Another Pass at Alien3

Did you know that Sam has never watched the Alien series because she's a 'fraidy-cat? Well, Case and special guest Erin Callahan conspired to force Sam to watch the whole primary Trilogy in order to critique Alien3.

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Outline

Introduction to Alien 3 (00:00 - 10:41)

• Introduction to the Alien franchise and Alien 3's troubled production history.

• Initial impressions of Alien 3 and comparison with Alien and Aliens movies.

Production Challenges (10:41 - 21:04)

• Deep dive into Alien 3's cast, strong actors involved, and their underutilization.

• Discussion on the production difficulties, including script rewrites, last-minute director changes, and the movie's rushed production.

Visual and Technical Aspects (21:05 - 31:52)

• Analysis of the alien creature's design evolution during filming and the poor CGI effects.

• Discussion on David Fincher's filming style and conflicts on set due to the chaotic production schedule.

Thematic Exploration (31:52 - 41:44)

• Discussion on the Bishop character arc and inconsistencies regarding timeline and character age.

• Debate about the lack of a strong anti-capitalist or anti-corporate message compared to the first two films.

️ Narrative Arc (41:45 - 51:41)

• Contextualization of the Alien franchise’s narrative arc, especially the themes of corporate greed and capitalism.

• Criticism of Alien 3’s lack of clear narrative, character development, and its brown, dull environment.

️ Pitch Segment (51:41 - 01:01:38)

• Recommendation to watch Alien 3’s assembly cut over the theatrical version due to restored character depth.

• Discussion on how rushed filming and lack of a finished script handicapped the movie.

️ Character and Setting Enhancements (01:01:39 - 01:11:52)

• Erin proposes focusing Alien 3 decisively on the prison-planet and religious cult narrative.

• Strong emphasis on making prisoners diverse in character and belief systems.

Visual Style and Atmosphere (01:11:53 - 01:23:18)

• Continued discussion on enhancing visual style and atmosphere with textured sets and steam effects.

• Desire for more distinct character personalities and motivations.

Conflict and Power Dynamics (01:23:19 - 01:32:31)

• Sam emphasizes reinforcing Weyland Yutani as the main antagonist and corporate villain.

• Desire for more tension and power struggles among prisoners after the warden’s death.

Plot Logistics and Theories (01:32:33 - 01:42:44)

• Discussion on reintroducing Hicks and Newt more plausibly, potentially with time jumps.

• General agreement the movie lacks a satisfying explanation for how queen embryo ends in Ripley.

Emotional Impact and Reflection (01:42:44 - 01:53:30)

• Emotional reflection on alien’s impact on fans and the franchise’s tonal shifts.

• Critique on one prisoner character’s unrealistic intelligence portrayal.

Summary and Closing (01:53:30 - 01:58:37)

• Alien 3 as archetypal third-movie syndrome though salvaged somewhat by Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley.

• Preview of next episode discussing Highlander 2.

00:00
Case
So for me, Alien 3 was the first Aliens movie I ever saw. And I overall actually rather like it, especially because my favorite Alien movie is the first one, which means that every single Alien movie has been worse than the one before, which means that this is still fairly early in that chain.

00:14
Erin
Right.

00:14
Case
And while theatrical cut, I think is not particularly good, the assembly cut's actually pretty strong. And what I was saying before you got back was that there was so much production hell in terms of getting this movie made, the fact that it is a movie, full stop, is, like, kind of amazing. Welcome to Certain Point. If used another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on itunes. Just go to certainpov.com hey everyone, and welcome back to another past podcast. I'm Case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea. Hello. And today we are discussing a movie that is a troubled and proud. Probably a movie that has been too long coming to be a part of this series, but it is a testament of female empowerment.

01:02
Case
And for that discussion, we have brought the absolute phenom, the total top boss, the head bitch in charge, my friend and comedian, Erin Callahan.

01:12
Erin
Hi. Thanks for having me. You added a whole bunch of tags there. I really liked that.

01:17
Sam
Yeah, of course.

01:18
Case
Well, I mean, the goal is to just keep adding stuff to it.

01:21
Erin
Absolutely. Get a full five minutes, just tags.

01:24
Case
Yeah. Go with that, like, real Grecian hero kind of thing where we just keep on adding additional epithets so that the people, when they're trying to remember it down the line thousands of years from now, it's like, Erin Callahan, head bitch in charge. Yes.

01:34
Erin
Hell yeah.

01:35
Case
Yeah. Yeah.

01:36
Sam
I mean, when you have the total package on, you really want to sell it. That's. That's really what you want to do.

01:43
Erin
See, my strategy, a lot of people don't employ this strategy, but I really like to be oversold right at the top. And then that just paves the way for, like, inevitable disappointment from there on out.

01:57
Sam
But that's comedy gold. I mean, that's where the funny is.

02:01
Erin
You get it? Yeah, you get it.

02:03
Case
And I mean, that is fitting for the movie that we're talking about today, because today we are discussing a movie that fell off a bit of a cliff of two strong entries into its franchise. Because today we are talking about Alien 3.

02:16
Erin
Woo.

02:18
Sam
Huzzah.

02:19
Case
Yeah.

02:22
Sam
I'm so enthusiastic.

02:25
Case
All right, so let's start off with this one. Sam, why don't you tell the audience about how you had never seen these movies before we subjected you to it this weekend.

02:34
Sam
So, listeners, you know. You know that I don't like horror movies because I've said it a couple of times, many times. Every time someone brings something that is scary, I'm like, I'm a coward.

02:45
Erin
And.

02:45
Sam
And I own that. I mean, like, know what you are and then accept it and you know you're going to better for it. And I had only seen Alien ever in my life because my mom really wanted me to because she loves monster movies. And I've also discussed that on this podcast. And that was a really good movie, but it scared the crap out of me. And I asked Case if I could skip Aliens, which is the second film for those of you who are lucky enough not to know.

03:14
Erin
And. And.

03:16
Sam
And he was like, no, this. This Aliens 3 really, like, feeds right into it. You kind of. You kind of have to watch it. And I was like, fuck. So I watched Aliens last night, and I watched Alien 3 this morning. And honestly, that was really rough. That was possibly rougher than how scared I was when my neighbor upstairs was drop something on the floor. And I jumped 10ft last night while watching Aliens.

03:47
Erin
Oh, no.

03:49
Sam
So, yeah, I'm going to have some feelings. I'm going to have some feelings because this is a worse movie that we're discussing.

03:57
Case
Oh, yeah, And Aliens for sure. Yeah.

04:00
Sam
Yeah.

04:01
Erin
But I mean, did you feel. Because I feel like at least Alien, out of the three is by far the scariest movie. I mean, like, that's absolutely. That's the only one I would characterize as, like, a horror movie.

04:13
Sam
Yeah, I actually really, once I got into. Okay. I don't like feelings of isolation. So there's still, like, moments in Aliens where they do feel very isolated and cut off. I don't like waiting for the evil to come to me. This is a big problem. This is why I don't like zombie movies either. It's all about waiting for doom to find you. And I don't like that. I hate that. I don't.

04:37
Case
So can I just guess that the scene you hated the most was the motion tracker scene in Aliens where they're approaching and it's like, wait, there should be in the room now. What's going on?

04:46
Sam
Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely, 1,000%. But there's a lot of really beautiful quiet moments in that film. And the sound editing in aliens, not aliens 3 in Aliens is so incredible because there are deliberate choices to place no sound, not even footsteps. There are deliberate moments, too, to then start adding slowly, like just the sound of beeping or something. Like that. And it builds tension in a way that is really lovely. Even though this is an action film, Alien is definitely more scary. And just the ending kind of makes you feel. I mean, it's. I wouldn't say cathartic, because I want to associate that with something pleasant, but there is a feeling like you just went through that. Like, you. You felt that experience with her and I think with Aliens, because the ending feels a little happier. She escaped with more people. Yeah.

05:52
Case
She's snuggling with her adopted daughter, her robot friend.

05:56
Sam
I actually. It's like a huge, like, aw, Mommy. The mommy scene. That was so cute, you know, so. And it's also just, like, a very badass. You know, it's Ripley grabbing guns. And when people are sexually attracted to her, it's because she's so badass. And it is like, overall, not that scary and more enjoyable. There's just, like, lovely. There's. There's some really good monster shots and some really great practical effects. And it turned into a mechanime towards the end, so I liked that. Sure did. So.

06:30
Erin
Yeah, that. That mech suit battle is pretty fun.

06:34
Sam
It's great. It ups that ante.

06:37
Erin
Totally. I don't know that it's aged that well in terms of, like, it being that it's kind of slow, but.

06:42
Sam
Oh, yeah.

06:44
Erin
You know, but it's fun. Super fun.

06:46
Case
Yeah. And I mean, at least there's, like, setup and payoff because we actually have, at the beginning, her, like, revealing that she knows how to pilot these things and using it for. For work purposes, which is.

06:54
Erin
Yeah, totally.

06:55
Case
I'm actually going to pause, though, and note. So I have watched the director's cut for all of these way more than I've watched the actual theatrical cuts. So there might be a chance where I will reference a scene that was not in theatrical edition, because I just forget which one's in which sometimes.

07:09
Erin
Sure.

07:09
Sam
I saw that there were director's cuts, and when my friend and I were discussing, I said, how much longer does that make each of them? And she told me, and I was like, yeah, not gonna do it. Theatrical it is.

07:20
Erin
I knew there was. What do they call it? They don't call it a director's cut for Alien 3. They call it for Alien 3.

07:25
Case
It's called the assembly cut.

07:26
Erin
That's right, the assembly cut.

07:27
Case
Because David Fincher refused to come back and have his name attached to anything further with this project.

07:32
Erin
That's right. Yeah. So I've read that. And I've read that the assembly cut helps a Lot justify some of the choices and transitions and stuff. But I haven't seen it, so I've only seen theatrical one.

07:47
Case
Gotcha. Aaron, what is your association with the franchise, man?

07:50
Erin
I guess I just. I just really love horror movies. So I'm like, on the total end of the spectrum as you, Sam. I. And I love when they're like, this is gonna sound so pretentious, but it's only slightly pretentious, I promise. I love when they're like, about something horrifying about the human experience. Right? Like, not. Not just like some random slasher, whatever, but like the horror of being, like you were saying, isolated in space. Right. And no one can come to help you. So I've always loved Alien. That's. It's just such a great movie. And then I don't think I had really seen Aliens or Alien, by the way. I think we're. If you look at the.

08:36
Erin
If you look at the printed title of the film which we are discussing on this episode, I believe it's actually Alien to the Third Power or Alien Cubed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Alien Times Alien. But yeah, so I hadn't seen either of those, I think, actually until know, sometime in the last couple years. Yeah.

08:55
Case
All right. Yeah. For me, Alien 3 was actually my first exposure to this franchise. It was on TV when I. And I was like, way too young. I was like maybe 9 or 10, and it.

09:06
Erin
Oh, wow.

09:07
Case
Like, this is the one that like, traumatized me so much so that, like, I still have nightmares of the xenomorphs. And it's because of this.

09:14
Erin
Oh, God.

09:14
Case
Like when I was. Let's get into some weird young shit here. Yes. So when I was a kid and like, I would have, like, recurring nightmares of like, wolves chasing me down. And then once I saw this movie, it went from being wolves to being the xenomorphs.

09:30
Erin
Now let me ask you, did the. Did the setting of your dreams change to reflect this change? Or were you still like, in the woods or were you already on a spaceship with the wolves?

09:39
Case
The setting did not change. I rarely was like, in the woods being chased. Oftentimes it would be like through a house or something like that and like me trying to escape.

09:48
Erin
Okay.

09:48
Case
The most. The. The freakiest one. And that one has retained. It's actually remained bears, which is being in some sort of weird maze, like floor plan, which then later when I saw what the coliseum floor plan looked like because, like, there's the top layer, which is actually where they battle. But right beneath that is all this like, interconnected, like, web of stuff. I was like, holy shit, that looks just like my weird nightmares from when I was four.

10:13
Erin
That's awesome.

10:14
Case
Weird brain.

10:15
Erin
I mean, it's not for you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

10:18
Case
Yeah, but some people have like dreams that are like, related to like, bugs or to intruders or to being strangled. Mine is always like, I'm running from a thing. And like, the alien certainly fits that like archetypal fear right there. So like when I saw this movie, and sure it was a TV edit, so it's a little less bloody and all that, but like, I was, you know, I had an active enough imagination to be like, oh, so they're dead. So, like, it was a pretty terrible murder. Like, honestly, seeing less of it probably made it worse. And theatrical cut already had like a lot of like off screen deaths anyway. So, like, it's not like that changed that much. So I was terrified of this movie when I was little. Later I finally saw. I shouldn't say I finally.

10:58
Case
Because this was like when I was like 12 is like when the cycle of like aliens being on like TNT in USA all the time on like Saturday afternoons started popping up. And so I saw that movie a lot and it's an action movie where you're like, oh, yeah. They're empowered to sort of compete against these things. And that's pretty cool, right? And I was like, a little bit later I finally saw Alien and I was like, oh, shit. That's like. That's a really well done version of all this. It's still terrifying. Oh my God, I'm scared.

11:21
Sam
Yeah.

11:21
Erin
And I mean. And you know, the acting is so good in that one too. I mean, the cast is just like, you know, Ian Holm and John Hurt, like, come. I mean, it's just so good.

11:31
Case
Well, the cast have generally been pretty strong for all these movies. Like I. For. Yeah, I forgot. I just didn't realize who he was when I watched this movie. Charles Dance is a major character in this movie and he is fucking delightful.

