August 23, 2025 • 19 mins
WARNING!
This episode of the Weekly Roundup is not only out early, it's filled with secrets!
So if you don't know anything about Weapons or Alien Earth, turn back now. Ripley and Father Malone will be back with a proper show that's spoiler free next time. But you've been warned about this one.
00:00 Introduction and Spoiler Alert
01:25 Corrections and Clarifications
05:11 Spoiler Philosophy and Upcoming Reviews
06:37 Alien Earth
12:48 Weapons
17:08 Final Thoughts
Father Malone
@midnight_viewing
FatherMalone71@gmail.com
patreon.com/fathermalone
This episode of the Weekly Roundup is not only out early, it's filled with secrets!
So if you don't know anything about Weapons or Alien Earth, turn back now. Ripley and Father Malone will be back with a proper show that's spoiler free next time. But you've been warned about this one.
00:00 Introduction and Spoiler Alert
01:25 Corrections and Clarifications
05:11 Spoiler Philosophy and Upcoming Reviews
06:37 Alien Earth
12:48 Weapons
17:08 Final Thoughts
Father Malone
@midnight_viewing
FatherMalone71@gmail.com
patreon.com/fathermalone
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Weird way. Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly
(00:51):
round up, The Spoiler Round Up. This is an anomaly
of an episode in that we're going back over previously
covered material, and as that title will suggests, this is
gonna be fucking spoilerrific. We're gonna Rosebud all over Bruce
Willis's ghost who's having lunch with Luke Skywalker's dad. Also
a ghost named Darth Vader. So so if you don't
(01:11):
know that Tyler, Dirton and Jack are the same person,
you might want to leave. You know that Ed Norton's
character's name, right, not narrator, Definitely not Tyler. All the
books he keeps finding, I'm Jacks Colin, I'm Jack's blah
blah blah, He's Jack. Anyway, got some corrections. In last
week's episode, when I was discussing Alien Earth, I kept
(01:32):
referring to the head of the Prodigy Corporation as Kid Cavalier.
His name is Boy Cavalier. In my defense, I co
host Knight Mister Walters, a taxi podcast, and in the
most recent episode of that, Tony Banta went incognito in
the boxing ring as a fighter named Kid Rodriguez, and
there have been a ton of kid fighters because kid
anything is a cool name. Boy would lose its luster
(01:56):
at age sixteen, probably earlier if you're a child genie,
which clearly I am not, because it's boy Cavalier. In
other alien xenomorphic corrections, my mother informed me that she
would have definitely purchased that eighteen inch alien figure for
me had I only asked. This was a crushing revelation,
as you might imagine. I mean, I'm certain forty years
(02:18):
later and that figure would be long gone or and
or destroyed by me at some point, but it could
have been mine, freaking me out from the corner of
my room as I tried to sleep. Jesus, I'm glad
I didn't ask for it. My mother then reminded me
of her one and only toy rule, no toy guns,
as if I needed reminding that the only squirt gun
I was allowed as a child was shaped like bugs
(02:40):
bunny's head, humiliating in neighborhood warfare situations. And that's all
the corrections, because my reporting otherwise is unassailable, and there's
no Ripley here to check that well, I mean, she's here,
but she's asleep. Remember a few months back, I was
obsessed with Madmen because I discovered the joys of streaming
services that have created entire channels populated with only one show.
(03:02):
That's right, twenty four hours a day of the Goldbergs
bad example. That show's terrible. But anyway, mad Men was
like wallpaper here in the kab Lighthouse for a few weeks.
And now it's MythBusters. Remember MythBusters? Remember when everyone was
obsessed with how cool science is for a few years there.
