I honestly don't find the crew all that human or interesting in the film. Forgotten Fallen Friend is pretty much in full force, as no-one ever gets mentioned after they die: there's one 10-second space burial scene and Ripley's horror when she encounters the cocoons, but that's it. Then, of course, supposedly survivalist Ripley actually sends Brett off alone to fetch the kitty and doesn't think that just because they have mistaken a cat for Alien, it doesn't mean that Alien isn't in their vicinity!
This is not to mention that the ship possessing a self-destruct device is really a contrived Deus ex Machina that makes no sense in-universe. Why would you put such a powerful explosive on a ship crewed by underpaid, demotivated truckers: you're practically encouraging them to go and hold some planet or spaceport for ransom with it. Oh, and Ash's betrayal was also poorly filmed: he closes the door, waits for five seconds, hits Ripley, waits for five seconds, hits her again, knocks her down, stands still again, finally begins choking her with a magazine and unsurprisingly doesn't make it in time. It's utterly unbelievable that he would do such harebrained assault after successfully keeping his identity secret for so long.
Believe me, I would have addressed that last part if these reviews had a length to actually go into the deeper themes of the story, but sadly they don't.
Well, you can do so in the comments here: there's no word limit on them, as far as I'm aware. I'm really interested as to what I managed to miss in a film that everyone and their dog seems to worship.
Normally I don't simply because it's supposed to be a review, not a debate, but this is one part of the film that I find pretty interesting.
My interpretation of Ash is that Ash's actions make sense if you view him as acting under conflicting programming. He was created to give medical assistance and work with the crew, but the order he's directly given is to passively allow them to be killed by the Alien and to actually kill them himself if he has to do so for his mission to succeed. We clearly see that he's stronger than they are, if he definitely wanted to kill them he could without going to the trouble of choking Ripley with a magazine. At the end, Ash seems to have a sense of envy for the Alien and its utterly efficient way of life, a marked difference from the way humans live or the way he was forced to mimic for who knows how long.
Just look at Ash's last words:
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
Ash: I can't lie to you about your chances, but … you have my sympathies.
One line suggests that desire to be like the Alien, the other suggests that his current mind means that he's going through the android version of mental illness because his orders went against what he was made to be.
And that's as far as I'm going with this. I don't want to get in trouble for continuing the review elsewhere, so I'm stopping now.
Actually, now that I think about it, just that comment alone was probably too much. I should have just declined to comment, and if people didn't like it well that's just too bad. If I could edit the above one to remove the statement, I would.
Again: relax, don't worry about it. The rule you're referring to exists mainly to prevent people from posting multiple "reviews" in the section, that are really the same thing. No-one is going to clamp down on you for discussing the film here: just look at these
two reviews and their comments. If the back-and-forth over there wasn't too much, we can continue this discussion without worrying.
Now, about your argument, I suppose I can see it, and it does improve my opinion of the film somewhat, but personally I think Alien 3 explored this topic far better. I was gripped when the second Bishop Android managed to convincingly pose as a human creator and has almost managed to persuade Ripley to give up. In fact, I significantly prefer Alien 3 in its Assembly Cut to original Alien. (Deluge of angry comments in 3...2..1.)
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A Great Work That Would be Followed by Lesser Minds
Be warned of unmarked spoilers.
Some might say that the film Alien is overhyped. That it isn't really so terrifying or brilliant as some might say. There might be some truth to that, but simply because people give it great hype does not take away from the fact that both as a story and a story to scare, it does very well.
As a story, it manages to generally follow two rules. The first is that the people in it are humans, most of them anyway, and the second is that as humans they act as rationally as they can for their perceived self interest. They do not wish to enter dangerous situations, they are compelled to by circumstances outside of their control. They do not simply blindly rush to fight the Alien, but rather formulate plans and act as duty says they should. When they do not act as rationally as they should, there are understandable reasons for why they do not. At different points the captain wishes to save a member of his crew from horrible death or a crew member is driven to helplessness by simple human fear. When they conflict with each other, it's for their personal human self interest. It is that reason and humanity that makes it actually interesting to follow them, and also why it makes the Alien such a good monster.
Much like other memorable villains, the Alien is a threat in spite of the logical actions of humans. It may have some passive help from an android's orders to retrieve it, but honestly watching it in action the viewer is left with no doubt that it could do just as much damage on its own. In that is the terror. Humans, trying their best and coming up with different strategies for what to do, just aren't good enough. Add to that the memorable horrifying image of sexual assault made flesh courtesy of H.R. Giger and you have a threat to attack the viewer on a very intimate level.
For most this is probably not the ultimate movie experience, but it definitely should be regarded as a very strong work that sadly was followed by movies that for the most part were of lesser quality at best.