Alien Resurrection with Gracie Gillam

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone. Quick content warning for this episode. There is
an occasional mention of rape, rape metaphors, and incest not
a pervasive part of our discussion, but it is present,
so we just wanted you to know. Enjoy the episode.
On the Bell cast, the questions asked if movies have

(00:22):
women in um? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start changing
it with the beck Del cast earth Man, what a
ship whole? Damn it's true. Where's the lie? Where's the lie?

(00:42):
I love a movie whose last line really thinks they're
doing something, but actually just serves to remind you that
you know nothing about the character you've been watching for
two hours. She's just like, I have no idea, I've
never been here. You're like, wow, beautiful, inspiring, and it's
Sigourney Weaver and went on a writer being like, wow, Earth,

(01:03):
look how pretty it is. But it had already been
established in the movie that Earth is a ship hole,
So I don't understand what that's about. Well, but then
they got there. They must have they landed, you know,
somewhere pretty, and they gasolate themselves into thinking it doesn't
suck ass here, which it does. They shot a version

(01:23):
of the ending of the movie with the same dialogue,
put them in front of green screen with a desolate
Paris in the background. It just like broken Iffel Tower
and like they're like, the military is going to come
get us. And then the writers like, well, you could
get pretty lost in a place like this, what do
you want to do? And then it's the same I
don't know, I'm a stranger here myself, but it's just

(01:45):
like desert land Paris in the background. That's kind of fun,
but also much like a lot of thoughts I was
having do this movie, what huh? Why? And why I
am so excited to talk about this movie that truly,
I mean for Bechtel cast listeners, Um, there's just I

(02:08):
feel like most of the time we have a we
have a grip on at least what's sort of going on.
But this is one of those fun, rare episodes where
I'm like, I I'm I'm at c I don't. I'm
so excited that we have a wonderful returning guest to
uh to be our little Titanic lifeboat. With the movie

(02:30):
Alien Resurrection a k A. A movie that struggled to
find watertight compartments to film in because Titanic was shooting
next door. Yes, okay, so really quickly, this is the
Bechtel Cast. Welcome to it. I'm Caitlin Darante, I'm Jamie Loftus,
and this is our show where we examine movies through

(02:51):
an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel Tests simply as
a jumping off point. Jamie, remind me, please, what is it? Okay? So,
the Bechtel test is a media metric invented by queer
cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace Test. Uh.
There's a lot of versions of it. Our version is

(03:13):
get ready this We require that two characters of a
marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something
other than a man for two lines of dialogue, and
that it has to be a meaningful interaction. And we
can't get more specific about that. You know what when

(03:34):
you see it? And yeah, that's basically the test this movie.
I mean, the ways in this movie in which this
movie passes are so Josh Weeden and I don't really
mean that as a compliment, right, yes, And we have
a wonderful returning guest. She's an actor. You've seen her

(03:56):
in teen beach movie z Nation and the new movie
streaming on shutter app called super Host. It's Gracie Gillum.
Hello everybody, thanks for having me back. Welcome back, Welcome back.
I think we should open this episode with your rendition
of the Bechtel Cast theme song. Maybe we'll edit that in.

(04:18):
I feel like that'sh the only it's the only way
I recorded. I like screen recorded it when you first
posted it, Um, because I'm weird, So we have it.
I love that you don't know what that means to me,
because every episode that I listened to, my boyfriend and
I do sing along with the harmonies to the opening number,

(04:39):
just like like we can't help but I have to
sing along to the very very catchy opening and you
thank you for that. That makes us so happy. Or
also sometimes when we watch sexist movies, we just sing it.
Of course, shouts out to our friend Mike Kaplan for
writing the song, and to Catherine in a k Reeny

(05:01):
Voskozynski first singing for doing the vocals of our songs.
So shouts out to our pals. Yes we are now
a song that five years ago around now was being
composed for the first time, which is so wild, Caitlin,
I realized that this podcast is my longest relationship relationship. Yeah,

(05:27):
look at us same Oh my goodness, still in love
after all these years. The spark will never die. What
if the gift for a five year I don't know.
That's actually Kaylee, we should have a weekend. Oh wait,
we should finally go to magic Mike Las Vegas, like
we keep saying we will. Oh my gosh, yes, wait,

(05:47):
five year anniversary gift. The traditional five year anniversary gift
is would a symbol of strong roots in an enduring relationship. Caitlin,
I'm going to plant a tree and be like, stop
the anniversary, baby, I'm gonna carve Alfred Molina's face out
of a slab of wood, just a little butter knife.

(06:12):
Oh god. Every time I forget the would anniversary, I
feel like that's a punishment for not being in a
relationship long enough. I thought it was gonna be like gold, right.
It feels like the gifts must get worse and worse
as your relationship goes on. Wood anniversary. I think paper
even comes after that, which is just processed. Would really

(06:36):
who made this little papers one of them, and it's
this shockingly late one. I think, I like fifty years
guess what paper divorce? You did it? You can get
out of here. Oh my gosh. Okay, So, Gracie, you
have brought us Alien Resurrection, the fourth movie and the
Alien franchise that came out in Tell us about your relationship,

(07:01):
your history with this film. Um, I brought this movie
and I do not apologize Jamie for making you watch
it for the first time. Thank you. I had not
watched it until June. I had seen Alien, I'm sure
in some sort of l A theater screening, then revisited them,

(07:23):
I think just because they were on HBO Max or whatever,
and watched the two thousand three directors cut, which I
think is just wildly better. The tension in the director's cut,
I think is so much better than when you like
when even after watching director's cut rerot rewatching Alien is good.
It's good, but the the amount of like like. Not

(07:44):
a lot of movies I think benefit from long shots
of hallways. The two thousand three directors cut of Alien
very much does. And then they went through and watched
more of them, um, including the first Alien versus Predator
and Alien Resurrection is by are my favorite alien movie
and maybe among like easily top ten or fifteen movies

(08:05):
for me. I think this movie is doing everything that
I really wanted to be doing. I know that this
is not a popular opinion. No, I love it. I
love Coming in Hot, Coming in Hot. Critics have Rotten
Tomatoes raded this movie fresh, and the audience has disagreed
with a thirty nine. And I'm going to disagree with

(08:26):
both of those. It's at least I'm so fascinated. I'm
truly so excited because I'm like, I'm at a point
where I'm just confused, and so my mind is very
open to being changed. I'm open to I I feel

(08:47):
like I can be taught here. I'm curious. Did you
watch Alien Cubed? The third one? I've seen it? I didn't.
I knew that, Caitlin, you had It's It's honestly, it's skippable,
like you know, like the first episode like people that
you can skip the first episode of Star Wars, um
of Star Wars movies like it's. It is pretty skippable.
You don't know how. I have to know very much

(09:07):
from it, but in terms of you watch it and
the theme is just ruined and your heart is ruined,
and then resurrection after that is very healing and satisfying.
Oh that's like in in the order, it seems like
I I did watch a bunch of franchise recap videos
just to understand where exactly this is all coming from,

(09:30):
because my history with the Alien franchise, which listening I
mean basically is all contained in the feet of the
show where I've seen Alien and Aliens because we've covered
it on the show. This is just I this genre
is so hard for me. I cannot follow. I get confused.

(09:50):
Everyone's wearing the same outfit. This is why I can't
do war movies. Also, I'm like, I don't know who
that is. They're all wearing the same outfit. And when
people are on spaceship the whole movie, uh, it's like
you're saying, Gracie. It's it's a lot of hallways. I
don't know. I'm not built for it. But it's so
fren Like, do either of you have a genre or

(10:12):
just like a vibe of a movie that it's like
it's hard for me to connect with, but I want to,
Like I want to and Alien Resurrection I mean, it
certainly held my attention because so much is happening. The
tone of this movie for me was so all over
the place that I was on the edge of my

(10:34):
seat just to see what genre the next scene was
going to take place in. Where like there's like the
scene where it's like, oh, it's kind of a tense
scene with one of the xenomorphs, but then the scientist
is like French ng the xenomorph like kiss me through
the phone style. It's like, sometimes genre is this, like

(10:57):
what is happening? So I'm just I truly like need
to be carried through this movie in a little baby Bjorn.
It's like true. Sometimes it's body horror. Sometimes it's a
porn film. Sometimes it's space jam because they're playing basketball.
Times it's a space jam team. Wait does that mean

(11:24):
I guess that technically couldn't Sigourney like ripley eight could
easily she would qualify to beyond the Monsters, would she not?
She's kind of I mean, she's an alien, so yeah,
she can't be on tune Squad. She's not a cartoon,
so she has to be one of the monstars. Dan

(11:44):
Hydeia is a cartoon in this movie. Ron Perlman is
a cartoon in this movie, but not Ripley. No. Death
is death is both very scary and also something that
happens to you after you look at a part of
take a part of your brain out and look at it.
It is very many scene was like what movie am

(12:06):
I watching? It? All? Like the production behind this movie.
I'm I'm so excited to hear that you watched all
the DVD extras Gracie, because I've I was mostly interested in, like,
how did this movie get this way? Because it's such
a specific way, and and I wasn't surprised to hear
that there were a lot of like the the director

