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100-458: Star Trek Magazine was the first regular magazine to be published by Titan Magazines and is its longest-running title. It was launched in February 1995 as Star Trek Monthly , soon after the first broadcast of Star Trek: Voyager . Early in its run, the magazine featured reprints of several DC Comics-produced comics , but this ended after issue 22. With issue 113, the publication went to

200-420: A B-17 bomber during World War II , and set it on the spaceship as the second half of the story. The working title of the project was now Star Beast , but O'Bannon disliked this and changed it to Alien after noting the number of times that the word appeared in the script. O'Bannon and Shusett liked the new title's simplicity and its double meaning as both a noun and an adjective . Shusett came up with

300-462: A heat wave , these conditions nearly caused the actors to pass out; nurses had to be kept on-hand with oxygen tanks. All of the visuals on the computer screens on the Nostromo' s bridge are computer-generated imagery (CGI). The staff used CGI because it was easier than any alternative. For scenes showing the exterior of the Nostromo , a 58-foot (18 m) landing leg was constructed to give

400-615: A wide release on June 22 and was released on September 6 in the United Kingdom. It initially received mixed reviews, but won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects , three Saturn Awards ( Best Science Fiction Film , Best Direction for Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Cartwright), and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation . Alien grossed $ 78.9 million in the United States and £7.8 million in

500-399: A bi-monthly release schedule, and increased its page count from 68 to 100. Before this change, various issues were special "bumper" releases (100 pages, costing £4.99, usually with a gift – typically a Titan-released Trek book) to commemorate a specific occasion, such as the 30th and 35th anniversaries, the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , and others. A separate North American edition of

600-429: A deal with Brandywine, but Hill and Giler were not satisfied with the script and made numerous rewrites and revisions. This caused tension with O'Bannon and Shusett, since Hill and Giler had very little experience with science fiction; according to Shusett, "They weren't good at making it better, or, in fact, at not making it even worse." O'Bannon believed that Hill and Giler were attempting to justify taking his name off

700-533: A fifteen-year run for ' Batman Legends '. Titan Magazines currently publishes the following comics and magazines: In 2022, the Titan Publishing Group launched Titan Manga, an imprint focused solely on manga series, with their first release being a "director's cut" of Takashi Okazaki 's Afro Samurai . Alien (film) Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon , based on

800-408: A hen's egg was used on the poster and has become emblematic of the franchise as a whole—as opposed to the alien egg that appears in the finished film. The "facehugger" and its proboscis , which was made of a sheep's intestine , were shot out of the egg using high-pressure air hoses. The shot was reversed and slowed down in editing to prolong the effect and reveal more detail. The facehugger itself

900-441: A project that took him to Paris for six months. Though the project ultimately fell through, it introduced him to several artists whose work gave him ideas for his science-fiction story including Chris Foss , H. R. Giger , and Jean "Moebius" Giraud . O'Bannon was impressed by Foss's covers for science-fiction books, while he found Giger's work "disturbing": "His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that

1000-563: A range of formats from "making of" books to screenplays to TV companions and novels, and has a backlist reprint program. Titan Books' first title was a trade paperback collection of Brian Bolland 's Judge Dredd stories from 2000 AD . Titan Books followed the first title with numerous other 2000 AD reprints. Subsequently, the publishing company expanded operations, putting out its first original title in 1987 ( Pat Mills and Hunt Emerson 's You Are Maggie Thatcher ). Around this time, Titan also began publishing Escape magazine (although

1100-481: A realistic environment, a concept summarized as "truckers in space". According to Scott, this concept was inspired partly by Star Wars , which deviated from the pristine future often depicted in science-fiction films of the time. To assist the actors in preparing for their roles, Scott wrote several pages of backstory for each character explaining their histories. He filmed many of their rehearsals to capture spontaneity and improvisation, and tensions between some of

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1200-414: A science-fiction comedy film, Dark Star , with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb , with production beginning in late 1970. The film featured an alien (created by spray-painting a beach ball and adding rubber "claws"), which was played for the comedic effect. The experience left O'Bannon "really wanting to do an alien that looked real ." A "couple of years" later he began work on

1300-471: A script titled Memory , containing what would become the opening scenes of Alien : a crew of astronauts awakens to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid. They investigate and their ship breaks down on the surface. He did not yet have a clear idea as to what the alien antagonist of the story would be. O'Bannon soon accepted an offer to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky 's adaptation of Dune ,

