Speaker 1: Hi everyone. Quick content warning for this episode. There is
Speaker 1: an occasional mention of rape, rape metaphors, and incest not
Speaker 1: a pervasive part of our discussion, but it is present,
Speaker 1: so we just wanted you to know. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1: On the Bell cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in um? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start changing
Speaker 1: it with the beck Del cast earth Man, what a
Speaker 1: ship whole? Damn it's true. Where's the lie? Where's the lie?
Speaker 1: I love a movie whose last line really thinks they're
Speaker 1: doing something, but actually just serves to remind you that
Speaker 1: you know nothing about the character you've been watching for
Speaker 1: two hours. She's just like, I have no idea, I've
Speaker 1: never been here. You're like, wow, beautiful, inspiring, and it's
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weaver and went on a writer being like, wow, Earth,
Speaker 1: look how pretty it is. But it had already been
Speaker 1: established in the movie that Earth is a ship hole,
Speaker 1: So I don't understand what that's about. Well, but then
Speaker 1: they got there. They must have they landed, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere pretty, and they gasolate themselves into thinking it doesn't
Speaker 1: suck ass here, which it does. They shot a version
Speaker 1: of the ending of the movie with the same dialogue,
Speaker 1: put them in front of green screen with a desolate
Speaker 1: Paris in the background. It just like broken Iffel Tower
Speaker 1: and like they're like, the military is going to come
Speaker 1: get us. And then the writers like, well, you could
Speaker 1: get pretty lost in a place like this, what do
Speaker 1: you want to do? And then it's the same I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm a stranger here myself, but it's just
Speaker 1: like desert land Paris in the background. That's kind of fun,
Speaker 1: but also much like a lot of thoughts I was
Speaker 1: having do this movie, what huh? Why? And why I
Speaker 1: am so excited to talk about this movie that truly,
Speaker 1: I mean for Bechtel cast listeners, Um, there's just I
Speaker 1: feel like most of the time we have a we
Speaker 1: have a grip on at least what's sort of going on.
Speaker 1: But this is one of those fun, rare episodes where
Speaker 1: I'm like, I I'm I'm at c I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited that we have a wonderful returning guest to
Speaker 1: uh to be our little Titanic lifeboat. With the movie
Speaker 1: Alien Resurrection a k A. A movie that struggled to
Speaker 1: find watertight compartments to film in because Titanic was shooting
Speaker 1: next door. Yes, okay, so really quickly, this is the
Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast. Welcome to it. I'm Caitlin Darante, I'm Jamie Loftus,
Speaker 1: and this is our show where we examine movies through
Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel Tests simply as
Speaker 1: a jumping off point. Jamie, remind me, please, what is it? Okay? So,
Speaker 1: the Bechtel test is a media metric invented by queer
Speaker 1: cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace Test. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of versions of it. Our version is
Speaker 1: get ready this We require that two characters of a
Speaker 1: marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something
Speaker 1: other than a man for two lines of dialogue, and
Speaker 1: that it has to be a meaningful interaction. And we
Speaker 1: can't get more specific about that. You know what when
Speaker 1: you see it? And yeah, that's basically the test this movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, the ways in this movie in which this
Speaker 1: movie passes are so Josh Weeden and I don't really
Speaker 1: mean that as a compliment, right, yes, And we have
Speaker 1: a wonderful returning guest. She's an actor. You've seen her
Speaker 1: in teen beach movie z Nation and the new movie
Speaker 1: streaming on shutter app called super Host. It's Gracie Gillum.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, thanks for having me back. Welcome back, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: I think we should open this episode with your rendition
Speaker 1: of the Bechtel Cast theme song. Maybe we'll edit that in.
Speaker 1: I feel like that'sh the only it's the only way
Speaker 1: I recorded. I like screen recorded it when you first
Speaker 1: posted it, Um, because I'm weird, So we have it.
Speaker 1: I love that you don't know what that means to me,
Speaker 1: because every episode that I listened to, my boyfriend and
Speaker 1: I do sing along with the harmonies to the opening number,
Speaker 1: just like like we can't help but I have to
Speaker 1: sing along to the very very catchy opening and you
Speaker 1: thank you for that. That makes us so happy. Or
Speaker 1: also sometimes when we watch sexist movies, we just sing it.
Speaker 1: Of course, shouts out to our friend Mike Kaplan for
Speaker 1: writing the song, and to Catherine in a k Reeny
Speaker 1: Voskozynski first singing for doing the vocals of our songs.
Speaker 1: So shouts out to our pals. Yes we are now
Speaker 1: a song that five years ago around now was being
Speaker 1: composed for the first time, which is so wild, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I realized that this podcast is my longest relationship relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look at us same Oh my goodness, still in love
Speaker 1: after all these years. The spark will never die. What
Speaker 1: if the gift for a five year I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's actually Kaylee, we should have a weekend. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: we should finally go to magic Mike Las Vegas, like
Speaker 1: we keep saying we will. Oh my gosh, yes, wait,
Speaker 1: five year anniversary gift. The traditional five year anniversary gift
Speaker 1: is would a symbol of strong roots in an enduring relationship. Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I'm going to plant a tree and be like, stop
Speaker 1: the anniversary, baby, I'm gonna carve Alfred Molina's face out
Speaker 1: of a slab of wood, just a little butter knife.
Speaker 1: Oh god. Every time I forget the would anniversary, I
Speaker 1: feel like that's a punishment for not being in a
Speaker 1: relationship long enough. I thought it was gonna be like gold, right.
Speaker 1: It feels like the gifts must get worse and worse
Speaker 1: as your relationship goes on. Wood anniversary. I think paper
Speaker 1: even comes after that, which is just processed. Would really
Speaker 1: who made this little papers one of them, and it's
Speaker 1: this shockingly late one. I think, I like fifty years
Speaker 1: guess what paper divorce? You did it? You can get
Speaker 1: out of here. Oh my gosh. Okay, So, Gracie, you
Speaker 1: have brought us Alien Resurrection, the fourth movie and the
Speaker 1: Alien franchise that came out in Tell us about your relationship,
Speaker 1: your history with this film. Um, I brought this movie
Speaker 1: and I do not apologize Jamie for making you watch
Speaker 1: it for the first time. Thank you. I had not
Speaker 1: watched it until June. I had seen Alien, I'm sure
Speaker 1: in some sort of l A theater screening, then revisited them,
Speaker 1: I think just because they were on HBO Max or whatever,
Speaker 1: and watched the two thousand three directors cut, which I
Speaker 1: think is just wildly better. The tension in the director's cut,
Speaker 1: I think is so much better than when you like
Speaker 1: when even after watching director's cut rerot rewatching Alien is good.
Speaker 1: It's good, but the the amount of like like. Not
Speaker 1: a lot of movies I think benefit from long shots
Speaker 1: of hallways. The two thousand three directors cut of Alien
Speaker 1: very much does. And then they went through and watched
Speaker 1: more of them, um, including the first Alien versus Predator
Speaker 1: and Alien Resurrection is by are my favorite alien movie
Speaker 1: and maybe among like easily top ten or fifteen movies
Speaker 1: for me. I think this movie is doing everything that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to be doing. I know that this
Speaker 1: is not a popular opinion. No, I love it. I
Speaker 1: love Coming in Hot, Coming in Hot. Critics have Rotten
Speaker 1: Tomatoes raded this movie fresh, and the audience has disagreed
Speaker 1: with a thirty nine. And I'm going to disagree with
Speaker 1: both of those. It's at least I'm so fascinated. I'm
Speaker 1: truly so excited because I'm like, I'm at a point
Speaker 1: where I'm just confused, and so my mind is very
Speaker 1: open to being changed. I'm open to I I feel
Speaker 1: like I can be taught here. I'm curious. Did you
Speaker 1: watch Alien Cubed? The third one? I've seen it? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I knew that, Caitlin, you had It's It's honestly, it's skippable,
Speaker 1: like you know, like the first episode like people that
Speaker 1: you can skip the first episode of Star Wars, um
Speaker 1: of Star Wars movies like it's. It is pretty skippable.
Speaker 1: You don't know how. I have to know very much
Speaker 1: from it, but in terms of you watch it and
Speaker 1: the theme is just ruined and your heart is ruined,
Speaker 1: and then resurrection after that is very healing and satisfying.
Speaker 1: Oh that's like in in the order, it seems like
Speaker 1: I I did watch a bunch of franchise recap videos
Speaker 1: just to understand where exactly this is all coming from,
Speaker 1: because my history with the Alien franchise, which listening I
Speaker 1: mean basically is all contained in the feet of the
Speaker 1: show where I've seen Alien and Aliens because we've covered
Speaker 1: it on the show. This is just I this genre
Speaker 1: is so hard for me. I cannot follow. I get confused.
Speaker 1: Everyone's wearing the same outfit. This is why I can't
Speaker 1: do war movies. Also, I'm like, I don't know who
Speaker 1: that is. They're all wearing the same outfit. And when
Speaker 1: people are on spaceship the whole movie, uh, it's like
Speaker 1: you're saying, Gracie. It's it's a lot of hallways. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not built for it. But it's so
Speaker 1: fren Like, do either of you have a genre or
Speaker 1: just like a vibe of a movie that it's like
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to connect with, but I want to,
Speaker 1: Like I want to and Alien Resurrection I mean, it
Speaker 1: certainly held my attention because so much is happening. The
Speaker 1: tone of this movie for me was so all over
Speaker 1: the place that I was on the edge of my
Speaker 1: seat just to see what genre the next scene was
Speaker 1: going to take place in. Where like there's like the
Speaker 1: scene where it's like, oh, it's kind of a tense
Speaker 1: scene with one of the xenomorphs, but then the scientist
Speaker 1: is like French ng the xenomorph like kiss me through
Speaker 1: the phone style. It's like, sometimes genre is this, like
Speaker 1: what is happening? So I'm just I truly like need
Speaker 1: to be carried through this movie in a little baby Bjorn.
Speaker 1: It's like true. Sometimes it's body horror. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: porn film. Sometimes it's space jam because they're playing basketball.
Speaker 1: Times it's a space jam team. Wait does that mean
Speaker 1: I guess that technically couldn't Sigourney like ripley eight could
Speaker 1: easily she would qualify to beyond the Monsters, would she not?
Speaker 1: She's kind of I mean, she's an alien, so yeah,
Speaker 1: she can't be on tune Squad. She's not a cartoon,
Speaker 1: so she has to be one of the monstars. Dan
Speaker 1: Hydeia is a cartoon in this movie. Ron Perlman is
Speaker 1: a cartoon in this movie, but not Ripley. No. Death
Speaker 1: is death is both very scary and also something that
Speaker 1: happens to you after you look at a part of
Speaker 1: take a part of your brain out and look at it.