(12:28):
of this movie, Oh, let's let's see how I do
with this French Jean Jean Jean Pierre Jeunet, who we
have covered his work before in the form of Amalie,
which I can't think of a more different movie on
the planet. But but I guess, I guess that he

(12:49):
wasn't really able to communicate directly with the actors. He
needed a translator to work with, and so it sounds
like from an actor perspective that everyone was kind of
winging it and like trying to figure out what movie
they were in, and everyone seemed to land somewhere different,
and Jean Pierre was kind of like, we'll figure it
out whatever. Yeah, he was apparently asking just crew members,

(13:12):
like what is like like during recording a scene, Like
what is he saying like about the dialogue that is
in the scene, Like I think there was a lot
of French people on set. And he says in the
director's commentary, which I didn't finish because it was so
little about story, uh, that he spoke the least English,
and like this movie is visually cohesive, but the performances

(13:33):
are not in the same film at all, right, which
it does sound like. And I'm Josh Sweden detractor even
before he was revealed to be a piece of ship person.
It's just I don't I don't know. I've never connected
with this stuff. But he did seem to have like
a some some severe grips with how this movie came
out where he had that quote that was like everyone

(13:56):
said every word of the movie wrong, like huh, Like
he's like, they said all the words that I wrote down,
but they said them so confusing, like, which I was like,
I guess if I wrote that script, I would also
be like I mean, starting with Ron Perlman being like,
oh Earth, we got to go there. That's a ship hole,
and then at the end when they end up on Earth,

(14:18):
they're like, well Earth is beautiful. It's like, uh, excuse me,
just the cloud part right right right, the this layer
of the earth is very beautiful. Yeah, Josh Speden said, quote,
it wasn't a question of doing everything differently, although they
changed the ending, it was mostly a matter of doing

(14:38):
everything wrong. They said the lines mostly, but they said
them all wrong, and they cast it wrong, and they
designed it wrong, and they scored it wrong. They did
everything wrong that they could possibly do unquote. So he
really did not like very I think it's very funny.
And also he's an asshole, so it's like who gives
it a ship that I was like, Wow, I've I

(15:01):
want I'm curious of like did he and the director
ever get to like talk, like, I don't know, it
really doesn't seem So I was really excited for some
Jos Sweden commentary on this movie when I got the
big package of it and was going to go into
the special features, and I watched just so many special
features and there was one clip of him and in

(15:23):
a long line of lots of people who designed props
for it saying what they thought the next movie should
be and how it should have this movie should have ended,
And it's just him saying I feel like there's a
lot of different directions that could go. And that is
the only John sued and special feature that I was
able to find is fully tapping out. I also read
some and I have not seen Firefly before, but I

(15:45):
read a lot of pieces written about Alien Resurrection and
a lot of theories that Firefly was John Sweden's attempt
to like course correct what he wanted Alien Resurrection to be.
Like that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because that
show is also about space pirates doing space pirate stuff,
so I can see that. So I guess if you

(16:06):
wanted to see Josh Weeden's Alien Resurrection, you should watch Firefly.
Yeah for Serenity, which is a little bit more serious. Um.
My relationship with the this movie and the Alien franchise
in general, I am a pretty big fan of the
first two movies, Alien and Aliens, and then for me,

(16:28):
the franchise keeps getting worse and worse. I have not
seen either Alien Versus Predator movie, but I have seen
Alien three, Alien Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien Covenant, and it's
really just the first two movies I care about. But
I do. I do appreciate how many swings this movie takes,

(16:51):
as far as just wild narrative and production design choices
there is. We were Caitlin and I were talking about
this right before you came on the call. Grace Weaver,
like I, I find this franchise so interesting because it's
like Sigourney Weaver is holding it down throughout, like I

(17:13):
love her. You know that there's going to be great
action sequences with women when she's in a movie. And
then it's like you get four very different male directors
with seemingly very different anxieties surrounding birth, just like letting
it all out over the course of twenty years. It's

(17:34):
just like so bizarre that it even happened. So I'm
glad it happened, But what a what a thing to
have happened. Why don't we take a quick break and
then we'll come back and recap the movie and we

(17:58):
are back. I figure to start us off, since this
is the fourth movie in the franchise, I would just
do very very quick recaps of the first three movies
where Alien from nineteen seventy nine is about an alien
that makes its way onto a spaceship and kills the

(18:20):
whole crew except for Ellen Ripley and Jones and Jones
the cat Yes, the fun fact is credited as Jones,
which I think is very funny. Really is that Jonesy's
stage name. It's like, it's just Jones. It's just please
call me Jones. I want to meet Jonesy at a
bar and really pick their mind. Yea. So Aliens from

(18:46):
n Ripley is brought along to advise on this military
operation because something maybe Aliens question Mark is thought to
have wiped out a small population that is terror forming
a distant planet. Turns out, yes, it is Aliens. There's
this big mother queen Alien. She has all of these

(19:08):
offspring and they kill everybody, almost everybody except for Ripley
and this little girl Newt, who escape into space. Alien
three from nine two picks up right where Aliens leaves off,
where Ripley, I think, crash lands onto a planet where
the population is all of these prisoners. So this is

(19:31):
so it's sorry. So it's like the Ridley Scott one.
James Cameron is Aliens, which is Mommy, and then David
Fincher is the one. We're talking about Alien three. Just
for for those who are not into the franchise, I
feel like these all these directors have very recognizable styles
and themes and it kind of like helped my brain

(19:51):
click a little bit. Yeah. Yes, so Alien three directed
by David Fincher. So she crashed lands onto this planetfull
of like religious extremist prisoners. There's also sex criminal prisoners. Yes,
they all have y y chromosome, so they're like extra male,
extra aggressive. And it's David Fincher very early career and

(20:18):
like was the fifth or something director attached to it,
and they were writing that one as they shot it. Yikes,
you can tell um. Anyway, Ripley has unknowingly brought an
alien along with her to this planet and it kills
a bunch of people, and then she kills the alien
and also has to sacrifice herself at the end because

(20:41):
she has been impregnated with an alien. Death by Mommy. Yeah,
so then Alien Resurrection, which is what we are talking
about today. We are on a military medical research spaceship
that is floating through space. These scientists have cloned Ripley
and we see them surgically remove an alien fetus from

(21:03):
her chest cavity. It's worth noting that the difference between
this alien being removed from a chest cavity and all
of the other times we get to see that in
this franchise is that this alien is not circumcised. This
one definitely still has foreskin it had for Wow, I
watched this movie twice and I did not get Wow.

(21:27):
This is this movie really rewards rewatch and you're like,
wait a second. Things have I'm very interested in talking
about in this franchise, like later in the episode, how
the idea of an alien parasite is treated differently in
male characters versus female characters, where I feel like with

(21:48):
the men, it's truly like a parasite and you're like,
get it out of me, like yucky. But with the
female characters, it's like, oh bird, then you're it's mommy.
You would think that the parasite would behave the same
regardless of who it's inside, but it just seems to
know when it's inside someone with a womb and it

(22:12):
acts a little different. And I'm like, you guys, you
guys think it through. Yeah, Also because Ripley is a clone.
She doesn't have the same cognition and memories as the
Ripley We've Come to Know and Love and the other
three movies, although she does have some of the memories,

(22:33):
and then she develops more cognition throughout the movie. But
at first she's almost kind of like a baby herself.
She's just space jam she's born Sexy Yesterday, but she
does know stuff. Yes, it's like a yeah, it's like
a variation on the Born Sexy Yesterday. She was like
born Sigourney Weaver today with some of Sigourney Weaver's memory,

(23:00):
but this time she has a manicure important because she's
an alien, that's how you know, And like Sigourney Weaver,
I mean in my mind, like she can do not wrong.
She's the hottest person on the face of the planet.
She's amazing. But the things that she used to do
in this movie, that whole like there's I would say

(23:22):
approximately five hundred birth metaphors a minute concervatively this movie.
But the one where she's like kind of hatching out
of a cocoon and the movie really like lets you
sit in it, and she's like uh uh, and then
she like it's like, where are we France? We're in France,

(23:43):
Space France. Okay. So the alien that they have removed
from Ripley is a queen, and in the military scientists
plan is to have that queen reproduced because they want
to tame the alien, train them, weaponize them, et cetera.
Make vaccines. Yeah, and we love vaccines, so I'm actually

(24:08):
fine with them doing that. Um. And then Ripley warns
them that if they try to do all of this stuff,
everyone's gonna die. Then the crew from this like commercial
freighter again basically space Pirates boards the military vessel. This
crew includes Genre that's Ron Perlman, Call that's one owner, writer,

(24:34):
other people who I don't recognize, so I'm not gonna
list the actor's names, but Revere, Christie Hillard, and then
their captain Elgin. They are there to bring cargo to
Perez that stand Hideya. And it turns out that this
cargo is a bunch of human bodies that are in
some sort of like cryostasis sleep that the scientists will

(25:00):
use these people as vessels for the face huggers that
come out of the the eggs that the queen lays
to impregnant so that the aliens will reproduce. Right, So
thank you for that. Thank you for that. No matter
how many times I hear it, I can't get that
piece of information to live in my brain like a parasite.

