Prometheus opens this weekend, heralding Ridley Scott's welcome return to the Alien movie franchise he started. The original movie plays so frequently on cable TV, and is so well made, that it's surprising to think it was made in 1979—a long time before directors could use computers and CGI to create special effects.
Alien was certainly one of the best horror movies ever made. Its measured pacing, coupled with Scott's refusal to fully show the audience what the alien actually looks like until the very end, give it the power to scare viewers even on repeated viewings.
But the movie raises a lot of business and economic issues too, mostly about the role that corporations, profits, employees, robots and stock might play in the future. Alien's macroeconomic predictions aren't pretty, but 32 years later they look eerily accurate.
Unchecked infections will ruin healthcare.
In the movie, the alien is brought aboard when it attaches itself to the face of one of the crew. He is initially treated—and thinks he's cured—in the ship's medical unit. It turns out the infection has simply gotten more complicated and more dangerous, of course.
The movie has a strong medical motif—there's a quarantine rule in the beginning that gets broken, and the crew attempt to kill the alien with sterilizing flamethrowers.
Alien was made before the HIV epidemic, but it is prescient: While AIDS is now under control, our healthcare systems are constantly threatened by new, more virulent "superbugs," like MRSA.
The vast distances involved will make space travel incredibly unattractive.
At the start of the movie, the crew of the spaceship Nostromo are awakened from a deep sleep during their years long journey back to earth in order to investigate what appears to be a distress call from a mysterious planet with a hostile, stormy climate.
Once the alien arrives on board the ship, the heroine (Sigourney Weaver's Ripley) and her crew must rid the craft of its stowaway before attempting to return to their hypersleep pods.
The Alien franchise returns repeatedly to the notion that to get anywhere in space, humans will have to sleep in suspended animation for periods of years—otherwise we'll grow old too quickly on the journey.
Richard Branson may believe he can make space travel into a glamorous source of tourist dollars, but the early scenes in the movie—when the crew awakes groggily in their underwear—make space travel look decidedly unpleasant.
Space is for the working class.
This is a corollary of the previous point. Life aboard the Nostromo is dirty, hard and ugly. The crew argue about who gets paid what—indicating that some of them may be underpaid for their labor.
Today we regard space as the province of adventurers and scientists. But if the history of the automobile is any guide—it was once a rich person's toy but driving as a business is now the job of truckers—space may be for the blue-collar classes.
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