Alien

A space mining outfit on their way home to Earth is woken out of a deep sleep by an SOS message. They are required to respond, so they change their course for a distant planet. When they arrive, they move down to the planet's surface to discover the source of the beacon. They discover some exotic, abandoned alien spaceship, and an enormous, ancient corpse of a creature with its chest bursted out. Deep within the spaceship, they discover an alien's nest. When one scientist examines an egg, it opens up, and the creature inside attacks him. It attaches itself to his face, and becomes unremovable. The other two crewmen manage to get him back to the ship but Ripley the ship's second officer in command doesn't want them to bring him aboard because of possible contamination. But Ash, the Medical Officer, opens the doors anyway, and lets the victim in. They put him in the infirmary, and learn that the hatchling is controlling his breathing patterns. After a while, the hatchling detaches itself.

Before going back into cryonic sleep, the crew decides to celebrate the recovery. But during the celebration, the victim goes into panic, and starts writhing in pain. His chest starts to warp, and then it bursts open, and a snake-like creature slithers out.

They begin searching for the creature, but before long, it has grown into a huge monster that resembles a 7 foot tall lobster with sharp teeth and claws, and it hunts down the crew, one by one. Ripley and Ash are two of the last survivors, and Ash attempts to kill Ripley, but Parker manages to bludgeon him, revealing that he's an android. When they get Ash's head working again, he reveals that his mission was to bring back a living alien for the Company to study.

Before long, Ripley, and a cat, are the only survivors. She decides to set the spaceship to self-destruct, taking the alien with it. The countdown begins, and she hurries to the escape pods, with the cat in hand. The pod ejects, back to earth.

Continuity mistake: In the shot of the alien's tail wrapping around the back of Lambert's legs right before it kills her, the floor is different to what it was before, there is water suddenly falling from the ceiling when there wasn't before and her trousers have changed from white to blue. This is because that shot was originally intended to be used when Brett was killed.

THGhost

More mistakes in Alien

Ripley: Did you ever ship out with Ash before?
Dallas: I went out five times with another science officer. They replaced him two days before we left Thedus with Ash. Hmm?
Ripley: I don't trust him.
Dallas: Well, I don't trust anybody.

More quotes from Alien

Trivia: Ripley abruptly yelling at Parker to "Shut up!" is not in the script. Fans and industry gossip have long speculated that this was Sigourney Weaver breaking character in frustration and she was in fact telling Yaphet Kotto to "shut up" so she can finish her lines. The sequels 'Aliens' and 'Alien 3' both feature scenes where one of the normally cooler-headed protagonists suddenly snaps at a ranting character to "shut up!" in apparent reference to this moment. (01:16:50)

TonyPH

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Question: What exactly is the space jockey and why haven't we seen it in the other films except its fossilized self sitting in the what I call the laser gun?

Answer: It's another race of space alien that is also subject to infection by the Aliens. This particular one was infected and moved as far as it could from its race's known space and broadcast a warning before it died. The presence of eggs in the hold may indicate that it was a research ship. The race was never used in other Alien movies because it adds a new dynamic to the plotlines: two alien species, locked in mortal combat and neither particularly friendly with humans. In the Alien pseudo-prequel Prometheus we learn these beings are known as the Engineers and have interesting ties with both the aliens and humans as well.

Phoenix

Answer: Other theories, mostly developed in the comics derived from the original franchise, assume the xenomorphs were biological weapons conceived by the Space Jockeys for some interstellar war of theirs. Hence, the crescent-shape derelict was just a bomber, full of eggs and operated by a single pilot to minimize risks of accident with this mostly dangerous cargo. - what just happened though.

AKA, the plot of Prometheus.

lionhead

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