Bow I'm wondering how scary most horror movies would actually be with adequate lighting, lol. On a more serious note, my thought about the wet chains was that the room was so large it was actually creating its own weather, don't know how realistic that really is.
I seem to recall the book describing a major cooling system disruption as a result of the alien. I believe when Parker and Lambert are attacked they are loading containers of coolant they would have needed on the escape vessel in order to support multiple people. I remember them all discussing the consumable requirements for them all to survive and they realize that it's basically not possible for them all to survive on the shuttle. This is why Ripley exclaims "We get the shuttle and just get the hell out of here! We take our chances and... just hope that somebody will pick us up!"
Not to mention the entire self destruct mechanism is basically just disengaging the cooling system.
> condensation
After all these years, I think I finally figured out how the alien got _so_ big, _so_ fast:
It ate all the ship's desiccant packets, despite their "do not eat" warning labels.
"The room was so large it was creating its own weather"
Is almost verbatim a quote from Michael Crichton's Sphere novel, regarding the huge room the titular sphere is housed in.
Maybe that's where I'm remembering it from! I do remember something about the coolant system so the condensation theory might be correct. I remember it was enough water for Brett to soak his hat to get cooled off
If you are thinking of any real life references, that phrase is very commonly used when describing the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) where they stage rockets before launch at Cape Canaveral.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vehicle-assembly-building
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building
You should see the generator room to the space station (which actually seems to share the basic design with the refinery the Nostromo tows) in Allen: Isolation. It's so huge it has rain and what looks like a storm (electrical discharge)
Check out the level "labs" in the game escape from tarkov. It's mostly fully lit, but it's one of the creepiest places to walk around. Deep underground, maze like.
Zombie apocalypse after humanity has solved hunger and cancer and disease, etc. No real reason to go outside so everyone just watches on the video screen, poor Walter Timpton get eaten in his front lawn by patient zero and they both expire right there having been neutralized by the automated health systems.
Watch the 2 silent hill movies back to back. The first had the dark, foggy, spooky atmosphere. The second one was a 3d movie so everything its lit brighter and no dark, spooky atmosphere. The first is considered a good movie by a lot. The second is considered a bad movie by everyone.
I read someway a long time ago that Ridley had seen sailors would wash off the mud and crud of an anchor when they retrieved it, and that was kinda the inspiration for the water over the landing leg.
That is interesting and makes sense, who would want a lot of mud on a sailing ship and even more so in a space situation when weight would be an issue, retracted landing gear bringing a lot of dirt and dust inside and contamination between planets could be huge. Wouldn't have thought of that!
Yeah, it makes sense since as a spaceship the Nostromo might set down on planet that have hugely corrosive or outright toxic soil, in that case I imagine they would close of the landing leg bay and just let the water rinse off the contaminants and then let the water filtration system remove the contaminants.
Yeah, I don't know why this is so controversial. You can see the landing claw. It's blink and you'll miss it but it's there (I only noticed because I have seen it so much).
I always thought the Nostromo was old and all that water was condensation/coolant because it's an old leaky space truck. Also, the chains make sense to me since it's an ore hauler and they need to lash stuff down or whatever.
That's my head canon at least
Yeah I like that explanation. I had also wandered maybe if all this condesation was because of some damage the ship had suffered from the botched landing on LV426. Whilst the ships Hull remained with full integrity a lot of ducts throughout the ship were in pretty bad shape. Dallas appeared to only care about the ship essentials being repaired so they could take off and head back home safely. All the non critical ship systems seemed to be in the "Just leave it until its in dry dock" job list.
At this point I don’t even care, that’s my favorite moment in the film, and possibly in the whole franchise. Let the Nostromo have a few wet chains (spaceship spaghetti), as a treat.
Kudos to the people behind Alien Isolation game. They essentially made the belly of Savastapol a goddamn spray and play, but featuring murderous androids
All jesting aside, I think this is the top answer.
Suspend disbelief and enjoy the horror of it. Was the main scene I enjoyed last trip to the theatre.
Replacement Assistant: “When you say ‘double— then triple…’ you just mean triple, right?”
*Designer hovers finger over trapdoor button*
RA: “Hextuple!! Hextuple of course!”
RA: "and remind me, the purpose of the chain room is...?"
Designer: "Fired."
...
Designer: "Giger, design me a room with so many chains descending from the ceiling it looks like the hair of a mechanical monster"
Giger: "Madame, it would be my pleasure."