That was heartening, hopeful even Well, there's like eighteen seasons
(03:24):
of that show. So that's what's on when I'm home
these days. It's comforting to hear Adam Savage cackling in
some portion of my home. Oh god, And it's nice
to see some critical thinking for a change. All right,
that's the end of the social commentary. The other thing
I ankled deep in these days is the Tim Robinson
(03:45):
show I Think You Should Leave on Netflix. I was
really slow warming to this fella and his humor, even
though every fucking comedian I respect has been singing his
praises for years. I just couldn't crack that code. Then
I watched his show Detroititer's also on Netflix, and that
was the key Robinson does cringey humor, which I am
(04:05):
generally off put by. Life is fucking awkward enough without
experiencing it vicariously through others, but Robinson has elevated it
into an art form. Also on Netflix. Also, I missed
the Boat on its initial run. The Unauthorized Bash Brothers
Experience The Lonely Island's visual poem. This is a fictional
album by jose Canseco and Mark maguire set in the
(04:27):
late nineteen eighties. The specificity of the music is what
finally grabbed me here. The beats and the rhymes they're
laying on top are so fucking era appropriate that it hurts.
I'm a little obsessed. It takes me half an hour
to get to work. That album is thirty minutes. How
many times do you think I've heard Andy Samberg as
jose Conseco boast about his room full of Kathy Ireland cutouts.
(04:50):
I got one hundred card board cutouts, the Kafy Ireland
all in one room. A run through that shit naked,
make them all watch me fuck myself with the broom.
Oh cassies, Oh my Cathys, you're the only ones that
know my pain, and you'll the only ones to see
my shame and yo jusse, Come on, man, we'll live
for the game. Let's talk spoilers. I generally just don't
(05:14):
give a shit about them myself. I'll read that script
for something years before it's made if I can get
my hands on it. My thing is, if the totality
of the entertainment is based on one surprise, then how
entertaining was it? Does it stand on its own, does
the twist or reveal deepen the other parts of the drama,
and how fucking rewatchable is it? Anyway? My system of
(05:35):
rules is not on trial here. I am very sensitive
to those viewers who preserve the twist with their very lives.
That's why I'm so hesitant to say as much as
I do in the pocket reviews here on the roundup,
which is me saying, turned this show off now if
you're allergic to the future, And if that's the case,
thank you for tuning in thus far, and I hope
you'll be back on Friday, where Yaoucha fest returns and
(05:58):
our pal HP with it. He and I are discussing
the PG thirteen masterpiece Aliens Versus Predator AVP. Hey, you
know me, no matter who wins, we lose. Look at
that tagline, it's predicting the future. That's Friday or if
you want to hear that and our review of Alien
Versus Predator Requiem, you can hear them both right now
(06:20):
on the Patreon channel, as well as the latest installment
of HP Hates Me, where he made me watch Corey
ham me myself and I what a fucking nightmare. Okay,
you have now been sufficiently warned spoilers by still here.
Our main topic is going to be weapons, but I
did want to touch on some of the alien Earth
(06:43):
to start. By the time you hear this, you might
actually know more than me, because the fourth episode will
be out as of this recording. I've watched the first
three a couple of times. I have to talk about
the fucking eyeball, you know, the one IMAGINEO the Wayland
Utahanni deep space research vessel at the center of this series,
the one that crashed into a Prodigy building in New Siam,
(07:04):
has apparently been in space for sixty five years. The
crew volunteered for what Ellen Ripley accidentally did to herself
at the end of Alien and they've brought back five species.
One is the xenomorph. One is this horrible bug thing
that drinks blood until it's a swollen sack of fleshy grossness.
There's a flying thing that's yet to be revealed. There's
(07:25):
what's being called the orchid, an apt name considering it
looks like an unopened orchid bud hanging upside down and
promising to open and reveal something really horrifying. And it'll
have to be to top the t ocellus, that's the
cruise designation for the octopus eye, a giant eyeball with
half a dozen irises and tentacled legs that are tensil
(07:47):
and lethal. And the motherfucker climbs into corpses, inserts itself
into the ocular cavity and then puppets their body. What
the fuck, Noah Hawley. He demonstrates it with a cat
one that looks like Jonesy. Holly himself described giggling as
he was writing it, recognizing just how horrible the scene is.
