Floaty Alien

[SM]

To go off track for a sec, I worked with Darrell for some time on the Nostromo layouts and never really considred the landing gear well.  We were too busy trying to crack our heads about the main airlock location.  Which I had another thought about a couple of nights ago...

And the water is a good point.  Back to the DVD with me for another look.

[CanadianHero67]

(Note position of the feet!)

That is one big penis.

[SM]

Andy Roberts and Michael Holding standing on the end of a pier having a slash.

Roberts - This water's cold.
Holding - And deep.

[deezelboy]

To go off track for a sec, I worked with Darrell for some time on the Nostromo layouts and never really considred the landing gear well.  We were too busy trying to crack our heads about the main airlock location.  Which I had another thought about a couple of nights ago...

SM, tell me more!  Am currently trying to 'map' the Nostromo myself, and am somewhat deviating from Darrell's plans.

[SM]

Might need a fresh thread.  And I'll have to go back over my old emails.

[CompanyMan]

Might need a fresh thread.  And I'll have to go back over my old emails.

I ask this with all due respect intended of course. But, when you, and deez, and Thedus first seen Alien. Did you all realize what an utter effect it would have on you rlives. And dominate projects you spend hours and hours on? All for the better and good of course?

But, just walking out of the theater or whatnot for the first time?

I think it's cool myself. I love the essays ( and would love them to be molded into a trade paperback of sorts like an offical " commision ". As for the ships. I have a fondness for blueprints. I'd really dig on that.

[SM]

I first encountered Alien through the photonovel before seeing the film in the mid-1980s after I saw Aliens.  And no, although I was as gobsmacked at Alien as I was when I saw Star Wars - I didn't think I'd be bullshitting away about it over 20 years later.

[CompanyMan]

Rock -n- Roll bro. I like the films. I do. Predator reionforced my idea to join the Army and start lifting weights. Which I think, or like to. Had a positive effect on my life...

Again, what you said. This is thread worthy..

Stand by.

[deezelboy]

Might need a fresh thread.  And I'll have to go back over my old emails.

Do it! (If it's not too much work, that is.    )

I ask this with all due respect intended of course. But, when you, and deez, and Thedus first seen Alien. Did you all realize what an utter effect it would have on you rlives. And dominate projects you spend hours and hours on?

Only in hindsight. 

Alien for me was the first taste of forbidden fruit.  Went to the cinema to see a film when I was 7, came out and saw that a film called Alien was advertised for next week.  Being very deeply into SF at the time - the whole Star Wars generation thing - and knowing that 'Alien' meant SF, I asked my parents if I could see it.  Their response "You'll be lucky, it's an X".  At that point I had no idea that there were films kids couldn't see, and the idea that there was an SF film that only adults could see was pretty fascinating.  After all, I'd seen aliens do all manner of things to people in Star Trek and the like, so I spent a vast time between then and seeing it on TV when I was 11 or 12 wondering just how bad it could be, gathering magazines and the like with anything at all about the film.

It's perhaps telling that, for the life of me I can't remember what film I actually saw at the cinema that day, but I can distinctly remember being told that Alien was an X.

I was very much into reading SF when I saw Alien that first time, and it was the first, possibly only, film I saw where the ships and the general 'SF look' of the film matched the covers and interior of all the books I'd been reading.  Claerly a case of the design team being teh ones actually illustrating the books, but it turned Alien into a kind of holy grail for the way SF should be visualised for me. 

[CompanyMan]

Thanks for the testimony ( + ).

I am the same age as you, but I was more turned on by Star Wars & Jaws. I never seen Alien until years later, when I was in Junior High, just befor the sequal came out. But I did like it! At that point.

[Rumrunner473]

Breathing new life into this old thread...

While the behind-the-scenes pix are informative and interesting, I think the Alien is playing the Spider in Little Miss Muffitt (sp?) via spinnerets or other physical form of attachment.   Interesting that his first strike isn't with both feet on the ground but from above, as if his final metamorphosis was in its last stages.

We've all read that the Nostromo is so big that the air in the landing gear bays could condense and form rain, which I wouldn't want to rinse in, but whatever.   I've read somewhere else that the 'rain' came from ice melting from the gear, ice perhaps rimed up from the planet's 'deep cold.'

Just a few pennies from the Mind Bank...

[Hudson]

I'm finding it harder and harder to actually believe Ridley was trying some odd new means of the monster to be floating around. This sequence is clearly a means of having a monster kill be really convenient for the filmmakers. Of course, doesn't mean we can't speculate the in universe explanation. I think I'm leaning more towards the gravity being weaker at higher elevations in the chamber, a jump sort of thing.

What does it say in the script anyway?

[deezelboy]

Very little!

                                 BRETT
                  Here kitty...Come on Jones.
   
        Brett reaches for Jones.
        Jones hisses.
        An arm reaches for Brett.
        The Alien.
        Now seven feet tall.
        Hanging from the undercarriage strut in reverse position.
        Grabs Brett and swings up into darkness.
        Brett screams.
        To no avail...
        In the doorway Ripley and Parker.
        They witness the horror.

[NERMAL]

I remember reading in Fangoria Magazine that the intermediate stage, the one that killed Brett, was meant to be winged. The ADF novel leans towards the same with Parker's statement, "It just swept down like a giant fucking bat!" (Or something similar).

I'm happy with disparaging levels of gravity within the cavities of the ship. ANd the 'heavier' chains at the bottom holding straight the lighter ones up top.

And a + for the Windies joke.

"Oh my God, he's hung like a bear!"
"That's the umbilical cord, Mr.Williams..."

[Moonpatrol]

The gravity idea works for me. What we see in the film is a little bit of two separate events put together as if they were one. When Brett falls over in the alien hands he pulls the head down too. At this point the alien is inverted and his feet are up in the landing gear.  It's easy for it to pull him up and away with light gravity and firm grip with its feet. The other event is when the cat first notices the monster, we see the tail uncoil and fall behind Brett followed by the back-horns and head. This view to me is the alien touching the floor with his feet. It would be impossible to ascend without jumping from this position or having a free appendage. The combination event implied from the theatrical release is he lowered himself down with the tail and then jumped back up using the right hand to grab a chain with Brett carried with the tail and other arm.