angry upvote

But honestly, fair. Alien is a 50-year-old movie, so when viewed with a modern lens it might not seem to be anything special.

Part of the legendary status of Alien is just how influential it has been. Before Alien, a horror-scifi movie would be some schlock about flying saucers piloted by men in gorilla masks terrorizing Hollywood. Audiences certainly weren't expecting a psychosexual thriller about forced oral insemination and mpreg.

And the android! Robots in movies were walking vending machines, and yet the robot in Alien is just some guy until he starts to malfunction. Plus in the context of the franchise, it makes you distrust every single android in each subsequent movie, and might even leave you guessing who else in the cast could be a robot in disguise.

Other movies have done it better since then. We all stand on the shoulders of giants after all. And the funny thing is, a lot of the time when you look back at the movies that spawn the tropes, they don't seem that impressive because they haven't been totally refined yet.

I have a soft spot for Alien, it's my favorite in the franchise. It relies so heavily on practical effects, it's got those retro-futuristic computers which I adore, and the smart woman saves the day (sort of) after all the dumb men tell her she's wrong. And yet despite what I just said, I don't think anyone is actually very dumb, the characters are all quite human and I understand and relate to their motivations.

It's a movie that feels far more modern than it is. You might even forget that it's fifty years old until you see that explosive finale in gloriously bad 70's CGI

I also liked Prometheus. It's not the best in the franchise but it's certainly not the worst, and it doesn't deserve as much hate as it gets in the community