(08:08):
That's the correct response. As I said in the last
round up, Holly understood the power of surprise in the
first Alien film, and he very wisely realized he's not
going to get there as far as mind chattering moments
like Cain in the very first burst Chest, so instead
he's stacking up so much twisted, odd and mortally questionable
material that it creates the same overall effect as the
(08:29):
chest Burster. We're lucky he's interested in loftier ambitions because
I'm convinced, had Holly decided to just barrel into horror,
this could be unrelenting and most likely scarring. Another thing
that's kind of wackad do off kilter in this series
is the young adults that are our heroes and the
fact that they're actually children. The show never shines away
from reminding us about these tiny kids are running around
(08:51):
in adult synthetic bodies, nor does it shrink from confronting
some of the dodgier aspects to the process and the
character's own struggles with their new busy and identities. Speaking
of them, Wendy, our lead, is played by Sidney Chandler.
In addition to being Kyle Chandler's daughter who saw that coming,
she was the best part of Danny Boyle's mini series
(09:13):
Pistol about the rise of the sex pistols. Chandler played
Chrissy Hind and she fucking killed it. That series was
adapted mainly from Steve Jones's memoir of his time in
the Pistols, as such as heavily freighted towards Steve Jones
as the chief creative force behind the Pistols, which is
great for the Chrissy Hind subplot as she was Jones's friend.
(09:35):
But I'll let you decide for yourself the overall quality.
Maybe I should watch it again. I did come away
with a deeper appreciation of both Chrissy Hind and Vivian Westwood.
In any event, I really like her in Alien Earth,
and I particularly like the fact that Wendy and the
Lost Boys are synthetic hybrids. It solves two problems elegantly.
(09:55):
James Cameron recognized that in a hand to hand situation,
humans stand zero percent chance of surviving against an alien,
so he ramped up the firepower. And that's been the
only solution since then in any of the iterations until now,
because now our leads have no reason to fear the creature,
and odds are they're just as strong. And and this
(10:18):
is the really clever bit. If next season he wanted
to jump ahead, say twenty years, and tell the story
of Amanda Ripley, who's out there searching for her mom.
He could do so with these characters who don't age.
Jump another thirty years, and he could have them running
around the Silaco while Hicks and Bishop and Ripley are
slugging it out on LV four twenty six. I'm not
(10:39):
suggesting they need to do any of this actual interaction
with legacy characters. I'm just saying it's possible and exciting. Okay, weapons,
not joking anymore. This isn't a series you can push
a button and watch right now. So if you haven't
seen weapons, here we go. It's witchcraft. There's a witch.
(11:00):
She's kidnapping the children to feed on their life force.
And by she I mean Aunt Gladys, a shrunken apple
doll under a severe shocking red bob and a slash
of lipstick where her mouth ought to be a character
that every time she popped up on screen had be
confusedly wondering who is that? She really reminds me of?
Amy Madigan. Of course it is Amy Madigan, who I
(11:22):
hope is getting all the fucking notoriety she deserves. Remember
her on Carnival. She was the real evil there too.
She has had a long and illustrious career. But here's
the flick I always recommend. Streets of Fire. That's the
Walter Hill, a rock and roll fable from nineteen eighty four.
She auditioned for Ellen Ame and ended up taking the
role of McCoy, that is, the badass, fully capable soldier
(11:46):
of fortune sidekick that had been written for a man.
That's how fucking awesome Amy Madigan is. And if you
rewatch the movie, do so for one moment that involves McCoy.
When our heroes have infiltrated torchies. Of course there's torchies.
It's a Walter Hill movie. McCoy goes upstairs and gets
one of the gang alone. The speed with which Amy
(12:06):
Madigan draws a pistol and places it against the guy's
skull is nothing short of breathtaking. See for yourself. So weapons, Aunt, Gladys.
The story is that Alex, the only boy who didn't
go missing, His parents inform him that a distant relative
is ailing and coming to live with them. Thus Gladys,
and as soon as she's in the house, the parents
(12:27):
are different, distant odd threatening because Gladys, who claims at
times to be Alex's aunt, his mother's sister, and Alex's
great aunt, a sister of his grandmother, is above all
a witch, one who is winding down and falling apart
and needs to feed, and has chosen Alex's parents, but
finds that they're not sufficient sustenance. Thus she targets Alex's class.