Speaker 1: It is very many scene was like what movie am
Speaker 1: I watching? It? All? Like the production behind this movie.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so excited to hear that you watched all
Speaker 1: the DVD extras Gracie, because I've I was mostly interested in, like,
Speaker 1: how did this movie get this way? Because it's such
Speaker 1: a specific way, and and I wasn't surprised to hear
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of like the the director
Speaker 1: of this movie, Oh, let's let's see how I do
Speaker 1: with this French Jean Jean Jean Pierre Jeunet, who we
Speaker 1: have covered his work before in the form of Amalie,
Speaker 1: which I can't think of a more different movie on
Speaker 1: the planet. But but I guess, I guess that he
Speaker 1: wasn't really able to communicate directly with the actors. He
Speaker 1: needed a translator to work with, and so it sounds
Speaker 1: like from an actor perspective that everyone was kind of
Speaker 1: winging it and like trying to figure out what movie
Speaker 1: they were in, and everyone seemed to land somewhere different,
Speaker 1: and Jean Pierre was kind of like, we'll figure it
Speaker 1: out whatever. Yeah, he was apparently asking just crew members,
Speaker 1: like what is like like during recording a scene, Like
Speaker 1: what is he saying like about the dialogue that is
Speaker 1: in the scene, Like I think there was a lot
Speaker 1: of French people on set. And he says in the
Speaker 1: director's commentary, which I didn't finish because it was so
Speaker 1: little about story, uh, that he spoke the least English,
Speaker 1: and like this movie is visually cohesive, but the performances
Speaker 1: are not in the same film at all, right, which
Speaker 1: it does sound like. And I'm Josh Sweden detractor even
Speaker 1: before he was revealed to be a piece of ship person.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't I don't know. I've never connected
Speaker 1: with this stuff. But he did seem to have like
Speaker 1: a some some severe grips with how this movie came
Speaker 1: out where he had that quote that was like everyone
Speaker 1: said every word of the movie wrong, like huh, Like
Speaker 1: he's like, they said all the words that I wrote down,
Speaker 1: but they said them so confusing, like, which I was like,
Speaker 1: I guess if I wrote that script, I would also
Speaker 1: be like I mean, starting with Ron Perlman being like,
Speaker 1: oh Earth, we got to go there. That's a ship hole,
Speaker 1: and then at the end when they end up on Earth,
Speaker 1: they're like, well Earth is beautiful. It's like, uh, excuse me,
Speaker 1: just the cloud part right right right, the this layer
Speaker 1: of the earth is very beautiful. Yeah, Josh Speden said, quote,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a question of doing everything differently, although they
Speaker 1: changed the ending, it was mostly a matter of doing
Speaker 1: everything wrong. They said the lines mostly, but they said
Speaker 1: them all wrong, and they cast it wrong, and they
Speaker 1: designed it wrong, and they scored it wrong. They did
Speaker 1: everything wrong that they could possibly do unquote. So he
Speaker 1: really did not like very I think it's very funny.
Speaker 1: And also he's an asshole, so it's like who gives
Speaker 1: it a ship that I was like, Wow, I've I
Speaker 1: want I'm curious of like did he and the director
Speaker 1: ever get to like talk, like, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: really doesn't seem So I was really excited for some
Speaker 1: Jos Sweden commentary on this movie when I got the
Speaker 1: big package of it and was going to go into
Speaker 1: the special features, and I watched just so many special
Speaker 1: features and there was one clip of him and in
Speaker 1: a long line of lots of people who designed props
Speaker 1: for it saying what they thought the next movie should
Speaker 1: be and how it should have this movie should have ended,
Speaker 1: And it's just him saying I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different directions that could go. And that is
Speaker 1: the only John sued and special feature that I was
Speaker 1: able to find is fully tapping out. I also read
Speaker 1: some and I have not seen Firefly before, but I
Speaker 1: read a lot of pieces written about Alien Resurrection and
Speaker 1: a lot of theories that Firefly was John Sweden's attempt
Speaker 1: to like course correct what he wanted Alien Resurrection to be.
Speaker 1: Like that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because that
Speaker 1: show is also about space pirates doing space pirate stuff,
Speaker 1: so I can see that. So I guess if you
Speaker 1: wanted to see Josh Weeden's Alien Resurrection, you should watch Firefly.
Speaker 1: Yeah for Serenity, which is a little bit more serious. Um.
Speaker 1: My relationship with the this movie and the Alien franchise
Speaker 1: in general, I am a pretty big fan of the
Speaker 1: first two movies, Alien and Aliens, and then for me,
Speaker 1: the franchise keeps getting worse and worse. I have not
Speaker 1: seen either Alien Versus Predator movie, but I have seen
Speaker 1: Alien three, Alien Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien Covenant, and it's
Speaker 1: really just the first two movies I care about. But
Speaker 1: I do. I do appreciate how many swings this movie takes,
Speaker 1: as far as just wild narrative and production design choices
Speaker 1: there is. We were Caitlin and I were talking about
Speaker 1: this right before you came on the call. Grace Weaver,
Speaker 1: like I, I find this franchise so interesting because it's
Speaker 1: like Sigourney Weaver is holding it down throughout, like I
Speaker 1: love her. You know that there's going to be great
Speaker 1: action sequences with women when she's in a movie. And
Speaker 1: then it's like you get four very different male directors
Speaker 1: with seemingly very different anxieties surrounding birth, just like letting
Speaker 1: it all out over the course of twenty years. It's
Speaker 1: just like so bizarre that it even happened. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad it happened, But what a what a thing to
Speaker 1: have happened. Why don't we take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then we'll come back and recap the movie and we
Speaker 1: are back. I figure to start us off, since this
Speaker 1: is the fourth movie in the franchise, I would just
Speaker 1: do very very quick recaps of the first three movies
Speaker 1: where Alien from nineteen seventy nine is about an alien
Speaker 1: that makes its way onto a spaceship and kills the
Speaker 1: whole crew except for Ellen Ripley and Jones and Jones
Speaker 1: the cat Yes, the fun fact is credited as Jones,
Speaker 1: which I think is very funny. Really is that Jonesy's
Speaker 1: stage name. It's like, it's just Jones. It's just please
Speaker 1: call me Jones. I want to meet Jonesy at a
Speaker 1: bar and really pick their mind. Yea. So Aliens from
Speaker 1: n Ripley is brought along to advise on this military
Speaker 1: operation because something maybe Aliens question Mark is thought to
Speaker 1: have wiped out a small population that is terror forming
Speaker 1: a distant planet. Turns out, yes, it is Aliens. There's
Speaker 1: this big mother queen Alien. She has all of these
Speaker 1: offspring and they kill everybody, almost everybody except for Ripley
Speaker 1: and this little girl Newt, who escape into space. Alien
Speaker 1: three from nine two picks up right where Aliens leaves off,
Speaker 1: where Ripley, I think, crash lands onto a planet where
Speaker 1: the population is all of these prisoners. So this is
Speaker 1: so it's sorry. So it's like the Ridley Scott one.
Speaker 1: James Cameron is Aliens, which is Mommy, and then David
Speaker 1: Fincher is the one. We're talking about Alien three. Just
Speaker 1: for for those who are not into the franchise, I
Speaker 1: feel like these all these directors have very recognizable styles
Speaker 1: and themes and it kind of like helped my brain
Speaker 1: click a little bit. Yeah. Yes, so Alien three directed
Speaker 1: by David Fincher. So she crashed lands onto this planetfull
Speaker 1: of like religious extremist prisoners. There's also sex criminal prisoners. Yes,
Speaker 1: they all have y y chromosome, so they're like extra male,
Speaker 1: extra aggressive. And it's David Fincher very early career and
Speaker 1: like was the fifth or something director attached to it,
Speaker 1: and they were writing that one as they shot it. Yikes,
Speaker 1: you can tell um. Anyway, Ripley has unknowingly brought an
Speaker 1: alien along with her to this planet and it kills
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, and then she kills the alien
Speaker 1: and also has to sacrifice herself at the end because
Speaker 1: she has been impregnated with an alien. Death by Mommy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then Alien Resurrection, which is what we are talking
Speaker 1: about today. We are on a military medical research spaceship
Speaker 1: that is floating through space. These scientists have cloned Ripley
Speaker 1: and we see them surgically remove an alien fetus from
Speaker 1: her chest cavity. It's worth noting that the difference between
Speaker 1: this alien being removed from a chest cavity and all
Speaker 1: of the other times we get to see that in
Speaker 1: this franchise is that this alien is not circumcised. This
Speaker 1: one definitely still has foreskin it had for Wow, I
Speaker 1: watched this movie twice and I did not get Wow.
Speaker 1: This is this movie really rewards rewatch and you're like,
Speaker 1: wait a second. Things have I'm very interested in talking
Speaker 1: about in this franchise, like later in the episode, how
Speaker 1: the idea of an alien parasite is treated differently in
Speaker 1: male characters versus female characters, where I feel like with
Speaker 1: the men, it's truly like a parasite and you're like,
Speaker 1: get it out of me, like yucky. But with the
Speaker 1: female characters, it's like, oh bird, then you're it's mommy.
Speaker 1: You would think that the parasite would behave the same
Speaker 1: regardless of who it's inside, but it just seems to
Speaker 1: know when it's inside someone with a womb and it
Speaker 1: acts a little different. And I'm like, you guys, you
Speaker 1: guys think it through. Yeah, Also because Ripley is a clone.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have the same cognition and memories as the
Speaker 1: Ripley We've Come to Know and Love and the other
Speaker 1: three movies, although she does have some of the memories,
Speaker 1: and then she develops more cognition throughout the movie. But
Speaker 1: at first she's almost kind of like a baby herself.
Speaker 1: She's just space jam she's born Sexy Yesterday, but she
Speaker 1: does know stuff. Yes, it's like a yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a variation on the Born Sexy Yesterday. She was like
Speaker 1: born Sigourney Weaver today with some of Sigourney Weaver's memory,
Speaker 1: but this time she has a manicure important because she's
Speaker 1: an alien, that's how you know, And like Sigourney Weaver,
Speaker 1: I mean in my mind, like she can do not wrong.
Speaker 1: She's the hottest person on the face of the planet.
Speaker 1: She's amazing. But the things that she used to do
Speaker 1: in this movie, that whole like there's I would say
Speaker 1: approximately five hundred birth metaphors a minute concervatively this movie.
Speaker 1: But the one where she's like kind of hatching out
Speaker 1: of a cocoon and the movie really like lets you
Speaker 1: sit in it, and she's like uh uh, and then
Speaker 1: she like it's like, where are we France? We're in France,
Speaker 1: Space France. Okay. So the alien that they have removed
Speaker 1: from Ripley is a queen, and in the military scientists
Speaker 1: plan is to have that queen reproduced because they want
Speaker 1: to tame the alien, train them, weaponize them, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Make vaccines. Yeah, and we love vaccines, so I'm actually
Speaker 1: fine with them doing that. Um. And then Ripley warns
Speaker 1: them that if they try to do all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna die. Then the crew from this like commercial
Speaker 1: freighter again basically space Pirates boards the military vessel. This
Speaker 1: crew includes Genre that's Ron Perlman, Call that's one owner, writer,
Speaker 1: other people who I don't recognize, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: list the actor's names, but Revere, Christie Hillard, and then
Speaker 1: their captain Elgin. They are there to bring cargo to
Speaker 1: Perez that stand Hideya. And it turns out that this
Speaker 1: cargo is a bunch of human bodies that are in
Speaker 1: some sort of like cryostasis sleep that the scientists will
Speaker 1: use these people as vessels for the face huggers that
Speaker 1: come out of the the eggs that the queen lays
Speaker 1: to impregnant so that the aliens will reproduce. Right, So
Speaker 1: thank you for that. Thank you for that. No matter
Speaker 1: how many times I hear it, I can't get that
Speaker 1: piece of information to live in my brain like a parasite.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, in ten minutes, I'll need to hear that.
