Alien was based on pre-existing and numerously used stories. It hit the same beats, but did it in a way it hasn't been done before, with look, feel and designs and that made all the difference. That set it apart
Its HOW you can tell the story that makes the difference, not its source, because those other movies and stories that had the same story as Alien did not become such classics. But the difference was made by HOW it was presented on screen, the use of gritty technology and Giger's and Cobb's designs, the blue collar approach to the characters. For those unfamiliar with the preexisting stories that were basically that of Alien, take a look at some of them:
Discord in Scarlet (1939)
In Discord in Scarlet, the crew runs afoul of an ancient alien (which alien was in original continuity): the Ixtl, a vicious insect-like creature that had been free-floating in the vacuum of space since the Big Bang. Once brought on board, the creature revives and escapes. Hiding in the ship's air-shafts, the Ixtl abducts several crewmembers, who serve as hosts when it implants its parasitic eggs inside them. The creature is possessing great stealth and speed -- so much so that all the surviving witnesses can recall is "a scarlet blur" -- the ghostly creature buzzsaws through a good chunk of the crew until, once again, nexialist ingenuity (-- look it up --) tricks it into vacating the ship, which then warps away, leaving the monster stranded in deep space again
-A lawsuit by the author A.E. van Vogt, claiming plagiarism of his 1939 story "Discord in Scarlet" (which he had also incorporated in the 1950 novel "Voyage of the Space Beagle"), was settled out of court.
Black Destroyer (1939)
Another story by A. E. Van Vogt is concerning the exploits of Dr. Elliott Grosvenor and the crew of The Space Beagle, a massive interstellar exploratory vessel. In The Black Destroyer, the explorers find a large creature amongst the ruins of an ancient civilization. Taking this new specimen on board the ship, though friendly at first, the Coeurl quickly shows its true stripes and starts killing the crew; first clandestinely and then overtly, sucking the potassium it needs to survive from the corpses. Every attempt to kill the rampaging beast fails, as all their interior weapons prove useless, until the creature is tricked into a life-pod, jettisoned, and finally destroyed by the Beagle's larger atomic-disintegrator cannons.
IT! The Terror from Beyond Space -
Claustrophobic tale of a small crew trapped on a spaceship, facing an indestructible creature that randomly picks them off and violently dispatches them
- The producers of the 1950s It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) considered suing for plagiarism but didn't.
- David Giler, Alien's uncredited script doctor and co-writer of Alien 3, mentioned that the Alien script was basically a remake of that movie
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
via headstuff.org
The plots are very similar – both revolve around a space crew, mostly men and two women who receive a distress call from a crashed ship. Investigating the wreckage, they discover a race of malevolent and malignant parasitical aliens which wreak havoc, causing the crew to feud with each other as they are picked off one by one.
The crew also enters the unknown spaceship and finds a giant skeleton of the previous victim of the parasitical creature targeting the crew.
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
via headstuff.org
The plots are very similar – both revolve around a space crew, mostly men and two women who receive a distress call from a crashed ship. Investigating the wreckage, they discover a race of malevolent and malignant parasitical aliens which wreak havoc, causing the crew to feud with each other as they are picked off one by one.
The crew also enters the unknown spaceship and finds a giant skeleton of the previous victim of the parasitical creature targeting the crew.
People tend to forget that whatever the original material, it's not gonna be the same as the material that borrows from it. Again, I don't like the original movie/stories that Alien was copying but I love the Alien. Who cares if it has been done before, it hasn't been done before in THIS way and apparently THIS way is what the audiences prefer.
If you've seen those other stories you'd knew the creature will be found by the crew in some ancient ruins, pick up a creature who would then start killing them off once in a while and who would then get jettisoned into space. But it's the unique way how the old story was presented. Bottom line: the story was told multiple times but mixed with some small original ideas and with a brand new way of telling it makes all the difference. The story from Alien was told many times before but never had the blue collar approach, gritty realistic technology and Giger's designs in it, and never had things like Ash revelation, Ron Cobb's designs and Ridley Scott's compositions.