(12:52):
A couple of things here, because this is the line
of demarcation, it would seem amongst viewers of the film
a contentious line at that early images of those seventeen
children climbing out of bed and stepping out and running
off into the night are so fucking evocative and so
weighted with possibility that for a lot of people, finding
out that it's the crazy old lady you avoid at
(13:12):
the grocery store is kind of a letdown. And I
get that, because the mystery of seventeen disappearances in one
night is intriguing enough on its own, that there was
seemingly no perpetrator is doubly so. And in my horrible brain,
I go to lovecrafty and darkness. Those kids could very
well be trapped in some hell of infinite teeth and terror,
(13:33):
But you know, sometimes the honest thing just clicks in
your mind. A puzzle piece you didn't know you were
looking for just appears. Here's how the overly analytical cinematic
dissection machine of a brain of mind worked. I mentioned
Fight Club earlier. You know what I realized in that
movie when Jack is punching himself in front of his boss,
he thinks for some reason, I thought about my first
fight with Tyler, and my mind went, because you've been
(13:55):
beating yourself up the whole time. There is no Tyler. Oh,
we're fallowing the journey of a crazy man. Somehow. The
site of the children running in the manner in which
they do, and the mystery and the title. The title
specifically locked my brain in on the notion that it's
witchcraft and someone is controlling these children and potentially as
(14:18):
human weapons. That's still pretty vague, but it's also a
pretty good cushion for the reveal, because had I been
convinced of the limitless possibilities of what actually happened to
those kids, I can see where it's a witch might
be that letdown, But I was not let down. That's
a scary fucking character and a scarier scenario we get
five separate tales around the central mystery. Those are all
(14:41):
peripheral characters when it comes down to it, because the
only story that matters here is Alex's story. In the
parallels between his ordeal with Aunt Gladys and the one
children dealing with alcoholic parents or drug addicted parents or
rageaholic workaholic. There's no shortage of parental distraction you can
plug into this scenario. But Gregor himself has alluded to
(15:01):
alcoholism at its route. Those parallels are largely unexplored in
popular entertainment, and those are the images and scenes that
keep turning over in my head. It's horrible to lose
a child, I know, and it's horrible to deal with
the fallout of tragedy in your community, especially when there's
a mystery at the center of it. But it's so
much worse for that child trapped with a monster, compelled
(15:25):
to do its bidding and be forced into silence above all,
suffering alone. God damn it, that's fucking horrible. Piggybacking off
of Paul Waller's podcast A Year in Horror for a
second here, Paul mentioned on his show that Creiger offered
Amy Madigan two backstories for on Gladys. One she was
in fact the distant relative who, in the intervening years
(15:47):
since last they'd encountered her, had found black magic and
become a witch. Or she was never human to begin with,
just a demon inside a withered human suit. We don't
know which one Amy Madigan chose. We don't know which
one Craiger had in mind, which I love. I think
it's in between. I think she's human, but I think
she's impossibly old and has been pulling this I'm your
(16:09):
long lost relative act for decades, if not centuries. But
I don't suppose any of that matters, because they've already
announced a prequel to Weapons, and that fills me with
as much dread as some of the scenes in it
look so far. Cregger's has shown remarkable restraint and thoughtfulness,
so I shouldn't doubt his intentions with a prequel. It's
just that prequels tend to be exposition machines for films
(16:31):
that definitely avoided such clumsiness. Oh that's why he said that,
Oh it's really a ghost. No answer is scarier than
no answer, yadeg. Weapons The movie has stayed with me
on a lot of levels, but it's the finale that
really grabbed me by the lapels. The sight of children
previously hypnotized and fed upon by a shriveled old crone
(16:55):
who's using an arcane system of outdated beliefs and powers
over them, chasing her down and tearing her apart was
more than cathartic. It was joyful. It was fucking hopeful.
