S4E45.5: Alien

I hope everyone in here knows about the Monster High Xenomorph Skullector

"When Cain [John Hurt} and the crew of the spaceship Nostromo..." reminds me of my dad's copy of Dracula which states in the synopsis that Lucy was engaged to Dr. Seward.

So, iirc, the Alien is treated by the director as something hypermasculine, cruel, and viscious. It is effectively raw extraction, and sees everything around it as something to be used to breed more of itself, or killed, mirroring the capitalism of Weyland Yutani (hence why, spoilers, Ash sees it as the ultimate life form, to him and the company that made him, all life is is the ultrachud fight fuck feed thing.) But yeah, Alien I don't even think intends to do transmisogyny, I think it even kinda intends to be woke by making rape understandable to a male audience, it just fumbles hard.

God I remember seeing Alien once after realizing I really, really liked John Carpenter's The Thing and being astounded at how good both of those movies were. They were just making good movies back then.

i also noticed the ray blanchard mention in teenage sex and death at camp miasma. i was in the cinema like *leonardo dicaprio pointing meme*

I just wanted to let you know that as a kirkmas gift a Finnish power metal band released an absolute banger song which takes inspiration from this movie. Song: fear the beast (by beast in black) 🖤

Regarding the 'bobbing Bird' doodad that the crew keeps on the flight deck- This is definitely a very intentional detail to add to the set, in a hard sci-fi sense: once in motion, the frequency of the bobbing would change in the presence of a changing gravitational field (or accelerating frame of reference). What a useful little analog device for a flight crew to keep in view- able to mark subtle changes in acceleration, independent of the ship systems or even any electricity! The little bobbing bird is also on the flight deck of the Prometheus I think, which reads to me as more excellent world building: it could be practical, or perhaps just traditional/superstition, but the flight crews in this future intentionally bringing these little toys into space!

I appreciate the appearanceand convo of the transmasc body horror of forcible pregnancy

"My wife is gigantic the way the Alien is gigantic" is one hell of a November sentence

9:59 Look up Ed Harris's yearbook picture. Dude has always been old, or at least old-er.

Is Alien a safty third?

Before heist season is out PLEASE watch North Sea Hijack. It had everything, including Roger Moore as a ‘bearded, eccentric, arrogant, cat-loving chauvinist with master strategist skills who does needlepoint embroidery and drinks scotch whisky immoderately’

I think the parts that feel comedic are that way because we've had 40 years of people doing bits off those moments of horror

The bit about it happening in an apple store or a Star Trek ship had me laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair at work

Honestly, having watched the movie for the first time now, I think whoever says Ripley was written for a man was fucking lying.

So…when and if you do get round to Aliens you really need to decide on Special Edition v Vanilla because while both are good, one tiny missing scene in the latter causes the whole film to have a totally different gender discourse…

Insect misinformation unfortunately. Drones in bees and wasps are exclusively male, if they weren't, they would not be able to perform their function as drones. Drones exist purely to mate with queens on their mating flights, and are the only male members of social hymenopteran hives. Presumably xenomorphs have drones as well! I have no idea if they've ever been depicted.

Alien 3 (Assembly Cut) is the second best Alien movie and I won’t change my mind… watch it for Religion Season 2!!! David Fincher, shot like Andrei Rublev in space, POV shots of the alien climbing walls, Charles Dance being really hot?!

As someone who has read a lot about biological weapons, the idea of the company wanting them for a bioweapon is really funny. One of the biggest drivers of biological weapons ( for state actors ) is the idea that they just kill the people, and leave the infrastructure. The ideal biological weapon is one with a predictable, somewhat limited spread. The aliens would just kill every living thing on a planet and turn it into a death zone where you'd have to painstakingly kill every living organism that could possibly be a host and even then, you'd never be sure they were gone. It might as well just be a nuke or a rock you throw at a planet

In my headcannon Jonesy was in league with the Alien because the crew didnt give him enough quality cat treats.

"Getting really close to the egg" ah, the dream of many KJB audience members

They should have had the Deep Purple song Space Truckin' as wake up music, maybe that was against company policy 😔

"Star Wars Genesis" saved Starfield for me

Sitting with my pen and paper psychoanalyzing Ridley Scott on the basis of what objects he chooses as phalluses and what objects he chooses to be penetrated

True Romance on the bonus, looking forward to it. Hopefully we'll get to the other (fully) Tarantino heists on the main, though; I want to see the SCUM spread between Reservoie Dogs and Jackie Brown.