11:42
Erin
And he doesn't play a villain, which is not the most typical for him. He's lovely in this movie.

11:48
Case
This is a Charles Dan who fucks. It's great.

11:50
Erin
Yes, yes, exactly.

11:53
Case
We also get Paul McGann. So we have goddamn Doctor who out there. Like, wonderful stuff.

11:58
Erin
We have Pete Postlethwaite, except that we don't get a line from him until an hour into the movie, which is a tragedy to me if anybody doesn't know who he is. One of his More famous things was in Usual Suspects. He's the lawyer, Kobayashi.

12:13
Case
He is a. That guy actor. Like, if you see his face, you'll be like, oh, I know him from something totally.

12:19
Erin
But he's like. He's like a phenomenal actor. Or he was. But there's a ton of. I mean, there's a ton of really legit English actors in this movie who, if you're like a theater nerd or like a British TV nerd, like, I am. You're like, oh, like, it's the. It's the husband from Mike Lee's Vera Drake. Or, oh, shit, it's the vicar's boyfriend from the Vicar of Dibley. And they just are all, you know, they're all kind of underused.

12:49
Case
Yeah. And part of the problem is, like, many of the production choices that they made for this movie that cause everything to look very homogeneous, which is going to make it difficult to make any of these characters really stand out, which we'll talk about in a moment. But yeah, like, this movie was my introduction to the Alien franchise. And the Alien franchise I just generally enjoy, especially once. So I took a heroic literature class in high school my senior year, and we did all this time spent on Beowulf, and at one point we started talking about the Alien movies and how they actually perfectly mirror the Beowulf, like, epic. And from that point on, I have never been able to shut up about this thing as listeners of another fastnose.

13:27
Erin
But wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to go on a tangent, but, like, doesn't Beowulf go, oh, wait, no, Grendel attacks them first? Tax them the mead hall first?

13:37
Case
Yeah. So here's how it actually works out pretty well. And this is why Alien 3, no matter any of the faults that it has, remains like a film with, like a. A sequence of events that I'm fairly chill with. So Beowulf opens with a. A cry from the wilderness where people on the outskirts are being attacked by Grendel in the night. So this matches up with the first Alien movie where they have a distress call and they find the. The space jockey and all the eggs. And then in their. Their ship, which looks like this massive fortress that has no walls, they are then beset by this creature who is birthed from Cain. Just like Grendel is supposed to be the son of Kane.

14:13
Sam
Whoa, shit.

14:16
Case
The second movie is about the alien queen and her offspring. Just like how in the second chunk of Beowulf, Unferth hands over to Beowulf his sword and is very similar to a sequence that Hicks has with Ripley where he explains how to use the rifle and all of the different sequences of like their firearms and so forth to protect her into this fight where again they then go off and they face the queen of the aliens, like the mother of the aliens. And then in this movie, two important things are going on here for actually three. So first up it is so there's the time jump between the mother and the dragon. And so Beowulf is old. Everything is terrible. Epic poetry has this theme of everything being worse now than it used to be.

14:57
Case
And so this movie having it, she's the sole survivor. Everything's gone pretty to shit. She's on this terrible like prison planet and the company is coming for her. That's that it works with that sort of like time jump right there. But in this movie they refer to the alien as the dragon because it is this terrifying fire beast that just sort of emerges and kills them. And the way that Beowulf dies at the end of Beowulf is that he has been poisoned by the dragon and so dies after killing the dragon. And in this case she kills the alien and then gives up her life so that the baby doesn't get born, depending on which cut you're looking at and functions the same way that she's been poisoned. So she has a ticking clock this whole movie. So it matches up perfectly.

15:37
Case
And I haven't been able to find anyone to be like, oh yeah, that's what were trying to do. But the fucking alien is credited as the dragon in this movie.

15:44
Erin
Oh, for real? I didn't know. That's cool.

15:47
Case
So like, I, I, I, I think it's intentional and if it's not, it is the craziest synchronicity possible.

15:54
Erin
Yeah.

15:54
Sam
Sometimes I wish that you all could see what Case's face looks like, especially when he's talking about Beowulf compared to other things.

16:03
Case
I know because also we just did Predator, which also looks a lot like Beowulf, but only the first chunk of the, of the saga. Yeah, sorry, this is just a nerd area. But, and that is the reason why I am super here for the depressing third act of this story that Ripley has been poisoned in that. Yeah, like it's not going to have a happy ending. And I'm fine with that because I'm looking at it from the sort of meta perspective of it being a sci fi retelling of a classic work of old English literature. And that's just my personal bent. And I understand that audiences going into theaters weren't seeing it that way. Probably a lot of them would say, case, you're crazy. And in fact, probably most of them would say, case, you're crazy. So I get it.

16:46
Erin
Well, I, I, I feel like that's the least of my issues. I don't have an issue with her death at the end. I don't have an issue with the tone of it. I'm like, it's a fucking biological death switch that could be unleashed on all of humanity. And, you know, it's dark. It's not like I'm okay with it not being 100% happy ending. And then also, you know, they give her that really nice Christ imagery of the arms out when she's falling.

17:22
Sam
Yeah. I mean, the last half of this movie is not the problem in my estimation. I mean, like the, you know, trying to. A good idea. Right? So, like, I have definite feelings about this movie, but it is a great idea to have this third act be in a space where there are no weapons. Because ultimately in the first two movies, yes, there were weapons, but ultimately, how Ripley won was her wits in every single film. At the end of it always came down to how she could use the environment around her to eventually win the day over something that was much more powerful than her. And so placing the whole battle in a space where you actually have very little to give you an advantage, and you just have to figure out what's around you, that's brilliant.

18:20
Sam
That is something that this movie actually does. That is like whether or not they execute it perfectly. That's a really interesting and great concept to do with something like this, especially coming off of aliens and having massive gun fire everywhere and all of that stuff. Stuff.

18:40
Case
Oh, especially in the director's cut.

18:42
Sam
Yeah. So I didn't watch it. That was 30 minutes longer.

18:47
Case
No, I know, but a solid 10 minutes of the 30 minutes longer for the director's cut of Aliens is they have these automated turrets that they set up that just literally the sequence is just like robot guns firing at aliens.

18:58
Sam
Yeah, so, but, which is smart, I guess. But what I'm saying is that, that part, like the last half of this movie works. The last half of this movie, like her sacrifice, the company coming in, someone thinking, not being naive and thinking that the company will surely be fine, you know, leading them right to her kind of the maze, running the angles in that, all of that works. The problem with this movie is the first half of this movie. It is not good. It is not good. And I'm sorry, Case, I know you like it, but it is not good. It is. The pacing is all over the place. There is no real character development. There is no way for. I felt when people were dying towards the end, I didn't feel true sorrow. I mean, like, was I sad about the dog?

19:59
Sam
I mean, that was a monster thing to do. Yes, of course I was. Because as far as I'm concerned, animals are just innocent until proven otherwise. They begin innocent and, like, I don't want to watch a dog, you know, explode with a monster inside of it. I don't want to do that. It's unpleasant. That aside, that's not what really pissed me off. Because I kind of knew that was coming thanks to the Internet. But that's not really what pissed me off. What pissed me off was just that I don't care about any of these humans. I really didn't.

20:32
Erin
Yeah, they don't. They don't really do anything to distinguish any of them from each other. And that's definitely the thing that kept striking me is like, you know, they make this big point of how they've found religion, right? And they're. But, like, none of them act like fundamentalists. And especially when they're threatened by this extreme existential threat, like, you'd be expecting them to have a much wider range of reactions, right? Some of them are just going to refuse to fight. They're going to. They're going to pray. They're going to say this is God's punishment for us or something. They're all, like. They all take. Accept leadership really easily. And A, they're prisoners and B, they're super hyped on God. So I just feel like that is a missed opportunity for distinguishing a lot of them from each other.

21:23
Sam
Yeah, Yeah. I also, like, in the beginning of this film, I was like, okay, it is sad that she just. I guess we're not allowed to have families. It's sad she found a family in the last movie and then within the first 10 minutes, completely undone. Like, like, nope, not gonna happen. And I get it. It's been a couple years. Gotta recast little girl. That's really hard. Easier just to kill her off. Fine, fine, I get it. We gotta. We gotta make sure that Ripley is alone again. We gotta make sure to repeat the pattern again. We got to make sure to put her in a facility with a bunch of men that are not going to listen to her again.

22:01
Sam
Like, honestly, this was hard because I had just watched Aliens and then watching this movie and I was like, oh, my God, another man not believing her. And it wasn't once, but it was twice in this movie, back to back, seemingly in the beginning. And I was just like, this is so frustrating because I just watched yesterday's movie and I just feel like I am being just beaten over the head.

22:25
Case
Oh, yeah, it'd be even worse if you'd also just re. Watched Alien as well. Because, like, all of this starts because Ripley is like, no, we're not breaking quarantine. They have.

22:34
Sam
Right?

22:34
Case
We have to. We have to, like, make sure they're screened for any, like, weird. Because they've been exposed to an alien environment and they're all like, yeah, we're not going to listen to you. Let's. We gotta bring them back on board. And. And she's like, no, I am technically in charge. And they're like, we're not gonna listen to you. And that's how all these movies start.

22:52
Sam
Yep. Right. And so I get it. We gotta keep theme alive because it's. It's a theme. And then was it fully necessary to keep the ever present threat of sexual assault there for the whole. Like, I just. I was like, is this the best choice? See, like, and then my whole thing is. Then after that, I was like, okay, so they're really bad guys. They're really. They're really bad guys, but they don't seem like bad guys once we get to the second half of the film. Right? So, like, if you're gonna commit to, like, these are hardened criminals. Like, the only thing is that over and over they're like, we're rapers and killers of women. Right? Like, it's like they chant it at you and you're just supposed to believe it. Yes. And like, I understand.

23:43
Sam
Like, Like, I don't want to watch Ripley get raped. Like, that's not what I'm advocating for at all. In fact, like, I. My whole thing was just like, this is already like, one of the strongest characters ever written in terms of a female character. And now we're putting her in this situation. And I just felt like they kept playing on that and I'm just like, is this a writer's fantasy to take away her power, to challenge her power? And I. I don't know. Like, that was just really weird for me. And I was like, is this necessary again? I just watched this morning and I'm having a lot of feelings because I did watch Aliens right before it, but I Just felt like you could have still had the same thing or you had to lean more into them being really bad.

24:33
Sam
Because I felt like they were a bunch of English actors.

24:35
Erin
Yes. Yeah. Well, my feeling.

24:37
Sam
I didn't feel like they were actually rapists. Right.

24:40
Erin
So I was. I just rewatched this, and my. My. I was actually grateful that there wasn't more of an overt theme of that.

24:52
Case
Yeah.

24:52
Erin
Impending sexual assault. You know, there is that one scene, and they do. They keep making reference, like you said kind of verbally to, like, you shouldn't be walking around alone because, like, you know, you're a woman. But I think, to me, it comes off less as, like, a writerly fantasy and more of, like, a weak attempt to keep reminding the audience of the circumstances because they, for whatever reason, were not able to put that into the characters. And again, I think that's another missed opportunity where, like, we could have had a stronger subplot of, like, a handful of the prisoners really actively plotting to kidnap Ripley and rape her or something. And then, you know, they're defeated somehow, but instead we just sort of get, like, lip service to that.

25:49
Erin
And it's like you said, it's just sort of like, well, either commit to it or don't.

25:55
Sam
But, yeah, I'm also fine with them being reformed, Right. Not doing anything to her. But I would like to see cool things. Like, okay, so in Aliens too, right? You. When you see Shepard and he does the cool knife thing, I want to know that these guys are cool on some level, even if it's like they've made something and they're beating the shit out of each other, like. And then the pastor steps in, or whatever they called him, the head religious guy, to kind of keep the order and keep them in place and be like, see, they're dangerous. They're crazy. Like, there was no sense to me that they. They were just kind of annoying, and they weren't really, like. There was no actual sense to me that they were dangerous other than they kept saying, like, oh, we're dangerous.

26:42
Sam
And it also feeds into this thing that I dislike where there's the belief that people cannot be reformed. And I'm like, there. You can be reformed and go into the opposite realm, too, right? You can, like, become a zealot in a different way. Right? And you can. You don't have to continue to berate yourself for a crime that you. I'm not. I'm not forgiving rapists. I want to say this, but what I'm saying is that it feeds into this, like, idea that these people who found. Like, I kind of wanted her to push back. When Dilton kind of said something like, you know. Cause he was just like, we're rapists and murderers and da, da. And then he was like, but all our work from here, but also, we can't have temptation.

27:28
Sam
And I wanted her to kind of push back and just say something like, well, how do you know you're really reformed unless you face your temptation and overcome it? Or something to the point of, like, also. Just because I feel like that would have been pushed back enough to make them have a connection. I guess I was just looking for her to have any kind of connection with someone that she was going to be fighting for her life with in this film. Because you get that in the other two films, and you care about the other characters in the other two films, and the first half of this film is just these guys going like, we're really bad. We are do, do, do. And then just later on dying.

28:08
Erin
Yeah. And I. I feel like to that point, I feel like you do get a connection with. With her and Charles Dance, and not just because they bone, but because they're both, you know, just really great actors. But then he gets smoked, like, so fast. So. Yeah, to your point about.

28:27
Sam
But.

