Release Year: 1979

Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi

Director: Ridley Scott

Writers: Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett

Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt

If you ever encounter an extraterrestrial, be ready for one of two scenarios.

• In scenario A, you'll meet the "We Come in Peace" alien. This alien is typically technologically advanced and will share its scientific savvy with the human race to usher in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. Humankind will, in turn, share Candy Crush Saga and the latest reality show. 

• In scenario B...well, let's just say you'd better hope for a well-stocked armory and a lot of old-fashioned human ingenuity.

In Alien, we definitely have a scenario B on our hands. 

The film opens with the crew of the Nostromo responding to a signal of unknown origins on a mysterious planet. This goes about as well as you'd expect, and the crew accidentally brings a dangerous alien aboard their ship, resulting in a tense game of kill or be killed.

Produced by Brandywine Productions, Alien was directed by Ridley Scott and hit theaters in 1979, the year of Donna Summer, the Village People, and the Bee Gees. Made on a corner-cutting budget of $11 million, the film was an instant success, taking in a world-wide gross of more than $100 million (source). It would go on to win an Oscar for best visual effects, a BAFTA for best production design and best sound track, and a Saturn Award for best science fiction film, best supporting actress and best director (source).

The film brought director Ridley Scott into the mainstream and turned Sigourney Weaver into a leading lady. Her performance as Ripley toppled cinematic gender role barriers (a girl in an action movie?!), paving the way for other grrrls to head up science fiction and action films. (Looking your way, Sarah Conner.)

The film was so popular partly because it successfully merged of the horror and science fiction genres, meaning that it had not one but two ready-made nerdy fanbases. These two genres have had the old on-again, off-again for the last two hundred years. If we think of their initial hook up as Frankenstein, then Alien was the blissful honeymoon before the long, gut-wrenchingly painful breakup that was Pandorum.

Seeing an opportunity to make bank, Brandywine turned Alien into a hugely popular franchise. The film spawned three direct sequels, a prequel, and two spin-offs where the alien went fists-to-fangs against the Predator from the Predator series. The franchise has produced novels, comics, action figures, and video games in every generation from the Atari 2600 to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. (Some of them have even been fun to play.)

And that is Alien in a nutshell...a terrifying, fleshy, mucus-covered, otherworldly nutshell.

Alien gave bloody alien birth to a substantial legacy of innovation and awesome—from its excellent blending of science fiction and horror tropes to its pitch-perfect world-building and excellent cinematography—but its greatest legacy just might be the character of one Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver.

Before Ripley, strong female characters in cinema were few and far between and entire light years apart in the science fiction and big-budget blockbuster films. Sure, you had your occasional Barbarella, but is Barbarella a strong female character or, at best, a fetishized power fantasy? (Hint: it's the latter.) Even Princess Leia had to do her time in a gold bikini.

As writer John Scalzi points out, Ripley is such a great female character because she's neither a sidekick, arm candy nor an "idealized killer fembot" but a fully realized human being who can run the gamut of emotions while still able to do what is necessary even at great cost to herself" (source).

In other words, she's just like us.

She is such an engaging character that she received the number 9 spot on Empire's "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" list, making her the highest placed woman and putting her in front of such memorable bros as Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone, Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Winnfield, and Sean Connery's James Bond. (Word is, Bond was both shaken and stirred at the results.)

The point is, Ripley's brand of female buttkicker is the foremother for generations of strong female protagonists. In the '80s, we met Sarah Conner, who went toe-to-toe with the T-800 like a boss. The '90s would see Dana Scully in the X-Files and Captain Janeway take charge of a Star Trek starship. And in the 2000s, we got the ladies of the starship Firefly—not to mention a whole lot of familiar, high-value names like Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior.

Now that's a legacy of awesome well worth studying.