(25:23):
I'm just like, in ten minutes, I'll need to hear that.
Totally fine. Yeah, So this the cannon that has been
established and the other alien movies is that a queen
lays an egg. What comes out of the egg is
a face hugger. It impregnates a human, usually human host,
and then an alien fetus burst out of the human

(25:46):
hosts chest, and then it grows very very quickly into
a full adult alien that goes on to kill people. However,
as we will find shortly, this kind of gestation reproduction
process changes in this movie. Well it's in the first movie.
The cannon is that they're all like it's it's kind

(26:09):
of a sexless reproduction, Like the set looks like they're turning.
The captured crew members from the first film are turning
into eggs. And I know that Ridley was really interested
in that. And what I think is so cool about
this monster is, you know it didn't really and I
don't think anybody thought about it as a rape metaphor
until they hired a woman to play the lead. But

(26:29):
it does really work really well as one I think,
and in this non gendered way, which is what's the
wrong with Alien Cube, Like, let's just complicated, Like one
of the metaphor was just the plot it's mother exclamation
point um. But like the first movie, it feels like
there's just the one kind of alien and they can

(26:49):
do the reproduction themselves and within the can and people
recognize that. But then there can also elect a mother
like a b and that is more efficient. There's more
eggs getting laid if that's the case. But there's not
a need for there to be a mother in the
first movie. And it's only once they're writing for Sigurne
Weaver that anybody decides there needs to be a mother,

(27:11):
right because the queen doesn't get introduced until Aliens, and
prior to that, yeah, I think it's just assumed that
these eggs appears somehow the same as the cocoons, I guess,
which it's just like so it's just like, as it's
so bizarre to think as as this franchise continues, it

(27:33):
just gets like Mommy ere and Mommy are like in
more ham fested ways. Okay, okay, So then we see
a scene where Ripley meets this rag tag crew of
space pirates. She sort of plays basketball with them, and
then she also fights them. She also seems superhuman and

(27:57):
her blood is acidic, just like the aliens blood is,
so it's becoming increasingly clear that she is perhaps part alien. Then,
when on a writer A. K. Call goes to try
to kill Ripley, Call is trying to kind of secretly
stop the military people from breeding the aliens. But then

(28:20):
she doesn't end up killing Ripley when she realizes they've
already taken the alien out of her, and then this
big fight breaks out between the Space Pirates and the
military where most of the military end up dead. This
is also when hell just kind of generally breaks loose,
where a couple aliens get loose from their enclosure and

(28:41):
kill several people, including Dan Hydeia and the character Elgin
And you get that amazing what you're saying earlier, crazy
like your head gets blown out and he's like, oh
my brains. And then and then Dan Hyday goes home
and he's like, Wow, this is going to be such
a hell areas comedy that I just shot, like he who.

(29:05):
I enjoyed that moment a lot because I was like, yeah,
you know, he really does think that this is a
different genre, and I appreciate his commitment. Yes, so cartoony.
We always quote Liz Lemon at that point because she's
got a line on dirty rocks. I hope it's not
an important part of my blearn wow. Okay. So then

(29:30):
Ripley teams up with the Space Pirates. One of the
scientists is also with them, Wren, and they have to
start to figure out how to get off this military
ship that is now completely infested with aliens. So they
make their way to their cargo freighter called the Betty,
and on the way, Ripley discovers a room with a

(29:53):
bunch of past Ripley clones, presumably the first seven that
didn't work out, because they keep calling her Ripley eight.
So it turns out they were just you know, making
all these like Ripley slash alien hybrids. There's all manner
of body horror in the scene, and then she destroys
all of them and then they move onward without like

(30:15):
a flamethrower. It's like she couldn't destroy them any more. Yeah,
it's just it's cannon for there to be a flamethrower death,
and it's cannon for someone to go kill me. Which
it's nice to get a return to that in sort
of a full circle of it being Ripley love a

(30:36):
good callback. Yeah. Also, so after Ripley destroys all of
the failed clones, Ron Perlman's character is like, Wow, what
are ways to Ammo? And then like Ripley's crying because
she just had to kill all these versions of herself,
and He's like, oh, most be a chick thing feminist icon.

(30:58):
Ron Perlman, I love, I hope. I don't know anything
about Ron Perlman as a person, but I really enjoy
seeing him in movies and I love his beauty and
the Beast CBS show that he did with Girl Boss
Linda Hamilton's Belle Lawyer lived in the Sewers of New York.
If you have Paramount Plus, he gotta watch it. It's

(31:20):
so bizarre. He breaks when Sigourney Weaver for real makes
the three point line, throwing the basketball over like into
the basket. He immediately breaks, And I just have to
imagine that Sigourney Weaver must have said nothing. Must have
been so graceful about it, but must have just been
so furious that he immediately ruined that shot. I was reading.

(31:43):
I was trying to find out about that shot, because
I guess that there was like a popular myth for
a while that she got it on the first try. No, well,
the first take, she didn't get get it in rehearsal Um.
She trained really intensively with the professional basketball player right
for like for like least. It a very intense two weeks,
and apparently her trainer that she was supposed to not

(32:05):
try to make it, and her trainer come up to
her and was like, trying to make it, you can
do it. She did it. I heard she was trained
by the Monstars, and that's she was so good. I
like that. That's a good headcanon. Yeah, or bugs, Bunny
Bugs Bunny came over. He's like, you've got this. She's spinning.
She's spinning the ball on her pointy manicure that she

(32:27):
has because she's part Aliens, so obviously she has pointy
black nails like the Aliens, which seems harder. I've never
spun a basketball in my finger, and I never will,
but it seems harder. To do with the curl nails. Yeah,
she really makes it look convincing, like when she's that
the choices made in that scene are all so funny
and good, Like that scene in no way requires that

(32:50):
she's playing basketball very well. But who was her idea?
It's so good was it that? It seems like from
the interviews that it was her idea because she imagined
it as the character kind of getting out of prison
and just trying to have a good time, which is
also while she keeps playing after beating people up. Okay,
I think it's it's so funny, it's well, it's the

(33:11):
type of thing that where in a movie that I
think had been more competently written for basketball skills would
I'm so sorry everyone played later, would would pay off
in some way, but then they don't, and so the
skill of hers is just established for no reason, and
then we just move on from basketball. After that, Christie's

(33:32):
skills come back into play. But from that scene, true, Yeah,
I did. I did kind of wish on the second watch,
I'm like, it would have been cool if basketball came back.
I don't know how it would have, but it would
have been cool at least be good at throwing something
would make sense, right, like pay off on that perfect shot.
That's a good throws blood later it's more of a flick.

(33:55):
It's true. I think that's I don't think it comes.
But also it's the way this movie works. I'm like,
you know what, if there's a dropped thread, fine, I've
I'll never regret having watched the basketball scene. There's so
many threads. Though, you can't complain about that many threads,
It's true. Okay, So then the characters have to swims

(34:17):
through like the flooded kitchen area. Aliens are chasing them
through the water. They make it to the other side,
but there's this huge nest where the queen has laid
a bunch of eggs. Also in that underwater scene, the
other I like to call her other woman, other lady. Yep,
Hillard dies and we'll miss her so much. Just kidding.

(34:39):
We don't know a single thing about her, and I
kept forgetting she had died. Her feet gets such a
closer close up than her face, even right before she
dies in this movie. Yeah, I wonder give her a
closer close up. She's about to die. The movie really like,
the movie doesn't even seem to care that they're coming
off this character to the play where I'm like, well,
why did you add her if she says no words

(35:01):
and she's in the way background of every shot, and
then they're just like, oh, and also she died. He died. Yeah,
there was that shot that went all the way down
her body to her feet, So well there, that's why
they had her there. She's also the character that I
guess like she and the Captain Elgin are an item

(35:23):
and he says something like, oh, there's nothing hotter than
seeing a woman strap to a chair. That does happen?
I'm like, is that why she's there? Like, there's so
many different creepy reasons that I hate that this character
could have been completely neglected by the plot. Yeah, poor whatever.