1400-435: A sense of the ship's size. Scott was not convinced that it looked large enough, so he had his two young sons and the son of Derek Vanlint (the film's cinematographer) stand in for the regular actors, wearing smaller space suits to make the set pieces seem larger. The same technique was used for the scene in which the crew members encounter the dead alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. The children nearly collapsed due to

1500-556: A similar story that would focus more on horror. "I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number of astronauts", he later recalled, " Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy." Ronald Shusett , meanwhile, was working on an early version of what would eventually become Total Recall . Impressed by Dark Star , he contacted O'Bannon and the two agreed to collaborate on their projects, choosing to work on O'Bannon's film first, as they believed it would be less costly to produce. O'Bannon had written 29 pages of

1600-424: A story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett . It follows a spaceship crew who investigate a derelict spaceship and are hunted by a deadly extraterrestrial creature . The film stars Tom Skerritt , Sigourney Weaver , Veronica Cartwright , Harry Dean Stanton , John Hurt , Ian Holm , and Yaphet Kotto . It was produced by Gordon Carroll , David Giler , and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions and

1700-479: A technique he employed while working on Star Wars . For example, some of the Nostromo 's corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area. Special-effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Nick Allder made many of the set pieces and props function, including moving chairs, computer monitors, motion trackers and flamethrowers. Giger designed and worked on all

1800-445: A transmission from a nearby planet and awakens the crew. Following company policy to investigate transmissions indicating intelligent life, they land on the planet and Dallas, Kane, and Lambert head out to investigate. They discover that the transmission comes from a derelict alien spaceship, where they find the remains of a large alien with a hole in its torso. Later, Mother deciphers part of the transmission, which Ripley determines to be

1900-425: A warning message. Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large eggs. When he touches one, a spider-like creature springs out, penetrates his helmet, and attaches itself to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo . As the acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash overrides her. While Parker and Brett work on repairing

2000-437: Is going to be very slow, very graceful, and the alien will alter shape so you never really know exactly what he looks like." Scott said: "I've never liked horror films before, because in the end it's always been a man in a rubber suit. Well, there's one way to deal with that. The most important thing in a film of this type is not what you see, but the effect of what you think you saw." The alien has been referred to as "one of

2100-525: Is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution . In April 2007, the original alien suit was sold at auction. Copious amounts of K-Y Jelly were used to simulate saliva and give the alien a slimy appearance. The alien vocalizations were provided by Percy Edwards , a voice artist who had provided bird sounds for British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the whale sounds for Orca: Killer Whale (1977). In most scenes,

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2200-489: The Nostromo crew's discovery of the alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. O'Bannon has also noted the influence of "Junkyard" (1953), a short story by Clifford D. Simak in which a crew lands on an asteroid and discovers a chamber full of eggs. He has also cited as influences Strange Relations by Philip José Farmer (1960), which covers alien reproduction and various EC Comics horror titles carrying stories in which monsters eat their way out of people. With most of

2300-500: The Nostromo , Ash attempts to remove the creature from Kane's face. He stops when he discovers that its highly corrosive acidic blood could harm Kane and potentially damage the ship's hull. The creature eventually detaches itself and dies. After the crew returns to space, Kane awakens with some memory loss but otherwise seems well. During a final crew meal before returning to stasis, he suddenly chokes and convulses. A small alien creature bursts from his chest, killing him, and escapes into

2400-613: The Vertigo comic-book title Sandman , The Simpsons , Star Wars , Tank Girl , The Real Ghostbusters , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , Transformers , The Walking Dead , Life Is Strange , Roy of the Rovers , Dan Dare , WWE Heroes , World of Warcraft and Bloodborne . In addition to licensed titles, Titan Comics also publishes creator-owned series, such as Bloodthirsty: One Nation Under Water (2015–2016) and Man Plus (2015–2016). In 2010, Titan acquired

2500-568: The Alien and Predator Films , asserts that part of the film's effectiveness in frightening viewers "comes from the fact that the audience can all identify with the characters...Everyone aboard the Nostromo is a normal, everyday, working Joe just like the rest of us. They just happen to live and work in the future." Alien was filmed over 14 weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. Principal photography took place at Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios near London, while model and miniature filming

