Ending of first Alien Movie

How does the creature know that it should go to the small escape ship? It hasn't been raised by its own kind, so how much intelligence could it have?

Thank you

The alien's intelligence level is an open question. Maybe it went there because it knew, or maybe it went there out of instinct. We get numerous hints that the alien has actually evolved to live on/hide in spaceships, most noticeably in that famous shot where what we think is some of the ship's tubing turns out to be the alien's head:



So, part me thinks it likes to hide out in little escape pods and among tubing the same way certain animals are attracted to wet places, or cats like high or enclosed areas.

Fusing these two theories together, though, there's also clear examples that the alien takes on the attributes of whatever it bursts out of (the one that comes out of a dog walks on all fours, IIRC). So maybe coming out of a person makes it a bit smarter than the others, too. Maybe a little hard to believe, but given the film's premise, I wouldn't say it requires too much suspension of disbelief.

who knows. At times it looked pretty smart for a Perfect organism. whose structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. and its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

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I have some issues with that assertion. One of the most obvious: do all spaceships have tubings on display?

Thanks to both of you. Very nice to get such quick replies!!

Don't think most other movie spaceships do, but I'm not sure about the larger Alien world. If Giger designed the rest of it, then yes.

Anyway, the ones in the film seem to have a lot. I guess you could qualify this to say that it's evolved to blend in with the kinds of ships that have had reason to visit that planet, IE: mining vessels. Evolution is certainly a theme in the film, too.

It's pretty speculative, I'll grant you, but it's a fun theory. And if something like this isn't going on, then we're left trying to explain why its head just coincidentally looks exactly like the tubing.

It could be said because it gestated in a human it picked up some human knowledge, or it was simply tracking the last survivors who were all making their way to the escape pod, then leaving it to start the countdown...

he didn't do much work on it besides some murals and previous designs that never got into the movie [besides the terrain on the moon and the Alien Ship]. The human spaceship interiors were designed by another artist [can't remember the name of that one]. It seems that the idea was that the creature could blend in with the environment but that decision was made on set once the Nostromo was layed out.

There are many themes in there [very heavy on sexuality] and they work flawlessly. O'Bannon was a crazy dude, and Giger could be his twin brother.

PS - the head of the Alien is a penis [and so is his tail] The 3 doors to the Alien Space ship are vaginas, the face huger is a hand with testicles and a penis for mouth.

I had a look at giger's book some time after seeing Alien. Wow, some seriously messed up stuff in there, but really beautiful at the same time.

There was a nice little homage to Giger in Hannibal. The showrunner is a huge fan of both the artist and the movies. I'll see if I can find a pic.

Interesting thread, and to think my initial reaction to the OPs question was simply - because it was so insanely suspenseful, nd just the whole idea of being in such a claustrophobic environment out in space with that thing going for her when she was just about naked. Really intensified the vulnerability.

Add to these the fact that the crashed ship looks like legs (and is full of eggs), that the alien is "implanted" by an incredibly phallic extension, that it then develops inside the stomach, that the spaceship's computer is called "Mother," that the Queen alien threatens the crew through sheer fertility...and so on. I've even heard it suggested that the method of killing the alien at the end of the first film is equivalent to an abortion that it uses suction, and that the creature dangles from a cord it's connected to around the stomach. Sounded pretty out there to me at first, but when I watched it again with that in mind it was pretty striking, especially in light of Giger's other work.

Anyway, there are posts on here from way back in 2004 about the same stuff, most of them (including this one) borrowing heavily from E. Michael Jones' Monsters From The Id, which is all about the intersection of sexual politics and horror.

Very messed up, Yods. I;ll make a coffee and have a read. Fascinating comment about abortion. That never occurred to me but it makes sense.

HA! A connoisseur!

I have to read that one.

I have some of Giger's works [ARh+ and www HR Giger com, plus some biographies]. Cool stuff.

That's what I was thinking when I saw the question – they're making their way to the escape pod and the Alien anticipates; being a "survivor".

lol did you guys watch this on AMC today?

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Ok take this theory with a large pinch of salt but maybe all spaceships no matter which alien species develops them have common features i.e panties, engine rooms, control rooms and escape pods and the Xenomorph XX121 has developed on an instinctive level to recognise these and knows to seek out the escape pods of ships to hide out in because the ones that do so have the best chance of survival and reproducing while those that pick the other parts of ships do not survive so often and so do not get to reproduce. Of course I am making all of this up with nothing to back it up because the reality of the matter is that of course they needed to put the Alien in the escape pod because the movie would have had a really disappointing ending without the climatic scene,

I always figured the Alien was super intelligent. I mean, there's a blue ray mist of light protecting the eggs. That's some pretty good technology for a giant cockroach penis head.

I think the mother alien sniffed out Ripleys white panties, and decided to follow her, using binoculars to spy on her as she ran through the steam, and then aboard the escape vagina.

When the mother alien hid among the tubes, she was waiting for Ripley to be at her most vulnerable so she could get revenge for her slaughtered babies that these incredibly attractive earthlings had destroyed and meddled with, with white panties on, sweating.

Well, maybe I'm an idiot, but all these years I've just assumed the escape pod was the quietest place to go, what with all the flashing lights and blaring alarms, so the frightened wild animal was trying to "escape" all the unfamiliar stressors. (Am I underthinking it?)

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"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."

Well "animals are afraid of fire, yes?"

Yes I did.

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