Speaker 1: Totally fine. Yeah, So this the cannon that has been
Speaker 1: established and the other alien movies is that a queen
Speaker 1: lays an egg. What comes out of the egg is
Speaker 1: a face hugger. It impregnates a human, usually human host,
Speaker 1: and then an alien fetus burst out of the human
Speaker 1: hosts chest, and then it grows very very quickly into
Speaker 1: a full adult alien that goes on to kill people. However,
Speaker 1: as we will find shortly, this kind of gestation reproduction
Speaker 1: process changes in this movie. Well it's in the first movie.
Speaker 1: The cannon is that they're all like it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a sexless reproduction, Like the set looks like they're turning.
Speaker 1: The captured crew members from the first film are turning
Speaker 1: into eggs. And I know that Ridley was really interested
Speaker 1: in that. And what I think is so cool about
Speaker 1: this monster is, you know it didn't really and I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody thought about it as a rape metaphor
Speaker 1: until they hired a woman to play the lead. But
Speaker 1: it does really work really well as one I think,
Speaker 1: and in this non gendered way, which is what's the
Speaker 1: wrong with Alien Cube, Like, let's just complicated, Like one
Speaker 1: of the metaphor was just the plot it's mother exclamation
Speaker 1: point um. But like the first movie, it feels like
Speaker 1: there's just the one kind of alien and they can
Speaker 1: do the reproduction themselves and within the can and people
Speaker 1: recognize that. But then there can also elect a mother
Speaker 1: like a b and that is more efficient. There's more
Speaker 1: eggs getting laid if that's the case. But there's not
Speaker 1: a need for there to be a mother in the
Speaker 1: first movie. And it's only once they're writing for Sigurne
Speaker 1: Weaver that anybody decides there needs to be a mother,
Speaker 1: right because the queen doesn't get introduced until Aliens, and
Speaker 1: prior to that, yeah, I think it's just assumed that
Speaker 1: these eggs appears somehow the same as the cocoons, I guess,
Speaker 1: which it's just like so it's just like, as it's
Speaker 1: so bizarre to think as as this franchise continues, it
Speaker 1: just gets like Mommy ere and Mommy are like in
Speaker 1: more ham fested ways. Okay, okay, So then we see
Speaker 1: a scene where Ripley meets this rag tag crew of
Speaker 1: space pirates. She sort of plays basketball with them, and
Speaker 1: then she also fights them. She also seems superhuman and
Speaker 1: her blood is acidic, just like the aliens blood is,
Speaker 1: so it's becoming increasingly clear that she is perhaps part alien. Then,
Speaker 1: when on a writer A. K. Call goes to try
Speaker 1: to kill Ripley, Call is trying to kind of secretly
Speaker 1: stop the military people from breeding the aliens. But then
Speaker 1: she doesn't end up killing Ripley when she realizes they've
Speaker 1: already taken the alien out of her, and then this
Speaker 1: big fight breaks out between the Space Pirates and the
Speaker 1: military where most of the military end up dead. This
Speaker 1: is also when hell just kind of generally breaks loose,
Speaker 1: where a couple aliens get loose from their enclosure and
Speaker 1: kill several people, including Dan Hydeia and the character Elgin
Speaker 1: And you get that amazing what you're saying earlier, crazy
Speaker 1: like your head gets blown out and he's like, oh
Speaker 1: my brains. And then and then Dan Hyday goes home
Speaker 1: and he's like, Wow, this is going to be such
Speaker 1: a hell areas comedy that I just shot, like he who.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that moment a lot because I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he really does think that this is a
Speaker 1: different genre, and I appreciate his commitment. Yes, so cartoony.
Speaker 1: We always quote Liz Lemon at that point because she's
Speaker 1: got a line on dirty rocks. I hope it's not
Speaker 1: an important part of my blearn wow. Okay. So then
Speaker 1: Ripley teams up with the Space Pirates. One of the
Speaker 1: scientists is also with them, Wren, and they have to
Speaker 1: start to figure out how to get off this military
Speaker 1: ship that is now completely infested with aliens. So they
Speaker 1: make their way to their cargo freighter called the Betty,
Speaker 1: and on the way, Ripley discovers a room with a
Speaker 1: bunch of past Ripley clones, presumably the first seven that
Speaker 1: didn't work out, because they keep calling her Ripley eight.
Speaker 1: So it turns out they were just you know, making
Speaker 1: all these like Ripley slash alien hybrids. There's all manner
Speaker 1: of body horror in the scene, and then she destroys
Speaker 1: all of them and then they move onward without like
Speaker 1: a flamethrower. It's like she couldn't destroy them any more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's cannon for there to be a flamethrower death,
Speaker 1: and it's cannon for someone to go kill me. Which
Speaker 1: it's nice to get a return to that in sort
Speaker 1: of a full circle of it being Ripley love a
Speaker 1: good callback. Yeah. Also, so after Ripley destroys all of
Speaker 1: the failed clones, Ron Perlman's character is like, Wow, what
Speaker 1: are ways to Ammo? And then like Ripley's crying because
Speaker 1: she just had to kill all these versions of herself,
Speaker 1: and He's like, oh, most be a chick thing feminist icon.
Speaker 1: Ron Perlman, I love, I hope. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about Ron Perlman as a person, but I really enjoy
Speaker 1: seeing him in movies and I love his beauty and
Speaker 1: the Beast CBS show that he did with Girl Boss
Speaker 1: Linda Hamilton's Belle Lawyer lived in the Sewers of New York.
Speaker 1: If you have Paramount Plus, he gotta watch it. It's
Speaker 1: so bizarre. He breaks when Sigourney Weaver for real makes
Speaker 1: the three point line, throwing the basketball over like into
Speaker 1: the basket. He immediately breaks, And I just have to
Speaker 1: imagine that Sigourney Weaver must have said nothing. Must have
Speaker 1: been so graceful about it, but must have just been
Speaker 1: so furious that he immediately ruined that shot. I was reading.
Speaker 1: I was trying to find out about that shot, because
Speaker 1: I guess that there was like a popular myth for
Speaker 1: a while that she got it on the first try. No, well,
Speaker 1: the first take, she didn't get get it in rehearsal Um.
Speaker 1: She trained really intensively with the professional basketball player right
Speaker 1: for like for like least. It a very intense two weeks,
Speaker 1: and apparently her trainer that she was supposed to not
Speaker 1: try to make it, and her trainer come up to
Speaker 1: her and was like, trying to make it, you can
Speaker 1: do it. She did it. I heard she was trained
Speaker 1: by the Monstars, and that's she was so good. I
Speaker 1: like that. That's a good headcanon. Yeah, or bugs, Bunny
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny came over. He's like, you've got this. She's spinning.
Speaker 1: She's spinning the ball on her pointy manicure that she
Speaker 1: has because she's part Aliens, so obviously she has pointy
Speaker 1: black nails like the Aliens, which seems harder. I've never
Speaker 1: spun a basketball in my finger, and I never will,
Speaker 1: but it seems harder. To do with the curl nails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she really makes it look convincing, like when she's that
Speaker 1: the choices made in that scene are all so funny
Speaker 1: and good, Like that scene in no way requires that
Speaker 1: she's playing basketball very well. But who was her idea?
Speaker 1: It's so good was it that? It seems like from
Speaker 1: the interviews that it was her idea because she imagined
Speaker 1: it as the character kind of getting out of prison
Speaker 1: and just trying to have a good time, which is
Speaker 1: also while she keeps playing after beating people up. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's so funny, it's well, it's the
Speaker 1: type of thing that where in a movie that I
Speaker 1: think had been more competently written for basketball skills would
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry everyone played later, would would pay off
Speaker 1: in some way, but then they don't, and so the
Speaker 1: skill of hers is just established for no reason, and
Speaker 1: then we just move on from basketball. After that, Christie's
Speaker 1: skills come back into play. But from that scene, true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I did kind of wish on the second watch,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it would have been cool if basketball came back.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it would have, but it would
Speaker 1: have been cool at least be good at throwing something
Speaker 1: would make sense, right, like pay off on that perfect shot.
Speaker 1: That's a good throws blood later it's more of a flick.
Speaker 1: It's true. I think that's I don't think it comes.
Speaker 1: But also it's the way this movie works. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, if there's a dropped thread, fine, I've
Speaker 1: I'll never regret having watched the basketball scene. There's so
Speaker 1: many threads. Though, you can't complain about that many threads,
Speaker 1: It's true. Okay, So then the characters have to swims
Speaker 1: through like the flooded kitchen area. Aliens are chasing them
Speaker 1: through the water. They make it to the other side,
Speaker 1: but there's this huge nest where the queen has laid
Speaker 1: a bunch of eggs. Also in that underwater scene, the
Speaker 1: other I like to call her other woman, other lady. Yep,
Speaker 1: Hillard dies and we'll miss her so much. Just kidding.
Speaker 1: We don't know a single thing about her, and I
Speaker 1: kept forgetting she had died. Her feet gets such a
Speaker 1: closer close up than her face, even right before she
Speaker 1: dies in this movie. Yeah, I wonder give her a
Speaker 1: closer close up. She's about to die. The movie really like,
Speaker 1: the movie doesn't even seem to care that they're coming
Speaker 1: off this character to the play where I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: why did you add her if she says no words
Speaker 1: and she's in the way background of every shot, and
Speaker 1: then they're just like, oh, and also she died. He died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was that shot that went all the way down
Speaker 1: her body to her feet, So well there, that's why
Speaker 1: they had her there. She's also the character that I
Speaker 1: guess like she and the Captain Elgin are an item
Speaker 1: and he says something like, oh, there's nothing hotter than
Speaker 1: seeing a woman strap to a chair. That does happen?
Speaker 1: I'm like, is that why she's there? Like, there's so
Speaker 1: many different creepy reasons that I hate that this character
Speaker 1: could have been completely neglected by the plot. Yeah, poor whatever.
Speaker 1: That lady's name is Hillard, R I p that lady
Speaker 1: Hillard Hillard, Hillard Hillard. Yes, justice for Hillard and truly.
Speaker 1: So they are burst onto the other side in the
Speaker 1: middle of this nest. They're fighting their way out this
Speaker 1: kind of trap. Some people die along the way, like
Speaker 1: Winona writer, including Christie, And I don't know why. I've
Speaker 1: seen this movie very many times and I don't understand
Speaker 1: why Christie sacrifices himself like acid to the face, big deal,
Speaker 1: But I don't get the self sacrifice. Besides, he's really
Speaker 1: good and we need him to go away so that
Speaker 1: later other deaths are more surprising, like we need to
Speaker 1: lose our sharpshooter, but I don't understand why he sacrifices himself.