2600-901: The American hardboiled fiction imprint Hard Case Crime , and since that time has released a number of comics and graphic novels under the Hard Case Crime brand. Heroic Signatures gave Titan the license to publish new titles featuring Conan the Barbarian in 2022. As of 2021, Titan Comics' publishing directors are Ricky Claydon and John Dziewiatkowski. Titan Magazines is the magazine-publishing division of Titan Publishing Group. Launched in 1995 with Star Trek Magazine , Titan had previously published several one shot film tie-in titles. Since then it has published many film, TV and comics titles, including poster magazines for Tim Burton 's Batman . Some of Titan's magazines are published in

2700-538: The Ash subplot, but also making the dialogue more natural and trimming some sequences set on the alien planetoid. Despite the fact that the final shooting script was written by Hill and Giler, the Writers Guild of America awarded O'Bannon sole credit for the screenplay. 20th Century-Fox did not express confidence in financing a science-fiction film. However, after the success of Star Wars in 1977, its interest in

2800-564: The Base of a Crucifixion . Giger's original design, which was refined, resembled a plucked chicken. Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon credits his experiences with Crohn's disease for inspiring the chest-bursting scene. For the filming of the chestburster scene, the cast members knew that the creature would be bursting out of Hurt, and had seen the chestburster puppet, but they had not been told that fake blood would also be bursting out in every direction from high-pressure pumps and squibs . The scene

2900-680: The Film published in 2020 and Escape from New York: The Official Story of the Film published in 2021, all written by John Walsh . As of 2016, Titan Books' editorial director is Laura Price. Titan Books also publishes trade paperbacks and graphic novels in the UK and United States under the imprint Titan Comics . The company has a backlist of over 1,000 graphic novels. Its titles include such licensed characters and properties as Batman , Doctor Who , Family Guy , Heroes , Nemi , Superman , Judge Dredd and other 2000 AD characters,

3000-519: The UK edition maintained its internal continuity, with the US #1 being relatively the same as UK issue 128. Later US editions returned to 68 pages in length, with the additional UK pages being inserted in the form of a supplement at the centre of the magazine. This practice was quickly discontinued, and the various editions were standardized with issue 134. The magazine is now printed in the United States rather than

3100-510: The UK, meaning that US distribution now takes place some time before UK release. A special cover is available for specialist comic shops ordering via the Diamond Previews magazine. For issue 137, and all subsequent 100-page editions, a new binding format and magazine size was introduced. The issue was perfect bound (instead of saddle-stitched), and measured 8 inches wide × 11 inches high (instead of 9 × 12). The following issue retained

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3200-524: The US, although not all, some with an entirely separate magazine. In April 2016, Bleeding Cool published a blog/vlog entry pertaining to concerns over Titan's UK reprints of DC titles, specifically cancellations and a lack of updates and communication with readers, as well as addressing the frequent inconsistencies regarding the publication dates of future issues. Titan ceased publication of all their DC Comics titles in December 2018, most notably ending

3300-480: The United Kingdom during its first theatrical run. Its worldwide gross to date has been estimated at between $ 104 million and $ 203 million. In subsequent years, Alien was critically reassessed and is now considered one of the greatest and most influential science fiction and horror films of all time . In 2002, Alien was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and

3400-404: The adult Alien and would make it impossible for the crew to kill it by conventional means, such as guns or explosives, since the acid would burn through the ship's hull. For the scene in which the dead facehugger is examined, Scott used pieces of fish and shellfish to create its viscera . The "chestburster" design was inspired by Francis Bacon 's 1944 painting Three Studies for Figures at

3500-488: The airlock door. The resulting explosive decompression almost ejects the alien into space, but it hangs onto the door frame. Ripley fires a grappling hook gun to push it out and activates the engines, blasting the alien into space. After recording her final log entry, she places Jones and herself into stasis for the trip back to Earth. While studying cinema at the University of Southern California , Dan O'Bannon had made

3600-495: The alien aspects, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the Nostromo and its human elements. For the interior of the derelict spacecraft and egg chamber, he used dried bones with plaster to sculpt the scenery and elements. Veronica Cartwright described Giger's sets as "so erotic...it's big vaginas and penises...the whole thing is like you're going inside of some sort of womb or whatever...it's sort of visceral." The set with