(35:43):
That lady's name is Hillard, R I p that lady
Hillard Hillard, Hillard Hillard. Yes, justice for Hillard and truly.
So they are burst onto the other side in the
middle of this nest. They're fighting their way out this
kind of trap. Some people die along the way, like

(36:03):
Winona writer, including Christie, And I don't know why. I've
seen this movie very many times and I don't understand
why Christie sacrifices himself like acid to the face, big deal,
But I don't get the self sacrifice. Besides, he's really
good and we need him to go away so that
later other deaths are more surprising, like we need to

(36:25):
lose our sharpshooter, but I don't understand why he sacrifices himself.
I was also I also had questions about that as well,
because they also just like there. It seems like the
second the plot starts to ramp up, with the exception
of like Sigourney and Winona, they're like, let's just kill
off every woman and person of color we can, so

(36:46):
we're left with the worst white guys that aren't well
written characters in the movie. And then our leads like
it just is like but why but why? Yeah, I mean,
good question. Dr Wren's death is kind of fun. Yeah, yes,
we do get left. Yeah right, Okay, So Christie dies,

(37:10):
call a k Nona writer dies, the military science dude
Wren betrays them. He's the one who kills call just kidding.
She's not dead because Big reveal she's a robot, and
then they use her to like hack into the ship
and basically set hacker dialogue here where she's just like

(37:35):
she uses every buzzword available. She's like, yeah, I had
to hack into the ship's main frame to the motherboard,
and now where it's all computers, You're like totally, yes,
I get it. Well, it's revealed also that she's an
auto toon, and like there's a lot of like you know,
reproduction anxiety as it also relates to like cloning and

(37:55):
then making robots throughout these movies. But there's Ripley's prejudice
against robots throughout, and then in this world there's at
least not twentieth century racism like in Aliens, but there's
lots and lots of prejudice against this new generation of
robots that were created by robots, and so like it

(38:17):
is cool, like everyone's like really grossed out and treats
in a writer like I can't believe I almost fucked you,
you gross robot who had thrown control over their actions
another just like Ron Perlman and if you robot like okay,
I was, I was like, what is huh? Yeah, there's
another part where Elgin is talking to Dan Hydaya's character

(38:42):
and he's just like, yeah, did you see the new
crew member we've got isn't she so fuckable? And he's
talking about one on a writer's character and yeah, and
then everyone as soon as they find out she's a robot,
there like you gross weird, like something that I think
is like and I and I will defer to both
of you for referencing if this is a trend in

(39:04):
the entire franchise, but that, like, the misogyny of the
men in this movie is so over the top that
I feel like I was just like, what is that?
Like it's it's maybe that's the genre thing, but it's
just so much and it seems like they have to
They make an effort to remind you every ten minutes,

(39:25):
like someone says something absolutely like horrific. It's never subtle,
it's always really aggressive and it doesn't ever really stop.
I don't know, And it's never sci fi bigotry. It's
never like this is what sexism would be in the future.
And even their ship just like regular sexism. Their ship

(39:47):
is called the Betty and has a pin up girl
on it, and it's just like why why is there?
Why is there this? Why is it still this? Like
I like, I like there being only racism against robots,
like that's a on idea, but like I feel like,
come up with a new kind of prejudice and then
your crechequing prejudice instead of just saying that in the

(40:08):
year twenty which when does this one take place? Seventy nine?
I mean seventy nine. Apparently we're making jokes about illegal aliens,
but nine that's we still got pin up girls on ships.
I mean, fortunately in twenty three seventy nine, um our
species will be extinct, so it's kind of a true

(40:30):
the non issue. But it is like this bizarre like
why is there just seven misogyny here? I guess because
they're like, you're in space, you can do whatever you want.
But they're like, well, women suck. Yeah, let's let's make
fun of the person in the wheelchair. And also like
how with my new employee? Yeahipes, there's a lot of it.

(40:54):
Thanks Josh Weeden for your amazing dialogue. Also, no no
room for a wet whiskey, but like there's obviously a
lot of water on the ship that can leak out everywhere.
Like that seems heavy, true, very wet spaceships throughout. I
did like the whiskey cube special effect, very very satisfying,
also apparently still lemons and cherries, which is very optimistic

(41:17):
about there, Like our military general is eating a lemon.
I didn't even think of that. Where are the bees? Right? Um? Okay?
So they hack into the ship basically call sets like
a collision course to crash the big ship that the
aliens have infested so that they can get to the

(41:37):
Betty and escape in this smaller freighter. Then as they're
getting is there like rushing towards the Betty, Ripley falls
through the floor and into a pile of aliens. Then
she cuddles with the queen, but it's but it's sexy
cuddling even though it's her daughter, okay. And then the

(42:01):
queen who thanks and a part of her and and
weirdly a clony part of her. Yeah, yeah, they share jeans,
not just because she's the mom, right, yes, I have so,
I just have all question marks in that area to
find out that like, okay, we have no answers, okay, okay,

(42:22):
good okay. So and then the queen, who thanks to Ripley,
now has a human reproductive system just described as a gift.
Just a guy who has been trying to train the
aliens just like her gift to her was a human
reproductive system, which the movie does subvert because the alien
is so obviously an agony, which I like in this

(42:45):
movie that is so obsessed with this one woman's maternity.
This movie at least is this is disgusting, like human
reproduction is disgusting and supposed to the other movies that
are like, oh, Egg's bad, human who human? Make baby good?
You be mother and business like aliens writhing around with
this little arms twitching about an agony. Yeah, you're just like,

(43:08):
why is everything so horny and painful seeming in this one? Yeah,
equal parts horny and pain Okay, So the queen has
now has a human reproductive system and then gives birth
to this half alien half like it has a human
skull face and then also meals like a cat. And

(43:32):
so that's Ripley's grand child. And the trainer guy after
watching Ripley, I mean, if anything play the role of
father in this relationship, then he says, look, he thinks
you're the mother, which I think it's really funny and
more of a critique of men viewing the thing rather

(43:53):
than like actually making Ripley be the mother. Thinks you're
the mother and it's like, well, no, it just Stroid.
It's mother. It thinks Ripley is it's God like, it's not.
It's really Ripley anyway, and maybe we're getting too into
it for the plot. I love like that didn't click
for me, but I was like, what what are you
talking about? She's obviously not the mother. You'd watch the

(44:15):
whole birth and sex scene like cocoon. He's really chilling
in this cocoon. He's one side note, the actor's IMDb
photo looks exactly like a picture of Buster Keaton. This
is like in Black Boy. Come. That actor is Brad Doriff,
who played worm Tongue in Lord of the Rings as

(44:40):
well as he's a major character in One for Over
the Cuckoo's Nest. So he's got range anyway. Okay, so
there's all the weird like horny ancestual cuddling. I'm sorry
you forgot his most important credit, Brad Dorriff is the
voice of Chucky. Oh my God. Dora has appeared in

(45:04):
a number of horror films, most notably as the voice
of Chucky in the Whole Child's Play franchise. He's canon Chucky.
I also think he as him like as an actor, Like,
were you not just him voice acting Chucky? But I
think he's also in the Chucky movies as a different
character as well. But I might be completely misremembering. No,
I think you're right Charles Lee Ray, who I think

(45:27):
is like the serial killer who's trapped inside of or
Charles Lee. Yeah, he's like one of the bad guys
in Chucky and also the real bad guy, which is
which is Chucky. I watched Chucky for the first time
last year and I was like, damn, this is pretty good.
I liked it. It kind of holds up. Yeah, I
was like Chucky. And then I watched Aubrey Plaza Chucky

(45:48):
and it wasn't that bad. It wasn't as good as
original Chucky. But you know, maybe well I don't know
if we have anything to say about Chucky on this
particular show, but it was fun. Sure. So anyways, Chucky's
in the movie. Chucky's in the movie. He dies. There's
been all this horny ancestral cuddling. And then Ripley runs

(46:11):
away and heads towards the Betty ship, but the weird
alien follows her and gets onto the ship as well,
and Ripley and such a good deal though, it's my
goodness called trying to close the door, and then the alien,
baby alien helps She was like, oh, baby alien, that

(46:35):
good or bad? That scene. I when Caitlin and Ikyl
and I watched this together the first time, and I
was like, maybe I just haven't been paying close enough
attention because I feel like this whole dramatic cutting back
and forth feels very bizarre and unearned. But then I

(46:56):
watched the second time, I'm like, no, it still feels
that wait where it's like something about the editing in
the scene where it just it keeps cutting back to
Sigourdy Weaver for a little bit too long, where she's
like and then you come back to like this terrifying
like suck through a whole bad c G. I I

(47:16):
loved it. I love that scene. It's so confusing because
what's about to happen is that Ripley and Call have
to deal with the alien who's gotten on board the
Betty and Ripley flings her acid blood onto a window
and it creates this hole and then the weird cat
human alien get sucked out of the whole into space

(47:39):
in what is one of the most disgusting like body
horror things I've ever seen. It takes its time, and
the movie really milks it for a long time, but
not before Ripley kind of makes out with the alien
a k a. Her grandchild. It's like horny nuzzling. Yeah,

(48:02):
it's very it's very charged. Yes, And then the movie
ends with Ripley and call arriving on Earth and they're like, wow,
it's nice the end. So let's take another break and
then we'll come back to discuss, and we're back, Uh

(48:27):
so crazy. I kind of wanted to start with you
here and sort of let you lead us through what
are we missing about this movie? What are and and like,
what about the popular kind of opinions surrounding this movie?
Do you feel very differently about Okay, let me make
my plea for Alien Resurrection, because I think that it's

(48:52):
really kind of I really don't like that this movie
becomes so obsessed with making Ripley into a mom. Obviously
it was written as female. It took a long time
for the writers to conceive of any of the characters
not being men, and even longer for them to think, like, well,
what if it was even the lead? And then the

