Science Fiction in Film and Television

Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Number: Date: Science Fiction in Film and Television The film under review in this text is Alien. This is a 1979 science fiction film written by Dan O’Bannon and directed by Ridley Scott. The film states the experience of a crew flying in a commercial ship called Nostromo and its untimely encounter with a lethal and an aggressive extraterrestrial being in form of an alien after setting itself loose from the ship. This paper explains a research carried out on the movie with an employment of several modes of analysis to create a complete text on the film, Alien. The primary writer of the film was Daniel Thomas O’Bannon who was born on September 30 1946. He attended Washington University located in St. Louis where he learnt art, performed comedy routines and later wrote, directed and produced a science fiction play called “The Attack of the 50-foot chicken”. This inspired his future works as he would later play major roles in numerous great science fiction films such as Alien, Heavy Metal, Blue Thunder, Lifeforce, The Return of the Living Dead, Total Recall, Bleeders, The Resurected, Screamers and a previous remake of the 1986 film, Invaders from Mars (Byars et al 280). From his apparent love and interest on science fiction films since the early stages of his career, O’Bannon’s film, Alien, Perfectly fits in to his standard genre. Moreover, the cast and the crew to the film were intellectually selected by Mary Selway as the casting director through role audition in London and New York. These co-creators of the film played a significant role in making the film a success. The film, for a large part, seems to pass the message of an alien invasion and the evils that it causes upon its impact with human beings. However, in this film, Kavanaugh states that O’Bannon uses a metaphorical and symbolic language with the use numerous sexual overtones to explain that even male individuals also have a clear fear and disturbance of abusive sex by their female counterparts but the issue has been censored by the society as one of the main topics of discussion (95). The writer attacks his audience by representing an abusive and archaic female individual using a dangerous alien. Also, the ways in which the alien attacks and its calculated methods of killing its prey are sexual representations of ways in which male individuals are randomly raped whereas the scenes in which the crew members are seriously injured represents the aftermath of sex and an account of violent birth. From this, the writer created a massive influence on his audience by bring the theme to the limelight as an attack to the numerous films that depict helpless female individuals being preyed on by monster males. In the case of dramatic media, there are stars in the film, Alien, whose persona influenced the roles and characters in the film. Tom Skerritt, who acted the role of Dallas who was the captain of the ship, was 46 years of age during its production and had been in the field of acting since a tender age. In his previous roles, Skerritt had been playing the role of a leader whose responsibility was to make just decisions that were then adhered to by other characters. Therefore, his real-life persona influenced his charac...