28:28
Erin
And I think, like, to your earlier point about, you know, they're being reformed or not, it's like. I think part of what I was thinking about earlier is the fact that it's, like, the religion stuff, it just feels too easy for all of them. And it feels like something that we could be seeing them struggle with a lot more. Like. Like, I have to really use this. I have to really use prayer to, like, check myself. Like, I really want. I really want to do this horrible thing, and I'm. I'm gonna, you know, flagellate myself or something so that I don't.

29:01
Case
One of my notes when I was working on this was, there's a lot of Name of the Rose energy going on here, and there's a lot of the thing energy going on here. And the Name of the Rose stuff is, like, in that sort of monastic kind of characteristic, which, if you look at the. The myriad drafts of scripts that came to this movie ultimately being created, the one that they were working with up until they did, like, the rewrites to make it a prison world, and everything was going to be like, a wooden space station that was, like, all filled with monks. And it was going to be this big visual treat of, like, crazy construction that got Moved on because it would not be fiscally viable for this movie. But, like, we don't. We keep the.

29:41
Case
The veneer, we keep the religious component, but we don't actually deal with, like, sort of the more hardcore elements, outside of Dylan being the sort of like, enforcer character for it all. Like, the others don't really come off like that, I guess. What is it, Gaelic? Paul McGann's character, who is the one who's sort of like, is overwhelmed by the. The sight of the alien and sort of has like a religious experience with it. And that's more so in scenes that made it into the assembly cut, where. To the point where he actually becomes almost sort of like an acolyte for the alien.

30:10
Erin
Oh, that's cool.

30:11
Case
Yeah, it's really cool. Like, so when I say the assembly cut is way better, like, no matter what, like, that's just. It's just a truth. Like, that's a much better movie because all the shit that they had for characters, like any sort of character beats is in that. And theatrical cut, they removed all of it.

30:25
Erin
Good.

30:26
Case
Like how they removed all the individuality of all the characters because they decided to have all the monks or all the prisoners, whatever, with shaved heads and wearing the same clothes.

30:34
Erin
Yeah.

30:34
Case
And they're all just like, look like generic white dudes with shaved heads in the exact same clothes. Talking about rape.

30:40
Erin
He's saying white people all look alike.

30:42
Case
Yeah. Yeah, I kind of.

30:43
Sam
That's what I heard.

30:43
Erin
Yeah. No, that's fair. I mean, I don't disagree.

30:46
Case
I mean, Sam, right now, no comment. Like, looking at the two screens on Zoom, like, can you tell the two of us apart right now?

30:52
Sam
Twins.

30:53
Erin
I can't. I keep forgetting which one is me.

30:56
Case
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

30:57
Sam
Twins. Absolute twins. It's just lucky for me that Zoom actually has your name on the bottom. Yeah. So I know who's talking because of that.

31:08
Erin
Yeah.

31:08
Case
Yeah.

31:09
Erin
I keep forgetting.

31:10
Case
Yeah.

31:10
Erin
You know, I see Case's mouth move and I'm like. But I'm not talking right now. What's going on?

31:19
Sam
Hashtag white people problems.

31:21
Erin
Yeah, I mean, you're. Of course, you're totally right. That they don't distinguish them visually. Which, you know, again, I. I don't think it would be an issue if they just distinguished them in terms of character. Character wants and needs and circumstances and, you know, which it sounds like they maybe do a little bit in the assembly cut, but more so it's.

31:44
Case
It's still, you know, very similar looking characters. You know, you're gonna have a hard time telling who any of these actors are if you're not already super familiar with them, because.

31:52
Erin
Right.

31:53
Case
They just don't have a visual to tell beyond, like, this is their. Their actual face. There's no spot for, like, makeup or hair or anything like that to, like, really accentuate any features.

32:02
Sam
Right.

32:03
Erin
And a lot of them have very similar dialects too, so.

32:07
Case
And the movie is just brown. Like, in contrast with the first two, this movie is just overwhelmingly brown. And that's kind of fine for, like, the whole somber tone of the end of days kind of element that's going on with it. But it also kind of felt like how every PS2 game had this, like, brown shit color to hide all the bad special effects that they. In the. Because it's the same thing just for movies. So it was 20 years earlier.

32:32
Sam
Yeah.

32:32
Erin
Right.

32:32
Case
Like, it. Like, this is a movie that has not particularly good special effects that are very rushed.

32:37
Erin
Yes.

32:38
Case
Like, as a result, like, they're trying to hide it by having everything just be earth tones.

32:42
Sam
Yes, absolutely. It's definitely. This is definitely one of those movies. Not as bad as the Beowulf movie, but the CGI doesn't quite hold up. The effects don't quite hold up.

32:57
Erin
No.

32:58
Sam
So I also.

32:59
Erin
It's funny that you mentioned PS2 because I actually really dislike the running through the hallways sequences in this. I just find them to be. They. They remind me of like a first person shooter game is why I was saying they remind me of like, Doom, like, really early, but. But. But then also kind of like music video, 90s music video stuff. There's a lot of, like, camera angles in this and stuff that I. That I'm like, oh, yeah, you. You direct music videos.

33:35
Case
Yeah, that's gonna be a true. Because, like, we're fairly firmly in the complaining about the movie phase, but we will talk about some good stuff. And I. I do have some nice things to say about Fincher's cinema graphic styling. But suffice it to say, the. He came on board, like, five weeks before they were filming. Like, he had very little time to get this together. He was not supposed to be the director that changed. The script was rewritten constantly still to the point that this movie was supposed to be made as a sequel to a 1986 movie and came out in 1992 because they just kept on doing fucking rewrites. And that's why you can't have the same actress play Newt, because she was supposed to be like nine. And by the time the movie came out, she was like 17.

34:15
Case
Like, it just isn't gonna work.

34:17
Erin
Yeah.

34:17
Case
And, and you can see it, how that rushed production schedule influenced everything because, like, we're talking about the special effects. The special effects, they changed the nature of the monster and redesigned it mid production. And that's a big part of why they have all the CG for the alien. Because they had to insert it after the fact because they were like, we don't have it together yet. And unlike today, where you could have all your actors wearing clothes that they're not going to be wearing when they actually are on screen. Like when you actually get to that point, like Avengers endgame, where they're like, we don't know what the costumes are going to look like yet. We just put them, we just shot the shot of them walking and fixed it in post.

34:51
Erin
Yeah.

34:52
Case
This was not an era where you could do that. Like, the CG is very bad. And I, I have to imagine that if they knew that's what was going to happen in terms of like, we're gonna have a CG monster, they would have lit it differently because you would have tried to have more shadow. You would have tried to have things to keep the alien from being super visible.

35:09
Erin
Yeah, you can really see the edges on the. Yeah. Like it, I mean, it looks like a copy paste job, kind of like Photoshop.

35:18
Sam
Just like the alien was posting his vacation, but it was places that he wasn't. And here's me on that planet. Steve, I don't think you were actually there.

35:31
Erin
He didn't have the money, but he had already told all his friends that he was going to all these places.

35:37
Sam
It's like these people, the people on Instagram that would use like a toilet seat to pretend they had an airplane window behind them.

35:45
Erin
Well, it's like people using the zoom backgrounds of like, you know, the Eiffel Tower.

35:52
Sam
Oh, yeah. I love zoom backgrounds. Yeah.

35:56
Erin
Yeah. And it's, it's funny because, like, I also feel like the practical effects are. Well, okay, I do want to say in terms of good things about this movie, that shot of her head against the wall and the alien, that is iconic.

36:15
Case
That's my exact note. That is my exact note about that scene. It's possibly the best scene in this whole movie or the best shot in this whole movie. And it's up there in terms of best shots in the Alien trilogy.

36:25
Sam
Absolutely.

36:26
Case
The Alien franchise as a whole. But who really cares about the ones that came after this one?

36:29
Erin
Yeah, no, it's like Unforgettable.

36:31
Case
Yeah.

36:31
Sam
I mean, honestly, it's one of the things that I thought, like, I think of as a person who never watched Alien well, until today. Aliens 3. It's one of the things I think about when people bring up the Aliens franchise, even though I have not seen it. That is how popular that image is.

36:52
Erin
Yeah. And it's just. I mean, it's got so much going on, like, the dripping stuff. And obviously, we love the. The second mouth.

37:01
Case
Yeah, yeah.

37:02
Erin
Coming out like a. Like a stapler cartridge. You're refilling staples. But, yeah, it's like she's. Yeah, it's just. It's such a great. It's such a great shot, but it's. But it is weird that a lot of the other even practical effects are. Are odd. Like, there's a. There's a moment when. When Ripley, like, corners. Corners it in, like, a weird, like, cubby thing, and it's, like, fighting her, but all it's really doing is, like, waving its tail around. And it's just. It's just. It's confusing. And it doesn't look. It looks like they're trying to disguise the. How human the thing is or, like, the person in the suit.

37:46
Case
Yeah, yeah. So they. They pivoted a bunch when they actually got into production on this one. So originally, the quadrupedal animal that the alien came from was a cow. And so that the idea was that the alien was actually going to be very big, that it was going to be bigger than the ones that we had seen in the previous movies. And that's why it was going to be, like, an additional level of scary. And then early in production, they're like, this isn't quite working. They'd already shot the cow stuff, and that's how it made it into the assembly cut. But they're like, this isn't quite working. We're going to have a hard time really selling it with that build and everything. And so they decided to redesign the alien to be smaller and lighter so they could justify faster scenes.

38:25
Case
They decided to change it to being from a dog, which I. The. The note I sent to Sam was like, can you get over the gall that they would murder a dog as a way of creating their monster? But that still got over it. Tons of new problems because they had to do a full redesign. And this is sort of why, if you watch the alien from shot to shot, its proportions change. Like, sometimes it's, like, kind of small. Sometimes it's pretty big. And it's also why there is Hilarious footage that they didn't use of them dressing up. I think it's a whippet in an alien costume to try to have it actually, like, run around. And it is ridiculous looking. And it also didn't work.

39:00
Sam
Cute.

39:01
Case
Oh, yeah, it's super cute. Like, there's a. Like, I was watching footage of them, like, fitting this dog's head with this, like, alien headpiece that then have it, like, run around. It's so. It's wild looking.

39:15
Erin
Oh, that's so great. But, yeah, I mean, that's a weird thing too, that, like, when it comes out of the dog, it gets so much bigger so fast. Like, how it goes from being, like, dog sized because it was contained within a dog, so, you know, couldn't have been bigger than a dog. And then it comes out and all of a sudden it's like six feet tall.

39:36
Case
Yeah. Which, you know, contrast that with the first alien where we spent time with it smaller and it gets big pretty fast. But, like, we have times of them, like, kind of identifying it at different points as it continues to get larger and larger. It's a weird movie. And, like, the. They clearly were just trying to get a movie out there. I mean, David Fincher was brought on because having never done a movie, he had just been known for doing music videos and commercials. And they were like, this is a guy who will listen to what we say and. And everything out really quickly. Totally not actually what happened, which is why there's, like, a lot of fighting on set. Yeah.

40:12
Erin
I mean, I have to, like. You got to admire the balls on. On somebody who's young. Directors never done a feature before, gets this. Gets this job and is like, decides to be a stickler about stuff.

40:27
Sam
Right.

40:27
Erin
Like, wasn't he, like, really obsessed with. Isn't. I mean, he's just, like, always obsessed with how his blood looks. Not like his blood in his body, but you know what I mean?

40:37
Case
Blood selfies all the time. Yeah.

40:38
Erin
Just always checking. Yeah.

40:41
Sam
Excuse me. I need to donate blood. And then I need you to look at me. Let me look at it.

40:45
Case
Yeah, yeah, I. I think that's pretty clear. Like, he. He apparently did, like, tons and tons of takes for certain, like, special effects scenes or just motions where it'd be like, oh, no, that happened too fast. And the camera didn't follow it properly. Properly. There were a lot of interesting things going on with how they lit it that probably also slowed down production on this one. Like, it was apparently a. A smooth enough shoot at when Fincher was totally in control, but they Kept on having to redo stuff and. And like I said, just like, rework how the monster looked and rework all the. All this stuff. And then the studio was just like given tons of notes every day and it was just a clusterfuck in general fun.

41:25
Sam
Sometimes it's those notes.

41:27
Case
And I mean, it's a shame that we didn't get Michael Bain back as Hicks. Like, that would have been kind of fun. Apparently, early in the drafts, they were going to do this as two movies where the first movie, Ripley was going to be in a coma or possibly in a cryotube, and Hicks would be up and about and dealing with like a military program to weaponize the aliens. And so he would be the star of the third movie and then she would come back for the fourth movie. And when he was told that wasn't going to be the deal, he was pretty pissed off about it and charged them a shitload just to use his picture so they could establish that the character was dead. Whoa.

42:00
Erin
Hell yeah, dude, get the bag. Get that bag.

42:03
Case
Oh, yeah. I mean, I kind of wish that they had worked it out and like gotten him in the movie instead, but I think they'd never even approached him about it at that point. So it was just like, oh, get. Oh, yeah, can we. Because, like, he found out that they had created like a mannequin of his body for the autopsy scene that was like really close likeness wise, and was fairly frustrated that they were using his image without consulting him.

42:25
Sam
Oh, yeah.

42:25
Case
Which I get. I get it. I'm not clear necessarily on where that was in the process of, like, special effects team working on it, because they're not the lawyers who have to go talk to him. So.

42:36
Erin
Right.

42:36
Case
Like, did he just find out too soon and that shut down any conversation? I don't know, but. But it happened. It. It sucks.

