The 25 Best Scenes In The 'Alien' Franchise - Page 4 of 5

10) “Prometheus” – David Watches ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’
The best elements of both “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant” have been the unexpected levels of texture, whether it’s references to Dante or Bosch, and much of that texture has come from Michael Fassbender’s David, an android who’s untrustworthy even by the not-particularly-trustworthy standards set by the franchise so far. One of our favorite elements from the character is his unexpected love for David Lean’s “Lawrence Of Arabia.” First, as the ship comes in to land, he quotes it: “There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.” And later, we even see him watching the film as he fixes and even dyes his hair, imitating Peter O’Toole’s performance and accent. “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts,” he says. It’s a fascinating bit of meta-textuality, and one that both reveals an enormous amount about the character, and highly informs Fassbender’s excellent performance.


9) “Aliens” – The Queen
Bigger, bigger, bigger, goes the maxim for virtually every studio sequel, but James Cameron showed how to do it right with “Aliens.” Not only is the film positively stuffed with xenomorphs, hugely outnumbering the single beast we got in the first film, but he also introduced the bee-like queen, an enormous, egg-laying, utterly terrifying extrapolation of Giger’s perfect killing machine. The moment when Ripley meets her, in all her limb-flailing glory, eventually makes for a great set-piece, but it also serves as a perfect doubling of the film’s theme of motherhood, mirroring Ripley’s protection of Newt.

8) “Alien3” – The Xenomorph Lets Ripley Live
From the unnerving opening of David Fincher’s “Alien3,” it becomes very clear that this isn’t going to be a sequel that plays by the rules. All the survivors bar Ripley are gruesomely killed off in the opening credits, our heroine has her head shaven and it’s clear that something’s very wrong with her, though what exactly that problem is isn’t made clear at first. Then comes the scene when the xenomorph attacks in the hospital, killing the most sympathetic character, Clemens (Charles Dance), and seemingly dooming Ripley. Except, after slathering all over her in the movie’s most indelible image, it backs away, for reasons that may be starting to dawn on the audience. The bad CGI on the creature aside, Fincher executes the scenes beautifully with almost Hitchcockian suspense, and it poses a dramatic question that again suggests that this is not going to be a sentimental movie: Ripley might have survived this, but she might well be doomed on a larger level.

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7) “Alien: Covenant” – The Flute Scene
For better or for worse, “Alien: Covenant” doubles down on the values of “Prometheus” — more mythology, more human characters making very dumb decisions, more creatures. This extends to maybe the best thing introduced in the earlier movie, Michael Fassbender’s David, who we get twice as much of in ‘Covenant.’ Or, more accurately, we get not only David (who’s been living alone on a world he wiped out for a decade), but also Walter, a later, American-accented model with some of the bugs — like, say, free will — ironed out. It lets the star give two very different, equally impressive performances, and the film’s best scene comes when the two meet properly and privately. John Logan and Dante Harper’s script gives them one of the odder scenes in modern blockbuster history: a discussion about self-determination and creativity, almost overladen with homoeroticism, as David teaches Walter to play the flute (“I’ll do the fingering,” he offers, hilariously). It’s rich stuff, with both ‘droids palpably intrigued to find potential companionship, whether a friend, a brother or a lover. Shame it all goes south so quickly…

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6) “Prometheus” – The Abortion
Though it has its defenders, and some great elements to it, we mostly found “Prometheus” to be kind of a hot mess. But it does have one scene in particular that truly deserves to be in the “Alien” canon, a sort-of-logical conclusion to many of the themes of the franchise in general — when Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) gets an abortion. After having sex with boyfriend Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who, unbeknownst to her, has been infected with the black goo, the scientist is forced to burn him alive after he begins to transform. And then she learns that she’s pregnant, despite being sterile. So she does what any strong-willed “Alien” heroine would do, and uses a futuristic surgery machine to remove the fetus, which turns out to be a grisly squid-like creature. It’s daring in conception (though perhaps less so than in Jon Spaihts’s original draft of the script, which would have seen the Shaw character die on the operating table too), and intense and utterly gag-inducing in execution. Would that the rest of the movie was as good.