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Alexander Peterhans's Reviews > Alien
Alien
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Alexander Peterhans's review
bookshelves: alien, bought-digital, film, graphics, horrorror, sci-fi, adaptation
Apr 09, 2022
bookshelves: alien, bought-digital, film, graphics, horrorror, sci-fi, adaptation
Alien is one of my favourite films, not just in sci-fi, but in general. It's always fun to read a novelisation, to see if bits are different, and you get a lot more room for characterisation. I'm guessing Foster based his book on an earlier script, and probably before or while the film was being filmed, because there quite a few differences.
I'm not going to go to deep into the differences - they are never better than what ended up in the film, and in most cases are uninteresting.
I think the most baffling aspect of this novel that Foster never actually describes the fullgrown xenomorph - we get descriptions of the eggs (different from the film, actually interesting - they are completely smooth and the gutters of the flaps only appear when Kane touches one), of the facehugger (who here has one big eye on its back, which is never mentioned again later on) and the chestburster. For the actual alien it is identified as bulky, and having claws. I think there is one mention of eyes..? No snappy inner mouth to be seen, or horrible stingy tail, pipes on its back, or even the weird elongated head.
The action scenes are bad - I've said it before in other reviews, just because someone is a sci-fi writer doesn't make them good at writing horror. The chestburster scene whiffs it bigly, it never has the pure visceral horror of the film. The xenomorph grabs people and abducts them, there is no tension to these attacks, they just sort of.. happen.
What you do get, is endless discussions that in the film take a couple of minutes at most. When Ripley wants to keep a facehugged Kane out of the ship, and Ash opens the inner airlock door anyway, this leads to pages and pages of circular arguments. It's just plain boring.
I didn't like it. The film is better than the book.
I'm not going to go to deep into the differences - they are never better than what ended up in the film, and in most cases are uninteresting.
I think the most baffling aspect of this novel that Foster never actually describes the fullgrown xenomorph - we get descriptions of the eggs (different from the film, actually interesting - they are completely smooth and the gutters of the flaps only appear when Kane touches one), of the facehugger (who here has one big eye on its back, which is never mentioned again later on) and the chestburster. For the actual alien it is identified as bulky, and having claws. I think there is one mention of eyes..? No snappy inner mouth to be seen, or horrible stingy tail, pipes on its back, or even the weird elongated head.
The action scenes are bad - I've said it before in other reviews, just because someone is a sci-fi writer doesn't make them good at writing horror. The chestburster scene whiffs it bigly, it never has the pure visceral horror of the film. The xenomorph grabs people and abducts them, there is no tension to these attacks, they just sort of.. happen.
What you do get, is endless discussions that in the film take a couple of minutes at most. When Ripley wants to keep a facehugged Kane out of the ship, and Ash opens the inner airlock door anyway, this leads to pages and pages of circular arguments. It's just plain boring.
I didn't like it. The film is better than the book.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
2022
–
Finished Reading
March 30, 2022
– Shelved
March 30, 2022
– Shelved as:
bought-digital
March 30, 2022
– Shelved as:
alien
March 30, 2022
– Shelved as:
horrorror
March 30, 2022
– Shelved as:
graphics
March 30, 2022
– Shelved as:
film
March 30, 2022
– Shelved as:
sci-fi
March 30, 2022
–
10.0%
April 1, 2022
–
18.0%
April 2, 2022
–
40.0%
"The facehugger has an eye on its back, and looks at Kane just before jumping on his face."
April 4, 2022
–
54.0%
April 5, 2022
–
69.0%
April 6, 2022
–
82.0%
April 6, 2022
– Shelved as:
review-to-come
April 9, 2022
– Shelved as:
adaptation
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Joe
(last edited Apr 09, 2022 03:15PM)
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Apr 09, 2022 03:11PM
Alien is my favorite movie of all time. Are the genders of all the characters defined in the novelization? The major attribute of the screenplay was that any of the characters could be male or female.
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Yes, they are defined, they're the same as in the film. This reads like it's based on an earlier Dan O'Bannon script, but one with some changes already made, the genders of the crew for example.There's no Navigator in this version, although they do see the contraption that is sending out the warning beacon. But they pretty much go straight to the egg chamber (with rows of eggs on the wall, not just on the floor! Kind of liked that idea, actually).
Would have to agree, I read the whole novel picturing the alien in my head. But every scene where the alien is forefront, no adequate description of the sheer monstrosity that is portrayed in the films.
Lewis wrote: "Would have to agree, I read the whole novel picturing the alien in my head. But every scene where the alien is forefront, no adequate description of the sheer monstrosity that is portrayed in the f..."Yeah, I guess Alan Dean Foster supposed you'd have seen the movie, why would you read a novelisation, but I agree with you, he could've at least made some mention of its features, its size, its mass, etc.