42:42
Sam
I mean, that would be a pretty terrible way to learn that you die, though.

42:46
Case
Yeah. And he apparently was pretty upset because it was going to have an open chest. And either that was for the autopsy or it was going to because of a chest burster. And he really rejected the idea of Hicks dying from an alien impregnation. I don't know. This is so many drafts earlier in the movie because they. They were going to be dead for pretty much halfway through the production cycle or the pre production cycle. They were like, no, we can't deal with these characters. They're dead. Didn't have them. And I understand Newt not coming back more easily.

43:16
Erin
Right.

43:16
Case
Like we said, you know, she's like 17. So, like, that. That makes sense. Unless you're gonna have her, like, thawed out and, like, living on her own on the ship for a while before they land or something. I. I don't know.

43:26
Erin
Honestly.

43:27
Sam
They probably could have done, because she did pretty well living on her own anyway.

43:32
Erin
Yeah, true.

43:34
Sam
She was. She was pretty savvy. So they could have done that. But it would. It would have. I mean, I don't know.

43:43
Erin
And. Well, the other thing, too, is that it's. I don't know. I don't know how you all feel about jumping around. I mean, we've already jumped around a bit, I guess.

43:53
Case
But let's talk about the movie right now.

43:54
Erin
Okay. So, you know. So when Bishop. So when Lance Henriksen comes in.

44:00
Case
Who.

44:00
Erin
God, I love him so much. When he Supposedly. The, like, prototype, the guy who created the Bishops, Right. When he comes in at the end of this movie, he. I don't remember. Do we learn more about him in later films in the franchise? Because he looks the same age as all the. I mean, if he created the Bishops, right. That would have been back.

44:24
Case
It's confusing. Prometheus has an appearance by him, theoretically, as the Founder, like, the way. Or maybe it's. Maybe it's one of the Alien versus Predator. At some point, he shows up playing like a. Like, Weyland of Weyland Yutani.

44:38
Erin
Okay.

44:38
Case
And I don't think any of it makes any sense.

44:42
Erin
Right? But, I mean, it's not like we find out that, like, the one in this movie who's claiming he's human was actually also a cyborg or whatever.

44:51
Case
So he bleeds, and in the assembly cut, he actually holds out the. Like, he holds his hand covered in blood to indicate that he's a real person and not a robot. But I imagine at the time of production that they thought that he was supposed to be the real Bishop, even though, weirdly, in the credits, he's listed as Bishop 2 for that role.

45:11
Sam
Huh.

45:12
Erin
Interesting, huh? Yeah, but it's like, he should look older then. Like, he looks. He looks young as hell. Like, because she's been. And, like, how long was she in stasis?

45:25
Sam
57 years.

45:27
Case
Well, wait, no, that's 57 years between the first and the second movie. This one's, like, only, like, two or.

45:30
Erin
Three years right from the first time we meet. Oh, Bishop.

45:34
Case
Right. Which is only in number two.

45:35
Erin
Right. Do we ever find out how long that is?

45:39
Sam
No, they don't. I don't know if they specify most.

45:42
Case
Of the stuff I've seen indicate that it's only like two or three years.

45:44
Erin
Okay.

45:45
Case
Between. Between two and three. And that's only. Yeah, because her 57 year gap in between the first and the second one, which also note the tech has advanced in that time. That's because she was on a. Like a. Like a life vessel out far outside of normal space.

45:59
Erin
Well, okay, then the. Then, you know, the Bishop in Aliens must have been hot off the press because he was a new model. The same.

46:09
Case
That's true. He does, like, have a lot of pride in that. He's top of the line.

46:12
Sam
Yeah, he does say that. He is a new model. He's. He's very forward about that. And actually in this. In Aliens 3, he actually. When she kind of brings him back to light or reboots him so that she can find out what happened on the ship while she was sleeping, he eventually asks her to turn her off because there's no way he'll be top of the line ever again.

46:38
Erin
Yeah.

46:38
Sam
So, I mean, he's very.

46:40
Erin
That's true.

46:41
Sam
Very conscious of the fact that, like, you know, at one point he was shiny and new. There's a. There's a musical in there somewhere.

46:47
Erin
Ooh, yes.

46:49
Case
Yeah. Can you imagine being a sapient, but also being part of a capitalist production cycle of planned obsolescence?

46:56
Erin
Like, I frequently feel that's my reality.

47:00
Sam
So are we not part of that?

47:01
Erin
Exactly.

47:02
Sam
You know what I'm talking about.

47:03
Case
This is as good a time as any to talk about how this movie doesn't rail against capitalism enough. Because I feel like that's one of the main them, the first two, and this movie doesn't. And that frustrates the hell out of me, looking at it now as a much more lefty person than I used to be.

47:17
Sam
Well, it's interesting too, because I feel like this movie tried to focus more on, like, a cult, like religion organized religion, but they missed the mark on both.

47:31
Case
Right.

47:32
Sam
So they were like wishy washy on both. The corporation is still not. Like, this corporation is still not a good thing. The company is still not a good thing. They're still coming for Ripley. She's still actively working against them. But they use what was in the last two movies to support that. Right. Like, you know, because you watched the last two movies, that this is a bad thing that's happening.

47:55
Erin
Right.

47:56
Sam
And I kind of felt like they were trying to be like, okay, let's do like a secondary kind of theme because this is a third movie. But they fall so flat on that because they don't lean enough into the religious aspect of it and what that has done to this society and what it has done to these forgotten people that are still forgotten and discarded because of capitalism and because of their crimes. I think, like, again, when we get into pitches, we can go into stuff, because I have some thoughts on that, but I feel like that's what happened. It just became really wishy washy as they tried to introduce a new thing rather than just focus on theme from before.

48:42
Erin
Yeah, no, I agree with that. They didn't commit to that shift enough if they were gonna do it.

48:48
Case
Yeah. Because I think looking at this movie, the thing that really gets me is outside of a tone, we can say a vibe for this movie. There's, like, a very strong vibe for this movie, but it doesn't have a point of view. That's. That's the problem. Fincher comes in so late in production. He has, like. While he does contribute rewrites and so forth, and they. They're doing a ton of work. I would say the strongest point about this movie is the cinemagraphic style of David Fincher. The. The shot that we got of, like, were talking about earlier, like, Ripley, having the alien come up close to her and hiss, like, is so iconic and so such an amazing shot. And there's so many good spots in this movie where we're seeing beautifully lit, you know, undertones with, like, all the lead and all the.

49:30
Case
Like, the. The fear of the monster. Even the fisheye effect where. Where the alien is chasing them down is at least an interesting way of representing the aliens movement. Like, I think that's cool. I think it's also kind of similar to, like, what Predator did, but you know what? Great, great artist, Steel. So that's fine. Yeah, like, I think all of those are good things going on there, but I don't think this movie has a strong thesis about what it is representing in the state of the world. And the alien setting has such an interesting environment. Like, like I said, the first two movies are kind of railing against capitalism in general, where it's like, oh, yeah, the. The first one, we're truckers in space and we came across a distress beacon that might be, like, fiscally rewarding to our bosses.

50:11
Case
And so the robot decides to kill us all. Like, that's what happens in that movie.

50:15
Sam
Like, yeah.

50:16
Case
The second one is very explicit that the company is bad and that they do not care about the people, that everyone there is cannon fodder. That even the reason the alien outbreak occurred is because the company Sent a person off to go look into the site that RIPLEY told them about. And that it just is like, all about, like, making that money. And the economy of this future is fascinating to me because it does feel like people really hating the Reagan era that we had come into at that point. I mean, obviously the first one came out before Reagan was elected, but like, that's that. That. Right. That US Capitalist world that were seeing and this movie has moved on from that point. Like, it doesn't feel as like, put upon by that.

50:56
Erin
Yeah.

50:57
Case
Like, you see that because there was a draft where apparently they were going to find a Russian space station at some point that was like, all being held up as a communist thing. And because the Berlin Wall fell, they were like, oh, I guess. I guess we're not doing that anymore.

51:12
Sam
I mean, I think if this movie was made now, it probably would be a statement on the prison industrial complex.

51:17
Case
Well, I can't get over that isn't part of it. Like, the fact that they're just there as prisoners and not being made like forced labor or something for the Weyland Yutani Company is so mind blowing to me today.

51:30
Erin
Yeah, it is weird too, because they make a point of saying at the very beginning, you know, they put a caption on or whatever that it's a. That it's a mining operation.

51:40
Sam
Right.

51:41
Erin
So they. They used to really profit off of this thing, but then at some point they say that, like, there used to be, like, way more prisoners, obviously, and now there's like 25 or whatever who just like, chose to stay.

51:52
Case
Right.

51:53
Erin
But I'm like, why are they still getting resupplied? Like, they say they get new supply ships every six months. And it's like, well, are you still mining? Like, are you still providing the company enough income to justify that?

52:06
Case
It's just a ubi.

52:09
Sam
Maybe the company's not so bad.

52:12
Erin
It offers solidarity.

52:16
Sam
Look at that.

52:18
Case
And I would take that scenario also. I would take one where, like, they've thrown down their tools and they are just like, living in the space that used to be a work thing. I would. I would take that just fine.

52:27
Erin
But, yeah, they join the Yang gang. They're. They're.

52:32
Case
Yang Gang, Weyland Yangtani.

52:37
Sam
No, but, like, honestly, like, if it were that they had decided to stay because they made the best of this colony and like, that was them breaking away from, you know, the realities and going back would be too difficult because they are murderers of women and rapers of women, which they keep telling us over and over. Then Like, I don't know. There would have been something about it, you know, like. But. But they're not. They're just. They just hang out.

53:05
Erin
Yeah.

53:05
Sam
And they've got a pretty decent mess hall, too. I mean, I. I don't know, man. I don't. I don't know this. You're right. No point of view.

53:15
Case
Yeah. And. And that's. That is this movie, like, this movie is one of my archetypal examples of what I call third movie syndrome, where the third movie, after a successful second movie is like, well, fuck, what are we going to do? Let's just do the exact same thing as the first movie. Like, that's like. Again, this is one of my archetypal examples. But Return of the Jedi has so many elements that rip off Star wars. The Death Star going on right there. Highlander 3 is basically a remake of Highlander 1 after whatever Highlander 2 is. We'll talk about that next time.

53:50
Sam
Next time.

53:53
Case
But like, the, like, you see this all the time in movies, especially as trilogies kind of became the norm in Hollywood, where first movie comes out, it is successful enough to merit a sequel. Second movie comes out, they do something that deviates, and either it's a success or it's a failure, but either way, it doesn't carve out a path forward that is identifiable to audiences who are more familiar with the franchise, starting from the first movie. And so the decision is made to get back to basics, quote, unquote, or with the third movie, and reset the stakes and play it out in a similar way. Even things like Planet of the Apes does that.

54:27
Case
Where all of a sudden the only different, like the third Planet of the Apes movie is the one where they, the apes, time travel back in time and live as celebrities in the 70s. But you know what? That feels a hell of a lot more like the first one than the second one.

54:38
Erin
I've never seen that.

54:39
Sam
What?

54:40
Case
Escape the Planet of the Apes. Is that true? Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's. It's great. It's probably not counting the circus movies, because I love the new ones so much, but of the original series, it's probably my second favorite.

54:53
Erin
Wow.

54:55
Case
And Ricardo Montalban's in it.

54:57
Sam
Yes.

54:58
Case
Whoa.

54:59
Erin
Way to class it up.

55:00
Case
Yeah. As a friendly circus trainer who gives them. Who provides them safety when they go on the run because they decide they don't want to be medically experimented on by the U.S. government.

55:10
Erin
Wow. Okay, I got to watch this.

55:13
Case
This then leads into it's conquest of the planet. Apes is the fourth one where their child becomes Caesar, who rises up and leads the. It's a wild series. And then there's Battle, which is just terrible. It's just terrible. But. But, yeah. So, like, I'm just saying that, like, movies tended to follow this path. And if you look at third movies in series, like, there's oftentimes the need to, like, okay, we have to reinforce the things from the first one, because that's where the franchise started. And I. I think that this movie suffers because no one fucking cared about Alien. When it came out, it was not a big success. It, like, made its money back and was known as a good Ridley Scott movie, but it didn't deserve a sequel from the standpoint of money.

56:01
Case
Studios were not itching to make a second Alien movie, and James Cameron really fought for it. After the success of Terminator, it was like, I have a great idea and I want to do this thing. And everyone was like, I don't believe you, but you can make good movies on really low budgets. And, like, that's one of the strong points of the Alien franchise. Up till this point, neither Alien nor Aliens were particularly expensive movies. This one is a more expensive movie than those which, you know, we know why it didn't work. They could get their together even while they were filming. But this is a movie that was like, all right, well, let's reset the clock to the first movie. And the circumstances are so similar. Like, it's one alien, it's her. They don't actually have weapons like the first movie.

56:45
Case
They have, like, little flamethrowers, but they. They don't have guns or anything like that. They're dealing with the same sort of, like, we don't have all this information. We're in, like, an enclosed space, yada, yada. It plays out the same beats. And if you were coming into the franchise with Aliens, because that was the big successful movie that, like, proved that this was a franchise to be made, this would feel like a very different movie and not a satisfactory conclusion to the military thriller that we had just witnessed. But I also don't want to just shit on this movie. And I've said some nice things about it. I will say again, it looks really nice. There's some great actors. It is a functionally good movie, and it is so much better than any of the sequels that came after it.

57:27
Sam
I wouldn't know, and I will never know. Do not suggest one of those.

