Re: ALIEN: Horror or Sci-fi?

[whiterabbit]

Thinking in the context of when Alien was the only Alien story in town.

Alien is a horror movie set in space. It is the hunted mansion but the villain is not super natural and evolves from beast to man-beast with in the movie. The kills in the movie go from incidental to predatory. It's life cycle was the shit back in the day. That in itself doesn't make it science fiction per-say but the atmosphere is the epitome of horror. Then there is the body horror/bloody horror/confined spaces horror... etc. The horror box is definitely checked.

However Alien is science fiction and a damn good one. It showed a dirty shitty corporate world with ftl travel, androids, cryopods and alien craft. All of which was not flashy or comfortable. Alien appears in many ways to be a window into a real "possible" future for us than other futurism tales. Sci-fi and futurism do go hand in hand.

Alien is also a great slice of life movie with Capitalism as it's back drop. Showing a group of working people in the boring as hell shipping mineral ore business. It also educates on the importance of reading that contract. Understanding ones place in corporate society and least we not forget; discussing that bonus situation before signing. And most importantly of all, your captain is just middle management and can't actually help you and you are on your own.

This was one hell of a movie for a 5 year old. Scared the shit out of me. But then the older you get the more scary it becomes. It's a perfect movie because just like the Alien evolves through the film, so does your discontent through the years. The scary creature was just one of monsters. The easiest one to notice. For me it took a few years for the rape and corporate shenanigans to become obvious.

Alien is also one of the most uplifting and positive movie ever because the cat lives.

And then came Prometheus...

[BigDaddyJohn]

And then the f**kery reached unprecedented highs.

[TC]

The problem here is that different genres are defined in different ways. To give the most obvious examples: musicals are defined by songs, and comedies are defined by jokes. So just because the horror genre is defined by its plot beats does not mean that other genres are defined by the same measure.

Sci-fi has no characteristic plot beats. You can get sci-fi with horror plot beats, you can get sci-fi with romance plot beats (e.g Starman), you can get sci-fi comedies (e.g. Galaxy Quest), you get sci-fi with detective murder mystery plot beats (e.g. I Robot), you get sci-fi courtroom drama (ST:TNG The Measure of a Man), sci-fi police procedural (e.g. Almost Human).

What defines sci-fi is its premise and setting. (Although, one could say that premise is a component of setting: Setting = Time and Place + the initial conditions that allow the plot to take place i.e. the Premise).

So taking that into account, trying to evaluate the relative importance of horror vs sci-fi in a combined sci-fi/horror story is like asking which is most important in defining a car: engine or wheels? They both contribute to the definition of car without competing with each other.

TC

[Acid Splash]

I think it's clearly more horror due to the number of stories we have such as Phalynx, stalker, and sacrifice that I can think off the top of my head where there's barely any to no sci fi elements used for the story itself besides how the characters technically got there at most.

[solace97]

IMO it is a horror movie that is in a sci-fi setting. And a sci-fi movie that is horror. A true brew. I mean blend...

I feel like when they wrote the movie the already new #1 it's going to be a horror/monster movie #2 we want it in space / sci-fi

Now what came first the chicken or the egg? Idk maybe someone else does from the OG  writer

[Valaquen]

Walter Hill described ALIEN to me as "a horror film wrapped in a science fiction envelope." That's how it was pitched to Fox. Horror was a better sell at the time because of The Omen (this was months before Star Wars). And Hill and Giler did strip the original script of its many Science Fiction-y elements. Concerns about gravity, oxygen, time dilation - too esoteric for mainstream audiences.

The film, like the monster, is a hybrid beast.

[SiL]

And Hill and Giler did strip the original script of its many Science Fiction-y elements. Concerns about gravity, oxygen, time dilation - too esoteric for mainstream audiences.

And yet loaded it with paragraphs of the clunkiest technobabble mercifully left on either the cutting room floor, or relegated to the sound mix.

[Valaquen]

And Hill and Giler did strip the original script of its many Science Fiction-y elements. Concerns about gravity, oxygen, time dilation - too esoteric for mainstream audiences.

And yet loaded it with paragraphs of the clunkiest technobabble mercifully left on either the cutting room floor, or relegated to the sound mix.

Dramatic glue