What Your Choice Between “Alien” & “Aliens” Says About You

When it comes to the first two films in the Alien franchise, people tend to either prefer the first film in the series, Alien, or its immediate sequel, Aliens. The former is the more nuanced Ridley Scott horror film that took the concept of the creature feature to the next level, while the sequel is its more action-oriented brother serving as a kind of first in a very brief trend of James Cameron making action-y sequels to horror films. (The first Terminator is much closer to a horror film than Terminator 2.)

You may not have realized it, but your preference between these two cinematic hallmarks tells certain people everything they need to know about you as a person.

So, which is your favorite movie: Alien or Aliens? Here’s what your deceptively simple answer reveals.

I’m an Alien Person

If your answer was Alien, this signifies that you are a vastly complex individual with a dizzying maze of thoughts and refined taste.

You likely have an appreciation for the humanities and fine art, with a penchant for high-concept art films that go way over most people’s heads, with little tolerance for the trivial or ridiculous. You probably prefer the ominousness of the dark to the obviousness of the light, finding a distinct black beauty in what isn’t always right there before your eyes, with a flair for the mysterious.

You find the unknown to be a pit worth pondering but ultimately existentially terrifying, from the mechanisms of a foreign creature you don’t understand to the vastness of the universe in its all-encompassing indifference toward us as a species, let alone as individuals.

You’re most likely an antinatalist in the spirit of David Benatar who believes that people should no longer reproduce and should acknowledge that life is pain. To exist is to suffer and wallow in a pit of anguish from those first flickering moments of cognizance to the deepest dark annals of our final moments.

You probably see women as the true pinnacle of human strength a la Alien‘s central protagonist, largely because of the mastery of the sex that drives us forward and enslaves the meek minds of men, and yet we as humans are a collectively weak and doomed fluke of nature’s perceivably cruel and pathetically flawed evolutionary pathology. We are no more fit to survive in an environment like that of planet LV-426 or the halls of the Nostromo than we are to survive on our “home” planet, on which we are the sole species that requires unnaturally produced coating and shelter to keep us comfortable and safe.

We are creatures born of a cold and dry womb, awaiting our inevitable extinguishment until the next doomed descendants come to face a world even harsher than we can ever fathom, as we fade into nonexistence like the worms beneath our feet we somehow see ourself as superior to, when in the end we’re all the same in that shared void.

You sit there, sometimes for hours at a time, staring at the wall and projecting an image of humanity’s inevitable demise onto that pale surface, wondering how we could have possibly come into existence when so many of us lack a conscience and the ability to cooperate with any semblance of cohesion. Corporations and monopolies exist to tighten the chains around the people at the bottom of the societal funnel, until those less fortunate are squeezed through the meat grinder they can never escape.

And you look through that wall ahead and see just how immense the blackness really is, a blackness that isn’t so much blackness but the absolute lack of it or any other shade. There is only nothing, the absence of everything we’ve come to know and that polar opposite we can’t even imagine, waiting for us with its beckoning silent call that assures us that our screams will forever remain unheard by anyone but ourselves, whether floating in the vacuum of space or the endless hallways down which lie equally infinite chasms of pure unadulterated terror.

I’m an Aliens Person

If your favorite of the two films is Aliens, chances are you’re a relatively simple person with simple pleasures. You enjoy the explosions and general audiovisual noise of an action flick with little patience for a more slowly paced film with any kind of elegance.

You’re not afraid of the unknown because your ego outweighs your intellectual capacity, so you’re far more likely to go into the dark guns blazing to ignite the space with superficial light than to actually contemplate what lies therein. You enjoy mindless video games that entail shooting and detonating things with minimal focus on anything like characters or story beyond the basics.

You’re never idle enough to think and yet your intuition that guides you is almost as inept as your thoughts, yielding unfavorable results on many occasions while you still rationalize that your successes outweigh your failures simply because you choose not to remember your failures. You might be a meathead and visit the gym to build your physical muscle as the atrophied muscle between your ears gives in to blind impulses and the decision to wander through life like a mouse in a death trap-riddled maze who can’t even see or smell the promised cheese but believes it’s somewhere.

If you see or experience something you don’t understand, you don’t bother to stop and think about it. As an impulsive person who thinks that actions speak louder than anything else, you typically let your flight-or-fight responses take you along for the ride—”fight” being your most frequent conscious and unconscious choice.

You don’t understand just how little you matter in the big equation of things. You think you’re essentially a god and nothing can stand in your way, regardless of what comes in your way to prove differently. Matter over mind is your philosophy as you moronically trudge your way through everything that truly might matter in any way. You represent the blind stupidity of those who cannot contemplate the ominous darkness or even see the point in questioning your existence as you ignorantly plow through life with blatant disregard for the forces that unfairly chose to bring you into this half-blink of an existence. And you will die having failed to achieve anything within your brief timeline worth remembering beyond what your prospective superficial children or ex-spouses might recall with equally moronic half-remembrance.

You’re a shrimp in the brackish pond who doesn’t know it doesn’t belong and so scuttles along the bottom of life waiting to curl and die, tail at the mouth.