57:34
Case
I'm not gonna suggest any of them. Alien Resurrection, the one that came after this one, is better known as the Joss Whedon alien movie.

57:42
Erin
Yeah, that's right. Oh, my God. I remember that one now.

57:45
Case
Yeah. Where they clone Ripley so that they can then, from her cloned womb, take out the alien that was inside of her cloned blood. Because that's how cloning works. Whaaaat? And so Ripley comes back. No.

57:57
Sam
Shut the front door. That is not what happens.

58:00
Case
Oh, it gets even weirder. So then there's a very Joss Whedon crew of, like, misfits that, like, she links up with. They. They fight them all. And then an alien gives live birth. And that has like this like half human, half alien kind of physiology to it. Like, it has like a skull face.

58:15
Erin
That's right.

58:16
Case
That she actually kisses at one point. And there's like all this mishigas. It's, It's. There are interesting shots in that movie, just like every other movie in the series, but it is not a good one.

58:27
Sam
Did you say skull face?

58:29
Case
Yes.

58:30
Sam
Okay. I just. I wanted to just. I. I'm sorry. I'm completely traumatized, but by everything you just said.

58:37
Erin
So.

58:38
Sam
Okay, we can. We can move on now.

58:40
Case
Oh, it's rough. It's rough.

58:41
Erin
I mean, I. I think for me, the trauma begins when I hear the words Joss and Whedon. I mean, like, that's enough for me because now I'm. Now I'm remembering, you know, people making lots of little comments of like, well, that's a little on the nose, you know, like all of their little. Like, we're. We're so quirky and self referential and that stuff that he likes to do.

59:06
Case
Yeah, that was the movie where I was like, oh, I see the gaps. Or like, I see the holes starting to form in his rep. Yeah, I was on that train long ago. Yeah, but. But then you get Prometheus, which I fucking hate. I know that there are people who like it. There's. Again, there's interesting shots in that movie, but it is such a weird, convoluted mess. It has a cool thing going on with Michael Fassbender as one of the robots, just hanging out by himself on a ship. That was really cool. We could have done that with Bishop in this movie.

59:36
Erin
That's true. But yeah, no, Fassbender's performance in that is really fantastic, I think. But yeah, that's the one selling point of that.

59:44
Case
Yeah, it's just. It's such a weird mess. They're like the concepts of like, what do you do when you go to an alien planet in terms of, like, do you remove your mask as soon as you come across Oxygen? Sure. Fuck it.

59:55
Erin
Like, right.

59:57
Case
None of these are things that make sense. And. And what's frustrating is that it's a Ridley Scott movie and the first one is the only one that actually dealt with like, oh, no, we're supposed to quarantine. We're not supposed to, like, directly interact with an alien life form if we can help it. We honestly don't know anything about it. Who the fuck can say if this will be a terrible disease? Because, like, what. What if that was just the alien. Like, it was just they. They got a plague and then everyone just died of plague. Yeah, because that could have just as easily happened, in fact, more logically than, oh, well, Cain is going to have a small creature burst out of his chest and it's going to eat you all. And then, yeah. The Alien vs.

01:00:34
Case
Predator movies, like, I don't even know where to start on those ones. It's revealed that the predators actually created Earth as a hunting ground, that they had pyramids that would be their control mechanism for preventing the aliens from overrunning us. But aliens have always been on Earth and that the predators just come to big game, hunt them at times for some reason. And then the second Alien vs. Predator movie, there was the Predalien, where a predator was infected by an alien and that created like a super strong one big, like, giant alien that could cloak.

01:01:06
Sam
Whoa.

01:01:06
Erin
Okay. I didn't see that one. That's bananas.

01:01:09
Case
Technically better than the first Alien, first Predator.

01:01:13
Erin
I just remember the one that has Adrien Brody in it.

01:01:16
Case
Predators.

01:01:17
Erin
Yeah, I guess. But aren't there aliens in that one too? Or is that just. No, that's just.

01:01:20
Case
No, that's just Predator.

01:01:21
Erin
That's right. That's right.

01:01:22
Case
Yeah. That's the Robert Rodriguez Predator movie.

01:01:24
Erin
Right, right.

01:01:25
Case
Yeah. Weird franchise that got weirdly. You know, it's so Predator 2 has, like, the Easter egg shot when you see the Predator ship. And, like, it's all these different types of skulls that's collected. And one of those skulls is clearly the xenomorph from the Aliens movies. And that just led everyone to be like, well, obviously we're gonna have a crossover at some point. And that just intertwined their franchise forever. Like, there are so many Alien vs. Predator video games. There's so many Alien vs. Predator comics. Like, those two pop culture things have just are. Are just permanently intertwined. And then. What's the most recent one?

01:01:57
Case
Alien Covenant, I think, was the most recent Alien Movie, which is, I think, supposed to be more of like an Aliens style military fight sc, the Alien thing, which I didn't watch because it didn't look very good because everyone, again, my favorite movie in the franchise is Alien, and I think Aliens is the second best, which means that every Alien movie has been worse than the one before.

01:02:17
Erin
Right, Right.

01:02:22
Sam
I. I promise that unless it's for this podcast, I will not be watching any of those movies. So I feel safe.

01:02:29
Case
Well, you know who should feel safe? The listeners at home as we segue into pitches. But before that, we should drop an ad for one of the great shows on our network.

01:02:40
Sam
Oh, you guys are gonna love this.

01:02:41
Case
Video games are a unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun. Whatever fun is to you. I'm Jeff Moonan. And I am Matt, AKA Stormageddon. And on Fun and Games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there. So we hope you'll share in that conversation with us. Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainpow.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming. And we're back. All right, so I have a well established I'm not allowed to go before Sam rule going on here.

01:03:26
Case
That said, my primary pitch is just go watch the assembly cut. I don't know how we're going to get into this conversation much deeper because, oh, my God, every step of this, of the way for this movie is a train wreck. Like, there's no, like, oh, if I came in as a producer at X point, I could fix it because I don't actually think that could happen. The studio all of a sudden saw dollar signs after Aliens and wanted to make a successful movie and greenlit it with a decent amount of money, hired great screenwriters to write screenplays that they then threw away. Like, William Gibson wrote a screenplay that they just had to throw out because it took forever to get it together. And it had the communist stuff.

01:04:04
Case
Like, we had multiple, like, multiple scripts that they were like, yeah, we'll work with this. We'll. We'll deal with this. They had different directors hired on every single thing. People got fired. Studio notes went crazy. Like, like, if you say, like, hey, I'm going to come in and work with David Fincher. David Fincher had Like one of the worst filming experiences possible. He had no prep time. He had a script that was not finished. He had special effects that were half done and had to make a movie out of it. I don't know where this goes, and I have a couple thoughts, but I'm curious, Aaron, where would you go if you were working on this?

01:04:39
Sam
Oh, God.

01:04:40
Erin
Well, I mean, I think, you know, you really addressed the biggest point, which is just like how many different directions this was going in at different stages in pre production. And so I, I think it just all really depends on like, at what point you get involved and like what you have in front of you to work with. Because that clearly changed so many times. I think the, to me, the biggest thing would be once you establish that it's this prison planet, right? And that there you get rid of the wooden spaceship thing, which is so bananas to me because like, how do you make a space worthy vessel out of wood?

01:05:20
Case
I have so many questions. Apparently there's a really cool library, but there's like metal on the outside and they're all like Luddites who are afraid of technology.

01:05:27
Erin
Huh. Wow, that's like, how do they anyway, that I have a bajillion questions about how that would have worked.

01:05:35
Sam
Spaceships require maintenance. Someone has to be okay with technology.

01:05:39
Erin
And like piloting occasionally. I mean, even if you have AI and stuff, you have to have somebody who at least understands if it starts to. Anyway, once you commit to this thing of like, it's a prison planet and there's this religious component, right? Like, that to me would have to be the whole focus that could have been such a huge new. Especially like when you're talking about how the movie doesn't really address capitalism and the oppression of capitalism because the option could have been, you know, well, the capitalism isn't functioning as much here anymore because they're not. The company isn't making that much money off of these guys anymore.

01:06:21
Erin
But now the oppression of capitalism has been replaced by the oppression of fundamentalist religion, which I think would have been a really interesting and kind of logical way to go if you had chosen to go this way. And then, you know, having Ripley come in is like a classic, becomes like a classic messiah story. I mean, she literally ends in a crucifix position, right? And if there could have been all kinds of stuff, there could have been all kinds of like legends that had developed about a, you know, a savior coming. You know, I just feel like that's. That could have Been really cool and would have been different from the prior two.

01:07:03
Sam
I could see that working.

01:07:04
Case
Yeah, you could. You could make it. I mean, it's kind of on my brain right now because the movie is coming out next week, but it could be like a dune kind of situation with like.

01:07:11
Erin
Right.

01:07:12
Case
And maybe it's a send up of messiahs. Like the way that the series is saying that these are not good things. Like.

01:07:17
Erin
Right.

01:07:17
Case
Deal with that sort of like religious iconography and. And all these characters who put their faith in Ripley and maybe that's the last thing she wants because she has so much survivor's guilt in the. At this point. And actually that would be really crazy if they do really see her as a messiah and then she dies at the end to prevent them from all dying from an alien.

01:07:34
Sam
Right.

01:07:35
Case
That could be a really cool kind of like, vibe.

01:07:37
Erin
Well, and then from what you were saying earlier about how the one guy sort of starts to worship the xenomorph, that could be really cool too, if you have an offshoot of the prison population who decide, no, we don't want to fight this thing. This is a. This is angel. Or this is like a, you know, this was sent from space and it's a mystery and it's like one of God's miracles. And if we need to be sacrificed to it, then we, you know, and like, then there could be internal conflict among the prisoners of like, no, you can't hurt this thing like that. That would be interesting. What do I know?

01:08:16
Case
Yeah.

01:08:19
Erin
Just a person sitting here.

01:08:20
Case
No, that. I think that works really well because again, that is the thing that, you know, the movie suffers from removing that element from it. Like, we still get a little bit of it with Gaelic, but like, it would be even cooler if they like really played it up. And like there are some of those scenes, like he lets out the alien once they capture it at first. And that's why it's like back around for the third act, killing everyone. So like lean into that and don't cut those scenes. Like all of that would be. Yeah, but then, like, actually, like have more scenes have other characters, like, get into it.

01:08:50
Sam
Yeah.

01:08:51
Case
Wow.

01:08:51
Erin
He. He releases it.

01:08:53
Sam
Yeah, yeah, he does.

01:08:55
Case
It's not in theatrical. It's. It's only in the directors or the assembly cut. But again, these, like, what. While it's not the cut that made the movie, it is the scenes that they shot assuming to inform how these things went. So.

01:09:08
Sam
Right.

01:09:08
Case
Like, some things only make sense if you understand that there was a Scene cut. Where that character died, or.

01:09:13
Erin
Right.

01:09:13
Case
In this case, that's how he died. He opened up. He opened up the. The vault that they had locked the alien in to worship it, and the alien just murders him immediately.

01:09:22
Erin
That would have been awesome. I mean, that would have really added something to the movie.

01:09:27
Case
Yeah, but if he had more people, like, if there were more people than 25 prisoners, and you actually saw big divisions in here, that could be really cool.

01:09:36
Erin
Yeah, well, especially because once their original leadership is killed off, like, once the warden is killed off, and they have, like, 30 seconds of being like, well, who's in charge? And then they just sort of figure it out really quick, and it's like they're like, oh, well, Ripley should be in charge. And then it's sort of like her and Charles Dutton, and, like, that's it. And there's just like. Nobody has any problem with that, but I'm like, this is a prison planet, and if you've been. If you've been basing your whole. Your whole worldview and your whole society on, like, you know, a monotheistic religion, and then you see the guy who's in charge, right. The head of the whole thing, he gets murdered, like, it'd be chaos. Like, there'd be all kinds of people jockeying for position. So.

01:10:23
Erin
So, yeah, I feel like that would have lent. Lent itself to kind of different factions forming about, you know, what this. What this thing is and what it means for us. Yeah.

01:10:33
Sam
The fact that there wasn't a power struggle at that moment was one of the most unrealistic things in a movie about a space alien and about a bunch of prisoners. Yeah.

01:10:45
Erin
Like, I'm trying to imagine if, like, there'd been an episode of Oz where, like, they kill the woman, and everybody's just like, all right, chill. Like, Chris Maloney's in charge.

01:11:02
Case
And then they all are. They're just like, yeah, no, I'll go back to my cell. It's fine.

01:11:06
Erin
Yeah, great.

01:11:07
Sam
No, no, after you. After you. No, after you. Yeah, yeah. Very, very pleasant.

01:11:12
Case
Sam, do you want to take a swing?

01:11:14
Sam
Sure, sure. Keep in mind, I watched Aliens, so I have more of a problem with this film, so I would. I feel like this film is really lacking in the first half. And again, I did not watch the assembly cut, so I do not know what was put in extra to create characters and connections. And from what I saw in theatrical release, there's, like, somehow this film didn't find time to introduce me to characters, but still managed to do what felt like, nothing in the first half. And that was ultimately very frustrating to someone watching this.

01:11:57
Case
Yeah, that's very fair.