Speaker 1: I was also I also had questions about that as well,
Speaker 1: because they also just like there. It seems like the
Speaker 1: second the plot starts to ramp up, with the exception
Speaker 1: of like Sigourney and Winona, they're like, let's just kill
Speaker 1: off every woman and person of color we can, so
Speaker 1: we're left with the worst white guys that aren't well
Speaker 1: written characters in the movie. And then our leads like
Speaker 1: it just is like but why but why? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: good question. Dr Wren's death is kind of fun. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: we do get left. Yeah right, Okay, So Christie dies,
Speaker 1: call a k Nona writer dies, the military science dude
Speaker 1: Wren betrays them. He's the one who kills call just kidding.
Speaker 1: She's not dead because Big reveal she's a robot, and
Speaker 1: then they use her to like hack into the ship
Speaker 1: and basically set hacker dialogue here where she's just like
Speaker 1: she uses every buzzword available. She's like, yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to hack into the ship's main frame to the motherboard,
Speaker 1: and now where it's all computers, You're like totally, yes,
Speaker 1: I get it. Well, it's revealed also that she's an
Speaker 1: auto toon, and like there's a lot of like you know,
Speaker 1: reproduction anxiety as it also relates to like cloning and
Speaker 1: then making robots throughout these movies. But there's Ripley's prejudice
Speaker 1: against robots throughout, and then in this world there's at
Speaker 1: least not twentieth century racism like in Aliens, but there's
Speaker 1: lots and lots of prejudice against this new generation of
Speaker 1: robots that were created by robots, and so like it
Speaker 1: is cool, like everyone's like really grossed out and treats
Speaker 1: in a writer like I can't believe I almost fucked you,
Speaker 1: you gross robot who had thrown control over their actions
Speaker 1: another just like Ron Perlman and if you robot like okay,
Speaker 1: I was, I was like, what is huh? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: another part where Elgin is talking to Dan Hydaya's character
Speaker 1: and he's just like, yeah, did you see the new
Speaker 1: crew member we've got isn't she so fuckable? And he's
Speaker 1: talking about one on a writer's character and yeah, and
Speaker 1: then everyone as soon as they find out she's a robot,
Speaker 1: there like you gross weird, like something that I think
Speaker 1: is like and I and I will defer to both
Speaker 1: of you for referencing if this is a trend in
Speaker 1: the entire franchise, but that, like, the misogyny of the
Speaker 1: men in this movie is so over the top that
Speaker 1: I feel like I was just like, what is that?
Speaker 1: Like it's it's maybe that's the genre thing, but it's
Speaker 1: just so much and it seems like they have to
Speaker 1: They make an effort to remind you every ten minutes,
Speaker 1: like someone says something absolutely like horrific. It's never subtle,
Speaker 1: it's always really aggressive and it doesn't ever really stop.
Speaker 1: I don't know, And it's never sci fi bigotry. It's
Speaker 1: never like this is what sexism would be in the future.
Speaker 1: And even their ship just like regular sexism. Their ship
Speaker 1: is called the Betty and has a pin up girl
Speaker 1: on it, and it's just like why why is there?
Speaker 1: Why is there this? Why is it still this? Like
Speaker 1: I like, I like there being only racism against robots,
Speaker 1: like that's a on idea, but like I feel like,
Speaker 1: come up with a new kind of prejudice and then
Speaker 1: your crechequing prejudice instead of just saying that in the
Speaker 1: year twenty which when does this one take place? Seventy nine?
Speaker 1: I mean seventy nine. Apparently we're making jokes about illegal aliens,
Speaker 1: but nine that's we still got pin up girls on ships.
Speaker 1: I mean, fortunately in twenty three seventy nine, um our
Speaker 1: species will be extinct, so it's kind of a true
Speaker 1: the non issue. But it is like this bizarre like
Speaker 1: why is there just seven misogyny here? I guess because
Speaker 1: they're like, you're in space, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: But they're like, well, women suck. Yeah, let's let's make
Speaker 1: fun of the person in the wheelchair. And also like
Speaker 1: how with my new employee? Yeahipes, there's a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Josh Weeden for your amazing dialogue. Also, no no
Speaker 1: room for a wet whiskey, but like there's obviously a
Speaker 1: lot of water on the ship that can leak out everywhere.
Speaker 1: Like that seems heavy, true, very wet spaceships throughout. I
Speaker 1: did like the whiskey cube special effect, very very satisfying,
Speaker 1: also apparently still lemons and cherries, which is very optimistic
Speaker 1: about there, Like our military general is eating a lemon.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of that. Where are the bees? Right? Um? Okay?
Speaker 1: So they hack into the ship basically call sets like
Speaker 1: a collision course to crash the big ship that the
Speaker 1: aliens have infested so that they can get to the
Speaker 1: Betty and escape in this smaller freighter. Then as they're
Speaker 1: getting is there like rushing towards the Betty, Ripley falls
Speaker 1: through the floor and into a pile of aliens. Then
Speaker 1: she cuddles with the queen, but it's but it's sexy
Speaker 1: cuddling even though it's her daughter, okay. And then the
Speaker 1: queen who thanks and a part of her and and
Speaker 1: weirdly a clony part of her. Yeah, yeah, they share jeans,
Speaker 1: not just because she's the mom, right, yes, I have so,
Speaker 1: I just have all question marks in that area to
Speaker 1: find out that like, okay, we have no answers, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: good okay. So and then the queen, who thanks to Ripley,
Speaker 1: now has a human reproductive system just described as a gift.
Speaker 1: Just a guy who has been trying to train the
Speaker 1: aliens just like her gift to her was a human
Speaker 1: reproductive system, which the movie does subvert because the alien
Speaker 1: is so obviously an agony, which I like in this
Speaker 1: movie that is so obsessed with this one woman's maternity.
Speaker 1: This movie at least is this is disgusting, like human
Speaker 1: reproduction is disgusting and supposed to the other movies that
Speaker 1: are like, oh, Egg's bad, human who human? Make baby good?
Speaker 1: You be mother and business like aliens writhing around with
Speaker 1: this little arms twitching about an agony. Yeah, you're just like,
Speaker 1: why is everything so horny and painful seeming in this one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: equal parts horny and pain Okay, So the queen has
Speaker 1: now has a human reproductive system and then gives birth
Speaker 1: to this half alien half like it has a human
Speaker 1: skull face and then also meals like a cat. And
Speaker 1: so that's Ripley's grand child. And the trainer guy after
Speaker 1: watching Ripley, I mean, if anything play the role of
Speaker 1: father in this relationship, then he says, look, he thinks
Speaker 1: you're the mother, which I think it's really funny and
Speaker 1: more of a critique of men viewing the thing rather
Speaker 1: than like actually making Ripley be the mother. Thinks you're
Speaker 1: the mother and it's like, well, no, it just Stroid.
Speaker 1: It's mother. It thinks Ripley is it's God like, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's really Ripley anyway, and maybe we're getting too into
Speaker 1: it for the plot. I love like that didn't click
Speaker 1: for me, but I was like, what what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? She's obviously not the mother. You'd watch the
Speaker 1: whole birth and sex scene like cocoon. He's really chilling
Speaker 1: in this cocoon. He's one side note, the actor's IMDb
Speaker 1: photo looks exactly like a picture of Buster Keaton. This
Speaker 1: is like in Black Boy. Come. That actor is Brad Doriff,
Speaker 1: who played worm Tongue in Lord of the Rings as
Speaker 1: well as he's a major character in One for Over
Speaker 1: the Cuckoo's Nest. So he's got range anyway. Okay, so
Speaker 1: there's all the weird like horny ancestual cuddling. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: you forgot his most important credit, Brad Dorriff is the
Speaker 1: voice of Chucky. Oh my God. Dora has appeared in
Speaker 1: a number of horror films, most notably as the voice
Speaker 1: of Chucky in the Whole Child's Play franchise. He's canon Chucky.
Speaker 1: I also think he as him like as an actor, Like,
Speaker 1: were you not just him voice acting Chucky? But I
Speaker 1: think he's also in the Chucky movies as a different
Speaker 1: character as well. But I might be completely misremembering. No,
Speaker 1: I think you're right Charles Lee Ray, who I think
Speaker 1: is like the serial killer who's trapped inside of or
Speaker 1: Charles Lee. Yeah, he's like one of the bad guys
Speaker 1: in Chucky and also the real bad guy, which is
Speaker 1: which is Chucky. I watched Chucky for the first time
Speaker 1: last year and I was like, damn, this is pretty good.
Speaker 1: I liked it. It kind of holds up. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like Chucky. And then I watched Aubrey Plaza Chucky
Speaker 1: and it wasn't that bad. It wasn't as good as
Speaker 1: original Chucky. But you know, maybe well I don't know
Speaker 1: if we have anything to say about Chucky on this
Speaker 1: particular show, but it was fun. Sure. So anyways, Chucky's
Speaker 1: in the movie. Chucky's in the movie. He dies. There's
Speaker 1: been all this horny ancestral cuddling. And then Ripley runs
Speaker 1: away and heads towards the Betty ship, but the weird
Speaker 1: alien follows her and gets onto the ship as well,
Speaker 1: and Ripley and such a good deal though, it's my
Speaker 1: goodness called trying to close the door, and then the alien,
Speaker 1: baby alien helps She was like, oh, baby alien, that
Speaker 1: good or bad? That scene. I when Caitlin and Ikyl
Speaker 1: and I watched this together the first time, and I
Speaker 1: was like, maybe I just haven't been paying close enough
Speaker 1: attention because I feel like this whole dramatic cutting back
Speaker 1: and forth feels very bizarre and unearned. But then I
Speaker 1: watched the second time, I'm like, no, it still feels
Speaker 1: that wait where it's like something about the editing in
Speaker 1: the scene where it just it keeps cutting back to
Speaker 1: Sigourdy Weaver for a little bit too long, where she's
Speaker 1: like and then you come back to like this terrifying
Speaker 1: like suck through a whole bad c G. I I
Speaker 1: loved it. I love that scene. It's so confusing because
Speaker 1: what's about to happen is that Ripley and Call have
Speaker 1: to deal with the alien who's gotten on board the
Speaker 1: Betty and Ripley flings her acid blood onto a window
Speaker 1: and it creates this hole and then the weird cat
Speaker 1: human alien get sucked out of the whole into space
Speaker 1: in what is one of the most disgusting like body
Speaker 1: horror things I've ever seen. It takes its time, and
Speaker 1: the movie really milks it for a long time, but
Speaker 1: not before Ripley kind of makes out with the alien
Speaker 1: a k a. Her grandchild. It's like horny nuzzling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very it's very charged. Yes, And then the movie
Speaker 1: ends with Ripley and call arriving on Earth and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's nice the end. So let's take another break and
Speaker 1: then we'll come back to discuss, and we're back, Uh
Speaker 1: so crazy. I kind of wanted to start with you
Speaker 1: here and sort of let you lead us through what
Speaker 1: are we missing about this movie? What are and and like,
Speaker 1: what about the popular kind of opinions surrounding this movie?
