Forty-five years after “Alien” launched horror into space, little hasn’t been analyzed about its hissing xenomorphs, face-huggers or the lingering untrustworthiness of “synthetic persons.” These recycle endlessly through a franchise that is ever expanding, like space itself, but the metaphorical power of the 1979 original and its 1986 sequel, “Aliens,” still inspire appreciative analyses all these decades later.
Ridley Scott didn’t intend for any of that when he set out to direct the first film. He wasn’t even the first choice for the job. But, as told in the Director’s Cut’s commentary, he won it by pitching “the most straight-forward, unpretentious, riveting thriller like ‘Psycho’ or ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ or even the most brilliant B-level like ‘Night of the Living Dead’ or ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ but I want it to look, and I’m going to do this, like ‘2001.’”