(49:12):
sequels like backstory was actually a mom, but we're going
to take that away. Also like be a mom this
whole movie, which was cool at the time because she's
doing a good job at her job and being a mom,
which I guess like historical context is powerful. And then
the third one, she's pregnant the whole time, but within

(49:33):
with an alien and like it's like stick like you know.
And then it's obsessed with the fact that she is
female bodied because she's on a planet of rapists that
only rpe female body people apparently, and have a religion
that women are bad and comtresses and should be kept
far away, and like, to me, that ruins the metaphor
of it. What I like about this monster is it's

(49:53):
a rape metaphor where everybody has to have birth anxiety.
And I think a lot of movies that include write
metaphors are very very gendered, and I like that it
isn't doing that. But these movies are kind of obsessed
with Ripley being a mom or not being a mom,
and please be a mom. And then I think Alien
Resurrection has the opinion that reproduction is disgusting, and you

(50:14):
think alien reproduction is disgusting, like human reproduction also disgusting
and terrible for the mother, and aliens are gross and
other and to be killed, but they are because of us.
It's a xenomorph like they're the way that they are
the like like, I don't know, I feel like a
lot of the xenomorphus bad qualities come from us, and
we see that in this movie with the alien sacrificing

(50:36):
the other one. They kind of seem naturally high minded
or even like they might have whale type intelligence and
consciousness of the group, like ants or whales, but because
they are partially us, they have this disgusting individualism. And
then this movie kind of takes it even farther where
then the reproduction becomes human, and then the baby becomes

(50:59):
groutesquely more human like. And then like this alien baby
who I just I love and I'll give all the
nipples to like I love alien baby, um and the
way that they light it so maybe they get sucked
through a hole. Yes, I love alien baby. I feel
for alien baby. They really make you watch her die. Yeah,
they really make you watch that baby die. But like

(51:21):
even when it's like even when it's attacking, you don't
know whether or not it's attacking, and I feel like
that's the human not like you know, the xenomorphs that
were used to age very very quickly. But this is
more human, and it seems a more emotionally volatile and
it doesn't have like a prime directive and at one
moment will be very very cute and cuddly but then

(51:42):
also screaming and like as if it wants to attack
you and sort of how is that different than the
human baby? And I think what's cool and what'sever feminist
about these movies is like the world is like, Rippley,
you should have a baby, Like why didn't you have
a baby two hundred and eighty four years ago or whatever?

(52:02):
And Ripley always chooses to save humanity instead of like
an individual family, and like, in that way is much
more parental, um and heroic than like just like, let's
have this character be a mother who wants to get
home to see her daughter's eleventh birthday. Um. So, what
I love about this movie is I feel like you
really get into who is disgusting. Is it the xenomorpher

(52:26):
is it the humanity that they have adopted genetically? And
this movie is just really like like reproduction in general
is disgusting. It's gross when robots to do it themselves.
It's gross when we clone things. It's gross when aliens
have babies, and it's also gross when humans have babies.
It is terrible and traumatic and disgusting. And why is
there still humanity in the year twenty three? Whatever this is?

(52:49):
I mean, I totally like, I I thank you for
like laying that out for us, because it feels like
this movie has not gotten this out of like love
and attention to detail. I'm so interested in that because
that was like, I still have a lot of confusion honestly,
and like some criticism around this movie, but I did

(53:11):
like one thing that really hit for me in ripley
eight's character in this movie was and I feel like
it's I guess that they explore it kind of thoroughly.
It's all over the place, but the idea that she
is considered worthless after the baby has been taken out
of her, and like I think Dan Hydeal literally refers

(53:34):
to her as like she's a sack of meat to
us at this point, we don't care. And I feel
like that does say something about how we in today
years still kind of characterized mothers, or or how people
with with wombs are characterized after they've you know, quote
unquote served their purpose and perpetuated the human race and

(53:58):
all and all of that, and and how ripley eight
is determined to continue to just like find purpose and
meaning in whatever that means for her after it's clear
that the structure in which she has been brought into
has seen her as like outliving her use I feel
like you can apply that to motherhood, you can apply

(54:21):
that to just aging in general, and like she feels
confident that she still has purpose and wants to keep
learning more about herself after people have told her that
she no longer is useful. So from from that perspective,
I really like that's the part of ripley eight journey
that I felt like was really effective. And then there's

(54:43):
a bunch of other stuff also, right my my, I
think there could be a parallel drawn between some of
the stuff that's happening in this movie and the things
that are happening in tech exist right now. As far
as the abortion band and like an obsession of being

(55:06):
control in control of the bodies of like childbearing people,
where this movie I guess I was maybe oversimplifying things
in my brain in terms of like this franchise does
get more and more obsessed with like reproduction, especially as
it pertains to wombs and birthing and motherhood, where like

(55:31):
the first movie you just established that basically anyone can
get impregnated by these face huggers and then you give
birth out of your chest, and that's what we see
happening to John Hurt's character. Aliens heightens this where we
see that happening I think, to a few different characters,
and then we see like the Queen mother laying eggs,

(55:55):
and then like Ripley becomes a de facto mother to
Newt and then it's like you said, this kind of
like Cannon gets retroactively established that she was also previously
a mother. I would say, Alien three, there isn't quite
so much like birth thing type imagery and metaphor, but

(56:15):
that she's saved and she's precious because she's pregnant with
an alien. Yes, that's that's true. That's true. And then
this movie, like we've hinted at, there's so much imagery,
like every few minutes it seems like there's some birth
metaphor happening, or there's some reference to wounds and reproduction,

(56:38):
and I mean, and sometimes it's not even if it's
not stated, it's visually stated, where it's like when they
get out of the water thing, they have to like
kind of born themselves again because there's that weird little
birth shell that they got to punch through. I'm like, oh,
and then they all got borned again. You take your
first breath again, People keep being born. I mean, even

(57:00):
the way that baby alien dies, it's getting sucked through
a hole that could maybe even be considered like a
birth metaphor. But then I was, as you were kind
of laying all of that out, Gracie, I was like, oh, well,
this movie is largely about this group of men who

(57:20):
are doing all of these like experiments and cloning and
obsessed with They're the ones who are obsessed with this
reproduction and these creatures with wombs and birth thing and
all that stuff. Much this way that like conservative lawmakers
are obsessed with controlling again the bodies of child bearing people.

(57:45):
So I wonder, I don't know how much intentional commentary
there is on that in this movie, but I think
there's like an interesting parallel that you can draw in
terms of like Yeah, look, how obsessed these people who
don't really understand quote unquote female reproduction and wombs and

(58:06):
bodily autonomy and having choices over your own body. Like
they clone Ripley without her consent. They don't know if
she was already impregnated with the alien or if they
impregnate her either way, Like that whole thing happens without
her consent, and then all this other stuff just like

(58:28):
they're just making choices for these people and or creatures. Yeah. Yeah,
like it's wait, you're blowing our minds or alien resurrection good. Actually, well,
I think you know, we've seen the military in this
in this world two years before that and this, and uh,

(58:51):
there are a lot of not a lot of them
get named aloud, and um, a lot of them die
pretty early, but there are men and women in the military.
And I think it is intentional in the script that
all of these military people who were outside of like
legal jurisdiction to they're like in an area of space
where like things aren't controlled. Um, but they're all male.
And then also the ship is father instead of mother

(59:14):
like in the other movies. Yeah, and like you know,
like in your previous discussion about alien like there's even
like should that count as the character? I think it's
really problematic to make subservient robots and computers female. Like
the first year that Siri came out, the number one
question that she was asked it was what's your brass eyes?
And we had a conversation like that in the in

(59:34):
the her episode a couple of years ago. Now where
it's like that is such a like there is a
psychological human conditioning by society not by nature, that people
are more comfortable telling female voice what to do, yeah,
and then yelling at it when it's wrong. That's not
what I asked for, Yeah, right, yeah. Um. And I

(59:56):
I think I think it is intentional that it's father,
And I think it is intentional that it's that these
character like ridiculous over the top cartoon isial men think
that they can possess life and control and profit off
of life and they can't control the aliens and they
can't control Ripley and it's the death of them all. Um.
So I do think I do think it is intentionally
commenting on that. Um. There is one female character who

(01:00:20):
is on their side who has just builled as antithesiologist UM,
and that does not follow the loftest rule of women
with least hair has most power. It's true, It's true,
which is unfortunate. She is the baldest woman, but she
is not in charge. She's the opposite of in charge
and unnamed, which I feel like a lot of these

(01:00:40):
characters don't have allowed names. To give them a name. Yeah, yeah, true,
Like it's I mean, I guess Hillard technically has a name,
but also they forgot to write her a character. Yeah.
And kind of going off of that discussion, the other
thing that really worked for me in in this be
was the connection that call in Ripley eight end up

(01:01:04):
forming by listening to each other, because it's what I
whatever call has we we learned has been you know,
told and programmed by the patriarchal structure that she was
made by to destroy Ripley. But in connecting with each
other in a way that makes sense in story, they're

