MovieChat Forums > Alien (1979) Discussion > One thing I have always hated about the ...

One thing I have always hated about the movie Alien ...

posted 7 years ago by brux (14724)
63 replies | jump to latest

Well, there are a few things ... it was such a fun movie, but
there were a lot of silly things in it.

One was of course the stupidity of the people who took Kane
right back into the ship with no quarantine procedures at all.
Another is how does the alien grow without eating anything.
This has been a stupidity in every one of the Alien movies,
and just seems to be getting worse.

But the one I am thinking of is the stupid idea of the Alien
having, "molecular acid" for blood as a defense mechanism.

Anyone who has had any chemistry knows that acid does not
eat through everything, and yet the Alien's blood seemed to
burn through everything, including plastic and glass.

But, since the Alien's blood did seem to eat through plastic
and glass and everything else ... how is it that it doesn't eat
through the Alien itself?

[–] degree7 (821) 4 years ago

These are some of the dumbest complaints I’ve ever read.

[–] brux (14724) 4 years ago

The dumb are no judge of dumb, dummy.

[–] thingmakersback (1370) 4 years ago

I've been making excuses for SF film and television since the early '70s... This film needed a lot less help than most.

No quarantine procedures... This is not a problem. These people are undisciplined truckers. And Ripley tried to follow procedure. (And in the context of this film alone, the discovery of the Alien may have been pure chance, with the companies paranoid secret agenda of the computer and the droid was activated when the circumstance arose - so even that is not a problem.)
The Alien not eating is a problem and, as has been mentioned, it did eat in the novelization, which I believe was based on an earlier version of the screenplay. I have faith in Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett. They certainly wrote it right. I think omitting any reference to this in the final film is a foolish oversight in favor of keeping the pacing faster.

The "molecular acid" is an example of using a sciencey sounding term to make something seem believable, but we can assume that it means something specific to the world this is set in... Examples in Star Trek include: "Photon torpedoes", which obviously are not photons, it's just 24th century jargon. "Ion storms" obviously does not refer to simple solar emissions - certainly not in deep space nor at warp speed so, again, the words mean something different in context.
Whatever "molecular acid" is, it does seem not to harm the Alien, possibly because of the effect described by Ash "It has a habit of shedding cells and replacing them with "polarized silicon". Or maybe there is something special about the "protein poysaccharides Ash mentions in the same conversation. All in all, I'd call it a fair use of technobabble to cover the point. And I do not recall us seeing it eat through anything that was definitely glass or silicon.

[–] [email protected] (5854) 4 years ago

You just have to overlook those "sciencey sounding terms" if you really want to enjoy films like Alien or TV franchises like Star Trek. You seem to do that; I certainly do!

Molecular acid just sounds like something very intense. Star Trek had its own made up jargon. It also used actual science terms but either the writers didn't know what they were talking about or they hoped the audience didn't know either.

For example, in Star Trek Voyager, the ship was seventy years from home and often looked for supplies. In several episodes they were searching for deuterium as a fuel. I remember some fans being so exasperated. Deuterium is just a stable isotope of hydrogen. They could have MADE the darn stuff on the ship. But the scripts made it sound like they were hunting for something rare.

Since Alien is such a great rollercoaster ride of a movie, I tend to give it a pass on some of the "science".

[–] brux (14724) 4 years ago

> These people are undisciplined truckers.

Christ, think. How many truck driving jobs do you think there are today,
and what the is average value of a load that a trucker hauls? Compare that
to how many people do you think there are in Ripley's world, and how many
jobs on a freighter ... not that many. The would not hire screw-ups to tend
over a massive freighter like the Nostromo.

Then of course there is the question of where the alien is getting all the mass
to build himself ... or herself? If the alien can imbibe inanimate stuff like a
rock or something why does it need to eat humans? What did it eat to get so
huge between when it hightailed it out of Kane's chest?

[–] thingmakersback (1370) 4 years ago

I think the space trucker analogy was intentional in the film. It's not crazy. These people are professional about the things that are ordinary parts of their job. Landing on an unknown planet and dealing with alien lifeforms is clearly not the norm for them and so they react to protect one of their own and override company protocol.

And, I'm telling you, the Alien not feeding is a mistake that clearly happened in between a well thought out screenplay and a movie that was cut for maximum tension. Frankly, I don't mind what we get in the film. The crew are definitely unnerved by how BIG the Alien is when they encounter it again... When I first saw it in 1979, I wondered, but guessed it had fed on something... stored food, maybe even something unexpected like plastics or lubricating oil. It was pretty alien, so who could say. I read the novelization shortly thereafter and was reassured that O'Bannon and Shusett had figured on that.

[–] brux (14724) 4 years ago

This is a exciting movie that falls apart when you think about it too closely, that's all. ;-)

[–] Goliard (1420) 4 years ago

It's amazing to me how many people - even after all these years - raise the same non-issues.
The quarantine issue has been discussed (ASH broke it!!!), but let's repeat, for the cheap seats:

IT HAS ACID FOR BLOOD!

As soon as you see its blood eat through multiple levels of the ship, you should understand that this creature can metabolize ANYTHING.

Not a difficult concept.

In other words:

Q) What does a Xenomorph eat?
A) Anything it wants. . .

[–] AZ (62) 4 years ago

Although the quarantine issue seems like a foolish mistake it works with the context of the movie if you consider they're space truckers. They're blue collar not scientists. Yeah they shouldn't have let him in yet it's somewhat believable given how they were probably acting from shock and fear.

Aliens has issues like this too, some of which I've pointed out. I don't consider them movie breaking though. If you focus on them they can be irksome. Yet they're not as bad as what happens in later movies or the prequels.

As for the alien biology, that can be chalked up to it being alien. We don't know much yet, haven't really explored space. There could be new substances and natural laws out there waiting to surprise us.

[–] Todge (23) 4 years ago

.... the stupidity of the people who took Kane right back into the ship with no quarantine procedures at all.

Ash already new what was on that moon, he had already convinced Ripley not to call back the search party because they were meant to find the Alien... 'Crew expendable'

...how does the alien grow without eating anything.

We don't see the Alien growing without eating, it is just assumed. It has metal teeth for a reason, so methinks it can eat pretty much whatever it needs to. Everything has calories, to an extent.

the Alien having, "molecular acid" for blood as a defense mechanism.

Anyone who has had any chemistry knows that acid does not eat through everything, and yet the Alien's blood seemed to burn through everything, including plastic and glass.

...how is it that it doesn't eat through the Alien itself?

You answered that yourself... 'Seemed' to burn through everything. Obviously it didn't as the xenomorph has some kind of natural defense.. Your stomach doesn't digest itself..