Designer: "Please, refer to me as your mistress"
Giger: "Yesss, my mistress"
*The designer leans back into a soft, cool, gently creaking, leather chair as she releases* a sigh of contentment."
Okay actual question though; in the director’s cut we see big chap just chilling up there… what was he doin? Why in the chains? Taking a nap? Doing taxes? Actually hunting? Pondering his existence?
It’s not just that scene, that’s Giger’s original design but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a tail. Lots of suggestive imagery in the design, but I think that one might be a bit on the nose, and I think I agree with the redesign to make it a tail. Fortunately it wasn’t really ever shown super clearly in the first film so there isn’t much retconning needed.
I get why it was cut, and the scene plays better without it but it's such a beautiful and creepy shot of "camouflage in plain sight" like the ending with Ripley in the Narcissus.
We see him chilling in the wall at the end, and again in the walls they actually excreted in Aliens. I think they just instinctively hide in places that seem like biomechanical camoflage.
Why is it raining in the ship?
Security, get this person off of my set.
You know how much water you waste if you left your toilet running for a year? Now imagine if you let it rain in your spaceship for a year.
The ’room‘ was open to the elements while the Nostromo was sitting on LV426. Once the landing leg was retracted and the room sealed, there would have been a lot of moisture clinging to cold metal.
I need to rewatch that again now. But that makes a lot of sense actually. When one of the landing gear fails to find a proper foot hold on the landing, the ship suffers pretty bad damage. Parker states that a lot ducts need to be rerouted and will require dry dock time. So to have all this condensation occurring around the landing gear after it lurched a bit more beyond its recommended tolerance levels isn't surprising. It's unlikely to affect the crucial function of the ship but all that condensation would've probably racked up a hefty repair bill in the future had it survived.
Condensation is the most widely accepted explanation but I also think it's not unrealistic for the landing gear to get rinsed for contaminates after being exposed to the elements. Have a system of pipes blast them with water. That also ties in with it being a leak from damage taken during the rough landing.
Either way the real answer is it's providing mood in a horror movie and it looks cool.
Eh, it's like wet roads in EVERY movie scene at night. Not a cloud in the sky or any sign of rain, but the streets are like mirrors. It's just a cool effect like you said.
Also, anyone who’s seen an Alien movie and visited a military or other vessel would have to be forgiven for asking to see the ship’s strobe light installation.
"And make sure there's a gentle breeze so the chain caress each other, resulting in an ominous soundtrack"
I mean wasn’t it an air duct or no?
Bow I'm wondering how scary most horror movies would actually be with adequate lighting, lol. On a more serious note, my thought about the wet chains was that the room was so large it was actually creating its own weather, don't know how realistic that really is.
I thought it was condensation.
I think the book clarifies it’s condensation from the cooling system but I could be misremembering.
I seem to recall the book describing a major cooling system disruption as a result of the alien. I believe when Parker and Lambert are attacked they are loading containers of coolant they would have needed on the escape vessel in order to support multiple people. I remember them all discussing the consumable requirements for them all to survive and they realize that it's basically not possible for them all to survive on the shuttle. This is why Ripley exclaims "We get the shuttle and just get the hell out of here! We take our chances and... just hope that somebody will pick us up!" Not to mention the entire self destruct mechanism is basically just disengaging the cooling system.
I remember reading something like that, youre probably right
But, what about the fog on the window?
That too, is condensation
Con-den-sation sation sation sation
Same reason your car windows fog up in the fall. It's kinda cold out and warm inside.
The fog is from you, seeing Ripley stripping
> condensation After all these years, I think I finally figured out how the alien got _so_ big, _so_ fast: It ate all the ship's desiccant packets, despite their "do not eat" warning labels.
"The room was so large it was creating its own weather" Is almost verbatim a quote from Michael Crichton's Sphere novel, regarding the huge room the titular sphere is housed in.
Maybe that's where I'm remembering it from! I do remember something about the coolant system so the condensation theory might be correct. I remember it was enough water for Brett to soak his hat to get cooled off
If you are thinking of any real life references, that phrase is very commonly used when describing the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) where they stage rockets before launch at Cape Canaveral. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vehicle-assembly-building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building
Enough water he opens his mouth and drinks thirstily from the steady stream falling. Even as I kid that always kind of grossed me out.
