The last film on my mind is Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), released three years before the release of another of Scott’s fan-favorites, Blade Runner. I remember being shuttled out of the room right after the infamous chest-burster scene which fascinated more than it scared my childish senses. Though I’m sure I saw the film at some point in my teenage years, the first time I remember seeing it in its entirety was a couple years ago, on DVD, when the director’s cut was released. I purchased the Alien Quadrilogy (all 4 films) a month ago, and now I’ve a very different perspective on the film that started it all. The following may sound a bit cornball, but I enjoyed looking at this horror series from a new perspective and thought I'd share.

The alien nemesis in Scott’s flick has no personality to speak of, no desire to form relationships with humans (this ain't no Spielbergian E.T.), no desire to do anything except kill and, perhaps, reproduce (the aliens’ procreative instinct receives much more attention in James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) than here). As the creature does little more than seek, destroy, lie in wait and destroy some more, it makes sense—from a faith-based perspective—to read it as an allegory for both a Christian’s spiritual Adversary (Satan) and that sin nature from which we have been redeemed, but against which we continue to struggle.

The alien’s method of reproduction—traumatizing insertion of a fetus that leaves no visible sign of its presence until a mature child erupts through the chest of the host—sparks the most obvious associations with James 1:15 (“after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death,” NIV). Read in this way, the bloody birth of the alien reminds me that just because a particular, rooted sin does not immediately manifest itself in obvious ways does not mean that it won’t eventually break forth, wreaking havoc on the host and those close to him/her.

Similarly, the film reminds me that sin cannot be cordoned off and relegated to a particular, isolated sector of the psyche (something men often attempt with sexual temptation issues, for instance). The mysterious military corporation behind the story’s terrible situation (they set in motion the heroes’ unscheduled side-trip to a dangerous alien planet in an effort to bring a valuable specimen of the species back to earth for scientific analysis) provides a leitmotif that reappears in all four films, constituting an invisible nemesis at least as fearsome as that represented by the aliens themselves. The corporation values scientific knowledge more than human life, and blindly believes the alien can somehow be caged and controlled; they refuse to acknowledge that it—like sin—will destroy anyone that experiments with and attempts to provide a home for it.

This film shares with earlier, earth-bound B-movies (and a host of horror flicks contemporaneous with Alien which I have no wish to revisit), a well-worn plot structure in which a group of friends go up against a devious, supernaturally strong enemy intent on destroying them. The only difference is, instead of a gaggle of sex-crazed teenagers who waddle off and get themselves drowned in a lake or shredded in their own dreams, this team of interplanetary miners are smarter and more experienced, yet still get picked off one by one as they wander through the ship's corridors. This familiar scenario reminds me that sin, like those more tangible adversaries admitted to in the world’s presses, is better faced as a group. While Christ died for every individual and their sin, he also called us to deepen our connections with and reliance on one another. The whole of Ephesians iterates repeatedly the interdependent nature of the Christian life, preparing us for chapter six which describes not only the weapons of our trade, but the nature of our very dangerous enemy. Victory sometimes requires the joint force provided by communal effort: it can be dangerous to attempt confronting sin without the supporting superstructure of the body of Christ, whether represented by accountability relationships or the variegated voices of our tradition’s many theologians and teachers.

written early Sept, 2004