Speaker 1: Do you feel very differently about Okay, let me make
Speaker 1: my plea for Alien Resurrection, because I think that it's
Speaker 1: really kind of I really don't like that this movie
Speaker 1: becomes so obsessed with making Ripley into a mom. Obviously
Speaker 1: it was written as female. It took a long time
Speaker 1: for the writers to conceive of any of the characters
Speaker 1: not being men, and even longer for them to think, like, well,
Speaker 1: what if it was even the lead? And then the
Speaker 1: sequels like backstory was actually a mom, but we're going
Speaker 1: to take that away. Also like be a mom this
Speaker 1: whole movie, which was cool at the time because she's
Speaker 1: doing a good job at her job and being a mom,
Speaker 1: which I guess like historical context is powerful. And then
Speaker 1: the third one, she's pregnant the whole time, but within
Speaker 1: with an alien and like it's like stick like you know.
Speaker 1: And then it's obsessed with the fact that she is
Speaker 1: female bodied because she's on a planet of rapists that
Speaker 1: only rpe female body people apparently, and have a religion
Speaker 1: that women are bad and comtresses and should be kept
Speaker 1: far away, and like, to me, that ruins the metaphor
Speaker 1: of it. What I like about this monster is it's
Speaker 1: a rape metaphor where everybody has to have birth anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of movies that include write
Speaker 1: metaphors are very very gendered, and I like that it
Speaker 1: isn't doing that. But these movies are kind of obsessed
Speaker 1: with Ripley being a mom or not being a mom,
Speaker 1: and please be a mom. And then I think Alien
Speaker 1: Resurrection has the opinion that reproduction is disgusting, and you
Speaker 1: think alien reproduction is disgusting, like human reproduction also disgusting
Speaker 1: and terrible for the mother, and aliens are gross and
Speaker 1: other and to be killed, but they are because of us.
Speaker 1: It's a xenomorph like they're the way that they are
Speaker 1: the like like, I don't know, I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of the xenomorphus bad qualities come from us, and
Speaker 1: we see that in this movie with the alien sacrificing
Speaker 1: the other one. They kind of seem naturally high minded
Speaker 1: or even like they might have whale type intelligence and
Speaker 1: consciousness of the group, like ants or whales, but because
Speaker 1: they are partially us, they have this disgusting individualism. And
Speaker 1: then this movie kind of takes it even farther where
Speaker 1: then the reproduction becomes human, and then the baby becomes
Speaker 1: groutesquely more human like. And then like this alien baby
Speaker 1: who I just I love and I'll give all the
Speaker 1: nipples to like I love alien baby, um and the
Speaker 1: way that they light it so maybe they get sucked
Speaker 1: through a hole. Yes, I love alien baby. I feel
Speaker 1: for alien baby. They really make you watch her die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they really make you watch that baby die. But like
Speaker 1: even when it's like even when it's attacking, you don't
Speaker 1: know whether or not it's attacking, and I feel like
Speaker 1: that's the human not like you know, the xenomorphs that
Speaker 1: were used to age very very quickly. But this is
Speaker 1: more human, and it seems a more emotionally volatile and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have like a prime directive and at one
Speaker 1: moment will be very very cute and cuddly but then
Speaker 1: also screaming and like as if it wants to attack
Speaker 1: you and sort of how is that different than the
Speaker 1: human baby? And I think what's cool and what'sever feminist
Speaker 1: about these movies is like the world is like, Rippley,
Speaker 1: you should have a baby, Like why didn't you have
Speaker 1: a baby two hundred and eighty four years ago or whatever?
Speaker 1: And Ripley always chooses to save humanity instead of like
Speaker 1: an individual family, and like, in that way is much
Speaker 1: more parental, um and heroic than like just like, let's
Speaker 1: have this character be a mother who wants to get
Speaker 1: home to see her daughter's eleventh birthday. Um. So, what
Speaker 1: I love about this movie is I feel like you
Speaker 1: really get into who is disgusting. Is it the xenomorpher
Speaker 1: is it the humanity that they have adopted genetically? And
Speaker 1: this movie is just really like like reproduction in general
Speaker 1: is disgusting. It's gross when robots to do it themselves.
Speaker 1: It's gross when we clone things. It's gross when aliens
Speaker 1: have babies, and it's also gross when humans have babies.
Speaker 1: It is terrible and traumatic and disgusting. And why is
Speaker 1: there still humanity in the year twenty three? Whatever this is?
Speaker 1: I mean, I totally like, I I thank you for
Speaker 1: like laying that out for us, because it feels like
Speaker 1: this movie has not gotten this out of like love
Speaker 1: and attention to detail. I'm so interested in that because
Speaker 1: that was like, I still have a lot of confusion honestly,
Speaker 1: and like some criticism around this movie, but I did
Speaker 1: like one thing that really hit for me in ripley
Speaker 1: eight's character in this movie was and I feel like
Speaker 1: it's I guess that they explore it kind of thoroughly.
Speaker 1: It's all over the place, but the idea that she
Speaker 1: is considered worthless after the baby has been taken out
Speaker 1: of her, and like I think Dan Hydeal literally refers
Speaker 1: to her as like she's a sack of meat to
Speaker 1: us at this point, we don't care. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that does say something about how we in today
Speaker 1: years still kind of characterized mothers, or or how people
Speaker 1: with with wombs are characterized after they've you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote served their purpose and perpetuated the human race and
Speaker 1: all and all of that, and and how ripley eight
Speaker 1: is determined to continue to just like find purpose and
Speaker 1: meaning in whatever that means for her after it's clear
Speaker 1: that the structure in which she has been brought into
Speaker 1: has seen her as like outliving her use I feel
Speaker 1: like you can apply that to motherhood, you can apply
Speaker 1: that to just aging in general, and like she feels
Speaker 1: confident that she still has purpose and wants to keep
Speaker 1: learning more about herself after people have told her that
Speaker 1: she no longer is useful. So from from that perspective,
Speaker 1: I really like that's the part of ripley eight journey
Speaker 1: that I felt like was really effective. And then there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of other stuff also, right my my, I
Speaker 1: think there could be a parallel drawn between some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that's happening in this movie and the things
Speaker 1: that are happening in tech exist right now. As far
Speaker 1: as the abortion band and like an obsession of being
Speaker 1: control in control of the bodies of like childbearing people,
Speaker 1: where this movie I guess I was maybe oversimplifying things
Speaker 1: in my brain in terms of like this franchise does
Speaker 1: get more and more obsessed with like reproduction, especially as
Speaker 1: it pertains to wombs and birthing and motherhood, where like
Speaker 1: the first movie you just established that basically anyone can
Speaker 1: get impregnated by these face huggers and then you give
Speaker 1: birth out of your chest, and that's what we see
Speaker 1: happening to John Hurt's character. Aliens heightens this where we
Speaker 1: see that happening I think, to a few different characters,
Speaker 1: and then we see like the Queen mother laying eggs,
Speaker 1: and then like Ripley becomes a de facto mother to
Speaker 1: Newt and then it's like you said, this kind of
Speaker 1: like Cannon gets retroactively established that she was also previously
Speaker 1: a mother. I would say, Alien three, there isn't quite
Speaker 1: so much like birth thing type imagery and metaphor, but
Speaker 1: that she's saved and she's precious because she's pregnant with
Speaker 1: an alien. Yes, that's that's true. That's true. And then
Speaker 1: this movie, like we've hinted at, there's so much imagery,
Speaker 1: like every few minutes it seems like there's some birth
Speaker 1: metaphor happening, or there's some reference to wounds and reproduction,
Speaker 1: and I mean, and sometimes it's not even if it's
Speaker 1: not stated, it's visually stated, where it's like when they
Speaker 1: get out of the water thing, they have to like
Speaker 1: kind of born themselves again because there's that weird little
Speaker 1: birth shell that they got to punch through. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: and then they all got borned again. You take your
Speaker 1: first breath again, People keep being born. I mean, even
Speaker 1: the way that baby alien dies, it's getting sucked through
Speaker 1: a hole that could maybe even be considered like a
Speaker 1: birth metaphor. But then I was, as you were kind
Speaker 1: of laying all of that out, Gracie, I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this movie is largely about this group of men who
Speaker 1: are doing all of these like experiments and cloning and
Speaker 1: obsessed with They're the ones who are obsessed with this
Speaker 1: reproduction and these creatures with wombs and birth thing and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Much this way that like conservative lawmakers
Speaker 1: are obsessed with controlling again the bodies of child bearing people.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, I don't know how much intentional commentary
Speaker 1: there is on that in this movie, but I think
Speaker 1: there's like an interesting parallel that you can draw in
Speaker 1: terms of like Yeah, look, how obsessed these people who
Speaker 1: don't really understand quote unquote female reproduction and wombs and
Speaker 1: bodily autonomy and having choices over your own body. Like
Speaker 1: they clone Ripley without her consent. They don't know if
Speaker 1: she was already impregnated with the alien or if they
Speaker 1: impregnate her either way, Like that whole thing happens without
Speaker 1: her consent, and then all this other stuff just like
Speaker 1: they're just making choices for these people and or creatures. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's wait, you're blowing our minds or alien resurrection good. Actually, well,
Speaker 1: I think you know, we've seen the military in this
Speaker 1: in this world two years before that and this, and uh,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of not a lot of them
Speaker 1: get named aloud, and um, a lot of them die
Speaker 1: pretty early, but there are men and women in the military.
Speaker 1: And I think it is intentional in the script that
Speaker 1: all of these military people who were outside of like
Speaker 1: legal jurisdiction to they're like in an area of space
Speaker 1: where like things aren't controlled. Um, but they're all male.
Speaker 1: And then also the ship is father instead of mother
Speaker 1: like in the other movies. Yeah, and like you know,
Speaker 1: like in your previous discussion about alien like there's even
Speaker 1: like should that count as the character? I think it's
Speaker 1: really problematic to make subservient robots and computers female. Like
Speaker 1: the first year that Siri came out, the number one
Speaker 1: question that she was asked it was what's your brass eyes?
Speaker 1: And we had a conversation like that in the in
Speaker 1: the her episode a couple of years ago. Now where
Speaker 1: it's like that is such a like there is a
Speaker 1: psychological human conditioning by society not by nature, that people
Speaker 1: are more comfortable telling female voice what to do, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then yelling at it when it's wrong. That's not
Speaker 1: what I asked for, Yeah, right, yeah. Um. And I
Speaker 1: I think I think it is intentional that it's father,
Speaker 1: And I think it is intentional that it's that these
Speaker 1: character like ridiculous over the top cartoon isial men think
Speaker 1: that they can possess life and control and profit off
Speaker 1: of life and they can't control the aliens and they
Speaker 1: can't control Ripley and it's the death of them all. Um.