There actual end of social commentary and end of this
brief but also weird episode of the Roundup. I'm always
(17:16):
around if you want to talk about this subject or
any subject, really, check the show notes on Instagram. We
are at midnight underscore viewing Oh my God. Check out
our Instagram everybody. Paul Williams Rainbow Connection, Paul Williams Swan
from Phantom of the Paradise, Paul Williams, emmittt Ottero's jug
band Christmas. Paul Williams liked and commented and reposted one
(17:36):
of my posts, and it's one where I'm singing one
of his songs, So I now consider myself a singer
with Paul Williams seal of approval. Anyway, find us there
or hit me up on the email, or go to
the Patreon and buy Ripley a new bag of pork
medallion dog treats. Oh fuck, I said it out loud,
and now she's awake and staring well for a hungry
(17:57):
Ripley gene. I'm father Malone, see you on Friday. What
I have, no trees, no baseball game. Man in the
baseball and the pack ro for the skin and in
the brains of the baseball, gonna run a on the
fucking train on the baseball. Tell me to be fucking
(18:18):
on the jumble. And my mother so strong now to
paint so bad that my motherfucking horse a
Weird way. Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly
(00:51):
round up, The Spoiler Round Up. This is an anomaly
of an episode in that we're going back over previously
covered material, and as that title will suggests, this is
gonna be fucking spoilerrific. We're gonna Rosebud all over Bruce
Willis's ghost who's having lunch with Luke Skywalker's dad. Also
a ghost named Darth Vader. So so if you don't
(01:11):
know that Tyler, Dirton and Jack are the same person,
you might want to leave. You know that Ed Norton's
character's name, right, not narrator, Definitely not Tyler. All the
books he keeps finding, I'm Jacks Colin, I'm Jack's blah
blah blah, He's Jack. Anyway, got some corrections. In last
week's episode, when I was discussing Alien Earth, I kept
(01:32):
referring to the head of the Prodigy Corporation as Kid Cavalier.
His name is Boy Cavalier. In my defense, I co
host Knight Mister Walters, a taxi podcast, and in the
most recent episode of that, Tony Banta went incognito in
the boxing ring as a fighter named Kid Rodriguez, and
there have been a ton of kid fighters because kid
anything is a cool name. Boy would lose its luster
(01:56):
at age sixteen, probably earlier if you're a child genie,
which clearly I am not, because it's boy Cavalier. In
other alien xenomorphic corrections, my mother informed me that she
would have definitely purchased that eighteen inch alien figure for
me had I only asked. This was a crushing revelation,
as you might imagine. I mean, I'm certain forty years
(02:18):
later and that figure would be long gone or and
or destroyed by me at some point, but it could
have been mine, freaking me out from the corner of
my room as I tried to sleep. Jesus, I'm glad
I didn't ask for it. My mother then reminded me
of her one and only toy rule, no toy guns,
as if I needed reminding that the only squirt gun
I was allowed as a child was shaped like bugs
(02:40):
bunny's head, humiliating in neighborhood warfare situations. And that's all
the corrections, because my reporting otherwise is unassailable, and there's
no Ripley here to check that well, I mean, she's here,
but she's asleep. Remember a few months back, I was
obsessed with Madmen because I discovered the joys of streaming
services that have created entire channels populated with only one show.
(03:02):
That's right, twenty four hours a day of the Goldbergs
bad example. That show's terrible. But anyway, mad Men was
like wallpaper here in the kab Lighthouse for a few weeks.
And now it's MythBusters. Remember MythBusters? Remember when everyone was
obsessed with how cool science is for a few years there.
That was heartening, hopeful even Well, there's like eighteen seasons
(03:24):
of that show. So that's what's on when I'm home
these days. It's comforting to hear Adam Savage cackling in
some portion of my home. Oh god, And it's nice
to see some critical thinking for a change. All right,
that's the end of the social commentary. The other thing
I ankled deep in these days is the Tim Robinson
(03:45):
show I Think You Should Leave on Netflix. I was
really slow warming to this fella and his humor, even
though every fucking comedian I respect has been singing his
praises for years. I just couldn't crack that code. Then
I watched his show Detroititer's also on Netflix, and that
was the key Robinson does cringey humor, which I am
(04:05):
generally off put by. Life is fucking awkward enough without
experiencing it vicariously through others, but Robinson has elevated it
into an art form. Also on Netflix. Also, I missed
the Boat on its initial run. The Unauthorized Bash Brothers
Experience The Lonely Island's visual poem. This is a fictional
album by jose Canseco and Mark maguire set in the
(04:27):
late nineteen eighties. The specificity of the music is what
finally grabbed me here. The beats and the rhymes they're
laying on top are so fucking era appropriate that it hurts.
