Alien

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The Alien franchise is a series of films, video games, and comic books that range from absolutely awesome to absolute garbage. The premise is remarkably simple: a hostile alien lifeform is discovered, and slowly it kills everyone. The series is very influential, with some of the high notes being the Titular Alien(or Xenomorph, as our friends at Xenopedia would call it.) to Sigourney Weaver's performance as Ellen Ripley, and the USCM.

Origins

Back in the 1970's, sci-fi was pretty much the same; a futuristic setting with bleached white tile and highly futuristic technology. This sat unwell with a few directors, one of which was George Lucas.

With the release of Star Wars, 20th century fox decided to take up this idea. Scott was actually not their first choice, but he eagerly took up the opportunity. The creature of the film would be influenced by the work of H.R. Giger, who was hired to work on the creature design for the film.

Alien

The first film was met with resounding acclaim. If you wonder why, go ahead and watch it. The special effects stand up even today, and the acting from the cast was fantastic. The film itself took sci-fi in a unique direction: rather than having everything be a traditional sci-fi setting with computer gizmos and flashy lights, the setting of the film was a commercial freighter, designed to be dingy, dark, and grungy. Also should be complimented is the amount of work that went into the design of the model of the Nostromo, the aforementioned ship, which was gorgeous.

But the best part is by far the creature violence and design. The Alien was fascinating to audiences at the time, not because it looked super scary, but because the Alien had a nightmarish form and characteristics, and the fact you could barely see it allowed your imagination to do the work that not even a team of designers could ever recreate. As for the creature violence? It's...dated, but still iconic, such as the Headbite, and the Chestburster scene(which was filmed only once and with no warning to the rest of the cast, with the intent of getting a genuine reaction of fear and terror.)

Additional celebration goes to the cast, in particular Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, the hot and awesome main hero of the film who takes no crap and shoots the alien out of her escape pod with a Grapple gun.

Aliens

The second film was actually not directed by Scott, but by another familiar name: James Cameron. This film was going to keep the sense of terror from the first film, but also have more combat. The film essentially entered into production hell (this tends to a be a trend with anything Cameron does) but the final result was a gorgeous masterpiece that stands the test of time just as well as Alien, if not better. The Alien's design was changed to a more militant creature with a ridged head, as the smooth domed variant from Alien was deemed to fragile for filming.

High points in general are Sergeant Apone, the direct inspiration for Sergeant Johnson from Halo, the Colonial Marines, which are also the inspiration for the UNSC Marines from Halo, Ellen Ripley being a complete badass again, and FUCKING BILL PAXTON. The Colonial Marines were a light reference to Americans going into Vietnam, and a lot of the props in the movie were functional weapons or machines. The Pulse Rifles were modified Thompson Submachine guns, and the Smartguns were Browning M1918's with motorcycle parts added to make them look more gothic. Also of note was the acting of the little girl named Newt, who was chosen because she DID NOT SMILE during auditions.

Alien 3

The third film is skubby for a variety of reasons, the biggest of these being that the director decided to kill off some of the better parts of Aliens, such as Corporal Hicks and Newt. Additionally something that grates on people is the lack of guns in the film, which was a choice to theoretically make the film more terrifying and capture the feel of unarmed humans versus alien of the first film (which also lacked guns), which would have made sense if it wasn't on a prison planet. Plus there was little suspense as everyone knew who the hero was and what an alien would do and so instead of horror it became a formulaic Alien eats skinheads until hero kills it. After expanding both the setting, scale and arsenal in the 2nd film this nothing new back to basics approach didn't cut it with most viewers.