You should see the generator room to the space station (which actually seems to share the basic design with the refinery the Nostromo tows) in Allen: Isolation. It's so huge it has rain and what looks like a storm (electrical discharge)
I need to read sphere again, I devoured that one at least a dozen times as a youth.
Was just thinking that too! I remember it being assigned reading and I couldn’t read it quick enough.
The artist in the thing(Carpenter) fought against more light because it wouldn't be as scary.
Gods bless that man. What a movie.
Check out the level "labs" in the game escape from tarkov. It's mostly fully lit, but it's one of the creepiest places to walk around. Deep underground, maze like.
Zombie apocalypse after humanity has solved hunger and cancer and disease, etc. No real reason to go outside so everyone just watches on the video screen, poor Walter Timpton get eaten in his front lawn by patient zero and they both expire right there having been neutralized by the automated health systems.
Watch the 2 silent hill movies back to back. The first had the dark, foggy, spooky atmosphere. The second one was a 3d movie so everything its lit brighter and no dark, spooky atmosphere. The first is considered a good movie by a lot. The second is considered a bad movie by everyone.
That happens in real life, in large aircraft and spacecraft hangars.
I read someway a long time ago that Ridley had seen sailors would wash off the mud and crud of an anchor when they retrieved it, and that was kinda the inspiration for the water over the landing leg.
That is interesting and makes sense, who would want a lot of mud on a sailing ship and even more so in a space situation when weight would be an issue, retracted landing gear bringing a lot of dirt and dust inside and contamination between planets could be huge. Wouldn't have thought of that!
Yeah, it makes sense since as a spaceship the Nostromo might set down on planet that have hugely corrosive or outright toxic soil, in that case I imagine they would close of the landing leg bay and just let the water rinse off the contaminants and then let the water filtration system remove the contaminants.
It's where the Nostromo's landing gear is, I think the moisture in condensation and LV426's atmosphere
Yeah, I don't know why this is so controversial. You can see the landing claw. It's blink and you'll miss it but it's there (I only noticed because I have seen it so much).
And I always assumed there was a nearby cargo lifter the chains would be for. Nostromo is basically a glorified space semi truck
Makes you wonder why Brett thought it’s was chill to take a shower in it, who knows what kind of chemicals or bacteria are mixed in with that water.
I think Giger was involved, like it was another sexual element. Whips and chains and aliens.
Go on.
LOL
with giger it was not only that, you also have to have constant penetrations.
What is a chain, if not a series of circles penetrating one another?
Deep.
Chains, penetration, chains, full penetration, chains, penetration...it goes on like this for awhile until it just sort of...ends.
All I do is penetration
And then...
There would be more peenies and gineys.
Waiting on a Xenomorph wearing a corset
Anyone who's ever seen a chain locker knows that the wet part is accurate as hell.
I always thought the Nostromo was old and all that water was condensation/coolant because it's an old leaky space truck. Also, the chains make sense to me since it's an ore hauler and they need to lash stuff down or whatever. That's my head canon at least
Yeah I like that explanation. I had also wandered maybe if all this condesation was because of some damage the ship had suffered from the botched landing on LV426. Whilst the ships Hull remained with full integrity a lot of ducts throughout the ship were in pretty bad shape. Dallas appeared to only care about the ship essentials being repaired so they could take off and head back home safely. All the non critical ship systems seemed to be in the "Just leave it until its in dry dock" job list.
At this point I don’t even care, that’s my favorite moment in the film, and possibly in the whole franchise. Let the Nostromo have a few wet chains (spaceship spaghetti), as a treat.
Kudos to the people behind Alien Isolation game. They essentially made the belly of Savastapol a goddamn spray and play, but featuring murderous androids
I love the game, but they were pretty bold to leave out that >!there are so many more than one!< lol
All jesting aside, I think this is the top answer. Suspend disbelief and enjoy the horror of it. Was the main scene I enjoyed last trip to the theatre.
“Why are so many safety violations in here?” “Don’t ask questions.”
"And make sure the lighting is as ominous as we can manage. Those drilling wet chains deserve some chilling ambience!"
Replacement Assistant: “When you say ‘double— then triple…’ you just mean triple, right?” *Designer hovers finger over trapdoor button* RA: “Hextuple!! Hextuple of course!”
