Comments by "Hittite Charioteer" (@hittitecharioteer) on "The Critical Drinker" channel.

  1. Might they be perpetrators of these crimes? I'd say we are entitled to ask the question of them.
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  2. Have we had a gay dalek? A trans or non-binary Cyberman?
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  3. "Alien" (1979) was a stunning and thought-provoking film, with many beautiful sets and broader originality. "Aliens" (1986) was just a spectacular shoot'em up, but beyond ludicrous (far too many weaknesses, the worst being the loss of The Nostromo and Hadley's Hope…for what?). The other films that followed (including the Predator cross-franchise) all failed to live up to the first film. I actually hate Prometheus and Alien:Covenant – some things are best not answered. Once a mystery the magnitude and depth that Alien (1979) is created, it is definitely best left at that. The utter vastness of spacetime makes the likelihood of any answers implausible. Just because we might want to know, is that enough? DO WE REALLY NEED TO KNOW? The one thing I wished of Alien: the crew holding tight until a more fulsome analysis of the repeating acoustic beacon. Isn't that what any crew would have done? I would have liked to have heard the signal itself. And surely between them they'd have had the forethought to scan Brett immediately on his regaining consciousness? All the same, it is a film with thankfully few such glaring failings.
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  4.  @oinkleberry  The need to answer the "Alien mystery", and the writing of weak scripts to do it, I view as two distinct matters. I agree with you: the scripts are ruinous. But for me, 1979's Alien was good (no other superlative seems quite justified). The 1986 film Aliens, had so many strengths too – but utterly missed a golden chance to offer a plausible follow-up and to develop the 'mystery and wonder' of "Alien". Aliens (1986) might well have been a stunning film on so many levels, but it sort of blew the gaff on the creatures – which themselves seemed neither as stealthy, so 'other worldly', or in a perverse sense so 'beautiful' (the translucent cranium of the original Geiger creature was quite arresting to me, despite the opportunity to appreciate it being momentary). A good second film to my minds-eye would have had all the excitement that Cameron achieved, but enhanced 'the mystery' with mere hints and expressions at what the deadly creature's intelligence, motivations, and evolutionary history might be. Re. this latter point: the alien might well be able to hybridise with other alien animals (such as human), but maybe it came from a world where the range of fauna was as numerous as Earth's – but where it's capacity to dominate its environment was no more than a lion on the Serangeti, or shark in the ocean. (An unimaginable savage and dangerous-to-humans planet(s) could have been an arresting seed to sow in an audience primed with terror already?) SO MANY THOUGHT-PROVOKING ideas could have been introduced. And that is what left me so dissatisfied with it all. The poverty of ideas irked me more than the anaemic and witless script-writing. So, to conclude. A whole gamut of ideas and possibilities was never explored – or for that matter given a moment to reflect upon. Great films tend to have that enigmatic property: from Citizen Kane's "Rosebud", Bladerunner's "tears in rain" ending, Clear And Present Danger's "sorry Mr President…I don't dance" (to the President's invitation to do the 'Potomac Two-Step').
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  5. Ho hum…☝🏻 me too.
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  6. She really is.
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  7. It is the liberal/left pushing woke? It is they that demand the rest of the world call paedophiles "minor attracted persons". Let's call this evil out: this is a liberal left 'progressive' narrative; and they need to own it.
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  8.  @oinkleberry  Are we not broadly in agreement? Isn't the power of any narrative found in its plausibility? Re-reading all your thoughts as I interpret them, you desire plausible answers, whereas I'm quite indifferent to the need for any such revelations (unless those answers are worthy of the original 1979 Alien film whose legacy we would wish to have preserved). Once we saw the aliens in the 1986 Cameron sequel, for me at least (at some level or another) it became Jurassic Park meets Star Trek. I'm glad that you enjoyed (as you put it) "the aesthetics, visuals, thematics and esoteric identity" of Prometheus. It isn't that I dislike them, but that I feel no engagement with the idea of any of it. That difference aside, there is a deleted airlock sequence (it can be viewed 4:10 to 4:17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF6An_fs8eA&list=PL3Js5pJZN4Mn64MdBJPH2-I7yldlfiqz9&index=21&t=0s) and to me it shows a sort of terrifying beauty and majesty about the original creature that is utterly missing from Cameron's Aliens (1986). If you've not seen it, I think you'll be impressed by it; it is brilliantly filmed by Ridley Scott , though omitted for good reason from the final version. But the short sequence makes the creature look better than at the end of the film when Ellen Ripley expels it from the Nostromo's escape pod. For me, I'd have preferred a sequel that returned to LV 426, aged the 'space jockey' (is it a fossil, or semi-fossilised? Just imagine how old it might be!). An exploration of the vessel (not just the egg chamber) that offered a dimension on the 'biomechanical fusion' of its design and construction, possible salvageable technologies (even a sort of Rosetta Stone discovery that deciphered, explained more intriguing circumstances of the ruin and its lethal cargo). The 'story' could have stopped on LV426; or it needn't have. I'm sure by now you'll have a handle on my preferred direction of story development. It is always intriguing to hear what 'fellow-travellers' think about a shared passion. If you find any similar discussions that are similarly creative in outlook and offer their own unique 'take', let me know, please? (I've never read the Alien comics, and don't play video games.)
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