01:11:58
Sam
Like, I was just like, okay, all right. And I think also, you know, again, in the very beginning. And granted, right, this is coming off of the huge success of Aliens, and it has been a few years, but people know what the aliens look like. But I still think that this movie introduces its new alien a little too soon in full view. And Case and I have talked about this before. Whether it's with Godzilla or even with some other films, we. We both prefer you to hide your monster a little bit. Like. Like, let us get glimpses, little sneaks. It. It. Honestly, from a person who's very afraid, it freaks me the fuck out. So please do not show me the whole thing because you will get me jumping, which will scare everyone in the row because I jump really high.

01:12:48
Sam
So it's part of the show. It's like, was that 4 4D or. Yeah, where you go to the movie.

01:12:54
Erin
Theater, the seat, like, shakes you.

01:12:57
Sam
I'm there to shake your seat. You don't even have to pay extra. So what I would do is I'm going to accept the fact that the family is dead.

01:13:07
Erin
Fine.

01:13:08
Sam
Okay, fine. I accept. I don't like it, but I accept it. But I need off the top. Even though Ripley is showing some amazing strength, I still need her. I need a little more of the survivor's guilt theme coming through. And I actually think that this would actually be kind of a nice way for her to connect with the doc and for him to have more of a fleshed out survivor guilt kind of. Not necessarily. Like, I did this horrible thing by giving wrong meds, but him surviving a tragedy where, like, his skills weren't enough. So I'm changing his backstory just a little bit.

01:13:53
Sam
And that way they connect on a survivor's guilt kind of level where they kind of understand what it's like to feel like you don't know if you can ever really live life again because you've just experienced so much loss and you feel like maybe it's partially your fault or that there was more that you should have been able to do to make it not happen. You know, Ridley could feel like she should have checked the ship. She shouldn't have thought, like, yes, we can go to sleep. Yes, we've escaped. Yes, you know, I've done. You know, she put everyone in their cryo chambers, but they didn't do that final sweep, you know? And what was so amazing and what was so great about Aliens is they really give you some time.

01:14:41
Sam
Not a huge chunk of the movie but it gives you some time to really deal with the trauma that Ripley is feeling. And in this movie, although, yes, she does have a moment where she touches, you know, her child's face but she immediately goes into search mode. She immediately goes into like what is happening with this child? And is there something inside of her? And I understand that seems natural to me. But I feel like there needed to be other scenes where we get a little bit of the survivor guilt. So I think if he has not the same story but a similar kind of experience and we have them connect over that right away then that to me makes them falling into bed together, falling into comfort together make a little more sense and have that come a little bit sooner.

01:15:30
Sam
Have their talks and kind of that stuff come a little sooner. Amp up all of the religious zealot stuff. Have it when Ridley is walking down the alleyways, people turning from her and like whispering to themselves into their hands or nodding fast at the walls. Which is very like. Can be very creepy, right, because you're walking past someone and they turn away from you and they're just start mumbling something and rocking. That's horrifying. I know. I ride the subway all the time. And so you know, you, you have that happen. Have the structures have there already be a little bit of a schism. Let's make this like politically religious. Let's make this a like, you know, have some people really already be following the. The main zealot and have them be following Dilton. You know, where there's another fraction that's a little more.

01:16:26
Sam
More calm, more you know, more level headed and, and have that kind of. So there's a dynamic that she's coming into. And that way the Rhett doesn't have to necessarily be to her body but can be to the fact that she's coming into a heavily politically charged area. But this is like. This is basically a. An environment where these men are already. They've created a structure and she just by. Just by being an outsider is a threat to this. And then I do like. So I'm going to steal it. I do like the breakoff sect that thinks that. And I'm gonna make them nihilistic. They've been on this rock too long. Yeah. And they think that this transformation into Alien is actually a salvation. It's a freedom. They're. They're transforming into their regular human bodies into something better, to something greater, into a predator.

01:17:23
Sam
That really understands it's a new life, it's a new. And kind of have them go with that. And that way you've got kind of what you had with the first robot, right? Where you have something actively, some people actively working against your better interest. And it's because they believe that the bad things that they did, this is not just a punishment, this is a reward. This is a reward for their time here. And they're going to transform into something more holy, something better, which sends them off the deep end. And I love when villains go off the deep end. It's one of my favorite things. I, I love it. Especially when they think it's because they're doing it for something better, greater than themselves. It's my favorite. Take it up to an 11 with that and then keep 86 as naive as possible.

01:18:20
Sam
Still calling the company. He wants to get out. Because this is all fractioned now, right? There's, there's Dilton with his more level headed religious guys who are just trying to do the right thing and they're just like, no, this girl's. She's fucking right? Like she's here to save us. We need to like follow her and listen to her and do what she's telling her. Then you've got the alien worshippers who are like, nah, man, I'm going to be one of these guys. Like, I'm going to like that dog fucking morphed into fucking. I can't believe I'm keeping the dog thing. That dog morphed into something amazing and now nothing can ever hurt it. And I want to be like that. I'm going to morph into something like that. The alien is going to enter me and.

01:19:02
Sam
And something better is going to emerge and like actually create accolades. And then you've basically. And I would keep the doc alive for longer only because that is our biggest connection and it's her biggest human connection. But I would still have him die in an almost similar manner and I would have him try to shield her and still keep that scene with puppets. Practical effects, gooey puppets love it. And because that's iconic and I wouldn't get rid of that at all. I'm fine with the maze down there. I would like a little bit more texture to the furnace area in terms of the set design. Like I would like a little more, I don't know, pipes on the wall. It felt very like too clean to me.

01:19:56
Sam
I didn't really feel like there would be like heat and therefore adding some like steam scenes which I Think would help also because it would obscure the monsters a little bit and take care of some of that quick CGI issuing that you have. And I would still leave the end the same. I would still leave it where the company comes. They can take care of the accolades. The. The. The alien accolades. Just shoot them right on site. Like, I don't give a. About you guys. And then just come in because they. Their primary source is just either get this monster or get Ripley because she's got one of them inside. Right? That's it. So they don't really care about anyone else in.

01:20:40
Sam
In this space and just have them kind of go through and get rid of the people that they need to get rid of and still have her have that showdown because she's right. Trusting a man has never worked for her. So this is the right choice. The right choice to jump into that vat and to basically make this sacrifice now that she's killed the monster. And that's what I would do with it. I'd fix the first half and leave the second half, add some steam.

01:21:07
Erin
Yeah, well, and when you're talking about, like, adding the pipes and stuff, I mean, I think that's one of the. When the Alien movies are really good, I think that's one of the strengths of the monster, right, Is that it has these parts because the HR Giger design, it's like, very industrial. It's like very machine. Like, it's very, like, metallic. And like, you know, there are all these great moments at different points in the franchise where you're, like, going through tunnels that are full of pipes and stuff. And actually you're looking at the xenomorph and you don't realize until it moves. Right. Because it looks. It like, blends into the machinery. And I feel like that's always a strength of it, is feeling like this is like, so far from being what we associate with, like, an organic creature.

01:22:01
Sam
Yeah, there's just not enough. Like, they're just. You're near furnace. There needs to be steam. There needs to be showing of heat. We need to like. And I just felt like the walls needed to be more textured than they were. Like, some. Some shots of the ceiling were there. And definitely when she was like, climbing up at one point, like, trying to trap him there was. There was texture on that wall because she needed to climb it. But I just felt like it was very smooth and. And very bright and not enough. There just. What? There wasn't enough mystery for this love story for me. And. And I just didn't love it. You know, like. Like, one of the scenes that I really loved in Aliens was when the kid falls through that.

01:22:44
Sam
That gear and ends up down inside of the water and they're trying to cut through, and then you just see that doll head, like, because it's just murky water. And that's great because you don't actually even need to put any practical. I mean, you know, I like my gooey puppets, but you don't have to do any puppets or anything for you to get a full sense of, like, the dread there. Right. Because there's dark corners, there's water, there's all sorts of things. There's just not enough dark corners in this. I. I appreciated it because I was not scared, and I hate being scared. But also, I think that it's a flaw in this film.

01:23:22
Case
Yeah. Like, it. You know, it's hard not to compare this movie with the first one, because the first one, it has such similar, like, story beats to it all, but that. One of the crazy parts about the setting of the first movie is that there's all these really, like, rich shadows that the alien hides in. You know, like, some of those scares are just, like, so legitimately earned, where, like, you. Your eye is called to the wrong thing, and it's, like, such wonderful sleight of hand that when all of a sudden you realize, no, I should be looking at this, all of a sudden the monster's there and, like, that's it, and you're done. So, yeah, I. I agree that it would be really nice to, like, add more to it. I think some of it.

01:24:01
Case
I think they actually had started working on the wood sets. Like, you had to, like, change it. Oh, no, I'm not clear on that one. I listened to a bunch of interviews today, and so, like, some people were being like, oh, yeah, were already working on it for, like, the wood satellite kind of thing and then had to, like, make it into a prison world instead. So that might contribute a little bit.

01:24:20
Sam
But, yeah, let's just add some texture to this wood wall and make it look metal. Yeah.

01:24:25
Case
Almost all metal sets in things are probably just wood flats that have been spray paint. Right. So.

01:24:31
Erin
Right.

01:24:32
Case
So who cares? Like, just. Yeah, you can make it crazier. But I also understand crazy production schedule, so who knows what they were able to do or what they even knew that they were shooting the next day because.

01:24:42
Erin
Right.

01:24:43
Case
I agree. I think that the last half of the movie is, for the most part, fine. You know, I think that it would be nice to have more players involved in this and have more distinct individuals in it all. But, like, the ultimate confrontation of defeating this last alien and Ripley sacrificing herself. I think I want to keep that no matter what. So it's really kind of a question of, like, all right, so what is this movie missing? And I, I think looking at the first movie and comparing it to this one, there's just so much more stuff to look at in the first movie. Like, it's this crazy big alien ship we've. Or not alien. Pardon me. This crazy big, like, industrial ship that they're on. This, like, again, like, space truck driver situation. We've got cool stuff with the cryopods.

01:25:26
Case
We have them find an alien world, find an alien ship, find a dead alien pilot for that ship, find all these eggs, have them, like, exploring in spacesuits. Then. And then we get the alien introduction produced versus this movie where the alien. I mean, sure, it's three movies in. We know what the aliens kind of. We know what their game is. But there isn't a lot to really look at in this movie. Like, it's all the same, you know, this, like, prison set piece up until the alien arrives. And then all of a sudden it's now, like, okay, now we're running through the tunnels of this prison set piece, but there isn't a lot of, like, visually distinct things.

01:26:01
Case
And I, I realize that we're kind of limited on locations if we're going to have it on a prison world, but it's still weird that there just isn't anything to look at. It's just shit brown the entire time.

01:26:12
Sam
Yeah.

01:26:12
Case
Yeah. And I, I find that a bit of a bummer. So I kind of think that I would like to have the prison planet. So for. I think we're all agreed more. More prisoners, like, just have more people so that we can have, you know, other factions. We can have, like, a little bit more conventional unrest in a prison scene. Like, we can do prison drama stuff. Yeah, Like, I feel like that would help a lot. So have more prisoners. My thought. My thought is that this should be more of, like a work camp for the Weyland Yutani Corporation. And, like, actually, like, emphasize that. And maybe they've found this weird religion kind of component to it all.

01:26:42
Case
But I feel like this is the end point where we need to really articulate that the Weyland Yutani Corporation is the problem in this series, because the aliens were just out there and that, like, it was the. As directed by the company, they interacted with the aliens in the first place, and then as directed by the company, they had to interact with them again. And I really want to emphasize that, like, this company is the thing that's fucking everything up. That their profit goals of finding an alien species, that's a problem.

01:27:10
Case
So come face to face with just like the gritty, darkest element of this sort of like space capitalism where we have whole planets where people are sent off to be labor forces in terrible conditions for crimes that like, yeah, sure, some of them can be rapists, but, you know, maybe have some people who are like, I really didn't do anything or like, nothing that was major, and I am. I am here for the rest of my life.

01:27:32
Erin
Or falsely accused or, you know, falsely convicted.

01:27:35
Case
Yeah. And have some characters who are like that. And then, you know, like, we can play up the religious sects kind of thing to sort of give visual indications of who's. Who's whom. Sure. The lice thing. Everyone's bald. Fine, keep that. Like, for Ripley, it makes a ton of sense. She looks so distinct compared to any other movie. Like, and we get again, some amazing shots with her just looking very different and kind of asexual in the sort of. In the sort of like divine kind of component to talk about, like the messianic figure. I think that's all very good, but, you know, maybe we have like a. More of a. Like a religious sect that's like all into self flagellations, as we mentioned before, and reference name of the Rose. Like, that's a big part there.

01:28:13
Case
And like, maybe have them like, not wear shirts and have like, scars all over their body. Like, that could be really cool. Have, you know, have. Maybe have particular colors that they wear. And then I think that it should be more interesting than just like a lead smelting plant. And this is where you could get something visually interesting. I don't know necessarily what exactly, but if we could have something that was either blue or green just to have a different color palette in there aside from just like orange, brown, like gems. Maybe not gems, but maybe like some kind of like fusion reactors or something like that. I don't. I don't know exactly, but, like, have something that emanates a light that is a different color than what the rest.

01:28:50
Sam
Of this movie is.

01:28:51
Case
Oh, my God.

01:28:51
Erin
Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's a. It's sort of an oppressively monochromatic color palette. Yeah.

01:29:01
Case
Yeah.

01:29:01
Erin
I really agree with what you're saying about highlighting Wayland Yutani as. As the. The real big boss. Right. The real Big boss villain. And I think. I think we've all kind of said variations of this, but I. I think the movies are always stronger when there's a human antagonist or a cyborg antagonist in addition to. Because the xenomorphs are just animals, right? They're just trying to survive. They're not like, sentient. They don't have a plan.

