"Alien" and "Aliens" are some of the best sci-fi films ever made, but a ton of things hit differently on a modern rewatch. Hidden details and some ridiculous filming tricks are just the tip of the iceberg.
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00:00Alien and Aliens are two of the best films ever made.
00:04And if you don't agree, then f**k you!
00:06Here's what your lack of priorities caused you to miss for the last four decades.
00:10One of the joys of rewatching Alien is getting to appreciate all the different techniques
00:13the filmmakers used to psych you out the first time around.
00:16We can make an hour-long video about how Alien ratchets up the tension and puts viewers into
00:21the minds of the various Nostromo crew members.
00:24Instead, we'll focus on just one small detail that most viewers will miss the first time
00:28they see Alien.
00:29And that is all the times they actually see the alien.
00:31In a couple of key scenes, the Xenomorph can be seen lurking in the shadows behind
00:35our beloved characters.
00:37When Brett goes looking for Jonesy the Cat, the scene stretches on as Brett aimlessly
00:41wanders the halls.
00:43Careful viewers can occasionally spot the Xenomorph hidden among the machinery and ductwork
00:47of the sets.
00:48The director's cut also includes this shot of the Xenomorph hidden in plain sight leading
00:52up to Brett's death, which worked because at that point in the movie, the alien had
00:56yet to fully reveal itself.
00:59Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you.
01:04Later, when Ripley is getting ready to go into cryosleep, she discovers the alien curled
01:08up on the escape ship.
01:09It's a shock to viewers, but it's been there from the very beginning of the scene.
01:13The creature is hard to spot in the darkened shuttle, but once you see it, you can't unsee
01:17it.
01:18It's entirely possible that Alien would never have been as enduring as it is if it had been
01:22made today.
01:23The thing was made for $11 million, after all.
01:25With a limited budget, the crew had to squeeze every ounce of juice out of the sets they
01:29built, and the end result of that is that everything feels viscerally real.
01:33Take the relatively simple opening shots as an unlikely example.
01:36Just by having the camera pan through the halls and rooms of the ship, the atmosphere
01:40and texture of everything immediately sets the mood.
01:43It's impossible not to be engrossed in the world of Alien from the get-go, and you barely
01:47realize that five minutes go by before you see a single person.
01:50It also speaks to resourcefulness when you don't have a lot of CGI to fall back on.
01:54Basically, Scott and the film crew had been trying to come up with some sort of reactive
01:58membrane to cover the eggs in the hold of the space jockey's ship.
02:01As it happened, the rock band, The Who, was rehearsing on a soundstage next to the production
02:05and were testing out new scanning lasers to use for their live shows.
02:09Scott took one look at the lasers and knew they had the solution.
02:11There's a layer of mist just covering the eggs that reacts when broken.
02:18And when it came to the actual space jockey set, they just didn't have the budget to build
02:22it as large as they wanted to.
02:24Rather than settle for a smaller, less impressive Alien, they simply pivoted to a low-tech approach.
02:29For the wide shot, Scott's kids stood in for the actors to give the set the proper sense
02:33of scale.
02:34No one is gonna say that CGI can't look incredible, but it's all too easy for a filmmaker to wave
02:38their hand and say they'll fix a problem in post-production.
02:41When you re-watch Alien today, you immediately notice how much the practical sets and props
02:46elevate the movie.
02:47Working in a real space and being forced to deal with problems on the fly inadvertently
02:51created some of the most iconic shots of the film.
02:54The otherworldly props and sets of Alien wouldn't stand out nearly as much as they do if it
02:59wasn't for the designer behind them, a little-known Swiss artist named H.R. Giger.
03:03"...Ridley wants that I do the three monsters.
03:07That was the facehugger, the chestburster, and the big alien."
03:11In addition to designing the Aliens, he was also hands-on in the set design, even airbrushing
03:15the entire space jockey set by hand.
03:18Giger basically split the film's design between two brains, as he put it.
03:22Giger handled everything Alien, while everything with a human origin was designed by Michael
03:26Seymour.
03:27Ironically, re-watching Alien now, some of the designs feel, well, overused, but only
03:31because they've now had nearly 50 years to influence cinema.
03:35Stranger Things, The Expanse, The Descent, Event Horizon, The Tomorrow War, Life…
03:40Alien has been openly cited as a direct influence on all of them, and that's just scratching
03:44the surface.