I'm a little obsessed. It takes me half an hour
to get to work. That album is thirty minutes. How
many times do you think I've heard Andy Samberg as
jose Conseco boast about his room full of Kathy Ireland cutouts.
(04:50):
I got one hundred card board cutouts, the Kafy Ireland
all in one room. A run through that shit naked,
make them all watch me fuck myself with the broom.
Oh cassies, Oh my Cathys, you're the only ones that
know my pain, and you'll the only ones to see
my shame and yo jusse, Come on, man, we'll live
for the game. Let's talk spoilers. I generally just don't
(05:14):
give a shit about them myself. I'll read that script
for something years before it's made if I can get
my hands on it. My thing is, if the totality
of the entertainment is based on one surprise, then how
entertaining was it? Does it stand on its own, does
the twist or reveal deepen the other parts of the drama,
and how fucking rewatchable is it? Anyway? My system of
(05:35):
rules is not on trial here. I am very sensitive
to those viewers who preserve the twist with their very lives.
That's why I'm so hesitant to say as much as
I do in the pocket reviews here on the roundup,
which is me saying, turned this show off now if
you're allergic to the future, And if that's the case,
thank you for tuning in thus far, and I hope
you'll be back on Friday, where Yaoucha fest returns and
(05:58):
our pal HP with it. He and I are discussing
the PG thirteen masterpiece Aliens Versus Predator AVP. Hey, you
know me, no matter who wins, we lose. Look at
that tagline, it's predicting the future. That's Friday or if
you want to hear that and our review of Alien
Versus Predator Requiem, you can hear them both right now
(06:20):
on the Patreon channel, as well as the latest installment
of HP Hates Me, where he made me watch Corey
ham me myself and I what a fucking nightmare. Okay,
you have now been sufficiently warned spoilers by still here.
Our main topic is going to be weapons, but I
did want to touch on some of the alien Earth
(06:43):
to start. By the time you hear this, you might
actually know more than me, because the fourth episode will
be out as of this recording. I've watched the first
three a couple of times. I have to talk about
the fucking eyeball, you know, the one IMAGINEO the Wayland
Utahanni deep space research vessel at the center of this series,
the one that crashed into a Prodigy building in New Siam,
(07:04):
has apparently been in space for sixty five years. The
crew volunteered for what Ellen Ripley accidentally did to herself
at the end of Alien and they've brought back five species.
One is the xenomorph. One is this horrible bug thing
that drinks blood until it's a swollen sack of fleshy grossness.
There's a flying thing that's yet to be revealed. There's
(07:25):
what's being called the orchid, an apt name considering it
looks like an unopened orchid bud hanging upside down and
promising to open and reveal something really horrifying. And it'll
have to be to top the t ocellus, that's the
cruise designation for the octopus eye, a giant eyeball with
half a dozen irises and tentacled legs that are tensil
(07:47):
and lethal. And the motherfucker climbs into corpses, inserts itself
into the ocular cavity and then puppets their body. What
the fuck, Noah Hawley. He demonstrates it with a cat
one that looks like Jonesy. Holly himself described giggling as
he was writing it, recognizing just how horrible the scene is.
(08:08):
That's the correct response. As I said in the last
round up, Holly understood the power of surprise in the
first Alien film, and he very wisely realized he's not
going to get there as far as mind chattering moments
like Cain in the very first burst Chest, so instead
he's stacking up so much twisted, odd and mortally questionable
material that it creates the same overall effect as the
(08:29):
chest Burster. We're lucky he's interested in loftier ambitions because
I'm convinced, had Holly decided to just barrel into horror,
this could be unrelenting and most likely scarring. Another thing
that's kind of wackad do off kilter in this series
is the young adults that are our heroes and the
fact that they're actually children. The show never shines away
from reminding us about these tiny kids are running around
(08:51):
in adult synthetic bodies, nor does it shrink from confronting
some of the dodgier aspects to the process and the
character's own struggles with their new busy and identities. Speaking
of them, Wendy, our lead, is played by Sidney Chandler.
