Oh, absolutely. I don't even know if I'd put Dragon Quest and Funger in the same room together, much less the same genre.

This is what happened to pretty much anyone who played quakelike competitive multiplayer games in the 2000s. Getting instantly killed by someone with insane movement is fun, actually.

I wrote massive parts of this. I promise it's worth your time if you're goddamn tired of the state of modern criticism, internet hatedom, and poorly researched video essays. I set out on this video to be as fair as humanly possible.

You fucking better it was awesome.

Early reception on this has been INCREDIBLY POSITIVE.

I wrote massive parts of this. I promise it's worth your time if you're goddamn tired of the state of modern criticism, internet hatedom, and poorly researched video essays. I set out on this video to be as fair as humanly possible.

(At least until the sequel where we blow the whole goddamn thing out the pod bay door.)

Alien is about the way progress hardens people and turns them into mechanical monsters- and about how that fragile human heart will save you as much as it will betray you. No matter how far we go, we will be made with the same flaws- and those flaws might just be the thing that keeps us human.

But do not be hardened by this fact. For remember- Ripley is not some heartless bitch, she is a captain, and a captain who’s not willing to leave a man behind.And this ends up saving her- as Jonesy is what tips her off to the alien being on the escape craft in the first place.

Soft humanism is a trap that will get your hand stuck in the whirling machine of Weyland Yutani

Numerous people die by partaking in sensation and human emotion- A dinner that turns into a bloodbath. A momentary lapse of judgement caused by caring about an animal gets you killed.. Having mercy for a comrade ends up getting you both killed.

Ripley, as a character, is chastised by her crew for not valuing the life of another crew member when she refuses to break quarantine- a calculated choice that she defends by saying the captain would had done the same in her position.

To simplify, the Alien is truly the face of the setting. Cold, uncaring, and brutalist, where the divides between man and machine have disintegrated.

(I wish Ridley Scott would stop giving a fuck about the space jockey, but in this film it does serve a purpose- we have to accept that whatever the alien is, it evolved to take advantage of interplanatary travel in other living beings- which means man is not alone in space. Terrifying to ponder.)

But it is also thoroughly anti-biological, as this supreme hunter of the kind of living being who could become a space faring being.

Then, it’s mechanical nature steps in. The chrome teeth. The distinct, planned evolution. The ferocity of indifference beyond it’s own personal coding. The alien is fascinating as a creature because it is a thoroughly anti-mechanical being, more akin to a roach caught inside of a computer case.

It’s both a fleshy, living thing made of the softest, most uncomfortable things imaginable- Vaginas and Penises and folds and layers and ridges, a map of human insecurities, of flesh stuck to bone.

What’s striking about this ferocious beast is that it is, first of all, designed to be a horrific fusion of the deeply biological and the uncaringly mechanical. Bishop expresses it as a pinnacle of evolution and deeply admires it.