3700-404: The alien blocks her path to the shuttle. She retreats and unsuccessfully attempts to abort the self-destruct. She reaches the shuttle unhindered with Jones, narrowly escaping as the Nostromo explodes. As Ripley prepares for stasis, she discovers the alien has stowed itself in a narrow compartment. She dons a spacesuit and flushes it out. It approaches Ripley, but before it can kill her, she opens

3800-475: The alien creature", while Ivor Powell suggested that "Dallas is found in the ship as an egg, still alive." Scott remarked, "they're morphing, metamorphosing , they are changing into...being consumed, I guess, by whatever the alien's organism is...into an egg." The scene was cut partly because it did not look realistic enough, but also because it slowed the pace of the escape sequence. Tom Skerritt remarked that "The picture had to have that pace. Her trying to get

3900-756: The alien creatures became the thematic and narrative core of the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). A crossover with the Predator franchise produced the Alien vs. Predator films, while a two-film prequel series was directed by Scott before Alien: Romulus (2024). The commercial space tug Nostromo is returning to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis : captain Dallas, executive officer Kane, warrant officer Ripley , navigator Lambert, science officer Ash , and engineers Parker and Brett. The ship's computer, Mother, detects

4000-419: The alien was portrayed by Bolaji Badejo. A latex costume was made to fit Badejo's slender 6-foot-10-inch (208 cm) frame by taking a full-body plaster cast. Scott later said that the alien "takes on elements of the host – in this case, a man". Badejo attended tai chi and mime classes to create convincing movements. For some scenes, such as when the alien lowers itself from the ceiling to kill Brett, it

4100-488: The artwork of H. R. Giger ; both of them felt that his painting Necronom IV was the type of representation they wanted for the film's antagonist and began asking the studio to hire him as a designer. Fox initially believed Giger's work was too ghastly for audiences, but the Brandywine team were persistent and eventually won out. According to Gordon Carroll: "The first second that Ridley saw Giger's work, he knew that

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4200-418: The background. That way the story and the characters emerge and they become more real. —Ron Cobb on his designs for Alien O'Bannon brought in artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss, with whom he had worked on Dark Star and Dune respectively, to work on designs for the human aspects such as the spaceship and space suits. Cobb created hundreds of preliminary sketches of the interiors and exteriors of

4300-415: The biggest single design problem, maybe the biggest problem in the film, had been solved." Scott flew to Zürich to meet Giger and recruited him to work on all aspects of the alien and its environment including the surface of the planetoid, the derelict spacecraft, and all four forms of the alien from the egg to the adult. The scene of Kane inspecting the egg was shot in postproduction. A fiberglass egg

4400-459: The cast members, particularly towards the less-experienced Weaver; this translated convincingly to film as tension between the characters. Roger Ebert notes that the actors in Alien were older than was typical in thriller films at the time, which helped make the characters more convincing: None of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm

4500-493: The chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its 'open, dripping vaginal mouth'." The sets of the Nostromo ' s three decks were each created almost entirely in one piece, with each deck occupying a separate stage. The actors had to navigate through the hallways that connected the stages, adding to the sense of claustrophobia and realism. The sets used large transistors and low-resolution computer screens to give

4600-403: The company's orders. Ash states that the alien is unkillable and expresses his admiration for it, taunting them about their chances of survival. Ripley shuts him down and Parker incinerates him. The crew decides to self-destruct the Nostromo and escape in the shuttle. While gathering supplies, Parker and Lambert are killed by the alien. Now alone, Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence, but

4700-430: The deceased alien creature, which the production team nicknamed the "space jockey", proved problematic, as 20th Century-Fox did not want to spend the money for such an expensive set that would only be used for one scene. Scott described the set as the cockpit or driving deck of the mysterious ship, and the production team convinced the studio that the scene was important to impress the audience and make them aware that this

4800-414: The end credits. Scott and Rawlings had also become attached to several of the musical cues they had used for the temporary score while editing the film, and re-edited some of Goldsmith's cues and rescored several sequences to match these cues and even left the temporary score in place in some parts of the finished film. Goldsmith later said, "You can see that I was sort of like going at opposite ends of

4900-659: The film in London, which impressed Fox enough to double the film's budget. His storyboards included designs for the spaceship and space suits , drawing on such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars . However, he was keen on emphasizing horror in Alien rather than fantasy, describing the film as " The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction". Casting calls and auditions were held in New York City and London. With only seven human characters in

