Alien's Final Scene: Why Sigourney Weaver Sings 'You Are My Lucky Star' and How It Ties to Star Wars

1979's Alien is, I think, my favorite film of all time, and 44 years later I believe I have finally figured out why Sigourney Weaver chose to sing You Are My Lucky Star in the escape shuttle. It blew my mind when I connected the dots: the choice ties in with Star Wars, cements Alien as a Hollywood classic and underlines who the true alien of this movie is.

I will lay out that connection at the end of this piece. First, the details that build up to it, because Alien is one of those movies a lot of people know a lot about, and I wanted to make the definitive analysis of Ridley Scott's science fiction horror classic.

Alien's opening beacon is a warning, not a distress call

We open with the five letters of the word alien forming over the planetoid. Jerry Goldsmith composed the score, but much of what we hear is temp scoring pulled from his earlier work, such as 1962's Freud, which was darker and more mysterious than what he wrote for this movie. That swap angered Goldsmith, though his music here is still great.

The sound I want to single out is the beacon from the space jockey calling out to the Nostromo. It is not a distress call but a warning, functionally a siren call drawing in a doomed crew. The planetoid is only ever called the planetoid in this film; later films call it LV426, and script drafts called it Acheron, the river in Greek mythology described as the stream of woe, a branch of the Styx that forms the border of Hell in Dante's Inferno. The film really opens and closes with a song, a song of despair and a song of hope.

The Nostromo takes its name from Joseph Conrad, and this ship is very much plunging into a heart of darkness. It starts dormant with its lights off, like a haunted house, and its huge towers are actually the refinery platform it tows, which scale designs put at two miles long and 1.5 miles wide. That haunted house in space is what writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett envisioned; they pitched it as Texas Chainsaw Massacre in space.

Alien grew out of Dark Star and Jodorowsky's failed Dune

At USC, O'Bannon worked on John Carpenter's thesis project Dark Star, a kind of parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey. O'Bannon wanted to make a 2001 type movie as a serious horror film with an alien that looks real, so he teamed with Shusett. Then he got a call to work on Jodorowsky's Dune in Paris. That project fell apart, but it is where O'Bannon met artists like Chris Foss and H.R. Giger, whose opium induced nightmares became the visual look of Alien.

The script was originally titled Star Beast, but O'Bannon hated that, noticed the recurring word alien and realized no other movie had used it. It works as both a noun and an adjective, and that adjective matters for the deeper themes. They nearly sold it to Roger Corman's studio, which would have made it a B horror movie. Instead, when Star Wars arrived in 1977, studios greenlit their science fiction projects, and Alien got a budget of 4.2 million dollars and director Ridley Scott.

Alien would not exist as this high production value hit without Star Wars, but conceptually it predates it. As I see it, "Star Wars is really space fantasy alien is actual science fiction," and the two are like siblings raised on completely different planets.

Ron Cobb built the Nostromo as a blue collar trucker hauler

Ron Cobb designed the interiors to look grimy and industrial, with exposed pipes and wet surfaces that make perfect camouflage for the xenomorph. Cobb and Giger worked hand in hand so the alien's industrial look reads as a kind of super efficient evolution for invading exactly these spaces. With no windows, the crew of seven is in a confined space, and we feel their claustrophobia.

Above the hatches are Cobb's semiotic standard symbols, an in universe language for commercial vehicles that also shows up in the 2011 film Moon. My favorite is number 23, coffee, in the shape of a mug. Then the ship wakes up like a ghost: a chair moves and pages flutter, but it is just the airflow waking to let life, all kinds of life, breathe in this giant petri dish.

Mother, Freud and why Alien is a story about motherhood

The creepiest thing is how Mother, the ship's AI, turns on the crew and uses them as bait. The name was chosen as part of the Freudian sexual symbolism O'Bannon and Shusett coded into the film: the ship as womb, the alien's phallic head and penetrating inner jaw, and a Facehugger process that, according to O'Bannon, was designed to make male audiences uncomfortable. Veronica Cartwright said Giger's sets were "so erotic" and that "it's like you know it's the whole thing is like you're going inside of some sort of womb."

The way I read it, the ship is Mother, the humans are her eggs and the alien is the sperm she lets inside. Mother can betray you, and that betrayal feels worse. In my Jaws analysis I explained that it is about how sometimes it takes a father; Alien's core myth is that sometimes it takes a mother. On screen we also see the company name Weyland Yutani, never spoken until the sequel, where James Cameron's spelling stuck. Cobb based it on British Leyland and a Japanese neighbor named Yutani.

Kane, Ash and the newcomer: how the crew is introduced

The first human we focus on is John Hurt's Kane, a bit like Hitchcock focusing on Janet Leigh in Psycho; he is the first to wake and later the first to die. Ian Holm's Ash reaches for milk; the fluid he bleeds later isn't actually cow's milk, but milk is what they put in Holm's mouth for the shot. Ripley barely speaks at breakfast, petting Jonesy the cat, making Alien one of the first films to embody save the cat.