01:29:29
Case
Or even if they do, because it is remarked on how smart they are, but they're different. And, like, they're certainly. We entered their space, right?

01:29:37
Sam
And.

01:29:38
Erin
And they're. I guess when I, you know, when I say they're not sentient, they're not. They don't have a plan besides survival and propagation of their species. Right. Like, they don't have, like a, you know, they don't have a bank account that they're trying to beef up.

01:29:55
Sam
They're not trying to profit off of all the lives that they're taking. Yeah.

01:29:59
Erin
They just.

01:29:59
Sam
They're like someone.

01:30:01
Erin
Right. Well, they're. They're more just acting on instinct, and it's like they're just an invasive species and we can't. We cannot cohabitate with them. But, like, it's. To me, it's scarier when it's. It's supported by, you know, a person or people or cyborgs or company that are like, no, we want this to happen. Like, we want these. These guys to win in this section of population because we'll profit off of it.

01:30:28
Case
Right.

01:30:29
Erin
We don't care about lives. We understand what we're. What they're taking, and we're okay with it.

01:30:35
Case
Yeah. So I feel like I want to bring in Weyland Yutani a little bit earlier than we get them in this movie. So that's probably the one big change I would have in that regard. The other thing. So, you know, again, first Alien, when we find out that there's a. That there are androids, period, in this world, it's a big scene. It's a big crazy visual scene that happens. We don't have anything. Any big paradigm shift occurring in this movie. Like, we. The alien shows up, and once the alien is there, everyone's on the run. And it's the same exact thing until we end the movie. Yeah.

01:31:05
Case
So I think things like, I know that Sigourney Weaver didn't want gunplay in this movie, and she was a big enough star by the time we got to this movie that her word actually was able to, like, sort of set that tone. I don't think that means that we shouldn't necessarily have guns at the prison planet. Like, I think what they should be is that they should be inaccessible because aliens are going to be blocking the path and that maybe the only way to get in there anyway would be a key that was on the now dead warden's body.

01:31:32
Case
And I think that could be some first, or, pardon me, some first half of act two kind of adventures of them trying to get the tools to fight the aliens failing so that we have something going on and maybe that takes us to a different part of the. Of the prison than what we're at normally.

01:31:49
Sam
Yeah.

01:31:49
Erin
Or the guns are contraband and they're entirely in the possession of, like, a fact that we hate, but now we have to deal with them to get them on board so that we have weapons or something.

01:32:01
Case
Yeah, because, like, imagine like some kind of doomsday cult here having, like, ritualistic, like, fire and blood and like, all this kind of, like, interesting iconography at least going on to set them apart from the other groups that are. Are here. Like, we could have some really cool stuff. And maybe, yeah, they're the ones who get a hold of the guns or they've stolen all the guns or maybe they just have all the shivs. You know, whatever. We can play prison jokes if we want.

01:32:25
Sam
I mean, I'm. I'm okay with there not being guns, but I wish that there were more pointy things. Like, I wish that there was like throwing knives or something fun, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not asking for ninja stars. Like, you know, like, I'm not doing that, but I'm asking for, like. Yeah, and I would have liked to see them get like, a little creative with some stuff. These are people who would probably have to be creative, especially if we're going with the original script and they have decided to stay behind on this planet for gar knows what reason. So, like, I would like to see one of them, like, I don't know, like, use something that one of the aliens left behind. Like, you know, like. Or one of the little. My favorite puppets.

01:33:15
Sam
The little, the little, you know, mouth eating ones. I don't even know the face huggers. That makes so much sense. Look at me renaming things that make more sense with their actual names.

01:33:26
Case
The mouth eating ones.

01:33:29
Erin
I mean, you're not wrong.

01:33:30
Sam
I mean, it happens. So anyway, so they like, you know, they like, you know, they climb onto the face, right? Like, they have little pointy, like, finger things. Like, what if you, like, broke those off and like, created like a rake like, thing on a stick, you know? Or like, I don't know, it would have just been really cool to be like, you know, you have one guy, he's been in prison forever. Like, maybe. Maybe his thing is that he creates art out of found objects. Like, he's a. He's a weirdo and he creates art at a found objects. And, like, this comes in handy, right? There's many. So throwaway comes in handy later on because he starts taking parts of discarded aliens and piecing them together and creating these weapons. And that's what they're using to kind of, like, fight back.

01:34:19
Sam
Because, let's be honest, like, these aliens probably possibly fight each other. So why would they not use the parts? That would be so cool. Like, you don't need guns to have cool weapons. Like, you can create things, right? And they. They could have found ways to kind of, like, create things and make things. I mean, these are potentially, even though we don't have any proof, violent, murderous people. Why? Like, if you roll up a piece of paper, a thick piece, like, if you roll up a magazine in a certain way and you swing it at someone, you can cut a person. That is a fact.

01:34:56
Case
Oh, I thought you were going to talk about how you can, like, wet it and then, like, layer it down until eventually it's a stabbing implementation.

01:35:01
Sam
Oh, you can do that too. But what I'm saying is just like, just a magazine near you can roll it up and in a certain way, you can use that to actually cut someone. These people would know that. I mean, I know that these people would know that they're murderers. They keep telling us that they are murderers and rapers of women. They say it like 10 times. If there was a drinking game, I'd be drunk by the middle of the movie. And so the fact that they don't know these things and they don't, like, ever, like, they're just not. They're just not badass. And they should be bad. They should be like the Marines. They should be like the Marines from the last movie without the guns because they're more badass. Like, what the fuck? Like, they're just not cool. They're not cool.

01:35:45
Sam
It's very frustrating to me, and I just. I think that it's okay for them not to have guns. It is okay for us to. To decide that we do not want to add on to gun violence on screen. If I'm Sigourney Weaver, I don't want to hold the gun. I don't want to shoot the gun. Fine. But we need something, some kind of weapons, and we need to see weapons.

01:36:09
Case
I think that, like, I'm not trying to say like the gun is the answer because it's not answer at any point in the series, but it should be a false glimmer of hope for them at some point. And I, I think it's okay to like, explore that as, at least as being like, oh, yeah, well, it is for the prison guards, but that's right smack in terms of where all the people we found have died.

01:36:29
Sam
I will give your guns and I will give you zero ammo.

01:36:32
Case
Well, what I'm saying is that they can't even access the guns, like, because it's completely fine.

01:36:36
Sam
I think they should be able to and then realize they have no ammo and it is just not even helpful.

01:36:42
Case
I mean, that could also be fun. It could be like a no piercer kind of situation where like, they, their guns are being brandied about to like, keep the prison population in check. And actually they've run out of bullets a while ago and they've just been afraid of anyone ever, like, testing it because right now they're. So maybe that could be kind of a part of it. I just think that we need more going on in the first half of the movie to get to the point where once they're all kind of on the run, the alien is the true threat. And then maybe like, maybe more closely to like the break into three is when like the Weyland Yutani people show up initially and you think, okay, well, now they have it under control. They have marines.

01:37:16
Case
But because they're so dedicated to not killing either the alien or Ripley, like a bunch of the guards can die and then. Or like, or soldiers or whomever they send, and then that becomes the area where it's then a confrontation that we get more time between this Proto Bishop character with Ripley actually talking and again, just to sort of re emphasize that like, no, Weyland Yutani is the company that has fucked over your life. Like, the alien is this terrible monster from the darkness. This, you know, Cthulhu esque kind of thing that you peered into the darkness, but they're the ones who like, put you out into the shadows and then pulled your eyelids open so you had to see it like that.

01:37:53
Case
That's the element there that we need to be playing with because that's been the through line up until this point in this movie. Like, continues it from momentum. But I don't think it does anything to advance that component.

01:38:05
Sam
Yeah, Agreed. Because.

01:38:06
Erin
And it's, and it's, I think it's even beyond like they pushed you into the darkness and held your eyelids open though. That's a phenomenal image. And I think that's entirely true. But it's like they will also choose the darkness over you every time. They will, they will keep reaching out there with no regard for you whatsoever.

01:38:25
Case
Now then, the other thing, because I realized that audiences were turned off by like the main characters from the previous movie all being dead. I would probably keep Hicks alive. I would see. So the challenge with Newt is that like the most logical way to do it, you can either recast her or you can have her be a little bit older and say that she was not in her pod. But if she's not in her pod, then did she witness the aliens impregnate everyone? Like how did that all play out? I don't know. I really don't know from the movie that we had how I would end up.

01:38:54
Sam
The other thing that I kind of toyed with was like, you kind of don't do this right after and you let there be a time jump and then the focus is her as a 17 year old and her mom going to a new space and surprise, aliens. I mean like that's the other option is that you let them have 17 years of happiness. But that would be too much, wouldn't it?

01:39:27
Erin
Yeah.

01:39:28
Case
Yes, that would be too much. Aaron, it looks like you're about to say something.

01:39:31
Erin
Yeah, well. Cause I, I almost forgot to ask this before, but does the assembly cut address how she got the queen inside of her because her pod was not cracked. Yeah, it wasn't cracked or anything. So did that. It must have happened before.

01:39:48
Case
I think it did. It's because it's all in that like weird flashbacky kind of stuff at the.

01:39:53
Erin
Beginning, right, Isn't it?

01:39:55
Case
That is actually the roughest part, which is explaining how the alien even winds up on their like, pod is a difficult thing because it's like. Well, it was a queen who theoretically left her like egg laying abdomen when she like severed herself to like chase after Ripley. So I don't think she just had like eggs that were like dribbling out as she like walked.

01:40:15
Erin
Right.

01:40:15
Case
Which is such a visual that I say.

01:40:20
Erin
Eggs dribbling out. I hate when I have eggs dribbling out.

01:40:24
Sam
She was technically giving birth for a very long time. So maybe she just wasn't done. And you know, we don't really understand alien physiology.

01:40:35
Case
No, we don't.

01:40:36
Erin
Yeah, I have an easier time accepting that one of them got onto the EEV or whatever it is than I do understanding how it infiltrated Ripley's pod. Unless it was already in there before she. Yeah, that's.

01:40:53
Case
Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure. And, like, this is a rough area in terms of, like, making it make sense and having it. Like, the. The shots work. Because, like. No, no.

01:41:03
Sam
We.

01:41:03
Erin
We need to solve this right now. I'm not leaving until we figure this out. Just kidding. Sorry. Go on.

01:41:11
Sam
That's it.

01:41:12
Case
We'll probably be here forever, never ending another pass episode where we just, like. All right, all right. So what if instead of it being one of the eggs, what if it was just one of the drones, but it had, like, a facehugger that it was carrying? I don't know.

01:41:25
Erin
Get Fincher on the horn. Get him on the horn right now.

01:41:28
Case
Fincher, we want to Talk about Alien 3 and immediate click.

01:41:31
Sam
Yeah, we are definitely still on this call, even though it is on your podcast listening thing. Please go into Discord and tell us how this happened. Please go to our Discord.

01:41:44
Case
Yeah, I would actually love if people have fan theories on this one, because, like, man, that would be nice. Like, the other thing is that, like, all of the alien movies from the first one on have made the aliens less mysterious. And so the first one has the weirdest physiology to the point where, like, we don't understand why it's capturing people and, like, putting them in, like, cocoons kind of thing. Like, there's all these. Oh, that doesn't quite match what we see in the second one, because the second one's like, oh, there's a queen, and they lay eggs. And one of the. One of my problems with the second one is it just makes them bugs, as opposed to, like, something that's truly alien, truly, like, unknowable in terms of its life cycle.

01:42:20
Case
Like, nothing makes sense if you just are looking at the first movie. This movie could double down on nothing making sense, but I don't think it. It does. Like, it needs to have something to support that beyond just, like, yeah, I was on the ship, and somehow now you're pregnant with a queen, like, right.

01:42:35
Sam
Yeah.

01:42:36
Case
I mean, because, like, how gnarly would it be if the main alien of this was inside Newt?

01:42:40
Erin
Well, you know, when I was. When I was re. Watching it, that's what I thought. I couldn't remember, and that's what I thought it was, that they were going to do that.

01:42:48
Case
I don't mean like in Newt, when she was like, in the pod. I mean, like, if Newt had actually gotten out and was alive and then died at the beginning of the movie and, like, they were fighting the offspring of Newt.

01:42:58
Sam
Right.

01:42:58
Erin
I don't know. I don't know how people would feel about watching a kid get chest burst.

01:43:05
Sam
It was bad enough watching the dog die. I think the kid would be far too far.

01:43:11
Case
It's. It's a rough situation regardless. Like, I'm not right. I'm necessarily advocating. I'm just spitballing, like.

01:43:16
Erin
Well, right.

01:43:17
Case
Because, like, I, I understand that, like, there's a lot of audience members who came away from Aliens, which has, like, a happy ending. And then we're very upset that, like, most of the characters are dead off screen before the movie starts.

01:43:29
Erin
Right? Just immediately.

01:43:31
Sam
Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely. My. My friend who I watched it with was very. This was one of the things she told me. She was like, I. This, the beginning of this movie made me very angry. And definitely that is part of her thing because, you know, it was a. It was a family, you know, Hicks giving heart eyes and, you know, Ripley getting a child and, you know, kind of like, seemingly there was a parental unit for this abandoned child and a hopeless. And she could dream. She can dream again. That's, like, one of the things said. And it's. It's so lovely. And, you know, Shepard turned out to be a good robot. You can trust this ribbit, unlike other rubits, you know, and it was, like, lovely, you know, and. And then.