I saw Alien: Romulus when it came out and the roughness and grittiness of the ship stayed from the first movie, I loved it so much. They took the trucker framework and said “okay but what if there were stowaway train hoppers on here”

Am I the only person who thought A3 was miles better than A2?

Regarding the existence of other alien species in the movie universe, I don't know if it is stated in Alien that nothing has ever been found by anybody ever, but it Aliens it's made pretty explicit that the Marines are there expecting to kill some aliens. Presumably they've done so before because they have a term for when the enemy doesn't obligingly fight them (bughunt). There's a conversation about sex with some kind of alien (the Arcturians) and the marines joke that somebody had sex with a male and the marine replies that it doesn't matter. Also there's the whole setup for that movie which is a colony of hundreds of people disappears, there's credible evidence something very bad might have happened and it might have been aliens, and the decision is made to send like a dozen lads with less firepower than you'd see nowadays to serve an arrest warrant in a small American town. Some folks see that as a plot hole, I think it's a beautiful bit of world building. The lack of any wonder or interest at encountering alien life and artifacts and so on in space really heavily suggests that it happens so often nobody gives a shit, which is why the company are like, "Let the truckers have a look" rather than scrambling the evil corporate version of the starship Enterprise to pop over and have a peek. It is an amazing mindset for a science fiction setting. Alien Earth took it one step further by featuring other alien species, but unfortunately for contemporary Aliens movies, games and whatnot, the setting is kind of broken and all that can really be done with it are cool self-contained stories because the whole is messed up from that Covenant and Prometheus nonsense. Apologies for the wall of text but this shit was my Star Wars back in the day. I Glupped the Shittu out of these movies.

"when you have an airlock, every problem looks like a thing you can throw out an airlock" Aka the "Camina Drummer approach"

I watched Alien and Aliens when I was far too young, but it did mean I got to enjoy for a few years in my childhood the period of history when these were the only two Alien movies that existed, and the entire story of Ripley Versus The Xenomorphs was complete and perfect. What a time to be alive.

I was trying to explain the concept of "Truck Season" to Samantha, and then while trying to explain why Alien was a "Truck" movie, hit upon the following gem: Alien is about a group of truckers that pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a serial killer.

Btw, Alien Romulus and Alien Earth are both great.

My favorite horror movie, i need to own every peice of clothing anyone ever wore in this movie.

i liked alien romulus :)

The APC is technically truck shaped Soooo pls review Aliens!!!

This film is kind of dear to me despite not having watched it and not even liking horror. BUT someone made a tweet about how HR Giger talked in a german talkshow about being spitroasted by 2 trans woman. And because that someone made that tweet I am in a relationship with that same someone.

The jump scare with Dallas was absolutely ruined with the upscaling to HD/BluRay. The scene has aged just fine on VHS, where the graininess and darker lighting hide the "BOO" part of it jumping out

Two words: Space Truckers (1995) Also, recently watched Name of the Rose and realized THAT was the vibe Alien³ was going for.

YOOOOO!!

18:00 PEOPLE DO THIS AT MY JOB. whole plant runs on steam. Bosses know our areas, but not the specifics.

It feels so weird to me for John Hurt to be doing anything other than telling me about a Land of Myth and a Time of Magic. Additionally, this episode retroactively made me so much more sad and disappointed about Directive 8020.

Please do dark star

Credit where it's due, it's a pretty brilliant move: Basically everybody in the cast EXCEPT Sigourney Weaver were genuinely famous; she's the newbie. They were the big names; they were the big draw to see this film. If you are watching this in a cinema back in 1979, you would be perfectly justified in believing that central character, our hero who's going to save the day and slay the monster, would have been Dallas or maybe Parker. If it's a Final Girl situation, audiences would have likely been rooting for Lambert to be the one to make it out alive. Nope. It's the by-the-book, chilly, no-fun new girl... Who, it turns out, is completely correct at every turn in the script, and always has the right idea. It's her that you're going to learn to care about and cheer for by the end of this thing. Brilliant little decision 👍

I am not through the ep yet but I am surprised discussion of the most expensive pubes in movie history has not occured. They had Weaver wear those tiny ass underwear and her bush was clearly visible on camera and Scott was like you are gonna have to trim that and she refused to trim her magnificent 1970s bush so they had to edit it out by hand in post and it allegedly cost production a million dollars, presumably which could have been saved with a larger pair of pants. It returns in the 4k remaster I have heard

The minute of predator jokes is worth the patreon fee alone

Alien: Earth fucking whips. It's not remotely subtle, but in a deeply charming, camp way - and the performances are excellent. Earth and Isolation are the only two other bits you need from the franchise (although I think Romulus is fun and Covenant looks gorgeous). Also great fucking episode, thanks! So lovely to hear you all just really gush over a movie I adore.

