alien. Again, it’s an unfair comparison, especially because the second film was a much bigger movie than the first and movie-making technology had progressed nearly a decade since it was made, but overall, Aliens has the greater number of effects that hold up today. 

Point to Aliens.

Tone/Genre: 

Some film buffs who are more critical of Aliens see its roots as an action movie rather than a horror movie as an argument for why it isn’t as good as the first movie and isn’t as scary, but to me, it’s a flawed argument. These movies master two different hybrid genres: Alien is a great sci-fi-horror movie, and Aliens is a great sci-fi-action movie. Sure, there are other genre elements thrown in to both, but when you boil them down, that’s what they are, so for that, I can’t say one is better than the other in this way. Just because Alien was distinctly sci-fi-horror didn’t mean Aliens had to be, as well. They both accomplish many of the same things, but Aliens also accomplishes the action aspect well, too, despite not accomplishing the horror aspect as well as Alien. 

One point to each.

Music:

Because Aliens has a different tone and pace than Alien, the music of course sounds quite different. The score for Alien by Jerry Goldsmith is haunting and slow, especially in its opening chords as the title slowly fades in over shots of space. It doesn’t have as many big moments as James Horner’s score for Aliens, but the Aliens soundtrack underscores the action parts with its big moments, using sounds like the marching drums as they are getting ready to leave the Sulaco and land on LV-426, or the loud percussion when the creatures attack them in the hive. In contrast, Horner’s score has less-effective haunting/slow pieces of music compared to Goldsmith’s. 

Both scores have become iconic, but in different ways. Parts of the Alien score were recycled in Alien Resurrection and Prometheus, while the only other movie to re-use distinct parts of the Aliens score was AVP: Requiem, though the signature part of the score has been used in many movie trailers. I love both scores, and think they are perfect for their respective films, but in the end, I have to side with the score that elevates the visuals more effectively, and that would be Jerry Goldsmith’s. Without the aid of his music, the movie wouldn’t have had quite as many unnerving scenes. Scenes like the power loader fight and the marines initially investigating the colony are still great without music. 

Point to Alien.   

Legacy:

I don’t award points in this section, but I almost wonder if I should deduct a point from both movies, simply for spawning an inconsistent, often confusing, and usually sub-par franchise. Ridley Scott wanted to end Alien with the creature killing Ripley, then imitating her voice into the ship’s recorder, which would’ve either ended the franchise right then and there, or set up a drastically different storyline. But, without Alien as we know it, we wouldn’t have had Aliens, which did a pretty neat job of exterminating the xenomorphs at the end and sending our characters off on a happy trip through space, leaving it open for more potential adventures, but not so wide-open that people would be groping for part three.

And yet, everyone was groping for part three because Aliens was so awesome. Then Alien 3 did come along, and it took a seriously dark path that officially ended the franchise by killing the last xenomorph and Ripley herself. But no, Alien Resurrection brought it all back for one more far-flung adventure. Okay, that had to be the end. Nope, the first Alien prequel came in the form of the crossover Alien vs. Predator, which was followed up by Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Then Ridley Scott took the reigns of the franchise back in his own hands and did another prequel (which may or may not make the AVP movies canon), but this time, he explored the origins of the space jockey, with the stand-alone sci-fi adventure Prometheus. Now, we get a sequel to that prequel, Alien: Covenant, which finally reunites Ridley Scott with the creature he originally brought to the big screen all those years ago. Hopefully it’s the best movie in the franchise to have Alien in the title since Aliens.

No points awarded.

Conclusion:

This was a tough one. Normally with these “movie vs. movie” articles, I come to a strong conclusion, but not this time. I’m as big of a fan of Alien as I am of Aliens. Aliens used to be my clear favourite of the two when I was younger, then it was Alien for a while, now I can’t pick which one is my favourite. They both are. But if I’m going to pick one as being the better movie, I have to go back to the scoreboard. Alien scored one point more than Aliens, and here’s why.

When you break down both movies, the answer to why Alien comes out on top is clear, and it might sound like a cop-out-answer, but it’s just a fact: Alien came first. Alien launched the entire franchise—the iconic female heroine Ripley, the entire mythology of the xenomorph creature, the expansive futuristic world—and Aliens, while it did build on that mythology in creative and fantastic ways (the colonial marines, the terraforming, the Alien Queen), it didn’t produce as much original and iconic content as Alien.  

I completely understand both sides of the argument. In many ways, Aliens is better than Alien, and vice versa, and like I said, I’m not picking a favourite here, I love both. But I’m also not saying Alien is objectively better than Aliens, necessarily. What I will say: Alien is a more important film than Aliens, simply because without one, you couldn’t have possibly had the other. 

Alien wins. 

Thanks for reading, and be sure to stay tuned for my upcoming Alien: Covenant review!