Talk:Alien (film)

Discussion pertaining to non-free image(s) used in article

A cleanup page has been created for WP:FILMS' spotlight articles. One element that is being checked in ensuring the quality of the articles is the non-free images. Currently, one or more non-free images being used in this article are under discussion to determine if they should be removed from the article for not complying with non-free and fair use requirements. Please comment at the corresponding section within the image cleanup listing. Before contributing the discussion, please first read WP:FILMNFI concerning non-free images. Ideally the discussions pertaining to the spotlight articles will be concluded by the end of June, so please comment soon to ensure there is clear consensus. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 05:08, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Quotes

The quotes on the right and left of the article should (probably) be integrated into the article. Some quotes are done so, but others are not. This lends to a POV. Be careful to avoid this (see wp:npov).Hyperpiper (talk) 04:44, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

External links

Wikipedia:EL#What_should_be_linked says "Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons." IMDB and, to a lesser extent, Rotten Tomatoes, fit this category and are widely recognized as being a valuable link. In fact, I found that this page was missing an IMDB link because I was running various checks on pages for high-rated movies. Out of 550 movies culled from various best-of lists, 548 pages on Wikipedia had IMDB links. Only Alien and Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal were missing them.

The fact that Rotten Tomatoes is also cited inline is irrelevant. Ridley Scott's name is inline and in the Infobox. It's just good, consistent design. —KHirsch (talk) 02:43, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Because the infobox is a summation of details from the article. The External links section is not. There is little sense in repeating a link twice just for the sake of having it twice. WP:EL and WP:NOT#LINK encourage us to be critical in choosing what external links we provide. When the same site appears as an External link in every single film article, it's an indication that maybe we are not being so critical and need to rethink the status quo. If it's so valuable, why don't we consider it a reliable source and allow it to be used as a reference? I grant that IMDb has additional detail that is valuable to a reader (ie. full cast & crew listings), but if we agree that the information is valuable, why don't we allow the site to be used as a citation for verifying cast & crew info in the article? The reader can easily access the additional info via the link in the citation. As for Rotten Tomatoes, I fail to see what additional information it provides that is not/could not be in the article itself, considering that it is already linked via citation in References. --IllaZilla (talk) 03:06, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

IMDb is valuable as an encyclopedic resource and does deserve an EL, but I don't think RT deserves one, simply because there's so little info on ALIEN there to justify it. Or is it's importance related to 1001 reviews mostly by people I've never heard of nor care about?Shirtwaist (talk) 10:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Gross revenue

There seems to be a disagreement between 2 common box office sites with respect to Alien's total gross. Box Office Mojo gives figures of $80,931,801 domestic and $24,000,000 foreign, for a total worldwide gross of $104,931,801. The Numbers, on the other hand, gives figures of $80,930,630 domestic and $122,700,000 international, for a worldwide total of $203,630,630. Notice that The Numbers' international figure is almost 5x that given by BOM, resulting in the The Numbers' total gross being nearly double that given by BOM. What accounts for this discrepancy, and which source is more reliable? --IllaZilla (talk) 03:31, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

One possibility: The Numbers gets totals from more countries than BOM? Just to add to the confusion: World Wide Box Office lists domestic as $80,930,630 and Foreign as $104,000,000. Maybe foreign numbers do fluctuate with number of countries counted, while U.S. total remains the same in all three?Shirtwaist (talk) 10:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Protagonists, antagonists and heroes

I've made some adjustments to the use of these terms in the article mainly for consistency with the linked Wiki pages.

An antagonist is someone who's opposed to the protagonist, and a hero is simply the major character. An anti-hero is someone who fails to be heroic, although in common misusage it tends to mean an evil hero.

The article originally said that the alien was the antagonist and Ripley the protagonist. I'd suggest that it is much more like the other way around, i.e. actually it's the alien that is the protagonist. This is not because the film is called "Alien" rather than "Ripley", but because it is the alien's attributes and actions, not Ripley's, that drive the plot. Ripley's role is a reactive one, so while she qualifies as the hero, just about, she's not the mainspring of the story.

I suspect the terms were used under the default assumption was that the protagonist had to be the good guy, and the antagonist someone who opposed him, i.e. the bad guy. This need not necessarily follow.Tirailleur (talk) 11:37, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The Alien is certainly not the protagonist. The protagonist is the main character, with whom the audience is supposed to share empathy. In this case that would be Ripley: She is introduced (with the other human characters) at the start of the film, while the Alien is not introduced until about halfway through. The other humans are protagonists as well, but she is clearly the central character as the narrative focuses on her more and more as the other characters die off, until at the end she is the only one left and we (the audience) are sharing all of our empathy with her as she attempts to survive. The Alien is the clear antagonist: It opposes the major characters and represents a clear threat to them. The audience is clearly not supposed to empathize with the Alien: as noted in the background and analysis sections the Alien is supposed to represent all manner of human fears—it's amorphous, incredibly dangerous, has acidic blood, and its actions against the protagonists are symbolic of rape and sexual violation (facehugger, chesburster, second mouth). It's not simply "good guy/bad guy", the Alien is specifically designed to inspire fear and revulsion, making the audience empathize more and more with Ripley and root for her survival.

Besides, the sources (both the creators and the critics) specifically refer to Ripley as the main protagonist and the Alien as the antagonist. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree with IllaZilla. All definitions I found of "protagonist"/"antagonist" (including WP) clearly indicate they refer to Ripley/Alien&Ash in that order.Shirtwaist (talk) 02:44, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Does Lina Bradley Even Exist and Does Anyone Care?

"Film analyst Lina Badley has written that the Alien's design, with strong Freudian sexual undertones, multiple phallic symbols, and what the critic terms an overall feminine figure that provides an androgynous image conforming to archetypal mappings and imageries in horror films that often redraw gender lines.[95]"

I've looked around for this alleged film analyst. I keep running into the same quote over ad over again... and it is the above quote from THIS article!

I'm not saying that there aren't sexual undertones to the film. I think that's obvious. But can we get a far less obscure and much more authoritative and respected person for the quote? 75.48.22.62 (talk) 05:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)