I'm suddenly reminded of my post-pop psychedelic blues band & science-fiction pub quiz team name, The Wailin' Yutanis.

Idk if I’m just reading into things to much, but it felt weird for Abby to specify the nonbinary weed store employee as being AFAB? It just struck me as really unnecessary especially for the joke about killing the newborn alien with a combat boot?

1:07:53 I actually had the exact opposite reaction due to the lack of set up. With how inhuman MOTHER acts (and it's specifically based on a kind of pre-llm AI that was basically a giant flowchart called an expert system that was actually seeing use in the 70s and had a boom in the 80s before crashing), I came to the conclusion that this world's rules was no human-like artificial intelligence. So the reveal that Ash was one felt like a complete rug pull. I didn't need to be told about the weapons division, but I did need to be told what Ash was. Cause again, I'd dimissed AI that could pass as human as a possibility. And it wouldn't have taken much for me to feel it was sufficiently set up. Like if at the start of the movie the captain complained about how MOTHER is an ancient system and not like some of the new AI they have on earth.

If you need suggestions for Sci-fi trucker season a great 70s anti corporate movie is Silent Running (1972) imagine the Nostromo as a national park that had just been decommissioned. (I haven't seen it in 10+ years, millage may vary)

To answer Devon‘s rhetorical question in a pedantic and irritating fashion, generally what happens at McDonald’s when the fryer goes down is that they use one of the other two fryers. Source, my husband is the guy they call to come and fix the first fryer.

Incredible film. I hope they make exactly one sequel, and I certainly don't hope that they don't make a film after the sequel that completely nullifies the stakes of the previous film.

One part that was disturbing to me was when Ash grabs Yaphet Kotto by the pectoral during their fight. It is, one, such an inhuman way of grappling because no human grip could possibly be strong enough to hold on let alone pinch to the point of disabling pain and, two, it’s sort of horrifying to realize that not only might your human strength be insufficient but that this inhuman strength could destroy it. I think that’s particularly affecting to anyone who is a BigStrongGuy (BSG), and maybe helps make sure that every member of the audience feels vulnerable/in danger in some kinda way

Something I LOVE about the original Alien movie is that when Ripply goes to look for her cat, there is this scene where she's climbing a ladder and there is a close up of her hands clasping the top and her nails and hands are CAKED in filth. Those are blue collar hands, and it's something you rarely see in modern films and almost never on women. Alien is analog and tangible in all the best possible ways. The sequels never are this grounded and visceral imo and are less compelling movies for it.

I feel like in the way that a significant portion of fantasy fiction is noticeably derivative of Tolkien, a lot of sci-fi horror is just Alien again. There’s so often such a terror of parasitism, of contamination, and of violent death coming from inside a body that has come into contact with the unknown. Although in fairness that is probably at least partly because a significant portion of sci-fi horror is sequels, prequels and spin-offs of Alien.

Oh my God, how did it take me this long to realize that Alien is Mpreg?

I want to watch Abby vs Predator.

I don't think the Amazon prime description could have been written by AI. There's way too much training data about Ripley as the protagonist of Alien out there. I think this has to be sourced from something like the original solicitation description of the movie. Like when you'd open the newspaper to see what movies were playing in the local theater. That's the only time the bait and switch would work, both for cynical marketing reasons and as further strengthening the tone setting when the first character you see dies.

I'm non binary (android) and a miner (engaged in mining activities)

When Sci-Fi season bursts from the chest cavity of its host, please include "Repo Man," wherein Harry Dean Stanton 'doesn't want no Commies in his car. No Christians, neither!'

Really happy to hear y'all talking about Camp Miasma, it's been one of my favourite movies of the year. Hoping you will do a full blown episode on it when it hits streaming <3

Kind of funny that the useless screaming woman is canonically a trans woman Like Ripley was written as a man, and Lambert was written as the one hysterical woman aboard, but then Ripley is a cis woman and Lambert is a trans woman

"Hoping the 'don't ' doesn't get left off my 'don't rescue me message" This is my regular call for all time classic event horizon to get more love

Im excited for 20XX where they do sci fi season and have to watch every other awful alien movie

Obviously the aliens aren't meant for real combat, they are a replacement for police dogs

Hot Damn! I've been waiting for this episode!