Speaker 1: So I do think I do think it is intentionally
Speaker 1: commenting on that. Um. There is one female character who
Speaker 1: is on their side who has just builled as antithesiologist UM,
Speaker 1: and that does not follow the loftest rule of women
Speaker 1: with least hair has most power. It's true, It's true,
Speaker 1: which is unfortunate. She is the baldest woman, but she
Speaker 1: is not in charge. She's the opposite of in charge
Speaker 1: and unnamed, which I feel like a lot of these
Speaker 1: characters don't have allowed names. To give them a name. Yeah, yeah, true,
Speaker 1: Like it's I mean, I guess Hillard technically has a name,
Speaker 1: but also they forgot to write her a character. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And kind of going off of that discussion, the other
Speaker 1: thing that really worked for me in in this be
Speaker 1: was the connection that call in Ripley eight end up
Speaker 1: forming by listening to each other, because it's what I
Speaker 1: whatever call has we we learned has been you know,
Speaker 1: told and programmed by the patriarchal structure that she was
Speaker 1: made by to destroy Ripley. But in connecting with each
Speaker 1: other in a way that makes sense in story, they're
Speaker 1: not just like, oh where you know, we're the women characters,
Speaker 1: so we have to band together and be friends in
Speaker 1: a vague way. But it's like you have like two
Speaker 1: real scenes with them figuring each other out and forming
Speaker 1: uh bond and a friendship and at first honestly, going
Speaker 1: into this episode, I was like, Wow, we have like
Speaker 1: five million asshole human men and are too like the
Speaker 1: two women who are the leads of this movie. They
Speaker 1: have I think humanity in the from the story aspect,
Speaker 1: but it's like a Lien clone born Sigourney yesterday and
Speaker 1: uh robot Winona. But the more we talk about it,
Speaker 1: the less I'm fixating on that. I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I do because they're They're scenes together are very are
Speaker 1: are very I think like you understand why they band together,
Speaker 1: and you understand why Ripley eight is choosing call Over
Speaker 1: baby Yeah, And I think, you know, kind of the
Speaker 1: lock in of this movie is finding out that those
Speaker 1: two characters share a common goal, even though the scene
Speaker 1: is called going to kill her, and they do have
Speaker 1: this like like, you know, why are they keeping you alive?
Speaker 1: Like I don't know the newest thing. So I think
Speaker 1: that they are both women who are supposed to feel
Speaker 1: ashamed of their bodies by the patriarchal system in which
Speaker 1: they exist, and Ripley refuses to and embraces what is
Speaker 1: different about her clone body, and the same happens with
Speaker 1: call Um. I think it's kind of cool that like
Speaker 1: there's the there, like it's an auton in a in
Speaker 1: a clone, and yet they're like, no, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be powerful and like try to find happiness on
Speaker 1: my own and Call is so ashamed of her body
Speaker 1: and learns not to be because it saves the day
Speaker 1: and then says, father's gone asshole and then it's great, right,
Speaker 1: and and like their common journey of being told what
Speaker 1: they're good for and what they're supposed to be doing
Speaker 1: and realizing that there are other ways to be and
Speaker 1: to like whatever. Like I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I need to text with therapist. Shame deep programming, let's say,
Speaker 1: like d programming your own shame de programming your you know,
Speaker 1: just the idea that your quote unquote creator or your
Speaker 1: overlord or whoever it is. For them, it's like their
Speaker 1: literal creator. Um, what they ascribe as the meaning of
Speaker 1: your life isn't what Like they don't get to decide that.
Speaker 1: So in that way, wow, movie good. And I like
Speaker 1: that they have conflict again because it seems like you
Speaker 1: get them together in a scene and they realize they
Speaker 1: have the same enemy and like here it is. It's
Speaker 1: going to be Sigourney and Monona being buddies against the aliens,
Speaker 1: and then the next time we see them again, they're
Speaker 1: fighting and they have completely different points of views of
Speaker 1: how they should be doing things and who should be
Speaker 1: in charge, and I like that there's that conflict. I also,
Speaker 1: I love I love when it seems like Sigourney is
Speaker 1: going to flame throw Dr Wren and then she ends
Speaker 1: up like it's like giving the gun away and say,
Speaker 1: don't do what and then Bona just gives perfect punch
Speaker 1: to the face the Doctor Wren, which just like such
Speaker 1: a great moment, which you guys talked about the like
Speaker 1: men punching women and women punching men thing that happens
Speaker 1: in action sci fi genre and I think You're Aliens episode, yes,
Speaker 1: and there is like you know, and there's some there's
Speaker 1: some superhuman element to this. But Sigourney does get barbelled
Speaker 1: and the nose prettier, oh my gosh, yeah, and she
Speaker 1: fights right back and like she I mean, yeah, there
Speaker 1: there's there seems to be very little anxiety that this
Speaker 1: movie has about who's fighting who. It's like whoever in
Speaker 1: the scene it needs to be fighting, even if it's
Speaker 1: mid basketball game. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: I mean, even though there's violence inflicted upon women, it
Speaker 1: didn't feel specifically gendered or as though like women were
Speaker 1: being targeted because they were women. It just felt like
Speaker 1: these are characters in an action movie, equal opportunity inflicting
Speaker 1: violence and violence being inflicted upon you regardless of gender,
Speaker 1: which I suppose is parody. Yeah, right, like and and
Speaker 1: I didn't. I was I was kind of waiting. I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, let's see when uh, women is going
Speaker 1: to be tossed to the side in the middle of
Speaker 1: an action scene to be like, we gotta keep ships,
Speaker 1: like whatever. Mary Jane at the climax of Spider Man two,
Speaker 1: they're like, we had to trap her and very sticky web.
Speaker 1: But because what if she tried to punch someone, um
Speaker 1: someone you mean Doc? I yes, I do. What if
Speaker 1: she what if Mary Jane was like, I'm going with
Speaker 1: Doc dog that would have been smarter. I'll allow it.
Speaker 1: My head, Kennon, this is a this is a tangent,
Speaker 1: and you can cut it out. But because listening to
Speaker 1: your Aliens episode earlier today, it was brought up to
Speaker 1: both of you. But I can't like the conversation happened
Speaker 1: to Caitlin Darante, who has a master's degree in screenwriting
Speaker 1: from Boston University, about the fight sequence in john Wick
Speaker 1: two against Ruby Rose, and it's I guess it's important
Speaker 1: to discuss john Wick fights women. But more importantly to
Speaker 1: tell Caitlin Darante, who has a master's degree in screenwriting
Speaker 1: from Boston University, is that that fight happens at the
Speaker 1: moment in Act two where John Wick should like reflect
Speaker 1: upon himself and then grow and change and real. I said,
Speaker 1: he needs his need instead of his wont because it's
Speaker 1: a John Wick movie that's never going to happen. So
Speaker 1: instead of that, he has a fight sequence with Ruby
Speaker 1: Rose and an art installation of mirrors called the Reflection
Speaker 1: of the Self. Oh my god, I feel like that
Speaker 1: was Keia news idea. That sounds like a k He
Speaker 1: was like, what if he called it reflections of the self,
Speaker 1: like unspoken screenwriting joke. That is very funny. And thank
Speaker 1: you for bringing up my master's degree in screenwriting, because
Speaker 1: you know I would never like it hasn't been coming
Speaker 1: up in flavor. It hasn't been coming up because I
Speaker 1: would never bring it up, so you would, you never would.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you doing it, Gracie, thank you. Unspoken screenwriting
Speaker 1: jokes very good. I appreciate that. Yeah, Um, can we
Speaker 1: talk about the Rice character Dom Price, like we we've
Speaker 1: had this discussion many times on the show at this point,
Speaker 1: but Dom Ryce is a wheelchair bound character who is
Speaker 1: played by all accounts that I was able to find
Speaker 1: a not a disabled actor, which again is like such
Speaker 1: a nineties I mean, a very casting decision that is
Speaker 1: just like, it's so unnecessary. I feel like we're repeat
Speaker 1: it's always worth repeating that there are so many talented
Speaker 1: disabled actors that would have fucking nailed that part. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to call that out and also and
Speaker 1: also just discussed that character a little bit, yes, because
Speaker 1: the way that he is treated, especially by Ron Perlman's
Speaker 1: character John Or, is astonishingly horrible. Where I feel like
Speaker 1: this is a pretty common thing for if there is
Speaker 1: an inclusion of a marginalized character in some way, and
Speaker 1: here specifically a character with physical disability, where there is
Speaker 1: an inclusion invisibility, but it comes at the cost of
Speaker 1: that character being horribly abused, bullied aggressively. That seems to
Speaker 1: be the whole function of the Ron Perlman character in
Speaker 1: this movie in a way that doesn't really work for me,
Speaker 1: And I think that is like kind of a Josh
Speaker 1: Weeden and like nineties two thousand writer. Thing that is
Speaker 1: done is the idea of the run probing character is
Speaker 1: he we know of how because of how he's written
Speaker 1: and presented that he's wrong, but I feel like you're
Speaker 1: still encouraged to laugh along with him. So what is
Speaker 1: the point of telegraphing to the audience this guy is
Speaker 1: an asshole? But also the way he's delivering them, like
Speaker 1: their comedy lines there, I think that they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be perceived as comedy lines. And so when he's teasing
Speaker 1: and abusing the only disabled character or you know, just
Speaker 1: firing off every sexist missive he could possibly think of,
Speaker 1: then it's like, well, what it feels like having it
Speaker 1: both ways in a way that doesn't work, especially because
Speaker 1: he's one of the few characters that survives through the
Speaker 1: entire movie. He died. It would be one thing if
Speaker 1: he was an asshole to everyone and then we understood
Speaker 1: that and his lines weren't played for comic relief, and
Speaker 1: then he was killed, like punished by being killed. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen In fact, at the end, when Ripley
Speaker 1: and Call have killed the final baby alien by sucking
Speaker 1: it out of a hole in the window, even though
Speaker 1: the two of them seem completely fine and do don't
Speaker 1: get their guts sucked out of the window. Well, I
Speaker 1: think they bother. They're supposed to have a little bit
Speaker 1: of superhuman going on. Oh that makes sense. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think because you know, Cal's a robot and because Ripley's
Speaker 1: part alien, they're able to hold on and be okay,
Speaker 1: and they're pretty close to that mystery. I think that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's the reason that it's like if the
Speaker 1: one what is the military guys left over to Stephano,
Speaker 1: if he was still there and hadn't been killed, I
Speaker 1: think he would have not been so okay with that. Yeah. Good,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll suspend my disbelief for that. They're also
Speaker 1: they buckle themselves into the wall, so I guess they're
Speaker 1: fine anyway. So when Ripley returns from that big climactic
Speaker 1: defeat of the alien, Ron Promin's character throws off a
Speaker 1: little quip where he's just like or he's just like, hey, Ripley,
Speaker 1: and then she's like, you remembered my name or something,
Speaker 1: and then there's like kind of like a comedic growth,
Speaker 1: like yeah, like a nice moment between them, I guess
Speaker 1: is what that's meant to be. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: you don't get to redeem yourself after you've verbally assaulted
Speaker 1: like every person in the cast of the movie. Even this,
Speaker 1: Like I mean it is obviously a terrible bully and
Speaker 1: a terrible bigot, but even just the tiniest bits of
Speaker 1: his actions are just unforgivable. Like he gets mad at
Speaker 1: cow for wasting his homemade liquor and then throws Christie's,
Speaker 1: Like he gets upset at Ripley for wasting Ammo and
Speaker 1: then shoots a spider a spider. Why that is the
Speaker 1: funniest part of the movie. You're just the worst guy.
