Alien 1979: Cast, Plot, Budget and Ending Explained

Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, follows the crew of a commercial towing ship who are woken early from hibernation by a signal from a nearby moon. The Nostromo is flying home to Earth with seven crew members in hibernation and a cat named Jones. The ship's computer, Mother, picks up the signal and wakes the crew, who land to investigate and find a wrecked alien ship holding a large field of egg-like organisms.

The setup is small: one ship, a handful of workers, and a decision about what the signal meant and what to do about what they found. The creature in the title is credited simply as Alien, played by Bolaji Badejo. If you want the full story, the next section covers it with spoilers, and the Alien movies in order page shows where this film sits against the rest of the saga.

In Alien (1979), the crew of the Nostromo answers a signal from a small moon, and the creature they bring aboard kills every crew member except Ripley. The ship's computer detects a transmission and wakes the crew from hibernation. Three of them, Dallas, Kane and Lambert, go down to the surface and find a derelict alien vessel with the fossilized remains of a giant pilot and a chamber full of eggs. Kane looks into one egg and a creature leaps onto his face.

Ripley, who stayed on the ship, works out that the transmission was a warning and tries to keep the group from boarding. The science officer Ash lets them in anyway. The creature later falls off and dies, and Kane seems to recover. During a meal a young alien bursts out of his chest and escapes into the ship.

It grows quickly and starts killing the crew one by one, taking Brett first and then Dallas, who hunts it in the air ducts. Ripley then finds that the company's secret orders put bringing back the creature ahead of the crew's lives. She also learns that Ash is an android carrying out those orders. Ash attacks her, and Parker and Lambert disable him.

The alien then kills Parker and Lambert, leaving Ripley alone with the cat. She sets the ship to self-destruct and flees in the shuttle with Jones. She then finds the alien hidden inside the shuttle, and she blasts it out into space through an airlock. Ripley records a last log entry and enters hibernation for the trip home.

Alien (1979) opened in the US on May 25, 1979, according to the 20th Century Studios film page. The UK release followed on September 6, 1979, as reported by the BFI, and Australia on December 6, 1979, as reported by TMDB. The US date is confirmed, while the UK and Australian dates are reported.

Nearly four months passed between the US opening and the UK one, and more than six between the US and Australia. The film now carries an R rating in the US, an 18 in the UK and an M in Australia.

Did it earn its money back? Comfortably. Alien took $84.2 million at the domestic box office and $25.5 million internationally, for $109.7 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Against the $11 million budget that is roughly ten times the cost. For the sequels' numbers, the Alien box office page compares every film.

The ending of Alien (1979) is Ripley's survival by improvisation: she starts the destruct sequence, escapes in the shuttle with Jones, and then finds the creature hidden aboard. She puts on a spacesuit and opens the airlock to throw it into space. She then dictates a final report and goes into hibernation, the only survivor, to await rescue.

What does the ending mean? The film never states one official meaning, and any reading is interpretation. In my opinion, the strongest reading comes from the chest scene. A creature is placed inside a body, grows, and bursts out during a meal, so it could be argued that the film is about invasion of the body, and about a company that treats its own crew as disposable. That second reading has hard support in the plot: the company's secret orders put the creature ahead of the crew, and Ash is the machine that carries them out. Viewers who prefer other readings will find room for them, because the film leaves the creature's origin and the dead pilot unexplained.

Why is Alien 1979 so good? Perhaps because it keeps the problem small. One creature, seven people and a ship give Scott a closed space, and the structure removes the crew one at a time until only Ripley and the cat are left. That being said, the final airlock scene is a payoff that Aliens, which opens with Ripley found drifting after 57 years in hibernation, picks up directly. Alien 3 then reverses her escape, putting her pod down on the foundry world Fiorina 161. The ending, then, is both a clean close for one film and the start of a saga, and it is the reason a first time viewer can stop here and still feel the story has finished.

One caution for anyone building a viewing plan: this is the third film in the chronological order, after Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. The Alien timeline explains why release order is the better route for a first watch.

Alien (1979) was shot in England, with principal photography and the Nostromo sets built at Shepperton Studios and model and miniature work done at Bray Studios in Windsor. Filming began in early July 1978.

If you are retracing the series through its sets, Shepperton and Bray are where it started. The ship interiors, the derelict and the miniature work all came out of those two English studios.

The most quoted facts about Alien (1979) concern its cat, its casting, its budget and its awards.

• The cat aboard the Nostromo is named Jones, and he escapes in the shuttle with Ripley.
• Filming began in early July 1978 at Shepperton Studios and Bray Studios in England.
• Fox first turned down the script as too violent.
• The budget was first proposed at $3 to 5 million, and final production costs were reported at $10.7 million.
• H. R. Giger designed the alien creature.
• Ripley was Sigourney Weaver's first leading role in a feature film.
• Jon Finch was first cast as Kane but became ill on the first day of filming, and John Hurt replaced him.
• The film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was also nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.

For the rest of the saga, the hub page on Alien movies lists every film, and how many Alien movies are there gives the count. The follow up, Aliens (1986), is the natural next watch.