Cartwright thought she was cast as Ripley, but Scott told her nobody showed abject fear better. O'Bannon and Shusett wrote all seven roles as interchangeable for men or women. Weaver was the youngest and least experienced, had lost Princess Leia to Carrie Fisher and nearly lost this part to Meryl Streep. Weaver said Scott, frustrated with the cast's energy, turned on her: "Ridley suddenly turned to me and he grabbed my hand he said look I don't want to give you your motivation to pick up your teacup." She said she cried, and that Scott later apologized, saying the note was meant for John Hurt. Her performance grew out of being the workplace new girl taking the blame for everyone.

The derelict, the space jockey and the egg

Giger designed the derelict to be curved and organic, and given what the cast admitted, I don't think it is reaching to say its two branched arms evoke Fallopian tubes. Shusett insisted on building the expensive space jockey set, saying the film needed a Cecil B. DeMille shot. Before Prometheus, Scott's longtime pitch was that the derelict was an egg bomber and this was its pilot.

The blue laser in the egg chamber was reportedly provided by The Who, testing concert equipment next door. The egg's fluid oozes upward because it was shot upside down, the stirring Facehugger is Scott's own hands, the innards are a cow's stomach, and the mouth tube is a sheep's intestine run in reverse.

Ripley's quarantine moment defines both hero and villain

When Ripley refuses to let Kane in, she emerges as the one person trying to do the right thing. I guess it's crazy how this movie hits differently since 2020. Ash defies her and opens the hatch, and in case it isn't obvious, the villain is not the alien. It's Ash, Mother and the company. Ripley takes abuse for this, and Cartwright actually slapped Weaver here.

The acid floor is styrofoam, probably splashed with acetone, and Cobb devised acid blood because the crew couldn't kill it conventionally. Then the Facehugger vanishes and drops onto Ripley's shoulder, like seeing a spider scuttle under the dresser before bed. While the chestburster scene and Brett's death are considered more memorable, I think this scene is the master class in horror filmmaking.

The chestburster shock was real, but only partly a surprise

The actors knew an alien would burst out; they had read the script. What they didn't know was that a squib and blood pumps would spray them, so the shock in that shot was genuine. I think the myth that the whole thing was a surprise came from people misinterpreting what Tom Skerritt said. The scene cuts together multiple setups, and the chestburster snagging on Hurt's shirt was an accident they kept. I've gone as dead Kane for Halloween multiple times, so I've studied it carefully.

Giger drew on Francis Bacon's 1944 painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which mixed the Furies with Christ's crucifixion. I see Kane the same way, a scapegoat and the first blood in a chain of bad decisions, mostly by the company.

Brett and Dallas fall to a monster we barely see

In the 2003 director's cut, Scott added a shot of the alien hanging in the chains in plain sight above Brett; it blends into the industrial background. Some say you can hear it hiss, but I think that's water hitting his hat. Scott drew restraint from Jaws, telling Variety "you don't show the monster too many times because you'll get used to him and you never want to get used to him ever."

Ash calls the creature Kane's son, likening it to a perverse pregnancy and perhaps evoking Cain from Genesis. The trailer had zero dialogue and, I think, the best ever tagline: in space no one can hear you scream. In the vents, Lambert's two dimensional scanner leaves Dallas no idea which way to run.

Ash's reveal: the crew was always expendable

Special Order 937 declares the crew expendable. As Ripley surmises later, Weyland Yutani wanted the alien for its weapons division, but it goes deeper: in Aliens their files show each crew member was a liability, like Kane's expulsion from medical school and Ripley suing over maternity leave. Again, it takes a mother. Ash sealing the door nods to 2001's pod bay doors, and his attack with Parker's magazine is an intentional form of sexual violence; Holm, Scott and Weaver all talked about implying buried urges in the Android.

Ash's praise of the alien as "a Survivor unclouded by conscience" shows him as a soulless corporation, but he is also telling Ripley what she must become, a disguised gift.

Scuttling the Nostromo: French instructions and Sanskrit buttons

When Ripley tries to abort, she reads the French instructions, which, translated, omit key steps. It could be a production design mistake, but I think that's why she gets frazzled. The keypad buttons carry Hindu and Sanskrit terms, like Shakti, Yoni and Padme, because the designer was reading Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine. In the restored egg chamber scene, Ripley finds Dallas and Brett becoming eggs, which explains why her flamethrower is empty later.

Why Ripley sings You Are My Lucky Star

On the shuttle, the xenomorph hides in the wall four minutes before it appears, and Ripley looks right at it. To calm herself she sings You Are My Lucky Star, the closing number from 1952's Singing in the Rain. Reportedly Scott was unhappy she improvised it because they had to pay for the rights. I think it is the only real world pop culture reference in the film, suggesting that 170 years later Singing in the Rain is still a classic.

Maybe Ripley sang it as a lullaby to her daughter. But in Singing in the Rain, the song ends with Don Lockwood crediting Kathy Selden as the real star, just as Ripley, ignored and abused by her crewmates, is the real star of this picture. And Kathy is played by Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher's mother, whose status arguably helped Fisher win Leia over Weaver. Weaver was also too tall, had her own leg up, and Fisher was perfect for the role, just as Weaver was perfect for Ripley. It takes a mother: Weaver pays homage to the mother and daughter who paved the way for her.

O'Bannon chose the word alien so Ripley could relate to being an outsider. She is the alien of this movie, and she turns the word into a synonym for survivor.

Do you buy that Weaver's song is a tribute to Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, or was it simply a lullaby for Ripley's daughter?