5000-443: The film to suspense and fear. Scott did not like Goldsmith's original main title piece, however, so Goldsmith rewrote it as "the obvious thing: weird and strange, and which everybody loved." Another source of tension was editor Terry Rawlings ' choice to use pieces of Goldsmith's music from previous films, including a piece from Freud: The Secret Passion , and to use an excerpt from Howard Hanson 's Symphony No. 2 ("Romantic") for

5100-487: The film's most memorable moments. During preview screenings, the crew noticed that some viewers would move towards the back of the theater so as not to be too close to the screen during the sequence. The scene has frequently been called one of the most memorable moments in cinema history. In 2007, Empire named it as the greatest 18-rated moment in film, ranking it above the decapitation scene in The Omen (1976) and

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5200-474: The final version is just under two hours. One scene that was cut from the film occurred during Ripley's final escape from the Nostromo ; she encounters Dallas and Brett, who have been partially cocooned by the alien. O'Bannon had intended the scene to indicate that Brett was becoming an alien egg, while Dallas was held nearby to be implanted by the resulting facehugger. Production designer Michael Seymour later suggested that Dallas had "become sort of food for

5300-529: The final version. He sculpted the body using plasticine , incorporating pieces such as vertebrae from snakes and cooling tubes from a Rolls-Royce . The head was manufactured separately by Carlo Rambaldi , who had worked on the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Rambaldi followed Giger's designs closely, making some modifications to incorporate the moving parts that would animate

5400-590: The flamethrower. Lambert suggests fleeing in the escape shuttle, but Ripley, now in command, explains that it will not support four people and insists on continuing Dallas's plan to flush out the alien. While accessing Mother, Ripley discovers that the crew was awoken and directed to the planet because the company secretly ordered Ash to return with the alien for study, and to consider the crew expendable. She confronts Ash, who tries to kill her. Parker intervenes, knocking Ash's head loose and revealing him to be an android . The survivors reactivate Ash's head, and he confirms

5500-449: The genre rose substantially. According to Carroll: "When Star Wars came out and was the extraordinary hit that it was, suddenly science fiction became the hot genre." O'Bannon recalled that "They wanted to follow through on Star Wars , and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was Alien ". Alien was greenlit by 20th Century-Fox, with an initial budget of $ 4.2 million. It

5600-413: The heat of the suits; oxygen systems were eventually added to help the actors breathe. Four identical cats were used to portray Jones, the crew's pet. During filming, Weaver discovered that she was allergic to the combination of cat hair and the glycerin placed on the actors' skin to make them appear sweaty. By removing the glycerin she was able to continue working with the cats. Alien originally

5700-463: The hell out of there, we're all rooting for her to get out of there, and for her to slow up and have a conversation with Dallas was not appropriate." The footage was included with other deleted scenes as a special feature on the Laserdisc release of Alien , and a shortened version of it was reinserted into the 2003 Director's Cut, which was re-released in theaters and on DVD . The musical score

5800-469: The idea of professional men being pursued by a deadly alien creature through a claustrophobic environment. Forbidden Planet (1956) gave O'Bannon the idea of a ship being warned not to land, and then the crew being killed one by one by a mysterious creature when they defy the warning. Planet of the Vampires (1965) contains a scene in which the heroes discover a giant alien skeleton ; this influenced

5900-436: The idea that one of the crew members could be implanted with an alien embryo that would burst out of him; he thought this would be an interesting plot device by which the alien could board the ship. Dan [O'Bannon] put his finger on the problem: what has to happen next is the creature has to get on the ship in an interesting way. I have no idea how, but if we could solve that, if it can't be that it just snuck in, then I think

6000-425: The interior settings of the ship in a realistic and believable manner. Under Scott's direction, the design of the Nostromo shifted towards an 800-foot-long (240 m) tug towing a refining platform 2 miles (3.2 km) long and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide. Cobb also created some conceptual drawings of the alien, which went unused. Moebius was attached to the project for a few days and his costume renderings were

6100-413: The jaw and inner mouth. A system of hinges and cables was used to operate the rigid tongue, which protruded from the mouth and featured a second mouth at its tip with its own set of movable teeth. The final head had about 900 moving parts and points of articulation. Part of a human skull was used as the "face", and was hidden under the smooth, translucent cover of the head. Rambaldi's original alien jaw

