FAQ

Early in this film, Lambert states that the Nostromo is "just short of Zeta 2 Reticuli", which is a real binary star 39 light years from Earth. Whether that meant the planetoid was in that star system or in a (relatively) neighbouring system, is not divulged. The planetoid itself does not have a name, and actually appears to be a moon rather than a planetoid. In the sequel, Aliens, the planetoid is designated as LV-426, and is referred to in other media (such as the novelization of Aliens) as "Acheron".

It's the future. Some sort of artifical gravity has been invented.

We never see the environment the alien lives in. We only see dormant eggs inside of a crashed spaceship. When Ash is studying the facehugger, he mentions that it "has a funny habit of shedding its cells and replacing them with polarized silicon. Which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions."

Essentially what this means is that the alien can mutate its cells to adapt to any environment. Also, in the later films, it's shown the alien can take on characteristics of its host. So the ability to breathe the same air as its host may be a result of this.

Principally, commercial deep space ore mining will mean encountering many rock and mineral formations. Encountering different, and even some new, rock types is likely - especially off world, as the Nostromo mines in different planetoids far from Earth.

This means having a chemistry qualified crew member is very advantageous, with a likely strong background in organic and inorganic chemistry, but definitely geological chemistry. That would be one form of science officer.

That aside, with a science background, it's possible as well science officers are best placed to take some biology and human medicine courses, or have a background in biology. We didn't see any dedicated medical crew member on the Nostromo: perhaps because of it's small crew size, it wasn't regulation to have one. Science officers might then also be asked to double up in some capacity in this instance, as a medical aide. Note how we saw Ash take charge of medical care matters on the Nostromo.

Grounding in basic physics would probably be expected for all space flight crew. However, depending on stage of career and training, more advanced physics talents might be required in some stationed science officers as well, depending on the mission. However, that's more speculation.

No. The alien has no official name as a species. In the sequel Aliens (1986), one of the characters refers to the creature as a "xenomorph", but this isn't the name of the species, it's merely a descriptive word (that loosely means "foreign shape" or "alien form"). Though the term has more or less been adapted by fans as the species name to specify it from other science fiction aliens.

There are probably a few reasons like companionship for the crew, even a source of relaxation. Also, Jonesy was probably brought along as pest control. To kill any rats, bugs or mice that could stow away on the ship. Much like large boats on earth.

When the deep space towing vessel Nostromo receives a mysterious signal from an unexplored planet, the seven crew members are awakened from hypersleep to investigate. Three of them—Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), and Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright)—form an exploration team and locate a derelict spaceship that contains a huge cavern full of eggs, while the other four crew members—Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), Chief Engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto), and engineering technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton)—remain behind to decipher the nature of the distress signal and to make repairs to the Nostromo. Trouble begins when one of the eggs hatches and a spider-like creature attaches itself to Kane's face.

Alien was based on a screenplay by American screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, with input from producers David Giler and Walter Hill. The movie was subsequently novelized by Alan Dean Foster. It's been claimed that Alien borrowed heavily from two earlier movies: It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), and Planet of the Vampires (1965) (aka Planet of the Vampires). The success of Alien fostered three movie sequels: Aliens (1986), Alien³ (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997), two prequels: Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), as well as two spin off films: Alien vs. Predator (2004), and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection continue the story of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Prometheus is set 30 years prior to Alien but features none of the same characters. Alien: Covenant (2017) is set 10 years after Prometheus and so 20 years before Alien. AVP and AVPR were crossover films that pair the titular Alien against creatures from the film Predator (1987).

The laserdisc supplementary features (which are also included on the Alien Blu-ray disc anthology) states that the mist was a "sort of biological alarm" meant to alert the slumbering facehuggers that potential incubators were in proximity.

Dallas and Lambert 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.

This is unexplained in the movie. The origin of the Alien is a complete mystery to the crew members who have not encountered this species before. One clue is in the early drafts of Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett's script. They write: Certain clues in the wrecked ship lead them across the hostile surface of the planet to a primitive stone pyramid, the only remnant of a vanished civilization. Beneath this pyramid they find an ancient tomb full of fantastic artifacts. Lying dormant in the tomb are centuries-old spores, which are triggered into life by the men's presence. A parasite emerges and fastens itself to one of the men's faces -- and cannot be removed. It would appear that it was the scriptwriters' intention that the Alien(s) originated on the same planet where the derelict was found. However, as the pyramid was left out of the final script and movie, the only clue remaining is the derelict ship; it seemingly landed or crashed on the planet, indicating that both the ship and the eggs came from a very different, yet unknown place. Notes by designer H.R. Giger also indicate that the Alien species may have been a bio-mechanical weapon created by the "space jockey" race (this idea was the basis of the prequel Prometheus (2012)) . The derelict would therefore have been a military transport ship carrying a cargo of eggs, one of which presumably attacked the crew, causing the crash.