Speaker 1: That is comedy gold and I'm obsessed with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a great moment. But he's a hypocrite. Yeah, he's awful.
Speaker 1: I will say. For getting back to Dom's character a
Speaker 1: little bit, I would also be very curious to hear
Speaker 1: what our disabled listeners who have seen this movie made
Speaker 1: of how he was characterized throughout the movie. One thing
Speaker 1: that I was I encouraged isn't the word not horrified by,
Speaker 1: I guess is that that Dom remains extremely active throughout
Speaker 1: all of the action scenes, where I feel like there
Speaker 1: is such a tendency to Sideline and Kirsten Dunston, the
Speaker 1: Spider Web characters who are disabled in action sequences specifically,
Speaker 1: but in a lot of genres um He is like
Speaker 1: those action sequences, particularly like once they're on the ladder
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, Like those scenes don't work if
Speaker 1: his character is removed from the scene. And so I
Speaker 1: did like that Dom is in the in the way
Speaker 1: that there's parody across genders in action. It seems like
Speaker 1: there was a fair amount of parody with ability as
Speaker 1: well in the action scenes, which was cool. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: felt that too, And I think it's notable that he
Speaker 1: also survives until the end and that he doesn't go
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of movies would have killed
Speaker 1: off a disabled character specifically because of their like they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have survived because of their disability, And I think
Speaker 1: that it's actually pretty remarkable that the filmmakers let that
Speaker 1: character survive until the end. It's true, you can't say
Speaker 1: the same for how non white characters in this movie
Speaker 1: are treated. That is true. I mean I think that Christie, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, is played It took me so long
Speaker 1: into the movie. I'm like, I know this guy. I
Speaker 1: kept thinking of that the actor Gary Dordan is his name,
Speaker 1: and I was like looking at him, I was like
Speaker 1: thinking of my aunt's house. I'm like, what is the
Speaker 1: connection between this man and my aunt's house. He was
Speaker 1: on c s I for like ten years and my
Speaker 1: aunt used to love that show. So I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's c s I guy, So whatever, that's a useless
Speaker 1: fact that you can know. But I would argue that
Speaker 1: he's He's Christie is the only black character who has
Speaker 1: a lot of influence on what goes on in the plot.
Speaker 1: There are other people of color, just it's just Christie
Speaker 1: and the soldier who gets frozen who are black. And
Speaker 1: then there's the two Latin X military men, including the
Speaker 1: general and then the one who makes it a long
Speaker 1: time right. But it's like even even the guy who
Speaker 1: lives a long time, I don't I don't know what
Speaker 1: his name was, or like what anything about him. In
Speaker 1: the same way that like with the other lady, we
Speaker 1: don't know anything about her. She she makes it about halfway,
Speaker 1: but like who was that no idea. I didn't know
Speaker 1: until listening to y'all's episodes that this franchise never has
Speaker 1: a woman of color character or guest character. But Vasquez
Speaker 1: is played by a white woman. What Vasquez is played
Speaker 1: by a white woman in brown face in the movie Aliens?
Speaker 1: It is? It is true, Like, I feel like there
Speaker 1: are not many popular movies with stuff that ages quite
Speaker 1: as poorly as brown face character and one of the
Speaker 1: best regarded sci fi movies of all time. It's so infuriating.
Speaker 1: And also, I mean this franchise for as much as
Speaker 1: I am like genuinely being swung to the side of like,
Speaker 1: this movie is pretty good, um, because Cracy is a
Speaker 1: worker of miracles. All I'm saying it's better than thirty nine,
Speaker 1: better than I'll give it a forty one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But but this, I mean throughout it's for a for
Speaker 1: a franchise that is really fixated on reproduction anxiety, which
Speaker 1: I do think is a topic that isn't off the
Speaker 1: table for you know, men to explore. I think that
Speaker 1: that's like, it's a it's a worthy it's a topic
Speaker 1: that affects anyone who's ever been born. So sure people
Speaker 1: are you know, entitled to explore that topic, but the
Speaker 1: fact that it's like if you go through the production,
Speaker 1: like the top level production of every single one of
Speaker 1: these movies, it's it's just guys. It's just white guys,
Speaker 1: Like it's man yeah, and it's like, we just let's
Speaker 1: get some other voices in the room here, maybe with uh,
Speaker 1: with you know, people who have been on both sides
Speaker 1: of of this uh of this thing. I'm about to
Speaker 1: say a kind of gender normative thing. But um, I
Speaker 1: think that if there was anybody in charge who was
Speaker 1: female bodied in this production, they would have shopped the
Speaker 1: close up of her manicure on a day where it
Speaker 1: wasn't so grown out like it her cocoon birth. I
Speaker 1: was like, that's a two week old manicure, Like this
Speaker 1: is the one time you were going to shoot a
Speaker 1: close up of it? Like I mean, maybe they were like, well,
Speaker 1: it'll be too unrealistic. If where did you get this
Speaker 1: manicure on a ship? We have to let it grow
Speaker 1: out so it looks I don't I believe that they
Speaker 1: just don't. They weren't looking and they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: her nails, and like it doesn't look like nails. Because
Speaker 1: it looks like a grown out acrylic manicure and it
Speaker 1: really bluts me. But there that's like a very valid point.
Speaker 1: It's like I feel like that is like almost giving
Speaker 1: the same like the ponytail moment in Birds of Prey
Speaker 1: where it's like if you know, you know um, and
Speaker 1: if you don't, people are gonna make fun of you
Speaker 1: for not attempting to know. Yeah, I don't. Yeah this
Speaker 1: this I forget what I was about to say something
Speaker 1: about birth. I feel like we've talked a lot about birth.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. My notes for this movie were pretty sparse.
Speaker 1: It was mostly um round problem and shoots a spider
Speaker 1: the end. I have a lot of I honestly like
Speaker 1: being able to understand this movie through your perspective crazy.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's genuinely been very very helpful to
Speaker 1: me to understand because it is like there is a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting stuff going on here, and then I
Speaker 1: just feel like it doesn't quite go as far as
Speaker 1: I would like it too in other areas. And also
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, this movie is really erotic, you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a way that like I don't hate it.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's I like, that's not even a
Speaker 1: criticism I have as much as an unavoidable observation. Well,
Speaker 1: it's erotic between Ripley and her alien offspring, so I
Speaker 1: do have a problem with it in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's incestuous. I get. I mean, I can see that.
Speaker 1: I it's so cuckoo that it didn't super bother me,
Speaker 1: and like, I guess it is like the gendered way
Speaker 1: that people interact with xeno morphs is like I feel
Speaker 1: like that. That is more what stuck with me of
Speaker 1: watching back old scenes from alien and aliens and men
Speaker 1: being so freaked out by being inhabited by a parasite
Speaker 1: and then m child bearing people like inherently being like, no,
Speaker 1: I must protect the parasite, as if this is just
Speaker 1: like a universal response like I don't. Yeah, see what
Speaker 1: I love about it as a monster her babies a lot? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really I really like that it it equalizes birth anxiety.
Speaker 1: And from a writer who thinks that men might have
Speaker 1: womb anxiety, this movie does not suggest that anybody has
Speaker 1: womb anxiety. And I think that really, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I really like that about this monster and I hate
Speaker 1: like making the fear of it gender it at all,
Speaker 1: But I do think that the relationship between Ripley and
Speaker 1: the alien baby is to me, it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: more God destroying their own creation then mother rejecting child.
Speaker 1: And I like that the prequels did not exist even
Speaker 1: as a as an idea. I don't think at this
Speaker 1: at this moment, but then like that really does resonate,
Speaker 1: and I think that gives this movie a good place
Speaker 1: in the franchise, is that these movies become less about
Speaker 1: the anxiety of acts like birthing an alien and more
Speaker 1: about what have we created as humanity and do we
Speaker 1: need to destroy it? And then there's of course this
Speaker 1: other alien species that created us and intends to destroy it,
Speaker 1: and that's where there's unit more goo comes from. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it feels it feels more to me like
Speaker 1: this movie is this This is maybe just an optimistic
Speaker 1: reading of it, but it feels like this franchise is like, Ripley,
Speaker 1: you need to be a mom. Go be a mom.
Speaker 1: You're a mom. M you're a woman, you have a wound,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get raped, and you're going to be a mom.
Speaker 1: And then this movie is like, no, Ripley's a fucking
Speaker 1: god and she's going to reject her own creation and
Speaker 1: saving to save gosh well, but I feel like, like
Speaker 1: how much of it was originally sexual and how much
Speaker 1: of that is just really Scott noticing the hr guy
Speaker 1: your designs, But then even like the way that they're
Speaker 1: creating those designs the actual pieces on set, Like whose
Speaker 1: idea was it that the phace hugger is literally an oyster.
Speaker 1: It's a it's the vaginast vagina monster I've seen in
Speaker 1: a while, and that's saying something because they get pretty vagina,
Speaker 1: but it's also a penis monster. I have written on
Speaker 1: my arm from you earlier, Jamie, don't wax my flaps
Speaker 1: flapped things. But it's I think that it's it's a
Speaker 1: penis horror and it's a vulva horror, and it's the
Speaker 1: horror of birth for every body. Yeah, and then Alien
Speaker 1: three is just like what if instead of the metaphor,
Speaker 1: she was just always about to get raped all the time? Like, thanks, David,
Speaker 1: interesting idea, And I want to I want to be
Speaker 1: clear that, like we hear on the Bechtel cast and
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, but motherhood is something we
Speaker 1: obviously fully support. Assuming a person who becomes a mother
Speaker 1: wants to be a mother. I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like we are condemning motherhood or childbirth in any way.
Speaker 1: What we are critical of is the patriarchal expectation for
Speaker 1: anyone with a womb to give birth and to become
Speaker 1: a mother and go through that process, and the expectation
Speaker 1: that that's basically the sole purpose of a person with
Speaker 1: a womb, regardless of whether or not that person wants
Speaker 1: to be a mother and be a parent, because historically
Speaker 1: that's been what society values and expects of people with wounds.
Speaker 1: And so again, it's oppressive expectation that we take issue with.
Speaker 1: It's completely anti choice, and it's turkey, and it's get
Speaker 1: your creepy laws away from which in this world still
Speaker 1: hasn't been resolved by the twenty three hundreds, which is
Speaker 1: like just wacky enough to believe and also still smoking.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, well, you know, big tobacco. It's wild.
Speaker 1: Is there any other stuff? We That was all I
Speaker 1: had for? Note? What is there? Are there anything we
Speaker 1: hasn't we haven't hasn't, haven't touched on yet. I've covered
Speaker 1: everything I had. Yeah, I think we nailed it. I
Speaker 1: think we blew alien Resurrection wide open. I also just
Speaker 1: wanted to give the back tol cast a tip of
Speaker 1: the hat for how many movies we've covered that came
Speaker 1: out in the year as the production conflicts for this movie,
Speaker 1: when Janet was trying to get space to film this
Speaker 1: movie because they, I guess the other alien movies were
Speaker 1: shot in England. This was shot in Hollywood because Sigourney
Speaker 1: was a co producer and she was just like, why
Speaker 1: the international commute, which I think is like really very
Speaker 1: good use of power. But they were shooting at uh
Speaker 1: like a Hollywood lot, and they had difficulty securing studio
Speaker 1: space because of Titanic, and because of Starship Troopers, and
Speaker 1: because of the Lost World Jurassic Park. So there were
Speaker 1: just so many huge movies filming in in Hollywood studios.
