Alien Digest

I enjoyed watching the film Alien for the first time Monday. I had never heard anything about this movie, and didn’t know what to expect when watching. What I really enjoyed about the movie was storyline, and the way the movie was shot. I thought Alien was ahead of it’s time in the basic concepts and imagery.

The Suspense is Killing Me

When watching the film I really like how the filmmakers shot most scenes on the ship. During the whole film I was uncertain of what was going to happen next. I wasn’t sure who was going to die and how they were going to die. From the beginning we don’t know much about the characters on the ship or what their main purpose. Thompson writes “Unlike many of the films that I’ve examined, Alien does not use its credits sequence to introduce much information. We only know that we are somewhere in space” (Thompson 286). This leaves the viewer guessing from the beginning and puts the director in firm control of the audience’s emotions. When watching Alien, I realized I kept getting sucked into the plot because of the way the film was shot. There were a lot of scenes that had dark lighting and wide camera angle shots. This caused me to focus hard about what was happening next. So when something jumped out or happened u I was alarmed. The filmmaker used suspense perfectly. Thompson described how Scott did this with one of the scenes by saying “Sideways tracking shots close to the furniture and equipment reveal a limited amount of space onscreen at any given moment” (Thompson 287). Even with the cheesy special effects and settings, I was still into the movie the whole time.

Dark Lighting help with the suspense

The Female Protagonist

Another interesting part I liked about the movie was how Ripley was the hero of the film. She seemed to be the only one that was thinking logically about certain crucial situations in the movie. When more people were thinking with their heart, she was thinking with her head. For example, when she didn’t want to let Lambert, Dallas, and Kane back into the ship because they could have hurt everybody on board. While Dallas and Lambert were upset she still did the right thing. Mulhall talks about Ripley saying that “she acts consistently from the outset to preserve the physical integrity of the ship she briefly commands because she has understood all along femaleness in the terms that the alien seeks to impose upon the human species, and hence has always understood her body as a vessel whose integrity at all cost must be preserved” (Mulhall 24). Ripley was the one I agreed with the most and felt like she should have been the leader of the ship. Which makes since because she’s the one that survives and kills the alien.

Ripley as the protagonist in the film


Works Cited

Mulhall, Stephen. “Kane's Son, Cain's Daughter.” On Film. London: Routledge, 2002. 12-32.
Print.

Scott, Ridley, dir. Alien. 1979. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009.

Thompson, Kristin. "Alien." Storytelling in the New Hollywood. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.
283-306. Print

Work Cited

Work Cited

Edwards, Kim. “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Alice’s Little Sister. Film As Text: 2008. Print.
Smith, Paul. “Pan’s Labyrinth.” El Laberinto Del Fauno. Film Quarterly, 2007. Vol 60. Print.

Our First Film

I found Pan's Labyrinth to be a very eerie and twisted movie. I had no idea what the film was about (except for the e-mail we got) before watching it. I was disappointed that there weren’t that many violent scenes in the movie, because there were so many executions in real life. At the same time I was surprised at the execution, because the movie seemed to be made for children. I also had a feeling that the film had a underlying message about woman in most societies.
Pan's Labyrinth is one of those movies that parents might have trouble letting their younger children go see. The movie seemed to be very dark and had violent elements to it. Most of these scenes had something to do with Captain Vidal. Smith talks about the beginning of the film “Pan’s Labyrinth begins with a blank, black screen. We hear the sound of feverish panting and the humming of Javier Navarrete’s haunting theme” (Smith 4). This is a gloomy way to open a movie. Then Smith goes on to explain another scene by saying “(Ofelia) descends the staircases of a vast fantasy set.
The screen flares up to white and the camera swoops over bombed buildings. A wide shot of a ruined bell tower shows the famously devastated village of Belchite” (Smith 4). This is the first sign that this couldn’t be a film for children. But then at the same time one could be easily confused by the scenes that deal just with Ofelia. Most of these scenes deal with magic and make believe.




The underlying message I got from the film was that women being the hero is more of a fantasy. I don’t agree with this message but it still fits with the movie. Ofelia was only able to be the hero with things that aren’t real. Edwards writes “This merging of the worlds is also an organic and growing phenomenon that begins with the relatively in signify the chalk - for how did Ofelia escape from a guarded room to reach the Captain's study if not for a magic door?” (Edwards 143). Then things are brought back to reality with “Ofelia's mother dismisses fairy-tales as the stuff of childhood and even sympathetic Mercedes says she herself outgrew such fantasies” (Edwards 143). This message is that girls or woman can’t be the hero if only for magic or make believe. I would of like to see Ofelia be the hero with less magical aspects. She did save her brother with her heart and beliefs in right or wrong, but that was it.





Work Cited
Edwards, Kim. “Alice’s Little Sister: Exploring Pan’s Labrinth”. Film As Text:1931- 2008. Print

Smith, Paul. “Pan’s Labyrinth El Laberinto Del Fauno”. Film Quarterly, 2006. Vol 60. Print