(01:01:26):
not just like, oh where you know, we're the women characters,
so we have to band together and be friends in
a vague way. But it's like you have like two
real scenes with them figuring each other out and forming
uh bond and a friendship and at first honestly, going
into this episode, I was like, Wow, we have like

(01:01:47):
five million asshole human men and are too like the
two women who are the leads of this movie. They
have I think humanity in the from the story aspect,
but it's like a Lien clone born Sigourney yesterday and
uh robot Winona. But the more we talk about it,

(01:02:09):
the less I'm fixating on that. I don't know, because
I do because they're They're scenes together are very are
are very I think like you understand why they band together,
and you understand why Ripley eight is choosing call Over
baby Yeah, And I think, you know, kind of the
lock in of this movie is finding out that those

(01:02:30):
two characters share a common goal, even though the scene
is called going to kill her, and they do have
this like like, you know, why are they keeping you alive?
Like I don't know the newest thing. So I think
that they are both women who are supposed to feel
ashamed of their bodies by the patriarchal system in which
they exist, and Ripley refuses to and embraces what is

(01:02:51):
different about her clone body, and the same happens with
call Um. I think it's kind of cool that like
there's the there, like it's an auton in a in
a clone, and yet they're like, no, I'm gonna I'm
gonna be powerful and like try to find happiness on
my own and Call is so ashamed of her body
and learns not to be because it saves the day

(01:03:12):
and then says, father's gone asshole and then it's great, right,
and and like their common journey of being told what
they're good for and what they're supposed to be doing
and realizing that there are other ways to be and
to like whatever. Like I was like, oh my god,

(01:03:34):
I need to text with therapist. Shame deep programming, let's say,
like d programming your own shame de programming your you know,
just the idea that your quote unquote creator or your
overlord or whoever it is. For them, it's like their
literal creator. Um, what they ascribe as the meaning of

(01:03:54):
your life isn't what Like they don't get to decide that.
So in that way, wow, movie good. And I like
that they have conflict again because it seems like you
get them together in a scene and they realize they
have the same enemy and like here it is. It's
going to be Sigourney and Monona being buddies against the aliens,
and then the next time we see them again, they're

(01:04:14):
fighting and they have completely different points of views of
how they should be doing things and who should be
in charge, and I like that there's that conflict. I also,
I love I love when it seems like Sigourney is
going to flame throw Dr Wren and then she ends
up like it's like giving the gun away and say,
don't do what and then Bona just gives perfect punch

(01:04:35):
to the face the Doctor Wren, which just like such
a great moment, which you guys talked about the like
men punching women and women punching men thing that happens
in action sci fi genre and I think You're Aliens episode, yes,
and there is like you know, and there's some there's
some superhuman element to this. But Sigourney does get barbelled

(01:04:58):
and the nose prettier, oh my gosh, yeah, and she
fights right back and like she I mean, yeah, there
there's there seems to be very little anxiety that this
movie has about who's fighting who. It's like whoever in
the scene it needs to be fighting, even if it's
mid basketball game. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I didn't feel

(01:05:21):
I mean, even though there's violence inflicted upon women, it
didn't feel specifically gendered or as though like women were
being targeted because they were women. It just felt like
these are characters in an action movie, equal opportunity inflicting
violence and violence being inflicted upon you regardless of gender,

(01:05:45):
which I suppose is parody. Yeah, right, like and and
I didn't. I was I was kind of waiting. I
was like, Okay, let's see when uh, women is going
to be tossed to the side in the middle of
an action scene to be like, we gotta keep ships,
like whatever. Mary Jane at the climax of Spider Man two,

(01:06:06):
they're like, we had to trap her and very sticky web.
But because what if she tried to punch someone, um
someone you mean Doc? I yes, I do. What if
she what if Mary Jane was like, I'm going with
Doc dog that would have been smarter. I'll allow it.
My head, Kennon, this is a this is a tangent,
and you can cut it out. But because listening to

(01:06:29):
your Aliens episode earlier today, it was brought up to
both of you. But I can't like the conversation happened
to Caitlin Darante, who has a master's degree in screenwriting
from Boston University, about the fight sequence in john Wick
two against Ruby Rose, and it's I guess it's important
to discuss john Wick fights women. But more importantly to
tell Caitlin Darante, who has a master's degree in screenwriting

(01:06:51):
from Boston University, is that that fight happens at the
moment in Act two where John Wick should like reflect
upon himself and then grow and change and real. I said,
he needs his need instead of his wont because it's
a John Wick movie that's never going to happen. So
instead of that, he has a fight sequence with Ruby
Rose and an art installation of mirrors called the Reflection
of the Self. Oh my god, I feel like that

(01:07:14):
was Keia news idea. That sounds like a k He
was like, what if he called it reflections of the self,
like unspoken screenwriting joke. That is very funny. And thank
you for bringing up my master's degree in screenwriting, because
you know I would never like it hasn't been coming
up in flavor. It hasn't been coming up because I
would never bring it up, so you would, you never would.

(01:07:35):
I appreciate you doing it, Gracie, thank you. Unspoken screenwriting
jokes very good. I appreciate that. Yeah, Um, can we
talk about the Rice character Dom Price, like we we've
had this discussion many times on the show at this point,
but Dom Ryce is a wheelchair bound character who is

(01:07:59):
played by all accounts that I was able to find
a not a disabled actor, which again is like such
a nineties I mean, a very casting decision that is
just like, it's so unnecessary. I feel like we're repeat
it's always worth repeating that there are so many talented

(01:08:20):
disabled actors that would have fucking nailed that part. Yes,
so I wanted to call that out and also and
also just discussed that character a little bit, yes, because
the way that he is treated, especially by Ron Perlman's
character John Or, is astonishingly horrible. Where I feel like

(01:08:42):
this is a pretty common thing for if there is
an inclusion of a marginalized character in some way, and
here specifically a character with physical disability, where there is
an inclusion invisibility, but it comes at the cost of

(01:09:03):
that character being horribly abused, bullied aggressively. That seems to
be the whole function of the Ron Perlman character in
this movie in a way that doesn't really work for me,
And I think that is like kind of a Josh
Weeden and like nineties two thousand writer. Thing that is
done is the idea of the run probing character is

(01:09:28):
he we know of how because of how he's written
and presented that he's wrong, but I feel like you're
still encouraged to laugh along with him. So what is
the point of telegraphing to the audience this guy is
an asshole? But also the way he's delivering them, like
their comedy lines there, I think that they're supposed to
be perceived as comedy lines. And so when he's teasing

(01:09:49):
and abusing the only disabled character or you know, just
firing off every sexist missive he could possibly think of,
then it's like, well, what it feels like having it
both ways in a way that doesn't work, especially because
he's one of the few characters that survives through the
entire movie. He died. It would be one thing if

(01:10:10):
he was an asshole to everyone and then we understood
that and his lines weren't played for comic relief, and
then he was killed, like punished by being killed. But
that doesn't happen In fact, at the end, when Ripley
and Call have killed the final baby alien by sucking
it out of a hole in the window, even though
the two of them seem completely fine and do don't

(01:10:31):
get their guts sucked out of the window. Well, I
think they bother. They're supposed to have a little bit
of superhuman going on. Oh that makes sense. Yeah, I
think because you know, Cal's a robot and because Ripley's
part alien, they're able to hold on and be okay,
and they're pretty close to that mystery. I think that. Yeah.
I think that's the reason that it's like if the

(01:10:53):
one what is the military guys left over to Stephano,
if he was still there and hadn't been killed, I
think he would have not been so okay with that. Yeah. Good,
I guess I'll suspend my disbelief for that. They're also
they buckle themselves into the wall, so I guess they're
fine anyway. So when Ripley returns from that big climactic

(01:11:15):
defeat of the alien, Ron Promin's character throws off a
little quip where he's just like or he's just like, hey, Ripley,
and then she's like, you remembered my name or something,
and then there's like kind of like a comedic growth,
like yeah, like a nice moment between them, I guess
is what that's meant to be. And it's like, no,
you don't get to redeem yourself after you've verbally assaulted

(01:11:38):
like every person in the cast of the movie. Even this,
Like I mean it is obviously a terrible bully and
a terrible bigot, but even just the tiniest bits of
his actions are just unforgivable. Like he gets mad at
cow for wasting his homemade liquor and then throws Christie's,
Like he gets upset at Ripley for wasting Ammo and

(01:12:00):
then shoots a spider a spider. Why that is the
funniest part of the movie. You're just the worst guy.
That is comedy gold and I'm obsessed with it. Okay,
that's a great moment. But he's a hypocrite. Yeah, he's awful.
I will say. For getting back to Dom's character a
little bit, I would also be very curious to hear

(01:12:20):
what our disabled listeners who have seen this movie made
of how he was characterized throughout the movie. One thing
that I was I encouraged isn't the word not horrified by,
I guess is that that Dom remains extremely active throughout
all of the action scenes, where I feel like there

(01:12:43):
is such a tendency to Sideline and Kirsten Dunston, the
Spider Web characters who are disabled in action sequences specifically,
but in a lot of genres um He is like
those action sequences, particularly like once they're on the ladder
and all this stuff, Like those scenes don't work if

(01:13:04):
his character is removed from the scene. And so I
did like that Dom is in the in the way
that there's parody across genders in action. It seems like
there was a fair amount of parody with ability as
well in the action scenes, which was cool. Yeah, I
felt that too, And I think it's notable that he

(01:13:25):
also survives until the end and that he doesn't go
I feel like a lot of movies would have killed
off a disabled character specifically because of their like they
wouldn't have survived because of their disability, And I think
that it's actually pretty remarkable that the filmmakers let that
character survive until the end. It's true, you can't say

(01:13:47):
the same for how non white characters in this movie
are treated. That is true. I mean I think that Christie, who,
by the way, is played It took me so long
into the movie. I'm like, I know this guy. I
kept thinking of that the actor Gary Dordan is his name,
and I was like looking at him, I was like
thinking of my aunt's house. I'm like, what is the

(01:14:08):
connection between this man and my aunt's house. He was
on c s I for like ten years and my
aunt used to love that show. So I was like, Oh,
it's c s I guy, So whatever, that's a useless
fact that you can know. But I would argue that
he's He's Christie is the only black character who has
a lot of influence on what goes on in the plot.

