Month: July 2023

Aliens (1986) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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It’s a funny thing I had never seen Aliens in its entirety until today.  Somehow, I missed the first half hour of the movie and only came in when the main action was beginning.  So finally, I have the correct basis on which to judge it.

I won’t synopsize the plot because it’s an Alien movie so the plot is for Sigourney Weaver to outlive the rest of her fellow humans battling the aliens before ultimately jettisoning a xenomorph into the vacuum of space.

As in the original “Alien” movie Sigourney Weaver is Ellen Ripley a commercial astronaut who works for the evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation.  Fifty-seven years after the first Alien attack Ripley is discovered still in suspended animation in the shuttle craft that she used to escape the destruction of her ship the Nostromo.

The evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation was very unhappy about her blowing up their ship but when they find out that their terra-forming colony on the planet that the alien was found on has gone silent they send “space marines” and Ripley to fix things.  They also send Paul Reiser playing smarmy corporate yes man, Carter Burke to provide the requisite “greedy corporation wants xenomorph for bioweapon” subplot.  And finally, they throw in an android to show that despite what happened in the first movie, androids can be pretty swell people too.

And finally, to soften up Ripley’s Rambo impression, they throw in an orphaned little girl named Newt that Ripley rescues a few times over the course of the movie, proving that a modern woman truly can have it all.

So, the producers pull out all the stops.  Aliens are popping up everywhere in the industrial complex that serves as the venue for this first-person shooter game.  Bits of aliens and “molecular acid” are sprayed everywhere and one by one the marine platoon is picked off by the monsters.  Until finally we’re down to Ripley, Newt, android and the pick of the Marine crew, Corporal Dwayne Hicks played by the ever-popular Michael Biehn.  But during the final rescue of Newt on the planet Hicks is wounded by molecular acid and from then on, all the heavy lifting is done by Ripley.  Which she performs with panache, culminating in the above mentioned obligatory spacing of the mother alien (of course there’s a mother alien).

So, what did I think?  Well, I have some quibbles.  The plot contrives it that the marines can’t use their heaviest weapons because the industrial plant is a “thermonuclear” power plant and if any of their explosive charges rupture a heat exchanger line the whole plant will detonate.  Since it’s a cinch that all the colonists (except Newt) are already dead why are they bothering to throw away their lives in this death trap.  As Ripley so astutely recommended, “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.  It’s the only way to be sure.”  Also, they overdid it with the strong female characters and weak male ones.  Yeah, I know, I know.  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”  But honestly it is insulting and stupid.

But taken all in all the movie does provide an exciting action-adventure/science fiction/horror experience.  I won’t claim it’s my favorite but it is a worthy representative of its genre.  I will give it a recommended status.

Gee, I Hope So

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H/T to Arthur.  But truly I hope they just keep pushing this stuff forever.  When cast and crew are always selected based on protected status it’s more or less guaranteed that no one will pay to see that work.  Then when someone finally provides actual entertainment the contrast will be startling.

Divergence Instead of Diversity

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According to the Left, America is becoming more diverse.  Of course, they don’t do a very good job defining that word.  If all they mean is that the earlier European American population is becoming a smaller fraction of the total population then that is true.

Since that change is being advanced as a tactic to balkanize the population and build a voting coalition at the expense of this earlier demographic grouping then it has to be realized that this diversity is not a strong basis for long term unity but rather a weapon of convenience that will be altered to accommodate whatever changes in the electoral calculus are required.

One thing the tactic has achieved is to reveal to many Americans just how insubstantial are the rights and benefits that those in charge supposedly guarantee to us.  But this knowledge has revealed that there are two different populations inhabiting this country.  And I don’t base that on ethnicity or skin color.  Because you can see both populations in all the various groups.

I would define the dichotomy like this.  There are a lot of people, especially the younger generations who will go along with whatever the government and other power centers in our society tell them to do.  I’m not saying all of them are happy about it but a lot of them seem to be.  Either way, they’ll wear a mask or drive an electric car or eat bugs or anything else they’re told to do.  These are the people voting for Joe Biden.  And then there are those who don’t.  These are the two populations that make up the United States of America.

And I do not think that these two groups will coalesce again into one group.  In fact, I think the divide is only growing wider.  This is because there are appearing different areas on the map where the local conditions approximate the practices that one or the other of these two groups favor.  So, California is almost a cartoonish stereotype of how the Leftist paradise would be run.  Nuclear power plants are being shut down.  Gasoline engines have been outlawed.  Pediatric transitioning is enforced against the will of parents.  It’s a perfect dysfunctional progressive madhouse.

And places like Florida are taking active steps to push back against these very same woke policies.  And what we see is people fleeing from places like California and moving to Florida and Texas.  What we seem to be seeing is people self-selecting into two populations.  They’re separating because these issues provide a binary choice based on the fundamental beliefs of all people.

It’s as if these two populations have a difference in polarity.  The same environment can attract those who have a positive charge but repel those with a negative charge.  And currently the polarity between the two groups is growing.  The paths they are on are diverging and unless some very powerful force intercedes, I think they will be essentially two different nations.  As different as Slovakia and the Czech Republic are.

Now as to the racial and ethnic components of these two diametrically opposed areas, I think it is far from determined how each of these groups would end up dividing themselves between these jurisdictions.  Questions of economic opportunity and government policies would have a huge impact but in general I would think that the same fundamental differences would tend to polarize people based on their innate values regardless of race.

Now the intercession of a powerful force that could force these two populations to remain together is obviously intervention of the federal government.  The analogy of the Civil War forcing the Confederacy back into the Republic is the obvious one.  Even the introduction of an enormous immigrant population is duplicated between the present age and the Civil War era.  But there are also differences.  The United States back then was a dynamic expansionist nation leveraging technological and scientific innovation to produce unheard of wealth and opportunity.  Currently we are a country in decline with a philosophy that favors shrinking all aspects of human endeavor.  A defeatist ethic and self-loathing define the Left’s approach to life.  However, the people repelled by this viewpoint would be the ones trying to break away from this defeatist entity.  It might prove a completely different outcome this time around.

To sum it up, the Left and Right are forming different, almost opposite groups within the United States of America and there is a very definite possibility that this divergence will lead to separate geographical areas where the laws and activities will be extremely different and people will self-segregate based on the system they innately prefer.