03:45There's even alien DNA in places you wouldn't expect.
03:48For example, Laura Dern says her character in Jurassic Park, Dr. Eli Sattler, was a conscious
03:52riff on Ripley.
03:53In video games, you see it in everything from Contra and Metroid to Halo and 2022's Scorn,
03:59to name a few.
04:00"...a desolate hellscape filled with biomechanical contraptions."
04:05It's obviously a stretch to say that every biomechanical design element in sci-fi since
04:09has drawn from Giger and Alien, but the Rippling influence is undeniable.
04:13There's simply no way to overstate how the design and aesthetic of Alien has permeated
04:17sci-fi and horror culture to this day, and re-watching Alien is an awesome reminder of
04:22how much impact it had, and continues to have.
04:25Decades after the release of Alien, there are two characters in the entire movie that
04:29most people can tell you about, Xenomorph and Ripley.
04:32In the years since that movie made its debut, multiple sequels have cemented Ripley's place
04:36as one of the best sci-fi heroines of all time.
04:39The franchise has proven that it can continue without her, but Ripley will always be a key
04:43part of the Alien mythology.
04:45Ripley's towering stature in the sci-fi genre makes her introduction in Alien even more
04:49fun to watch now.
04:50Back in 1979, most of the movie's cast members weren't well-known stars, and Ridley Scott
04:55used that fact to obscure the movie's real protagonist.
04:58When the crew first wakes up, the camera follows John Hurt's cane, and in the scenes that follow,
05:02Ripley is just a background player.
05:04She hardly has any speaking lines until the search party returns from the crashed ship
05:07on LV-426.
05:09Alien initially pushes Ripley to the background because she's not really the hero of the movie
05:13— she's just the only crew member who survives.
05:16The sequels turned Ripley into more of an action hero capable of slaughtering dozens
05:20of Xenomorphs, so it's easy to forget that when the story began, she was just as scared
05:24as any other human encountering a monstrous, unstoppable alien for the first time.
05:29When audiences first settled into theaters in May 1979 to watch Alien, everything in
05:34the movie was brand new and, dare we say it, alien.
05:38And some parts intentionally left filmgoers with more questions than answers.
05:41Like, where did all the eggs come from?
05:43Well, Aliens came along to answer that when it introduced the Xenomorph Queen, a veritable
05:48assembly line for eggs eager to introduce a face to a hug.
05:51But then, years later, Alien fans got to see a deleted scene that was added to the director's
05:55cut, where it's revealed that the Xenomorph isn't killing the Nostromo crew members — it's
05:59actually kidnapping them and slowly and excruciatingly turning them into more eggs.
06:04"...Kill me."
06:08That deleted scene seemingly cleared up a small plot hole in the original film, but
06:12since we already know there are queens to lay eggs, it introduced an even bigger problem
06:16for the franchise as a whole.
06:18So, which explanation is legit?
06:20Well, after years of novelizations and semi-canonical mentions and even more deleted scenes, it's
06:25likely that both methods of reproduction are possible.
06:28Reproducing, or what the Xenomorph was doing to Dallas and Brett in Alien, is generally
06:32considered a way for a single drone to repopulate in the absence of a queen.
06:36The idea is that some of those gestating eggs could produce a new queen to speed things
06:40up.
06:41"...Busy little creatures, huh?"
06:42In Alien 3, a scene that was deleted from the theatrical release but included in the
06:46quadrilogy box set showed a variation called a royal facehugger that could presumably impregnate
06:51hosts with queen chestbursters, and that was presumably the thing that impregnated Ripley
06:55with a queen.
06:56But with so many different versions of the film that change details in pivotal scenes,
07:00the specific lore gets royally convoluted.
07:02"...It's amazing to me that Fox is the number one studio in the country because they're
07:06all such a bunch of morons."
07:08Does knowing all this change the way you view Alien on a rewatch?
07:11Well, yeah, and not necessarily in a good way.
07:13The sheer mystery of what that ruthless killing machine wanted was a huge part of the horror
07:18of the movie, and giving its behavior an explanation kind of lessens the impact of that.
07:23Aliens double down on everything Alien introduced.