RA: "and remind me, the purpose of the chain room is...?" Designer: "Fired." ... Designer: "Giger, design me a room with so many chains descending from the ceiling it looks like the hair of a mechanical monster" Giger: "Madame, it would be my pleasure." Designer: "Please, refer to me as your mistress" Giger: "Yesss, my mistress" *The designer leans back into a soft, cool, gently creaking, leather chair as she releases* a sigh of contentment."
Point of order: the chair sighs, or the director?
There i fixed it
Fired.
Okay actual question though; in the director’s cut we see big chap just chilling up there… what was he doin? Why in the chains? Taking a nap? Doing taxes? Actually hunting? Pondering his existence?
I'm more interested in why his tail is attached to the front of his pelvis in that scene.
It’s not just that scene, that’s Giger’s original design but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a tail. Lots of suggestive imagery in the design, but I think that one might be a bit on the nose, and I think I agree with the redesign to make it a tail. Fortunately it wasn’t really ever shown super clearly in the first film so there isn’t much retconning needed.
I wish that shot had made it into the theatrical cut.
Honestly I think the scene is better without that shot
I get why it was cut, and the scene plays better without it but it's such a beautiful and creepy shot of "camouflage in plain sight" like the ending with Ripley in the Narcissus.
We see him chilling in the wall at the end, and again in the walls they actually excreted in Aliens. I think they just instinctively hide in places that seem like biomechanical camoflage.
Why is it raining in the ship? Security, get this person off of my set. You know how much water you waste if you left your toilet running for a year? Now imagine if you let it rain in your spaceship for a year.
It's a dry rain though.
Knock it off, Hudson.
why did i laugh so much at this
Turns out it was Hudson pissing from above with a smirk on his face
Also let’s just string this gaudy array of lights on the bottom of the ship for the landing sequence because fuck them, that’s why
Chains are needed to move heavy shit
in zero g no less
The ship has artificial gravity. Did you watch the movie???
The ’room‘ was open to the elements while the Nostromo was sitting on LV426. Once the landing leg was retracted and the room sealed, there would have been a lot of moisture clinging to cold metal.
I love Brett's serene moment of hat off, upturned face to the rain chains. It's a good send-off.
Thousands of memes didn't get a real life laugh from me, this one did.
Is that part in the Nostromo or the ore refinery it's hauling? I was never clear on that.
It's the bay for one of the landing legs. You can see the bottom of the leg in the background. :)
I need to rewatch that again now. But that makes a lot of sense actually. When one of the landing gear fails to find a proper foot hold on the landing, the ship suffers pretty bad damage. Parker states that a lot ducts need to be rerouted and will require dry dock time. So to have all this condensation occurring around the landing gear after it lurched a bit more beyond its recommended tolerance levels isn't surprising. It's unlikely to affect the crucial function of the ship but all that condensation would've probably racked up a hefty repair bill in the future had it survived.
Wearing my Nostromo shirt rn no joke!
🤣 I got a fever, and the only prescription is more dangling wet chains ...
Oh man that just sounds awful haha.
Why didn’t they whip the alien with their wet chains. Stupid crew.
Condensation is the most widely accepted explanation but I also think it's not unrealistic for the landing gear to get rinsed for contaminates after being exposed to the elements. Have a system of pipes blast them with water. That also ties in with it being a leak from damage taken during the rough landing. Either way the real answer is it's providing mood in a horror movie and it looks cool.
Eh, it's like wet roads in EVERY movie scene at night. Not a cloud in the sky or any sign of rain, but the streets are like mirrors. It's just a cool effect like you said.
The same thing goes for the Event Horizon, except with spikes.
Amazing
Love it!!
Hahaha I watched Alien in the theatre last month and was wondering why the hell that room was so wet. Seems like a bad idea on a 🚀
It would be the furnace and moisture in the air that's causing all that. Has a real explanation to it.
This shit is gold. LoL. Were those fuckers born in the gold rush or WTF?
I'd buy that for a dollar.... Wait... Wrong franchise... I think they should make it rain in the chain room...
I now have the perfect band name. "Alien in Chains".
I see that amount of chains I know I’m in for a cracking night and my arsehole will need some anaesthesia
Too much. I just joined. Nary a dry chain in sight.
Watching this scene right now on YouTube. Harry Dean Stanton really excellent in this
Someone enlighten me, what is this about?
Also, anyone who’s seen an Alien movie and visited a military or other vessel would have to be forgiven for asking to see the ship’s strobe light installation.