Speaker 1: In the best of them, of course, being Titanic, the
Speaker 1: best movie ever made, ever made, ever made. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a fact. Um does this movie pass the Bechtel test?
Speaker 1: It actually does quite a lot. It does. Between Ripley
Speaker 1: and Call primarily, but they talk about aliens. They talk
Speaker 1: about how Call is a robot, they talk about how
Speaker 1: Ripley's part alien, They talk about Earth, they talk about
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, religion, religion, the nature of humanity
Speaker 1: and if humans possess it, and Ripley says, I knew
Speaker 1: you couldn't be a human You're too humane. No human,
Speaker 1: no human being could be that humane, which is only
Speaker 1: the second most Josh windn't wed any line in this,
Speaker 1: I think, second to uh, I thought you were dead.
Speaker 1: I get that a lot. Feel a very good line.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. Um. I did have to laugh when
Speaker 1: Ripley says something like, who do I have to funk
Speaker 1: around here to get off this boat? And then Ron
Speaker 1: Perlman is like, well, I can get you off, maybe
Speaker 1: not the boat, and I was like the ship. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's an again, a despicable character, and that's a gross
Speaker 1: line coming from him, but it's a pretty funny line. Otherwise, anyway,
Speaker 1: does it pass the back to test when Ripley has
Speaker 1: to murder the terrifying body horror clone of herself with
Speaker 1: a flamethrower. I think it could. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think. You know, it's a tense interaction, but you know,
Speaker 1: let women have tension. Yeah, she says kill me, and
Speaker 1: then Ripley and the responses. The action is the response,
Speaker 1: but is definitely a conversation. It's a conversation. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: So it passes handily. Um, as far as our nipple
Speaker 1: scale goes a scale of zero to five nipples based
Speaker 1: on how the movie fares. Looking at it through an
Speaker 1: intersectional feminist lens, um, I mean power in. I'll split it.
Speaker 1: I'll give it a right down the middle two point five.
Speaker 1: I do think there is some interesting commentary being made
Speaker 1: on kind of the just a session of male authority figures,
Speaker 1: and like the fact that it's military and medical, you know,
Speaker 1: because there there's a lot to criticize about the way
Speaker 1: medical professionals, some of them harbor a lot of biases
Speaker 1: and withhold medical care from a lot of marginalized groups
Speaker 1: of people. So I think it's like interesting that it's
Speaker 1: these like military medical personnel and like all you know,
Speaker 1: these industrial complexes that are obsessed with basically using female
Speaker 1: bodies as vessels to perpetuate their own very destructive agenda.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think there's again these interesting parallels to
Speaker 1: be drawn about what's happening currently in the world in
Speaker 1: terms of groups of men being obsessed with controlling people
Speaker 1: with uteruses and denying people access to bodily autonomy. So
Speaker 1: I think that's all an interesting thing that the movie explores.
Speaker 1: I think that as far as how effectively it does
Speaker 1: that that might be a little up for debate, but
Speaker 1: I think it's I appreciate that the movie attempts something
Speaker 1: like that. I don't like how weirdly horny Ripley gets
Speaker 1: for her children, her alien children. I do appreciate that
Speaker 1: the main relationship that emerges in the movie that we
Speaker 1: are rooting for is between two fem presenting beings. Again,
Speaker 1: they're not human women, but they are for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes, women, I suppose, and that that's the kind
Speaker 1: of most compelling relationship between characters in the entire movie. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's some pros and cons of this very bizarre
Speaker 1: movie that's obsessed with birth imagery. I will give it
Speaker 1: too point five nipples. Does that seem too high? No,
Speaker 1: I think I'll probably meet ei there, Okay, all right? Uh,
Speaker 1: And I will give them to the spider that gets
Speaker 1: shot to death by Ron Perlman. I'll meet you at
Speaker 1: two point five. I. I think that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of really admirable swings in this uh, in this movie,
Speaker 1: and honestly, this conversation has been so enlightening and helpful
Speaker 1: in clarifying some of those swings. Uh. And I also,
Speaker 1: I mean, I like your interpretation, Gracie, that of of
Speaker 1: Ripley as God versus Ripley as alien Grandma. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that resolves I think like a lot of the like
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance I was experiencing. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: a more I wish that if that was the canonical intention.
Speaker 1: I wish that that was that almost they hit that
Speaker 1: a little harder because I feel like that's a really
Speaker 1: like cool journey to track in a way that is
Speaker 1: like clear and obvious. I'll piggy back on what you said, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: and I like that the central relationship is Ripley and
Speaker 1: call I think that their connection makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I like their mutual rejection of what they've been told
Speaker 1: about who they like, who they've been made to be,
Speaker 1: versus choosing choose, like making a choice as an individual
Speaker 1: that's also in the interest of the collective at the
Speaker 1: same time, like it that's such a difficult line to toe.
Speaker 1: That is like the thing that I think this movie
Speaker 1: maybe does the most effectively. And then there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that's like hit and miss that we've spent
Speaker 1: the last two hours discussing, so I won't rehash. But
Speaker 1: I think that two and a half feels good and admirable,
Speaker 1: uh and admirable swing. Definitely a movie that like, uh like,
Speaker 1: If not rewards, I'm rewatching. There's definitely ship you missed.
Speaker 1: If it's been a long time since you've seen this movie,
Speaker 1: and I think it's aged in a really interesting way,
Speaker 1: and watch it with friends, don't watch it, don't watch
Speaker 1: it alone. Have have a good night with friends. So
Speaker 1: I'll do two and a half. I'll will give one
Speaker 1: to that lady that dies, I'll give one to the basketball,
Speaker 1: and I'll give the last point five to uh ripley um. I,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, think that this is a four
Speaker 1: nibble movie. I'll remind you that you both you both
Speaker 1: give four nipples to aliens, both of you. Sounds like
Speaker 1: something I would have been a couple of years ago. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I recognize that maybe a lot of what
Speaker 1: I love about this movie is perhaps headcanon and is
Speaker 1: not necessarily super active in the movie. But I do
Speaker 1: think that a lot like there's a lot of male
Speaker 1: gaze going on in this movie. The direction is very
Speaker 1: very male gaze, and I agree. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: it's she's being really sexy with the alien. But I
Speaker 1: feel like what that moment is supposed to be, and
Speaker 1: it is really sexy and Sigourney Weavers keeping her eyes
Speaker 1: still and moving her head around just because she looks
Speaker 1: like Sigourney Weaver and she's moving in a fluid way.
Speaker 1: But um, it's supposed to be her choosing between her
Speaker 1: animal side and her human side and choosing humanity. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's the script. I think it's just on
Speaker 1: set it became very sexy. Um, But I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna throw a nipple at at least subverting the born
Speaker 1: Sexy Yesterday trope because toss it over your shoulder right
Speaker 1: into the basketball hoop because you know, and they're really
Speaker 1: surprised that that's a that's a side effect. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give, I mean a nipple to call um for
Speaker 1: all of the reasons. It just um just I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's unown a writer and Sigourney Weaver being being badasses
Speaker 1: in a movie together like that does that does get?
Speaker 1: That does a lot for me? Um, especially since part
Speaker 1: of the reason Suggourney Weaver got cast in the first
Speaker 1: place was from being very tall, and everyone who was
Speaker 1: doing casting was like, see this, I can see I
Speaker 1: can see as Ripley, Like that's Ripley walking in the
Speaker 1: room and she like credits her quote Hooker boots about it.
Speaker 1: So um as a short as a short person, I
Speaker 1: like that. There's also window and a writer being a
Speaker 1: badass UM five three. And I'm going to give a
Speaker 1: nipple to the baby alien because I love the baby
Speaker 1: alien so so much. And the lighting of the baby alien. Um,
Speaker 1: they apparently had to uh c g I off the
Speaker 1: umbilical cord when it was walking because it looked too
Speaker 1: much like a penis, which is just like a fun
Speaker 1: little I love that baby alien fact. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like a c g I thing that had to happen.
Speaker 1: It was the guy who c G I is that
Speaker 1: it's the weirdest um editing he had to do. Um
Speaker 1: but which this like to me relates just a tiny bit,
Speaker 1: even though John didn't have anything to do with production
Speaker 1: to Josh Weeden really wanting vision to have a penis
Speaker 1: and having to be shown what that would look like,
Speaker 1: to be told that that is incorrect. Um, but that's
Speaker 1: a sidetrack. And I'm going to give a nipple to
Speaker 1: the Josh Weedeney dialogue because uh, you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: the human being aside. I love dialogue like that and
Speaker 1: it is my lead character, my my Ripley being told
Speaker 1: I thought you were dead. I get that a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's a nipple for me. That's a nipple
Speaker 1: from me, dog nipples. Well, Gracie, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming back and for helping us. Yes, thank you
Speaker 1: for appreciate this movie. Yeah, I'm happy that you watched it.
Speaker 1: You can skip three. I mean Cube. The more I
Speaker 1: learned about Alien Cube, the more I'm just like, I'm
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll ever see the need to see it.
Speaker 1: No where can people follow you online? Check out your stuff?
Speaker 1: Plug away Um, I'm online on Instagram at Gracie Gillum
Speaker 1: dr A C I E G I L L A
Speaker 1: m um. And right now you can watch me in
Speaker 1: Super Host on shutter app. It is coming up on
Speaker 1: spooky season, so good time to get shutter app. And
Speaker 1: it's a good movie to watch in your home and
Speaker 1: contemplate the validity of safety in the domestic sphere. Ha
Speaker 1: ha ha ha yeah my super host on shutter hell Yeah.
Speaker 1: Check it out. You can follow us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at bechtel Cast. You can subscribe to our Patreon
Speaker 1: a k a. Matreon for five dollars a month at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com, slash specktel Cast. It gets you to
Speaker 1: bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back
Speaker 1: catalog of bonus episodes, which is over a hundred. Now
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think we did it. We've crossed
Speaker 1: into triple figures. Wow, there's so much content left to
Speaker 1: explore if you're not already a matron, and you can
Speaker 1: also grab our some merch of were public dot com
Speaker 1: slash the backtel Cast if you are so inclined. If
Speaker 1: you have a baby alien to dress, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: we have clothes for baby alien. Also, I meant it
Speaker 1: is a very size inclusive site. So go there, have
Speaker 1: a good time, and uh everyone, I think we just
Speaker 1: got to Earth. I mean, I know it's kind of
Speaker 1: a ship hole, but I'd rather stay with the things. Man.
Speaker 1: Fun fact like, she's apparently they're they're gonna put the ship.
Speaker 1: They're gonna send the ship to somewhere that's unpopulated and
Speaker 1: according to xenopedia dot com, that places central Africa. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's interesting. Oh okay, well this movie is a mess.
Speaker 1: Bye bye bye