01:44:21
Sam
And then the first 10 minutes of this movie happened and all of that is not true anymore.

01:44:26
Erin
Yep, yep, Crushed.

01:44:28
Sam
So it's. It's done and done. And so I think, like, I. I think maybe watching an alien pop out of the child's chest might have made people more angry. So if we're going to go with what I say, like, leave it the way that it is, rather than watch her get destroyed from the inside.

01:44:48
Case
I don't know. I'm just saying, like, as a different take from what we've already gotten, if this movie was just like a full Splatterhouse type thing and just everyone's exploding with blood everywhere. Like, at least it's a different movie just to reach out to the first one.

01:45:01
Erin
And the blood looks good. I mean, the Fincher blood always looks good.

01:45:04
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

01:45:06
Case
Like, it could glisten very well on all.

01:45:08
Erin
And it has, like, texture. It has, like. It isn't just, like, thin and watery and stuff.

01:45:14
Case
It's like, yeah, get some real Chunks in there.

01:45:16
Erin
Yeah.

01:45:16
Sam
Yeah, he does. I actually did make the joke that out of the three directs, only one of them was a monster because Ridley decided to save the cat and Cameron decided to save the child. But Fincher was like, fuck that dog. And so.

01:45:35
Case
Or cow. Or cow.

01:45:37
Erin
Or cow.

01:45:38
Sam
Fuck that cow.

01:45:40
Erin
Right.

01:45:41
Case
Yeah.

01:45:42
Erin
So can I. Can I make an observation? That really has no place anywhere. It's like, completely. Okay. I just want to point out that after Ripley and the Doc bone, he says to her, I appreciate your affections. Which I just want to say, gentlemen, that's the hottest thing you can say to a woman. Post sex. That's what we call game. Okay. I appreciate your affections.

01:46:12
Sam
Just.

01:46:13
Erin
Just store that away in the back of your mind.

01:46:16
Sam
Yes. Please also send a thank you note. That is an Emily Post.

01:46:20
Erin
Yes.

01:46:21
Sam
Direction. You should send a thank you note repeating the same phrase the day after. Please send it by snail mail, though, to really send the point home. That's how we will know how appreciated the affections were.

01:46:35
Case
Really channel Tywin Lannister when you do.

01:46:37
Erin
Yes.

01:46:38
Sam
Right. 1,000%. I mean, is there any other way? I don't think so. I appreciate your affections. Regards.

01:46:48
Erin
Yep. Best.

01:46:50
Case
I gotta say, though, he is very charming in this movie. Like. Oh, yeah, a good guy. Charles Dance is like, I was so happy to see. And he's.

01:46:58
Erin
Oh, no, I love.

01:46:58
Sam
I love him.

01:47:00
Erin
He was. He was lovely. And I loved that they. That they boned.

01:47:03
Case
Yeah, yeah. And that is the problem of if Hicks survives. Like, you assume that Hicks and she are a couple, even though they don't actually say it at any point. So maybe have him in a coma for a while so that she could go off and, like, were on a break.

01:47:17
Sam
Yeah.

01:47:18
Case
I don't know. I mean, this movie, like, again, like, on paper, this movie makes so much sense for us to talk about on the show because it clearly was a troubled production that led into a very flawed, you know, interesting movie. But flawed. Like, very flawed. And it's just hard to figure out where it went wrong because it looks like it went wrong every single step of the way. And they got lucky with having a director who has maybe not a strong thesis for what this movie is about, but at least a strong eye for how he wants it to look. And so that makes it a much better movie than it could have been if they got, like, that, you know, commercial director who they could just pay to, like, get through the shoot as quickly as possible.

01:47:57
Case
Like, this could have been a much worse movie too, which is the weird part.

01:48:01
Erin
Yes.

01:48:02
Sam
Yeah. And again, like, and I think we said this before we started recording. I think the fact that you have great actors and Sigourney Weaver there to protect the character of Ripley and just make sure that it doesn't go astray in studio notes and in anything else, as we've seen in some other third movies, you still get a sense of who these characters, like who her character is and she is this franchise. Yeah. And so that saves this totally.

01:48:30
Erin
And I think also just the supporting cast, like, I don't think there's a single moment when I'm like, I don't believe you as an actor. Like, I don't believe that you really meant what you just said. Right. It's, it doesn't always mix. It's not always logical in terms of like, why would someone do this? But I feel like you can, they're really great actors. And in that moment you're like, well, okay, that's a weird choice, but I believe that's what you wanted to do for whatever fucking reason.

01:48:57
Sam
Yeah, like that's not a great line, but you delivered it well.

01:49:02
Erin
Right.

01:49:02
Sam
Thank you.

01:49:03
Erin
Right, Exactly.

01:49:04
Sam
Thank you. Exactly.

01:49:05
Erin
Which is hard, which is really hard when you have like a slightly or extremely incoherent script. Right. Like, yeah, the only thing, the only character element that I just don't believe at all is 85 or 86 or whatever they call him.

01:49:22
Sam
86, okay. Yeah, that's his IQ.

01:49:24
Erin
There's, that's the thing. There is no way that guy has a sub normal iq. I mean he is like, he's like firing on all cylinders all the time. Like it's just not, that's not believable at all. They, they needed somebody a little bit more slack jawed.

01:49:39
Sam
Yeah, yeah, I could see that. I think also there was, there were attempts, and I say attempts because they fell flat. There were attempts at humor in the second half of the maze and those were not pulled off, but they were done fully right to the letter of the script. And those actors pretended that they thought that was funny. And I thought those characters have no sense of humor because that is not funny. But they believed it was.

01:50:08
Erin
Yeah, I think I know exactly what you're talking about. What they run into, the two run into each other and like they're like, oh, you scared the shit out of me.

01:50:14
Case
Hahaha.

01:50:15
Erin
It's only me. The part that's so crazy. They stay there laughing for so long, they're so loud. And they're like, they've been. The reason they were running so fast is because there's fucking alien in the tunnels with them. But then they just decide, oh, I guess we'll chill here for a hot second.

01:50:34
Sam
Yeah. And before that, like maybe a couple shots before that, someone else is running and he runs into a guy and he's running with scissors. And he's like, that's not how you run with them. And he turns them around, he's like, you're going to kill someone. And I'm like, right, I know that I'm supposed to laugh at this because it's what our mothers tell us and they are running for their lives and it would be a weapon, but it's. It's not. It doesn't land, it doesn't stick the landing. So I get it. I know what it's supposed to be.

01:51:03
Case
Yeah.

01:51:03
Sam
It's just not funny.

01:51:04
Case
It's very difficult to stick the landing when you start a movie without an actual finished script. And I think that's the big thesis of this episode where it's like, don't make a movie for a release date. Make a movie to finish the movie. And like every interview, every single one is just like all the producers like, nope, we got this slot is when it's coming out. So we had to make it for this. And you can see how that failed the production at every single step of the way.

01:51:27
Sam
I feel like that's too much logic that you're stealing and I don't like it.

01:51:32
Case
Well.

01:51:33
Erin
And it also doesn't necessarily serve our capitalist overlords as much, which is, you know, interesting when talking about a franchise that addresses the evils of eventually capitalist massive multi planet monopoly conglomerate Amazon.

01:51:54
Case
Actually, you know, one thing we totally missed and like I, we're very close to wrapping up, but I just need to drop this one right here. Wayland Yutani as the corporation is such 80s Japan scare that. Oh yeah, like it's like shocking to look back and be like, oh right, America was terrified of Japan at this time because it was like, oh, they're better at economics than us. Like yes.

01:52:15
Sam
And of course they would have a robot that would turn on us. Right.

01:52:20
Erin
Just saying they're better at economics than us and must therefore clearly be as obsessed with military dominance as we are. And that being connected. True story, you know, because everybody has to be right.

01:52:36
Case
Like that's just, that's a more complicated one considering that at that point there were plenty of people who were had fought against The Japanese still alive at that point.

01:52:45
Erin
No, that's true. Of course. Like, that wasn't a. That wasn't a completely unprompted.

01:52:50
Sam
Yeah.

01:52:51
Erin
Feeling to have.

01:52:52
Case
It's just so jarring to look at stuff from the 80s where it's just like, oh, yeah, were real fucking terrified because we. All of a sudden we're being like, oh, aren't we superior? Oh, wait, we might not be the best at everything.

01:53:02
Erin
Yes.

01:53:04
Case
Anyway, I just forgot to mention it earlier, and I just didn't want us to wrap up without pointing at that one.

01:53:08
Sam
Are you talking about American flaws?

01:53:10
Case
I have a hard time not doing that these days.

01:53:12
Erin
It's pretty much relevant to everything, you know?

01:53:16
Sam
Yeah.

01:53:17
Erin
Hard to get away from it, at.

01:53:19
Sam
Least if you're American.

01:53:19
Case
But we should get away from this movie because I think we can circle around this particular one a lot. And as much as I enjoy talking about this franchise, I don't have good fixes for this movie. I don't have, like, key things where I'm like, oh, this is where it went wrong. Because it went wrong everywhere. But where it did go wrong was us inviting Aaron to come on board because she is. What is the advent charge? The phenom.

01:53:45
Sam
The total package.

01:53:45
Case
The total package.

01:53:46
Sam
The total package. She's everything.

01:53:48
Erin
Thank you.

01:53:49
Case
Aaron, would you like to share what some of those total package elements are? Your plugs where people can find you all the stuff.

01:53:55
Erin
Yes. So if you live in or around Los Angeles, you can see me doing stand up at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank, at the Hollywood Comedy in Hollywood, and a variety of other places pretty much all the time. That's the main. That's the main plug right now.

01:54:15
Case
Social media.

01:54:15
Erin
Oh, yeah. So you can find me on Twitter @ Aaron McAllahan, M as in Multinational Corporation Aaron McAllahan. And you can find me on Instagram at Dingoes Ate My Baby, which is spelled D, I, N G O, z. The number 8, M, I, P, A, B, Y. Because all the Aaron Callahan variations were taken.

01:54:36
Case
That's fair.

01:54:38
Sam
Dingoes are dangerous. You're bringing awareness.

01:54:42
Erin
Thank you.

01:54:42
Sam
It's a good thing.

01:54:43
Erin
Thank you for recognizing that.

01:54:45
Case
People should absolutely go and check out your comedy. If they're local, wonderful. But if not, even just like, following your Instagram stories is always a lot of fun. So, so glad to reconnect with you after. Aaron and I were friends in high school and we have not talked to each other in, like, 20 years.

01:55:01
Erin
It's insane. It's insane.

01:55:04
Case
So wonderful to reconnect with you in the meantime. Yeah, likewise, after they check out your stuff. Another pass is on Twitter nherotherpass. I am on Twitter Aesakin Sam, where can people find you?

01:55:16
Sam
You can find me here on another pass and on our Discord server and nowhere else. Because I am a figment. I am a figment of a corporation created to make sure that case produces as much as possible.

01:55:33
Case
But yes, you should head on over to certainpov.com where you can find all kinds of great podcasts that we're putting out. I'm going to give a shout out to Reignite. Right now they are prepping for their fourth season now having finished the Mass Effect trilogy. They're starting their playthrough of Mass Effect Andromeda. So that's really exciting. I can't wait to see what that is in store, mainly because I haven't played that game yet. So we'll see what that one's like. But you can find that@ certainpov.com you can also find links to our Discord server where you can come interact with us directly. You can get sneak peeks at upcoming episodes and just chat with us and share memes. It's a lot of fun. We've got a section just for venting about just how awful the world is, which sometimes you just gotta do.

01:56:09
Case
We also have a section for pets and selfies. So like that's also a fun area. So all kinds of things. You can find all that over@ certainpow.com where you can find more episodes of this show. Sam, what is coming up next on this show?

01:56:22
Sam
Next time on Another Pass, we'll be talking about Highlander 2 the Quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.

01:56:36
Case
Thanks for listening to Certain Point of View's Another Pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on itunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

01:56:50
Sam
Another pass is a certain POV production. Are hosts are Sam, Alice and Casey Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macri and our outro theme is by Matt Brogan.

01:57:05
Case
Everyone should absolutely go check out your comedy. I've been it's been great that you've had it up on your Instagram story so I've been able to actually catch bit I can't make words right now. Hey all you amazing sentient beings. This is Case Aiken from Certain pov and outside of podcast, I work with a group that does Star Trek fan films called starship Farragut. For 15 years, we've been doing material inspired by the original Star Trek series. But now we're moving on to the movie era with our latest production, Farragut Forward. And that means new sets, new props, and we're gonna have to make those monster maroon uniforms. So we have a crowdfunder running right now. Backers can get access to our soundtracks, have their name show up on screen as part of a Duty Ride roster, or even get a walk on roll.

01:57:48
Case
Our hope is that this is just the beginning and that the assets we create with the money we raise will go towards future productions, including possibly a sequel that may just be written by a certain scruffy Nerf hurting man of steel who'll take another pass at it. Wink, wink. To back the production, go to Indiegogo and look up Farragut Forward or find us on Twitter aragat1921. And hey, while you're at it, check out the three minute prologue we put together to show what we can do. But in the meantime, live long and prosper. Evan. Wow.

01:58:22
Erin
No. You're killing it. You are killing it.

01:58:25
Sam
Matt, do not edit this out. Leave it all in.

01:58:27
Case
Or as a blooper or all in.

01:58:30
Sam
Or, you know, up to you. I trust you.

01:58:33
Case
CPOV certainpov.com.