07:25Like the first film, its practical sets and effects built an immersive alien world that
07:29still sucks you in to this day.
07:31And while Alien influenced untold sci-fi horror projects, Aliens pretty much became the archetype
07:36for space marines that would be emulated for decades afterwards.
07:39"...All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for?
07:42Breakfast in bed?
07:43Another glorious day in the corps."
07:45But if you strip away the surface layers, Aliens has entirely different themes driving
07:49the plot.
07:50One of those is the idea of motherhood.
07:52It's an important subtext that the movie doesn't start developing until about halfway through,
07:56and there's one scene in Aliens that's so crucial to that core theme, we still can't
08:00believe it ended up getting cut from the initial theatrical release, though it was restored
08:04for the extended edition released on home video.
08:06It comes early in the movie, right before Ripley has a meeting with Weyland-Yutani executives.
08:10Ripley asks Burke if he's found any information about her daughter.
08:13He reveals that in the 60 years since Ripley went into the shuttle's cryopod at the end
08:17of Alien, her daughter has lived out a full life — and died.
08:21"...I promised her that I'd be home for her birthday."
08:26Ripley's devastation in that scene is deeply moving, and it lays important groundwork for
08:30her emotional state throughout the rest of the movie, particularly her need to protect
08:34Newt at all costs.
08:35Newt's inclusion in the film in general ratchets up the tension and humanizes Ripley, but the
08:40added context in that deleted scene gives her character so many more layers.
08:44Ripley mentions her daughter elsewhere in the movie, but that deleted scene really hammers
08:48home the fact that she isn't just a cliché good person doing the right thing.
08:52She's nurturing a young girl to make up for the absence of her own daughter.
08:55"...I'm not gonna leave you, Newt.
08:58I mean that.
09:00That's a promise."
09:02There's one detail in Aliens that was impossible to spot when the movie first debuted, because
09:07it didn't exist yet.
09:08Much of the movie takes place inside the industrial buildings of the LV-426 colony, with the characters
09:13fighting off xenomorphs while running through narrow hallways and ducking under steaming
09:17metal pipes.
09:18The set later went on to play a big role in another film that's become a pop culture icon
09:22— Batman.
09:23One of the most pivotal scenes in Tim Burton's 1989 superhero flick takes place in the Axis
09:28chemical plant, where Jack Napier falls into a vat of toxic sludge and becomes the Joker.
09:33Burton started shooting Batman not long after Aliens debuted in 1986, and their studio had
09:38access to the set that was used for some of the interior shots of the colony in the latter
09:42movie.
09:44Burton borrowed the set, and LV-426 became Axis Chemicals.
09:47The place looks a little different with Batman running through it instead of the xenomorphs,
09:51but if you're watching carefully, you can see that both movies were filmed in the same
09:55place.
09:56You can also spot a few other borrowed set elements, like Batman's chair in the Batcave,
09:59which was originally used in the Marines' personnel carrier.
10:02Believing that the xenomorphs are the villains of the Alien franchise is an easy enough mistake
10:06to make, but on a revisit, it's easy to see that they're really just animals carrying
10:10out their basic instincts.
10:12They're no different than anyone you'd meet during the lunch rush at Quiznos.
10:19The xenomorphs absolutely present real threats, but at least in the world established by the
10:23first two movies, they're never ultimately responsible for all the slaughter they commit.
10:27One of the most crushing moments in Alien is when Ripley interfaces with Mother and
10:31learns that the Nostromo has had a secret mission all along, to retrieve samples of
10:35alien life from LV-426, even though she's technically in command of the ship.
10:39The company has ordered Ash to prioritize bringing the aliens to Earth above all else.
10:44In Aliens, the idea that a profit motive is the real evil becomes even more explicit.
10:48The alien attack on the LV-426 colony all starts because Burke wants to retrieve samples
10:53that he can sell back to the company for a profit.
10:55You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse.
10:59You don't see them f----- each other over for a g----- percentage."
11:03The Weyland-Yutani corporation is clearly modeled after the worst global conglomerates
11:07in our own world, and characters like Burke are meant to represent greedy, ladder-climbing
11:11corporatists.
11:12The company and its employees are willing to risk anything to make more money, and because
11:16of their greed, the xenomorphs are unleashed on helpless humans, and they've been preying
11:20on us at the movies ever since.