(01:14:31):
There are other people of color, just it's just Christie
and the soldier who gets frozen who are black. And
then there's the two Latin X military men, including the
general and then the one who makes it a long
time right. But it's like even even the guy who
lives a long time, I don't I don't know what
his name was, or like what anything about him. In

(01:14:51):
the same way that like with the other lady, we
don't know anything about her. She she makes it about halfway,
but like who was that no idea. I didn't know
until listening to y'all's episodes that this franchise never has
a woman of color character or guest character. But Vasquez
is played by a white woman. What Vasquez is played

(01:15:13):
by a white woman in brown face in the movie Aliens?
It is? It is true, Like, I feel like there
are not many popular movies with stuff that ages quite
as poorly as brown face character and one of the
best regarded sci fi movies of all time. It's so infuriating.
And also, I mean this franchise for as much as

(01:15:35):
I am like genuinely being swung to the side of like,
this movie is pretty good, um, because Cracy is a
worker of miracles. All I'm saying it's better than thirty nine,
better than I'll give it a forty one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:15:56):
But but this, I mean throughout it's for a for
a franchise that is really fixated on reproduction anxiety, which
I do think is a topic that isn't off the
table for you know, men to explore. I think that
that's like, it's a it's a worthy it's a topic
that affects anyone who's ever been born. So sure people

(01:16:19):
are you know, entitled to explore that topic, but the
fact that it's like if you go through the production,
like the top level production of every single one of
these movies, it's it's just guys. It's just white guys,
Like it's man yeah, and it's like, we just let's
get some other voices in the room here, maybe with uh,
with you know, people who have been on both sides

(01:16:41):
of of this uh of this thing. I'm about to
say a kind of gender normative thing. But um, I
think that if there was anybody in charge who was
female bodied in this production, they would have shopped the
close up of her manicure on a day where it
wasn't so grown out like it her cocoon birth. I
was like, that's a two week old manicure, Like this

(01:17:04):
is the one time you were going to shoot a
close up of it? Like I mean, maybe they were like, well,
it'll be too unrealistic. If where did you get this
manicure on a ship? We have to let it grow
out so it looks I don't I believe that they
just don't. They weren't looking and they're supposed to be
her nails, and like it doesn't look like nails. Because

(01:17:24):
it looks like a grown out acrylic manicure and it
really bluts me. But there that's like a very valid point.
It's like I feel like that is like almost giving
the same like the ponytail moment in Birds of Prey
where it's like if you know, you know um, and
if you don't, people are gonna make fun of you
for not attempting to know. Yeah, I don't. Yeah this

(01:17:48):
this I forget what I was about to say something
about birth. I feel like we've talked a lot about birth.
Uh yeah. My notes for this movie were pretty sparse.
It was mostly um round problem and shoots a spider
the end. I have a lot of I honestly like
being able to understand this movie through your perspective crazy.

(01:18:12):
I feel like it's genuinely been very very helpful to
me to understand because it is like there is a
lot of interesting stuff going on here, and then I
just feel like it doesn't quite go as far as
I would like it too in other areas. And also
just like, yeah, this movie is really erotic, you know,
in a in a way that like I don't hate it.

(01:18:34):
It's just like it's I like, that's not even a
criticism I have as much as an unavoidable observation. Well,
it's erotic between Ripley and her alien offspring, so I
do have a problem with it in the sense that
it's incestuous. I get. I mean, I can see that.

(01:18:55):
I it's so cuckoo that it didn't super bother me,
and like, I guess it is like the gendered way
that people interact with xeno morphs is like I feel
like that. That is more what stuck with me of
watching back old scenes from alien and aliens and men

(01:19:16):
being so freaked out by being inhabited by a parasite
and then m child bearing people like inherently being like, no,
I must protect the parasite, as if this is just
like a universal response like I don't. Yeah, see what
I love about it as a monster her babies a lot? Yeah, yeah,

(01:19:38):
I really I really like that it it equalizes birth anxiety.
And from a writer who thinks that men might have
womb anxiety, this movie does not suggest that anybody has
womb anxiety. And I think that really, I don't know,
I really like that about this monster and I hate
like making the fear of it gender it at all,

(01:20:00):
But I do think that the relationship between Ripley and
the alien baby is to me, it's supposed to be
more God destroying their own creation then mother rejecting child.
And I like that the prequels did not exist even

(01:20:21):
as a as an idea. I don't think at this
at this moment, but then like that really does resonate,
and I think that gives this movie a good place
in the franchise, is that these movies become less about
the anxiety of acts like birthing an alien and more
about what have we created as humanity and do we
need to destroy it? And then there's of course this

(01:20:42):
other alien species that created us and intends to destroy it,
and that's where there's unit more goo comes from. Um.
But yeah, it feels it feels more to me like
this movie is this This is maybe just an optimistic
reading of it, but it feels like this franchise is like, Ripley,
you need to be a mom. Go be a mom.
You're a mom. M you're a woman, you have a wound,
you're gonna get raped, and you're going to be a mom.

(01:21:04):
And then this movie is like, no, Ripley's a fucking
god and she's going to reject her own creation and
saving to save gosh well, but I feel like, like
how much of it was originally sexual and how much
of that is just really Scott noticing the hr guy
your designs, But then even like the way that they're
creating those designs the actual pieces on set, Like whose

(01:21:28):
idea was it that the phace hugger is literally an oyster.
It's a it's the vaginast vagina monster I've seen in
a while, and that's saying something because they get pretty vagina,
but it's also a penis monster. I have written on
my arm from you earlier, Jamie, don't wax my flaps

(01:21:52):
flapped things. But it's I think that it's it's a
penis horror and it's a vulva horror, and it's the
horror of birth for every body. Yeah, and then Alien
three is just like what if instead of the metaphor,
she was just always about to get raped all the time? Like, thanks, David,
interesting idea, And I want to I want to be

(01:22:13):
clear that, like we hear on the Bechtel cast and
we've talked about this before, but motherhood is something we
obviously fully support. Assuming a person who becomes a mother
wants to be a mother. I don't want to sound
like we are condemning motherhood or childbirth in any way.
What we are critical of is the patriarchal expectation for

(01:22:36):
anyone with a womb to give birth and to become
a mother and go through that process, and the expectation
that that's basically the sole purpose of a person with
a womb, regardless of whether or not that person wants
to be a mother and be a parent, because historically
that's been what society values and expects of people with wounds.

(01:22:58):
And so again, it's oppressive expectation that we take issue with.
It's completely anti choice, and it's turkey, and it's get
your creepy laws away from which in this world still
hasn't been resolved by the twenty three hundreds, which is

(01:23:19):
like just wacky enough to believe and also still smoking.
I guess, yeah, well, you know, big tobacco. It's wild.
Is there any other stuff? We That was all I
had for? Note? What is there? Are there anything we

(01:23:39):
hasn't we haven't hasn't, haven't touched on yet. I've covered
everything I had. Yeah, I think we nailed it. I
think we blew alien Resurrection wide open. I also just
wanted to give the back tol cast a tip of
the hat for how many movies we've covered that came
out in the year as the production conflicts for this movie,

(01:24:03):
when Janet was trying to get space to film this
movie because they, I guess the other alien movies were
shot in England. This was shot in Hollywood because Sigourney
was a co producer and she was just like, why
the international commute, which I think is like really very
good use of power. But they were shooting at uh

(01:24:24):
like a Hollywood lot, and they had difficulty securing studio
space because of Titanic, and because of Starship Troopers, and
because of the Lost World Jurassic Park. So there were
just so many huge movies filming in in Hollywood studios.
In the best of them, of course, being Titanic, the

(01:24:47):
best movie ever made, ever made, ever made. It's a
it's a fact. Um does this movie pass the Bechtel test?
It actually does quite a lot. It does. Between Ripley
and Call primarily, but they talk about aliens. They talk
about how Call is a robot, they talk about how
Ripley's part alien, They talk about Earth, they talk about

(01:25:10):
a lot of stuff, religion, religion, the nature of humanity
and if humans possess it, and Ripley says, I knew
you couldn't be a human You're too humane. No human,
no human being could be that humane, which is only
the second most Josh windn't wed any line in this,
I think, second to uh, I thought you were dead.