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 when it bursts out of its host, and all that is needed is that its 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 quickly invests all its energy into becoming functional, rather than into longevity, much like a butterfly. Think about the life cycle of houseflies and fruit flies: they age very rapidly and usually die in 24 hours. This is of course not a valid explanation for the sequel Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron. All aliens should have been dead long before the arrival of the marines.

It was condensation. Down near Brett it appeared quite hot, as he was sweating. Since hot air rises, 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.

At the beginning of the movie, the Nostromo crew find the dead "Space Jockey" with a large hole in his chest. In what looks like a holding area, there are hundreds of large egg-like objects, one of which starts to react when Kane comes close to it. The top of the egg slowly opens and as Kane looks inside, a spider-like creature leaps out and attaches itself to Kane's spacesuit helmet. Later, it is discovered that the creature has burned through Kane's helmet and attached itself to his face. It has inserted a long tube down Kane's throat and appears to be providing him with oxygen. Some hours later, the creature simply removed itself from Kane and dies. As Kane seems fine, and the crew decide to eat something before going back into hibernation. As Kane begins to eat, he begins having convulsions and his chest suddenly bursts open and a small creature bursts free. The creature then runs off before the stunned crew can stop it, but it grows at an incredible rate, shedding its skin, and reaches over 8 feet in height in a matter of hours. It then begins picking off the crew one by one. Near the end of the Director's Cut of the movie, Ripley finds that two of the crew members have been cocooned and are turning into eggs themselves (though this is only in the Director's Cut of the film and even director Ridley Scott has said it is not necessarily considered canon, as in the sequel, a Queen Alien is present to lay the eggs). In short, the simplest explanation as shown in the movie is that the Alien is hatched from an egg, incubates in the body of a living host, rips its way out of the host, quickly grows to adult form, and begins searching for other living hosts for future Aliens to spawn from.

"Space Jockey" was the nickname the production designers gave to the dead alien found inside the derelict ship, who was envisioned as the pilot who flew the entire ship from his chair, and most of the crew felt it as a benevolent creature, in contrast to the Alien itself. The name may be derived from Robert A. Heinlein's short story of the same name, which is about a pilot of a commercial spacecraft. The name stuck among the crew, and the term is widely used in behind-the-scenes material, so it eventually became a sort of unofficial yet informally accepted name for the creature, even though it is never explicitly named as such in the movie. The origin and function of the Space Jockey was kept ambiguous in the movie. During production and for several years later, Ridley Scott considered the possibility that the ship had a military function, and could drop the Alien eggs as biological weapons onto hostile territory during war. The origins of the space jockey's people (informally called "Engineers") was part of the prequel film Prometheus (2012).

Ridley Scott stated that his original cut or "rough cut" was approximately 4 hours in length, but was so graphic and horrific that it was demanded that he cut it. However, Scott also stated that he never intended it to be that long, and that it was simply a version containing all the scenes from which he could start trimming the film. For the 25th anniversary of the movie, he created a new version (primarily by request of the producers and fans of the movie) which restores several deleted scenes, but also omits several minutes from the original cut to maintain the pacing of the movie. Even though this version was released as the Director's Cut, Scott has since been quoted as saying that the Theatrical Cut is the cut he intended.

The films were made and released in the order of (1) Alien, (2) Aliens (1986), (3) Alien³ (1992), (4) Alien Resurrection (1997), (5) Prometheus (2012), (6) Alien: Covenant (2017) and (7) Alien: Romulus (2024).

In terms of the stories' chronological timeline, the story in each film is in the following order; (1) 2093 - Prometheus, (2) 2104 - Alien: Covenant, (3) 2122 - Alien, (4) 2142 - Alien: Romulus, (5) 2179 - Aliens, (6) 2179 - Alien 3, and (7) 2380 - Alien: Resurrection.

The spin-off/crossover films with the Predator series; Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) (neither of which the main Alien films make reference to) were made in 2004 and 2007 respectively and were both set in 2004.

In 2003, a Director's Cut of the film received a limited release in theatres and was later released on DVD together with the original 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 this newer version to be simply an alternate cut, rather than a preferred or definitive version.