Revealing mistake: In a scene near the end, the camera operator appears to bump into Sigourney Weaver from behind, prompting her to momentarily break character. Weaver had been frantically running down a corridor with the camera following closely behind. When she reaches a ladder, the view passes her for a split-second and bounces back a step from an apparent soft collision. Weaver glances back at the camera with a look as if meaning to say, "Are you all right?" but immediately resumes climbing the ladder. (01:39:35)
Alien (1979)
1 video
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright
Character mistake: When Ripley interfaces with Mother for the first time and sees the special order, an instruction reads as "Insure return of organism" rather than "Ensure return."
Question: What exactly is the space jockey and why haven't we seen it in the other films except its fossilized self sitting in the what I call the laser gun?
Answer: Other theories, mostly developed in the comics derived from the original franchise, assume the xenomorphs were biological weapons conceived by the Space Jockeys for some interstellar war of theirs. Hence, the crescent-shape derelict was just a bomber, full of eggs and operated by a single pilot to minimize risks of accident with this mostly dangerous cargo. - what just happened though.
AKA, the plot of Prometheus.
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Answer: It's another race of space alien that is also subject to infection by the Aliens. This particular one was infected and moved as far as it could from its race's known space and broadcast a warning before it died. The presence of eggs in the hold may indicate that it was a research ship. The race was never used in other Alien movies because it adds a new dynamic to the plotlines: two alien species, locked in mortal combat and neither particularly friendly with humans. In the Alien pseudo-prequel Prometheus we learn these beings are known as the Engineers and have interesting ties with both the aliens and humans as well.
Phoenix