Question: Question about the Director's Cut of the film. The scene where Brett is looking for Jones has been altered slightly - when he looks up at where the water is dripping from, you can actually see the Alien hanging motionlessly from one of the chains. Has Ridley Scott given an explanation as to why he added this new dynamic to the scene? It's easy enough to speculate why, but a link to an 'official' explanation would be appreciated.
Question: Who did the demonic voice that told the priest blessing the house to get out?
Answer: George Lutz.
How was it accomplished?
Question: When Frank is delivering books to inmates' cells, he reaches D block, but a guard stops him, and tells him they are not allowed in those cells. Were books really disallowed in D block cells?
Answer: Those were the solitary confinement cells, with no light and no luxuries of any kind. So yes, they did not allow inmates on that block to have books.
This is inaccurate as a light in each cell was turned on at 6:30 every morning in solitary confinement at Alcatraz.
Question: Instead of trying to murder them, why didn't the Lizzies simply contact the Riffs and tell them they had 3 of the warriors and to come get them? They had plenty of time.
Answer: The Riffs had put out a hit on the Warriors via the radio DJ, meaning that it didn't matter if the Warriors were taken alive or not; the Lizzies probably figured it would be easier simply to kill the Warriors and collect the reward.
Question: At first I thought that Jaws was chasing Bond throughout the movie, because he failed to kill him in the previous movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, but it turns out that he works for Drax now, whereas he first worked for Stromberg in TSWLM. As far as I know, Drax and Stromberg have nothing to do with each other, so is it purely a coincidence that Jaws now works for a new employer, which happens to be Bond's new target?
Answer: There's a scene where Drax is on the phone trying to hire someone to kill Bond. He says to the person on the other end "Well, of COURSE, if you can get HIM!" This is when he hires Jaws.
Question: Excluding plot convenience and suspension of disbelief, how could the time machine be shipped to San Francisco when H.G. Wells was traveling into the future with it?
Answer: At the end of the movie, he said that he was going to dismantle the time machine, so it's not used again, thus ending this timeline and the timeline we know as H.G. Wells would come to pass. As for the time machine being in San Francisco, if the machine had never been moved or buried, he would have landed in London.
Answer: In the late 1970s, Wells' time machine and other belongings were sent to San Francisco as part of an H.G. Wells exhibit at a museum. It had been found two years earlier, buried under Wells' since-demolished London house. It was considered a non-working "curiosity" that Wells built and had inspired his novel, "The Time Machine." In the 19th century, when Wells chased Jack the Ripper into the future, that is where his time machine landed, apparently drawn to its 1979 counterpart in San Francisco. At the end, Wells returned to 19th-century London in the time machine, where it would eventually be found many decades later. And sorry, but there has to be some "suspension of disbelief" to explain the time travel.
Question: At the beginning, Jill tells the police that she believes the caller is watching her through the windows. Since he calls her, how is this possible since cell phones did not exist at the time this movie came out?
Answer: Sorry, editing my answer because I misunderstood the question. The caller is using a different phone line in the same house. It's possible to have multiple different landlines/phone-numbers in the same building. However, Jill doesn't realise this and probably assumes he's watching her from a different house using binoculars or something similar.
Question: Maybe a dumb question. But what exact kind of Apocalypse happens in the movie that causes all of these problems? Shortage of gas is one of them. But was it nuclear war or what? What would cause the port of Sydney Australia to dry up like it was shown in the 3rd movie? Did the whole sea dry up?
Chosen answer: It was nuclear war. Tectonic plate movement could make ports dry and flood others. None of the movies ever goes into great detail about the apocalypse.
Answer: According to the commentary on the DVD, Ridley didn't add this scene to the original cinematic release because he thought it revealed the true horror of the Alien too soon in the film. The scene is quite early in the film and he thought revealing the fully matured Alien at that time would reduce the viewer's fear.
I had watched Alien several times before I noticed the Alien hanging there.At this point the Audience have no idea what the Alien looks like, they're looking at pieces of science fiction equipment put in by the production crew that they can't relate to, so for all they know the Alien could just be a piece of kit hanging there.