TOP TEN TUESDAY: Top Ten ALIEN Characters

1979. Unwary cinema participants. A monster in space. ALIEN redefined the horror genre as never before.”It is a very slow-building film that gives the sense of some great unnamed terror to come. That’s a quality that has much more to do with horror than it does with science fiction.” David Thomson, author of The Alien Quartet says ALIEN is “basically a haunted house film… The only difference is that the old dark house just happens to be a spaceship.”

Sir Ridley Scott, the renowned filmmaker who reinvented the science fiction film genre – having helmed Alien, a groundbreaking mix of science fiction and horror, followed by Blade Runner, one of the most revered and influential genre films of our time – offers his signature brand of action, thrills, scares, and much, much more, when PROMETHEUS is unleashed in theaters on Friday. With PROMETHEUS, Scott has created a new mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey, aboard the spaceship Prometheus, to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

On the verge of scaring us senseless once again and introducing us to a whole new ensemble, the crew of the USS We Are Movie Geeks compiled a list of our favorite characters from the original ALIEN. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is all about the poor sods who go head to head against “Kane’s son”.

10. The Company

The Company, or “Weyland-Yutani” is the large conglomerate that runs the human colonies outside of the solar system. They are an awful corporate group whose major purpose is to obtain living Xenomorphs as a biological weapon. The goal of this megacorporation,  as revealed in Alien Vs. Predator (2010) is to ensure that the human species remains superior.

9. Ash

One of the great twists in ALIEN is the secret behind this cold, methodical crewman. His attack on Ripley with a rolled-up magazine is brutally shocking in a film chock full of brutal shocks. Ash’s creepy smile as he utters, ” You have my sympathies.” is the stuff of cinematic nightmares.

8. “Mother”

The real fear comes not from the mechanoid Alien but the uncaring computer “Mother”. She’s basically the Nostromo’s housekeeper, keeping an eye on everything while the human crew is in suspended animation necessitated by the long journey back to Earth. The dichotomy comes when the “parent” is forced to destroy the house and children she was entrusted to protect.

Ripley: Mother! I’ve turned the cooling unit back on. Mother! 
Mother: The ship will automatically destruct in “T” minus five minutes. 
Ripley: You… BITCH! 

7. Jones

When, at the end of Alien, Sigourney Weaver says, “This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off,” she’s not telling the whole truth. Because there’s another survivor, curled up with her in the hypersleep capsule. Jones (or Jonesey) the ginger tom.

Jones serves multiple functions within the Alien storyline:

1) CATGUFFIN, a pretext for characters to go wandering off on their own.

2) CATPANION, an excuse for Ripley to express herself out loud when she’s otherwise alone.

3) CATSHOCK, a cheap shock tactic in which the cat jumps out unexpectedly.

4) CATSCALLION, a wild card; at the end of the film, the cat might yet be harbouring an alien.

In short, one cannot overestimate the importance of Jones to Alien.

6. Brett

Brett is an engineering tech who is constantly after a raise. He is the first to encounter a full blown Alien… all because he was searching for Jones the cat. Lesson: If you search for a cat, you get dragged into an air duct.

5. Lambert

Veronica Cartwright did an interview for Starlog magazine many years ago that was curiously titled “I was raped by an Alien”. What exactly is the fate of Lambert, the Alien’s first female victim? Her death is off-screen and the fact that her corpse, which we only get a brief glimpse of hanging from the ceiling, is stark naked insinuates that the creature may have indeed raped or sodomized her. I guess what happens in deep space, stays in deep space.

4. Kane

Someone had to be impregnated by the terrifying beastie and it may as well have been the sap willing to go down into the bowels of the derelict ship – Thomas Kane (John Hurt), Executive Officer aboard the Nostromo. It’s what followed a few mere minutes later that will forever be ingrained in the psyche of all who saw the film in May of 1979. The Alien unexpectedly bursts through his chest and kills him during the crew’s dinner.

3. Dallas

The commander of the Nostromo, Captain Dallas, is a stoic movie hero in the vein of Gary Cooper. He has the unflinching respect of his somewhat motley crew, and when their lives are at risk he himself ventures down the narrow air shafts to locate the ship’s unwelcome guest. His horrific sacrifice is even more gruesome in the film’s extended cut.

2. Parker

Chief engineer, smart-alec, complainer and realist. He and Ripley make good team as they’re both skillful and determined to live through the nightmare. That is until he makes the foolish mistake of trying to save the sell-shocked Lambert. (Frankly, we’d have left her whiny ass behind.) There is some comfort that at least before having his head impaled by the creature, he’s able to make a fiery “s-more” out of “the goddamn robot” Ash sent by the company with the flamethrower.

1. Ripley

“Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo. Third officer reporting. The other members of the crew Ash and Captain Dallas are dead.” Ridley Scott’s revolutionary film made history not only with the infamous chest-burster scene but by turning the notion of the woman as victim into the heroine on its ear. Ultimately ALIEN is the story of Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley. Her resourcefulness, courage and let’s just say it, keeping her shit together, makes her a hero for the ages and the obvious choice for our number 1 pick for this edition of Top Ten Tuesday.

So there you have it. Let us know who your favorite character is from Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece in our comment section below.

PROMETHEUS marks Scott’s first film shot digitally and in 3D, a format whose technical challenges and aesthetic opportunities were embraced by the filmmaker. Scott uses the technology to enhance the action and thrills in small confined spaces, as well within epic vistas. In returning to the genre he helped define, Ridley Scott continues to push the boundaries of storytelling, both visually and thematically. As he notes, he’s all about the “everything” – from story structure to casting, from sets and costumes to new ways of telling a story. And while the renowned filmmaker is scaring the shit out of you, he never loses sight of the big picture. “After you’ve seen Prometheus,” Scott concludes, “you will have experienced something completely unexpected.”

PROMETHEUS will be in theaters Friday, June 8.