The Star-Beast

Nicholas Cull: 

Every film is 

a product of its time.

And every successful film 

tells you something about 

the time it was made.

It's successful because 

it resonates 

with stories and images 

that people need to see 

at that particular point.

Henry Jenkins: 

"Alien" is a radical break 

with science fiction.

This is not 

the notion of The Alien 

that we were building toward 

in something like 

"Close Encounters."

Clarke wolfe: 

"Star Wars" comes out, we have a fun space adventure.

And then "Alien" comes out, and people embrace it.

And then just a couple of years later, 

"E.T.", and John Carpenter's "The Thing" come out, 

and audiences resoundingly 

are like, 

“NO, Thank You!!!”

“We want our aliens 

to be nice and squishy 

and cool and eat candy.”

I think there's a special status that comes to some films that lodge in the audience's collective imagination, and I think "Alien" is certainly one of those films.

William Linn: 

Tolkien talked about 

the cauldron of stories, 

and certainly, 

"Alien" is an example of 

A Story drawing from 

a real global set of myths.

If you look at 

a somatics experiment, 

what you're going to see is 

sand that vibrates in a shape, 

and the shape changes 

based on the different vibrations.

A Myth is like something 

that vibrated from 

something deeper

that you can't see.

You see a major curse 

in the form of The Alien, 

who is very much A Fury,

 responding to an imbalance.

We're looking at A Story where

there is a piece of material prop 

that is now completely alive 

in our imaginations.

It lives in our dreams.

It lives in our cultural conversation.

It's one of the biggest cultural dreams we've ever HAD.