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6200-474: The latest change to its publication schedule, the magazine has now returned to regularly being 100 pages in length. In August 2021, the magazine changed its name to Star Trek Explorer. Star Trek Explorer ' s final issue will be published on 4 December 2024. Titan Magazines Titan Publishing Group is the publishing division of the British entertainment company Titan Entertainment , which

6300-560: The magazine came into being in August 2006, otherwise synchronized with the UK version for contents, due in part to the loss of the Star Trek: Communicator in 2005, which had aggravated the previous 2003 loss of Star Trek: The Magazine , leaving the home market devoid of any and all "official" Star Trek' franchise magazines. Issue #1 of the run – bi-monthly like the UK edition – was released on 22 August 2006. Numbering of

6400-399: The most iconic movie monsters", and its biomechanical appearance and sexual overtones have been frequently noted. Roger Ebert wrote that " 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... The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from

6500-498: The name to imply a business alliance between Britain and Japan, deriving "Weylan" from the British Leyland Motor Corporation and "Yutani" from the name of his Japanese neighbor. The 1986 sequel, Aliens , named the company "Weyland-Yutani", and it has remained a central aspect of the franchise. Art director Roger Christian used scrap metal and parts to create set pieces and props to save money,

6600-481: The need to shorten the film. Instead, the egg chamber was set inside the derelict ship and was filmed on the same set as the space-jockey scene; the entire disc piece supporting the jockey and its chair was removed and the set was redressed to create the egg chamber. Light effects in the egg chamber were created by lasers borrowed from English rock band the Who . The band was testing the lasers for use in their stage show on

6700-404: The other characters. Shusett and he had intentionally written all the roles generically; they made a note in the script that explicitly states, "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women." This freed Scott, Selway, and Goldberg to interpret the characters as they pleased, and to cast accordingly. They wanted the Nostromo ' s crew to resemble working astronauts in

6800-553: The planetoid's surface and derelict spacecraft based on Giger's designs, then made moulds and casts and scaled them up as diagrams for the wood and fiberglass forms of the sets. Tons of sand, plaster, fiberglass, rock, and gravel were shipped into the studio to sculpt a desert landscape for the planetoid's surface, which the actors would walk across wearing space-suit costumes. The suits were thick, bulky, and lined with nylon , had no cooling systems, and initially, no venting for their exhaled carbon dioxide to escape. Combined with

6900-430: The plot in place, Shusett and O'Bannon presented their script to several studios, pitching it as " Jaws in space". They were on the verge of signing a deal with Roger Corman 's studio when a friend offered to find them a better deal and passed the script on to Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill, who had formed a production company called Brandywine with ties to 20th Century-Fox . O'Bannon and Shusett signed

7000-453: The pole with the filmmakers." Nevertheless, Scott praised Goldsmith's score as "full of dark beauty" and "seriously threatening, but beautiful". It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score , a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album , and it won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music . The score has been released as a soundtrack album in several versions with different tracks and sequences. O'Bannon introduced Scott to

7100-441: The producers vetoed this idea, because they believed the alien should die at the end of the film. Editing and post-production took roughly 20 weeks and concluded in late January 1979. The editor, Terry Rawlings, had previously worked with Scott on editing sound for The Duellists . Scott and Rawlings edited much Alien to have a slow pace to build suspense for the more tense and frightening moments. According to Rawlings: "I think

7200-421: The script and claiming Shusett's and his work as their own. Hill and Giler did add some substantial elements to the story, including the android character Ash, which O'Bannon felt was an unnecessary subplot but which Shusett later described as "one of the best things in the movie...That whole idea and scenario was theirs." Hill and Giler went through eight drafts of the script in total, concentrating largely on

7300-486: The ship a "used", industrial look and make it appear as though it was constructed of "retrofitted old technology". Ron Cobb created industrial-style symbols and color-coded signs for various areas and aspects. The company that owns the Nostromo is not named in the film, and is referred to by the characters as "the company". However, the name and logo of the company appears on several set pieces and props such as computer monitors and beer cans as "Weylan-Yutani". Cobb created

7400-559: The ship might have been a weapons-carrier capable of dropping alien eggs onto a planet so that the aliens could use the local lifeforms as hosts. In early versions of the script, the eggs were to be located in a separate pyramid structure, which would be found later by the Nostromo crew and would contain statues and hieroglyphs depicting the alien reproductive cycle, contrasting the human, alien, and space-jockey cultures. Cobb, Foss, and Giger each created concept artwork for these sequences, but they were discarded due to budgetary concerns and

