"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"That has not filled me with
A sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane
That sense of cosmic contempt is what makes Alien tick. The universe is not simply indifferent to life but outright hostile to it. On top of that, instead of banding together in the face of this, many men elect to stab each other in the back. Alien manages not only to be about this monster that consists mostly of teeth and corrosive blood, but also the contemptuousness of one's fellow man. The alien isn't even the real guilty party: it's just a catalyst for other people's fear, greed and cowardice.
This probably sounds like heady stuff for a movie that spawned three sequels and grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, but if you scratch the surface of any big-name entertainment you find a core of truth. Like Jaws before it, which became the first of the big Hollywood blockbusters by featuring a killer shark which wasn't even on screen for the vast majority of its running time, Alien is not so much about the monster as what the monster invokes in people.
