Alien Paper

Aaron Straker

Eng 103

10/2/12

            For my research project I’ll be researching the topic “Portraying Robots In Film”.  The movie I’ll be researching is Alien 1979 directed by Ridley Scott.  For this paper I’m interested in certain things about the character Ash.  Ash is a robot he’s the only robot in the crew on the Nosotromo.  Ash after he got his head damaged spoke to the other members of the ship.  They wanted to know how to kill the Xenomorph.  Ash tells them they have no chance but they have his sympathy.  But before they reach the climax of the conversation Ash claims the Xenomorph is the “perfect organism”.                      

Another interesting thing about the robot is Ash is able to exercise free will.  When robots get created in the real world chances are they won’t be able to exercise free will.  Since there will be only a few things they’ll be able to do to keep them in check.  This is my opinion of how robots might be.  Ash exercised free will a few times in the movie.  When one of the crew members got attacked by the facehugger is a good example.  Ripley didn’t want to let the member back on the ship because it could lead to infections etc.  Ripley wasn’t going to open the doors but Ash did it anyway.  The facehugger eventually came off then late at dinner then the baby xenomorph also called chestburster came out of the crew member chest.  Later in the movie turns out that these were the orders for Ash from the company.  He had to get the Xenomorph on the ship so he could take it back to the company for them to study it.  Also it didn’t matter if the crew members lived or died.  In this movie the robot is given orders or a mission that it must complete at all costs.  This is shown when Ash says the crew members were “expendable”.