In addition to being Kyle Chandler's daughter who saw that coming,
she was the best part of Danny Boyle's mini series
(09:13):
Pistol about the rise of the sex pistols. Chandler played
Chrissy Hind and she fucking killed it. That series was
adapted mainly from Steve Jones's memoir of his time in
the Pistols, as such as heavily freighted towards Steve Jones
as the chief creative force behind the Pistols, which is
great for the Chrissy Hind subplot as she was Jones's friend.
(09:35):
But I'll let you decide for yourself the overall quality.
Maybe I should watch it again. I did come away
with a deeper appreciation of both Chrissy Hind and Vivian Westwood.
In any event, I really like her in Alien Earth,
and I particularly like the fact that Wendy and the
Lost Boys are synthetic hybrids. It solves two problems elegantly.
(09:55):
James Cameron recognized that in a hand to hand situation,
humans stand zero percent chance of surviving against an alien,
so he ramped up the firepower. And that's been the
only solution since then in any of the iterations until now,
because now our leads have no reason to fear the creature,
and odds are they're just as strong. And and this
(10:18):
is the really clever bit. If next season he wanted
to jump ahead, say twenty years, and tell the story
of Amanda Ripley, who's out there searching for her mom.
He could do so with these characters who don't age.
Jump another thirty years, and he could have them running
around the Silaco while Hicks and Bishop and Ripley are
slugging it out on LV four twenty six. I'm not
(10:39):
suggesting they need to do any of this actual interaction
with legacy characters. I'm just saying it's possible and exciting. Okay, weapons,
not joking anymore. This isn't a series you can push
a button and watch right now. So if you haven't
seen weapons, here we go. It's witchcraft. There's a witch.
(11:00):
She's kidnapping the children to feed on their life force.
And by she I mean Aunt Gladys, a shrunken apple
doll under a severe shocking red bob and a slash
of lipstick where her mouth ought to be a character
that every time she popped up on screen had be
confusedly wondering who is that? She really reminds me of?
Amy Madigan. Of course it is Amy Madigan, who I
(11:22):
hope is getting all the fucking notoriety she deserves. Remember
her on Carnival. She was the real evil there too.
She has had a long and illustrious career. But here's
the flick I always recommend. Streets of Fire. That's the
Walter Hill, a rock and roll fable from nineteen eighty four.
She auditioned for Ellen Ame and ended up taking the
role of McCoy, that is, the badass, fully capable soldier
(11:46):
of fortune sidekick that had been written for a man.
That's how fucking awesome Amy Madigan is. And if you
rewatch the movie, do so for one moment that involves McCoy.
When our heroes have infiltrated torchies. Of course there's torchies.
It's a Walter Hill movie. McCoy goes upstairs and gets
one of the gang alone. The speed with which Amy
(12:06):
Madigan draws a pistol and places it against the guy's
skull is nothing short of breathtaking. See for yourself. So weapons, Aunt, Gladys.
The story is that Alex, the only boy who didn't
go missing, His parents inform him that a distant relative
is ailing and coming to live with them. Thus Gladys,
and as soon as she's in the house, the parents
(12:27):
are different, distant odd threatening because Gladys, who claims at
times to be Alex's aunt, his mother's sister, and Alex's
great aunt, a sister of his grandmother, is above all
a witch, one who is winding down and falling apart
and needs to feed, and has chosen Alex's parents, but
finds that they're not sufficient sustenance. Thus she targets Alex's class.
