"Alien3 took a while to come to the screen, just as James Cameron’s Aliens had taken its time in development after Ridley Scott’s 1979 original. The key difference is that while the sequel took longer because different executives blew hot and cold on the idea of another film, Cameron’s success made the third film inevitable from the off. As well as being a commercial hit, Aliens was praised by critics and audiences alike, and even went on to bag two Oscar wins and several other nominations. That changed Fox’s tune, and Roger Birnbaum, then the studio’s head of worldwide distribution, would reportedly call the series, “The Franchise”, at a point where big viable sci-fi movie franchises didn’t come along nearly as often as they do nowadays."
Alien is an American science fiction horror and action media franchise created by screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, which began as the 1979 film Alien. The series primarily follows deadly encounters between humans and the extraterrestrial Xenomorphs in the future.
"The Alien movies visualize the two things so many men look upon with disgust and horror—getting penetrated themselves, and watching a woman giving birth. In the Alien films, and very much in Alien: Covenant, moments of rape are always moments of impregnation. They provide a dual, intensified horror."
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because thats the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we dont even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth." Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesnt play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
"The Xenomorphs are memorable for a number of their traits-their raw power, adaptability, their quick development, their hive mind. As Ash put it, they are the "perfect organism," whose "structural perfection is only matched by its hostility." Likewise, we think that the Alien films are the "perfect" science fiction/horror series."
"Do men really require a science fiction scenario to understand how horrific unwanted violation of the body is? Maybe if our culture treated male-on-male rape like the horror it is, men wouldnt need to turn to science fiction movies to understand the problem. Even if some men require such a prompt for their empathy, the Alien franchise still isnt one that offers much in the way of true access to womens relationship with rape."
"As fans of the series know, "Alien 3" was the third installment in what would later round out as quartet of films about Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only crewmember to survive the infestation of the mining vessel Nostromo in Ridley Scotts inaugural 1979 sci-fi thriller "Alien." A key part of this series fascination lies in its malleability. In contrast to other franchises such as the James Bond films and the "Star Wars" series, the "Alien" films werent stylistically or thematically uniform. All they had in common were Ripley and the alien, or aliens, and certain images and motifs: eggs, acid, glistening teeth, scuttling tentacles and spindly legs, foggy corridors, desolate planetary landscapes, and battered commercial and military starships that had all the glamour of delivery vans or rusty refinery towers. Beyond that, each film in the series had a distinctive look and pace and rhythm. "Alien" was slow and moody, a true horror film in a nasty seventies vein. The second film in the series, writer-director James Camerons "Aliens," reconfigured the originals haunted-house-in-space vibe as an adventure film: part war movie, part Western, referencing everything from Apocalypse Now and Zulu to John Ford and Budd Boetticher. The fourth film, scripted by Joss Whedon and directed by Pierre Jeunet (Amelie [sic, actually Alien Resurrection]), is a hybrid of Frankenstein story, pirate adventure and disaster picture, starring a genetically reconstituted Ripley who has alien DNA and, it seems, superpowers."
"To describe the Alien franchise as a metaphor for male rape is to forget that the women of the Alien franchise are treated equally as invasively. And yet this sci-fi impregnation doesnt compare to the violent brutality frequently dished out to female characters as par of course across the breadth of cinema," says Baughan. "Its no bad thing to encourage men to rethink the way in which women are treated on screen. But whether they recognize or appreciate this subtext—lets wait and see."