My Thoughts After Re-watching Alien (1979)

We had late-night tornado sirens last night which, fortunately, led to no damage but did leave both of us feeling exhausted today. So, rather than try to focus while watching a new movie, I decided to put on Alien because I'd seen it enough times to know what happened if I fell asleep.

Here are some thoughts I had while re-watching it:

I am admittedly not a science expert but I'm pretty sure smoking cigarettes in an oxygenated environment, like Nostromo would have had, isn't a good idea. Then again, they were using flame throwers without incident, so I guess the only danger as far as this movie was concerned was lung cancer.

Why did the entire crew need to go to the planet? Nostromo had a shuttle, why not just send two or three to the planet on that rather than risk everyone's lives and the ship itself?

John Hurt's death scene is one of the best things about this movie. He did come a bit close to overacting, but he was one of the few crew members to go out in a memorable fashion. Oh, and I still love how he re-created the scene in comedic fashion for Spaceballs eight years later. Rest in peace.

How many cat-related jump scares can a movie have? I guess an equally good question would be why would a crew that is governed by a bunch of strict laws would be allowed to bring a cat in the first place but clearly Jones was there to be in the right place at the wrong time whenever the movie needed to build some tension.

Incidentally, how did Jones survive the final alien battle? I can't say for certain I didn't simply doze off and miss the explanation. I was, as mentioned, tired. However, if Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) only survived by putting on a space suit and strapping herself into a chair before depressurizing the chamber, I just don't know how the cat wasn't sucked out into space too or didn't die from a lack of oxygen.

This movie has a not-so-subtle message about corporate greed. Not really an original one on my part but still worth mentioning again - whether it was being clear about the crew being expendable, iron-clad contracts or other cost-cutting methods. 

Speaking of which, was Nostromo designed by the same people who built Titanic? If the shuttle is for emergency escapes, why design it to only hold four members of a seven-member crew? It was almost as though they were expecting fatalities.

If robot technology is as sophisticated as Ash (Ian Holm), then why have a human crew at all? As established, they were working for a greedy corporation and robot labor theoretically would be cheaper than human labor and more likely to carry out orders without question. In fact, as I told my wife, I kind of wished this movie would have had a twist that revealed all the crew were robots and just didn't realize it.

Come to think of it, there's no evidence Jones wasn't a robotic cat. That would answer my previous question about how he survived the movie.

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