7500-415: The ship, which went through many design concepts and possible names such as Leviathan and Snark as the script developed. The final name was derived from the title of Joseph Conrad 's 1904 novel Nostromo , while the escape shuttle, called Narcissus in the script, was named after Conrad's 1897 novella The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' . The production team particularly praised Cobb's ability to depict

7600-456: The ship. After ejecting Kane's body out of an airlock, the crew attempts to locate the creature using tracking devices and kill it. Brett follows the crew's pet cat, Jones , into a landing leg compartment, where the now fully grown alien attacks Brett. The crew determines that the alien must be in the air ducts. Dallas enters the ducts with a flamethrower, intending to force the creature into an airlock, but it attacks him. Parker later finds only

7700-404: The size, but returned to saddle-stitching. With this issue, the UK edition lost its 100-page length, becoming 68 pages long. The frequency with which the title has been published has further varied over the years, with an increase in output to eight issues a year in early 2009 (with issue 143), followed by a decrease to quarterly (along with an additional yearly publication) from 2012 onwards. With

7800-421: The sound stage next door. I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science-fiction films are notorious for this. I've always felt that there's another way to do it: a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be–as convincingly as possible, but always in

7900-399: The story, Scott sought to hire strong actors so he could focus most of his energy on the film's visual style. He employed casting director Mary Selway , who had worked with him on The Duellists , to head the casting in the United Kingdom, while Mary Goldberg handled casting in the United States. In developing the story, O'Bannon had focused on writing the alien first, putting off developing

8000-549: The task, but O'Bannon, Shusett, and the Brandywine team felt that these directors would not take the film seriously and would instead treat it as a B monster movie . According to Cobb, Steven Spielberg was also considered to direct the film and was interested but prior obligations prevented him to directing the film. Giler, Hill, and Carroll had been impressed by Ridley Scott's debut feature film The Duellists (1977) and made an offer to him to direct Alien , which Scott quickly accepted. Scott created detailed storyboards for

8100-666: The title was canceled in 1989). Titan Books continues to publish both new and licensed graphic novels, as well as film and television tie-ins. Titan Books’ range of fiction includes limited comic books tie-ins and novelizations for such films as Alien (film) , Predator (film) and Alien vs. Predator , Terminator Salvation , Iron Man , The X-Files: I Want to Believe , Transformers , The Dark Knight Rises and Firefly . Titan also publishes coffee table books on animation, popular culture, collectibles and comic and fantasy art including Harryhausen: The Lost Movies published in 2019, Flash Gordon: The Official Story of

8200-538: The transformation sequence in An American Werewolf in London (1981). IGN ranked it the 10th-best film moment of all time. For the scene in which Ash is revealed to be an android, a puppet was created of his torso and upper body, which was operated from underneath. During a preview screening, this scene caused an usher to faint. In the following scene, Ash's head is placed on a table and reactivated; for portions of this scene, an animatronic head

8300-420: The way we did get it right was by keeping it slow, funny enough, which is completely different from what they do today. And I think the slowness of it made the moments that you wanted people to be sort of scared...then we could go as fast as we liked because you've sucked people into a corner and then attacked them, so to speak. And I think that's how it worked." The first cut of the film was over three hours long;

8400-502: The whole movie will come into place. In the middle of the night, I woke up and I said, "Dan I think I have an idea: the alien screws one of them [...] it jumps on his face and plants its seed!" And Dan says, oh my god, we've got it, we've got the whole movie. —Screenwriter Ron Shusett O'Bannon drew inspiration from many works of science fiction and horror. He later said: "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody !" The Thing from Another World (1951) inspired

8500-536: Was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 30 and Weaver at 28 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, Alien achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth. David McIntee , author of Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to

8600-515: Was composed by Jerry Goldsmith , conducted by Lionel Newman , and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra . Scott had originally wanted the film to be scored by Isao Tomita , but Fox wanted a more familiar composer and Goldsmith was recommended by then-president of Fox Alan Ladd Jr. Goldsmith wanted to create a sense of romanticism and lyrical mystery in the film's opening scenes, which would build throughout

8700-472: Was distributed by 20th Century-Fox . Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The alien creatures and environments were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger , while the concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the other sets. Alien premiered on May 25, 1979, the opening night of the fourth Seattle International Film Festival . It received