(12:52):
A couple of things here, because this is the line
of demarcation, it would seem amongst viewers of the film
a contentious line at that early images of those seventeen
children climbing out of bed and stepping out and running
off into the night are so fucking evocative and so
weighted with possibility that for a lot of people, finding
out that it's the crazy old lady you avoid at
(13:12):
the grocery store is kind of a letdown. And I
get that, because the mystery of seventeen disappearances in one
night is intriguing enough on its own, that there was
seemingly no perpetrator is doubly so. And in my horrible brain,
I go to lovecrafty and darkness. Those kids could very
well be trapped in some hell of infinite teeth and terror,
(13:33):
But you know, sometimes the honest thing just clicks in
your mind. A puzzle piece you didn't know you were
looking for just appears. Here's how the overly analytical cinematic
dissection machine of a brain of mind worked. I mentioned
Fight Club earlier. You know what I realized in that
movie when Jack is punching himself in front of his boss,
he thinks for some reason, I thought about my first
fight with Tyler, and my mind went, because you've been
(13:55):
beating yourself up the whole time. There is no Tyler. Oh,
we're fallowing the journey of a crazy man. Somehow. The
site of the children running in the manner in which
they do, and the mystery and the title. The title
specifically locked my brain in on the notion that it's
witchcraft and someone is controlling these children and potentially as
(14:18):
human weapons. That's still pretty vague, but it's also a
pretty good cushion for the reveal, because had I been
convinced of the limitless possibilities of what actually happened to
those kids, I can see where it's a witch might
be that letdown, But I was not let down. That's
a scary fucking character and a scarier scenario we get
five separate tales around the central mystery. Those are all
(14:41):
peripheral characters when it comes down to it, because the
only story that matters here is Alex's story. In the
parallels between his ordeal with Aunt Gladys and the one
children dealing with alcoholic parents or drug addicted parents or
rageaholic workaholic. There's no shortage of parental distraction you can
plug into this scenario. But Gregor himself has alluded to
(15:01):
alcoholism at its route. Those parallels are largely unexplored in
popular entertainment, and those are the images and scenes that
keep turning over in my head. It's horrible to lose
a child, I know, and it's horrible to deal with
the fallout of tragedy in your community, especially when there's
a mystery at the center of it. But it's so
much worse for that child trapped with a monster, compelled
(15:25):
to do its bidding and be forced into silence above all,
suffering alone. God damn it, that's fucking horrible. Piggybacking off
of Paul Waller's podcast A Year in Horror for a
second here, Paul mentioned on his show that Creiger offered
Amy Madigan two backstories for on Gladys. One she was
in fact the distant relative who, in the intervening years
(15:47):
since last they'd encountered her, had found black magic and
become a witch. Or she was never human to begin with,
just a demon inside a withered human suit. We don't
know which one Amy Madigan chose. We don't know which
one Craiger had in mind, which I love. I think
it's in between. I think she's human, but I think
she's impossibly old and has been pulling this I'm your
(16:09):
long lost relative act for decades, if not centuries. But
I don't suppose any of that matters, because they've already
announced a prequel to Weapons, and that fills me with
as much dread as some of the scenes in it
look so far. Cregger's has shown remarkable restraint and thoughtfulness,
so I shouldn't doubt his intentions with a prequel. It's
just that prequels tend to be exposition machines for films
(16:31):
that definitely avoided such clumsiness. Oh that's why he said that,
Oh it's really a ghost. No answer is scarier than
no answer, yadeg. Weapons The movie has stayed with me
on a lot of levels, but it's the finale that
really grabbed me by the lapels. The sight of children
previously hypnotized and fed upon by a shriveled old crone
(16:55):
who's using an arcane system of outdated beliefs and powers
over them, chasing her down and tearing her apart was
more than cathartic. It was joyful. It was fucking hopeful.
There actual end of social commentary and end of this
brief but also weird episode of the Roundup. I'm always
(17:16):
around if you want to talk about this subject or
any subject, really, check the show notes on Instagram. We
are at midnight underscore viewing Oh my God. Check out
our Instagram everybody. Paul Williams Rainbow Connection, Paul Williams Swan
from Phantom of the Paradise, Paul Williams, emmittt Ottero's jug
band Christmas. Paul Williams liked and commented and reposted one
(17:36):
of my posts, and it's one where I'm singing one
of his songs, So I now consider myself a singer
with Paul Williams seal of approval. Anyway, find us there
or hit me up on the email, or go to
the Patreon and buy Ripley a new bag of pork
medallion dog treats. Oh fuck, I said it out loud,
and now she's awake and staring well for a hungry
(17:57):
Ripley gene. I'm father Malone, see you on Friday. What
I have, no trees, no baseball game. Man in the
baseball and the pack ro for the skin and in
the brains of the baseball, gonna run a on the
fucking train on the baseball. Tell me to be fucking
(18:18):
on the jumble. And my mother so strong now to
paint so bad that my motherfucking horse a
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