Hopefully, in this post you learned just how easy it is to peg you based on whether you prefer Alien or Aliens. So, next time you reveal which is your favorite to anyone who asks, remember that you can essentially label your entire persona and identity as an “Alien” or “Aliens” person without the need to say any more.

Daniel Craig’s Forehead Should Definitely Be the Next Bond

Daniel Craig's forehead with white background
Meet the best potential candidate for the new Bond, in my opinion.

We know that No Time to Die will be Daniel Craig’s final turn as everyone’s favorite alcoholic misogynist spy James Bond. Studios have been scrambling to find the next candidate. Men like Tom Hardy and Idris Elba have been in talks (with Elba ruled out as too old), but people are completely overlooking whom I think truly deserves the role once he’s finished: Daniel Craig’s forehead.

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5 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Stranger Things

Kids group picture in Stranger Things

Stranger Things is riding high on the Netflix popularity train, with some incredible homages to strange ’80s horror and science fiction franchises, particularly those created by strange weirdos Stephen King and Steven Spielberg, with an amazingly strange John Carpenter-esque score composed and performed by that strange electronic band Survive. It’s one big ball of strange, and while you may know a lot about the show’s references and Millie Bobby Brown thanks to Aaron Paul’s wonderfully strange interview, here are some things that you may have overlooked.

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5 Things the Star Wars Episode VIII Robe Photo Could Mean

If you’re not currently aware, Star Wars Episode VIII director Rian Johnson took this photo of a lone robe on a coat hanger in the middle of some rocky area.

Star Wars Episode VIII robe set photo by Rian Johnson

There have been many interpretations regarding what this could mean, including that it may indicate that Luke Skywalker is dead, or that this robe is Rey’s, meaning that Luke is training her in the ways of the Jedi.

But I disagree with those theories for several reasons. Here are my interpretations of what this photo could bring to the Star Wars universe in the next chapter.

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The Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence Paradox

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper enjoying being merged together

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence have appeared in multiple films together, as you may know. In a few they have been romantically involved, such as Silver Linings Playbook, while in others they are simply connected vicariously through other characters, e.g., American Hustle. While watching them in American Hustle–in which Cooper plays an FBI agent bossing around a criminal Christian Bale, whose character is married to Jennifer Lawrence’s–I saw a tear in space and time for a brief period when Cooper and Lawrence were in the same scene, in a casino.

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Is Mr. Robot Actually About Elliot’s Fish?

Mr. Robot on the surface appears to be a television show about an expert hacker with social anxiety who tries to fight an evil corporation with the help of the mysterious Mr. Robot and an underground group of rebellious tech experts called Fsociety. Elliot works with them to coordinate digital attacks while going through a morphine addiction as well as complicated relationships with his longtime friend and another fling. But this is simply the surface story.

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Dean Winters Needs Help for His Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dean Winters as teenage girl in Allstate commercial
No, no you’re not, Dean. You don’t look or sound anything like a teenage girl, and I wish you were aware of that.

For the past few years we’ve seen him tell us with complete sincerity that he’s a football player, teenage girl, a screaming toddler, a hot babe jogging (yeah, sure), and even inanimate objects and weather elements such as a lamp and a “pleasant breeze.” He’s even told us he’s a deer as he wanders into the middle of the street only to let himself get run over by a car to prove a point about insurance. People seem to find this amusing, while I’m seemingly the only one who can see the real tragedy occurring inside this man’s mind.

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New Review Coming Tonight, for Real

I know in my last blog post entry about The Tasting Room I said my new review for Hands of Death would be two weekends ago, but of course things come up. I’ve been working on the review the past few days, though, and I will definitely have it up later this evening. By later this evening, I’m talking around midnight Central Standard Time in America (thought I’d be specific for any international readers).

I wouldn’t even bother posting about this, but I actually saw that someone searched “hands of death 1987 review” today, which probably indicates there’s an audience who might like to see this thing posted.

So, get ready for some Mike Abbott action with those perpetually psychotic eyes.

Mike Abbott surprised with wide eyes

(Source for this magnificent .gif)

An Open Letter to Jeff Daniels

Jeff Daniels at PaleyFest

Hi Jeff (I hope I can call you Jeff like you’re my best bud),

I’m not your biggest fan. I like your work, and enjoy your appearances, but I wouldn’t call myself the kind of guy who just watches a film or show because you’re in it. I just thought I’d write you, a pretty cool dude, an open letter. Sometimes a man gets the itch to write to a celebrity, and you just happen to be that celeb, the guy I used to call “Jeff Dannels” when I was a child who’d never heard the name “Daniel” before.

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Black Mass: A Film That’s Actually About Shellfish

Johnny Depp as James
Johnny Depp as James “Whitey” Bulger, probably ruminating internally on his clam instincts vs. human needs

In Scott Cooper’s recent effort Black Mass, Johnny Depp is a gangster with white-blue contacts and make-up that makes him look like a balding clam with a gnarly set of teeth. If a clam were a man, he’d be James “Whitey” Bulger in this film. This man is a clam who likes to say threatening things and kill people just because. He carries guns, but he enjoys the occasional taking of life with ropes and hands, too.

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