Theres some kind of rule where when kjb gets to talk about cum they make their best episodes

Aliens could also be done in military/war season. It's YA, but I must recommend Mira Grant's book Alien Echo.

...really want to update my user name with messages to the predator. Speaking of 'fwwsjrjrjthegs!'

Ok, sorry to keep bringing up movie recommendations every week but the writer of Alien is a fun guy. Got started with John Carpenter, acting his cheapo debut film Dark Star. That movie had an alien that was like a beach ball with googly eyes and it got him thinking about doing a serious film about an alien creature on a spaceship. He's also directed two movies himself, a Lovecraft adaptation and (dun da da) Return of the Living Dead. A horror comedy zombie flick with an awesome soundtrack.

“Giant penis with teeth” is canonically what the Clive Barker monster Rawhead Rex is supposed to be, so it just occurred to me that it should probably look like a xenomorph. Damn!

My mum told me that this movie was marketed as the John Hurt space movie, he was the biggest star at the time and everyone expected him to be the main character. Funny that Amazon is using original 1970's film descriptions

I think the method directing bit was kind of true but also not, sort of like ethical method directing where they showed them the puppet and explained what was going to happen and everyone had their scripts but the actual effects were so... effective that it didn't involve a lot of feats of imagination from the actors.

When John Hurt is dying he makes a perfect Half Life scientist death noise

I like that when it means they go to the planet Ian Holm is all about remembering and following obscure contract regulations, and then when Ripley wants to enforce a quarantine and not let Kane back on board suddenly he's all about bending the rules

James Cameron working out his feelings on women isn't Aliens, it's True Lies. Also you skipped True Lies for spy season :(

All Xenomorphs are female, they have a form of reproduction called parthenogensis, with some parasitism thrown in. Any single drone, if isolated, will cocoon itself up and metamorphosis into a queen, and then begin laying eggs, cause they can just make themselves pregnant. The face hugger's are genetic clones and then when they infect a host, that gestating larvae will steal DNA from the host, but the resulting drone will still be a female. We already have quite of lot of insects and reptiles on earth that are similar. Theres a couple Gecko species that are all female, they do a thing called pseudocopulation where they just rub up on each other then boom theyre pregnant, and every offspring is a perfect genetic clone. You gotta come up with some pretty out of the box adaptations to make it through multiple mass extinctions.

Great movie, I think they possibly overestimated the franchise potential. If you do a series of these back to back in sci-fi or horror season it will quickly turn into a fast and furious style slog.

It is unfair to regard the transporters as a sanding down of spacetravel by trek, as it was a conceit born from the budgetary limitations of the show. if the stories required interfacing between land and the abyss there needed to be a contrivance to cross the gap. It is far more an obviation of "grit" to just make it so and never inquire into the hows and whys; and Trek was not shy about the uncanny that such photodoric transportation entailed; from the reduplication of an individual in TOS to the break in selfhood and sort of death it causes in TNG. And the quasi-scientifizing argument that "it's in space it doesn't need to be aerodynamic" must face the "but it has to be built nonetheless, and escape the various gravity wells of its planet and star; building off-world is far costlier and aerodynamic shapes use less mass, which is still a necessity to escape the solar gravity well, and a sleek profile will be less worn down by the flow of micrometeorites and other detritus; engreebling fluid-cycling tubes are just begging to be pierced"

I know bonus episodes don't get scammed, but I suspect this would have a single digit score...perhaps even close to zero. Edit: oh shit, I forgot about the 1970's casual mysoginy 😲 🤦‍♂️

I will never forget the disney+ synopsis for birdman that just spoils the entire movie front to back

Lucky (2019) is a great Harry Dean Stanton movie, written for him by John Carroll Lynch. It's prime religion season stuff, Buddhism [American southwest style]. HDS plays Lucky, a man in his late 90s who finally has to face death and figure out what that means when you don't have Christianity to fall back on. Just a bunch of tiny great little moments in a small town It's basically character actor, the movie. Ed Begley jr, David lynch... others I watched Predators in the dollar theater. I thought it was pretty good. I was like 19, so... Shoutout to the "the chestburster scene was unscripted" factoid for making me realize that pretty much any story about an unscripted moment that made it into the movie is either bullshit or very heavily exaggerated. No Leo did not smear his blood on Kerri Washington's face. No Joker did not noodle around with the detonator because the billion dollar movie didn't get the timing right. No, Hank Azaria's head is not all the way up her ass

HELL YEAH