Spielberg fails to understand that obsession is not love, and if David were really human, he would know that.
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As long as the aliens’ technology is advanced beyond humanity’s comprehension, then there’s no real way to pick apart how they turned the gas planet into a star.
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For the fans of 2001, the mystery is the point, and for those more devoted to secular causes, the concept of aliens as divine beings is the point.
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A problem for the franchise as a whole is that there’s been no consistent measurement for these creatures’ intelligence.
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In the previous reviews, we talked about how Ripley is once again the sole survivor. Her ship crashed because, somehow, the alien queen she killed in the second movie managed to lay an egg in the five minutes before it died. That egg hatched, attacked Ripley and the other’s cryobeds, and some of its acidic salvia melted its way into the ship’s wiring, causing the spacecraft to crash. To make the situation even more ridiculous, the escape shuttle the cryobeds were moved into crashed as well, and everyone expect Ripley was killed. Ripley wakes up in an all-male prison. Superintendent Harold Andrews is concerned for her safety, so he does his best to keep Ripley in the medical wing. Ripley Read More ›
No sense in burying the lead. This one is awful. But it’s important to understand how and why it’s awful. Alien 3 manages to destroy the entire franchise with remarkable speed. I’ll explain how, as the reviews go on. We start off with a credit sequence, and already things feel off. Ripley and the surviving members of the previous film are still in their cryobeds, but something else is aboard the ship as well: an alien egg. This egg is seen hanging upside down, almost at eye level. Already, we have a plethora of problems, so let’s dive in, shall we? The previous movie, Aliens, established that it takes a queen to lay these eggs. Now, we don’t know exactly Read More ›
Editor’s note: Parts one and two of this series have already been published here and here. The editor apologizes for the oversight and hopes you will enjoy this initial review and read the attending reviews as well. The first Alien film is considered a sci-fi classic, and Aliens, the sequel, is widely regarded as the best movie in the series. But personally, I found Alien to be tolerable, but not worth the hype. So, who’s to say if the second movie will be any better? It starts out with Ripley being found by a scavenger ship, where she is quickly taken back to earth and awakened from her cryosleep. Right away, we have a problem. One of “The Cooperation’s” big Read More ›
There’s a sequence of events that must take place to build a hero. But before that sequence can start, the hero must be weak.
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Arrival is a movie worth watching if you’re willing to not think about it too hard.
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When she asks why the aliens want to help humanity, the aliens respond by saying they will eventually need humanity’s help.
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By David Klinghoffer Our astrophysicist friend Brian Keating from UC San Diego was on the Joe Rogan Experience — for three and a half hours, much as philosopher of science Stephen Meyer was recently. I’ve listened to the whole thing. Very interesting! And with shout-outs to Dr. Meyer on a couple of points that Dr. Keating offers for consideration: that religious faith prepared the way for modern science by teaching the intelligibility and order of nature, and that what really got Galileo in trouble was challenging not the Bible but Aristotle, who had in effect (but not literally) been embraced as a saint by the Catholic Church. Watch and listen here on Spotify. From Another World, or Our Own? The conversation is very wide-ranging, as Read More ›
Arrival is an interesting movie. It’s well-shot, well-acted, and well-written. The trouble is the script makes some strange choices in the beginning and I just wasn’t persuaded by the movie’s twist at the end. The story starts out with a montage where Louise is raising her daughter, but the child tragically dies of some unknown illness, presumably cancer. The viewer is led to conclude that this is a flashback, but if one listens to the monologue Louise delivers, she says plainly that she’s explaining when the child’s story begins, if there are beginning at all, which is something she no longer believes. This basically means that the entire movie is a flashback, but the viewer is not supposed to notice Read More ›
The whistleblower report is out: aliens are real! At least, that’s the rumor. And the government has been hiding it for decades, apparently. If you needed another bizarre headline in your feed, we’ve got you covered. Although to be fair, the extraterrestrials have been in the news pretty often over the last couple of years. In 2021, the Pentagon confirmed that images of an unidentified flying object were taken by Navy personnel. Even earlier photos of similar “UFO” looking aircraft surfaced, going against strong winds and having all the appearance of highly advanced technology. Now, the whistleblower, Air Force veteran David Grusch, says that the US government recovered an alien spacecraft and has been hiding the fact for years, even Read More ›
Robert J. Marks, Dr. Ola Hössjer and Daniel Díaz discuss the various theories proposed to explain the fine-tuning of the universe. Show Notes Additional Resources