(01:25:31):
I get that a lot. Feel a very good line.
That's pretty funny. Um. I did have to laugh when
Ripley says something like, who do I have to funk
around here to get off this boat? And then Ron
Perlman is like, well, I can get you off, maybe
not the boat, and I was like the ship. I mean,
he's an again, a despicable character, and that's a gross

(01:25:53):
line coming from him, but it's a pretty funny line. Otherwise, anyway,
does it pass the back to test when Ripley has
to murder the terrifying body horror clone of herself with
a flamethrower. I think it could. Yeah, I think so.
I think. You know, it's a tense interaction, but you know,
let women have tension. Yeah, she says kill me, and

(01:26:16):
then Ripley and the responses. The action is the response,
but is definitely a conversation. It's a conversation. Yeah, it's true.
So it passes handily. Um, as far as our nipple
scale goes a scale of zero to five nipples based
on how the movie fares. Looking at it through an

(01:26:36):
intersectional feminist lens, um, I mean power in. I'll split it.
I'll give it a right down the middle two point five.
I do think there is some interesting commentary being made

(01:26:58):
on kind of the just a session of male authority figures,
and like the fact that it's military and medical, you know,
because there there's a lot to criticize about the way
medical professionals, some of them harbor a lot of biases
and withhold medical care from a lot of marginalized groups

(01:27:21):
of people. So I think it's like interesting that it's
these like military medical personnel and like all you know,
these industrial complexes that are obsessed with basically using female
bodies as vessels to perpetuate their own very destructive agenda.

(01:27:45):
And yeah, I think there's again these interesting parallels to
be drawn about what's happening currently in the world in
terms of groups of men being obsessed with controlling people
with uteruses and denying people access to bodily autonomy. So
I think that's all an interesting thing that the movie explores.

(01:28:07):
I think that as far as how effectively it does
that that might be a little up for debate, but
I think it's I appreciate that the movie attempts something
like that. I don't like how weirdly horny Ripley gets
for her children, her alien children. I do appreciate that

(01:28:31):
the main relationship that emerges in the movie that we
are rooting for is between two fem presenting beings. Again,
they're not human women, but they are for all intents
and purposes, women, I suppose, and that that's the kind
of most compelling relationship between characters in the entire movie. Um. Yeah,

(01:28:54):
So there's some pros and cons of this very bizarre
movie that's obsessed with birth imagery. I will give it
too point five nipples. Does that seem too high? No,
I think I'll probably meet ei there, Okay, all right? Uh,
And I will give them to the spider that gets

(01:29:20):
shot to death by Ron Perlman. I'll meet you at
two point five. I. I think that there are a
lot of really admirable swings in this uh, in this movie,
and honestly, this conversation has been so enlightening and helpful
in clarifying some of those swings. Uh. And I also,

(01:29:40):
I mean, I like your interpretation, Gracie, that of of
Ripley as God versus Ripley as alien Grandma. Uh. And
that resolves I think like a lot of the like
cognitive dissonance I was experiencing. And I think that that's
a more I wish that if that was the canonical intention.

(01:30:02):
I wish that that was that almost they hit that
a little harder because I feel like that's a really
like cool journey to track in a way that is
like clear and obvious. I'll piggy back on what you said, Caitlin,
and I like that the central relationship is Ripley and
call I think that their connection makes a lot of sense.

(01:30:22):
I like their mutual rejection of what they've been told
about who they like, who they've been made to be,
versus choosing choose, like making a choice as an individual
that's also in the interest of the collective at the
same time, like it that's such a difficult line to toe.
That is like the thing that I think this movie
maybe does the most effectively. And then there's a bunch

(01:30:45):
of stuff that's like hit and miss that we've spent
the last two hours discussing, so I won't rehash. But
I think that two and a half feels good and admirable,
uh and admirable swing. Definitely a movie that like, uh like,
If not rewards, I'm rewatching. There's definitely ship you missed.

(01:31:05):
If it's been a long time since you've seen this movie,
and I think it's aged in a really interesting way,
and watch it with friends, don't watch it, don't watch
it alone. Have have a good night with friends. So
I'll do two and a half. I'll will give one
to that lady that dies, I'll give one to the basketball,

(01:31:25):
and I'll give the last point five to uh ripley um. I,
on the other hand, think that this is a four
nibble movie. I'll remind you that you both you both
give four nipples to aliens, both of you. Sounds like
something I would have been a couple of years ago. Yeah, um,

(01:31:48):
But yeah, I recognize that maybe a lot of what
I love about this movie is perhaps headcanon and is
not necessarily super active in the movie. But I do
think that a lot like there's a lot of male
gaze going on in this movie. The direction is very
very male gaze, and I agree. I mean, it's like
it's she's being really sexy with the alien. But I

(01:32:08):
feel like what that moment is supposed to be, and
it is really sexy and Sigourney Weavers keeping her eyes
still and moving her head around just because she looks
like Sigourney Weaver and she's moving in a fluid way.
But um, it's supposed to be her choosing between her
animal side and her human side and choosing humanity. I
don't think that's the script. I think it's just on
set it became very sexy. Um, But I'm gonna I'm

(01:32:32):
gonna throw a nipple at at least subverting the born
Sexy Yesterday trope because toss it over your shoulder right
into the basketball hoop because you know, and they're really
surprised that that's a that's a side effect. Um, I'm
gonna give, I mean a nipple to call um for

(01:32:54):
all of the reasons. It just um just I don't know.
It's unown a writer and Sigourney Weaver being being badasses
in a movie together like that does that does get?
That does a lot for me? Um, especially since part
of the reason Suggourney Weaver got cast in the first
place was from being very tall, and everyone who was
doing casting was like, see this, I can see I
can see as Ripley, Like that's Ripley walking in the

(01:33:15):
room and she like credits her quote Hooker boots about it.
So um as a short as a short person, I
like that. There's also window and a writer being a
badass UM five three. And I'm going to give a
nipple to the baby alien because I love the baby
alien so so much. And the lighting of the baby alien. Um,

(01:33:35):
they apparently had to uh c g I off the
umbilical cord when it was walking because it looked too
much like a penis, which is just like a fun
little I love that baby alien fact. Yeah, it was
like a c g I thing that had to happen.
It was the guy who c G I is that
it's the weirdest um editing he had to do. Um
but which this like to me relates just a tiny bit,

(01:33:56):
even though John didn't have anything to do with production
to Josh Weeden really wanting vision to have a penis
and having to be shown what that would look like,
to be told that that is incorrect. Um, but that's
a sidetrack. And I'm going to give a nipple to
the Josh Weedeney dialogue because uh, you know, thinking about
the human being aside. I love dialogue like that and

(01:34:19):
it is my lead character, my my Ripley being told
I thought you were dead. I get that a lot.
I'm like, that's a nipple for me. That's a nipple
from me, dog nipples. Well, Gracie, thank you so much
for coming back and for helping us. Yes, thank you
for appreciate this movie. Yeah, I'm happy that you watched it.
You can skip three. I mean Cube. The more I

(01:34:41):
learned about Alien Cube, the more I'm just like, I'm
I don't think I'll ever see the need to see it.
No where can people follow you online? Check out your stuff?
Plug away Um, I'm online on Instagram at Gracie Gillum
dr A C I E G I L L A

(01:35:02):
m um. And right now you can watch me in
Super Host on shutter app. It is coming up on
spooky season, so good time to get shutter app. And
it's a good movie to watch in your home and
contemplate the validity of safety in the domestic sphere. Ha
ha ha ha yeah my super host on shutter hell Yeah.

(01:35:24):
Check it out. You can follow us on Twitter and
Instagram at bechtel Cast. You can subscribe to our Patreon
a k a. Matreon for five dollars a month at
patreon dot com, slash specktel Cast. It gets you to
bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back
catalog of bonus episodes, which is over a hundred. Now

(01:35:46):
I think, yeah, I think we did it. We've crossed
into triple figures. Wow, there's so much content left to
explore if you're not already a matron, and you can
also grab our some merch of were public dot com
slash the backtel Cast if you are so inclined. If
you have a baby alien to dress, I'm pretty sure

(01:36:07):
we have clothes for baby alien. Also, I meant it
is a very size inclusive site. So go there, have
a good time, and uh everyone, I think we just
got to Earth. I mean, I know it's kind of
a ship hole, but I'd rather stay with the things. Man.

(01:36:28):
Fun fact like, she's apparently they're they're gonna put the ship.
They're gonna send the ship to somewhere that's unpopulated and
according to xenopedia dot com, that places central Africa. Okay,
so that's interesting. Oh okay, well this movie is a mess.

(01:36:54):
Bye bye bye

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

The Bechdel Cast News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Caitlin Durante

Jamie Loftus

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Alien Resurrection with Gracie Gillam