8800-497: Was done at Bray Studios in Water Oakley , Berkshire . The production schedule was short due to the film's low budget and pressure from 20th Century-Fox to finish on time. A crew of over 200 craftspeople and technicians constructed the three principal sets: the surface of the alien planetoid, and the interiors of the Nostromo and the derelict spacecraft. Art director Les Dilley created 1 ⁄ 24 -scale miniatures of

8900-450: Was established as Titan Books in 1981. The books division has two main areas of publishing: film and television tie-ins and cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics references and art titles. Its imprints are Titan Books , Titan Comics , Titan Magazines and Titan Manga. Titan Books is a publisher of film, video game and TV tie-in books. As of 2011, the company publishes on average 30 to 40 such titles per year, across

9000-452: Was funded by North Americans, but made by 20th Century-Fox's British production subsidiary. O'Bannon had originally assumed that he would direct Alien , but 20th Century-Fox instead asked Hill to direct. Hill declined due to other film commitments, as well as not being comfortable with the level of visual effects that would be required. Peter Yates , John Boorman , Jack Clayton , Robert Aldrich , and Robert Altman were considered for

9100-408: Was made using a face cast of Holm. However, the latex of the head shrank while curing and the result was not entirely convincing. For the bulk of the scene, Holm knelt under the table with his head through a hole. Milk, caviar, pasta, fiber optics , and Foley urinary catheters were combined to form the android innards. Giger made several conceptual paintings of the adult alien before settling on

9200-405: Was not a B movie . To save money, only one wall of the set was created, and the "space jockey" sat atop a disc that could be rotated to facilitate shots from different angles in relation to the actors. Giger airbrushed the entire set and the "space jockey" by hand. The origin of the jockey creature is not explored, but Scott later theorized that it might have been the ship's pilot, and that

9300-420: Was portrayed by stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell. Powell, in costume, was suspended on wires and then lowered in an unfurling motion. Scott chose not to show the full alien for most of the film, keeping most of its body in shadow to create a sense of terror and heighten suspense. The audience could thus project their own fears into imagining what the rest of the creature might look like: "Every movement

9400-537: Was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster." After the Dune project collapsed, O'Bannon found himself homeless and broke, and returned to Los Angeles where he would borrow Shusett's couch. In need of money he decided to write a spec script the studios would buy, and the two revived his Memory script. Shusett suggested that O'Bannon use one of his other film ideas, about gremlins infiltrating

9500-588: Was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry . In 2008, it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre, and as the 33rd-greatest film of all time by Empire . The success of Alien spawned a media franchise of films, books, video games, and toys , and propelled Weaver's acting career. The story of her character 's encounters with

9600-436: Was shot in one take using an artificial torso filled with blood and viscera, with Hurt's head and arms coming up from underneath the table. The chestburster was shoved up through the torso by a puppeteer who held it on a stick. When the creature burst through the chest, a stream of blood shot directly at Cartwright, shocking her enough that she fell over and went into hysterics. According to Tom Skerritt, "What you saw on camera

9700-434: Was the first creature that H.R. Giger designed for the film, going through several versions in different sizes before deciding on a small creature with human-like fingers and a long tail. Dan O'Bannon, with help from Ron Cobb, drew his own version based on Giger's design, which became the final version. Cobb came up with the idea that the creature could have a powerful acid for blood, a characteristic that would carry over to

9800-409: Was the real response. She had no idea what the hell happened. All of a sudden this thing just came up." The creature then runs off-camera, an effect accomplished by cutting a slit in the table for the puppeteer's stick to go through and passing an air hose through the puppet's tail to make it whip about. The real-life surprise of the actors gave the scene an intense sense of realism and made it one of

9900-429: Was to conclude with the destruction of the Nostromo while Ripley escapes in the shuttle Narcissus . However, Scott conceived of a "fourth act" in which Ripley is forced to confront the alien on the shuttle. He pitched the idea to 20th Century-Fox and negotiated an increase in the budget to film it over several extra days. Scott had wanted the alien to bite off Ripley's head and make the final log entry in her voice, but

10000-400: Was used so that actor John Hurt could shine his light on it and see movement inside, which was provided by Scott fluttering his hands inside the egg while wearing rubber gloves. The top of the egg was hydraulic, and the innards were a cow's stomach and tripe . Test shots of the eggs were filmed using hen's eggs, and this footage was used in early teaser trailers. For this reason, the image of

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