The Beachball was a Xenomorph

Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric and I'm here with my co-host Torvald. This is the podcast where we talk about fan theories, fan theories regarding film. Sometimes we even get guests on. What is your all-time favorite blue-collar meets sci-fi movie about a crew of basically space truckers? If you could see my shirt right now, then you would know what movie I'm talking about. Oh, whoa. Look at your shirt. Look at my shirt. Oh, wait, mine's an Alice in Wonderland shirt. Wow, that's not the movie I'm talking about.

Well, you know what? What you described sounded like alien. Yeah, that's what's on my shirt. It's a big alien egg with the word alien. the weirdest thing about this alien egg is it seems to be like splitting open on the side and like green goo is oozing out of the side and that's not how alien eggs that's not how they work they have little hinges yeah they've got like little hinges yeah so wait we're talking about alien right that's what we're going to be talking about today no that's not the movie i was describing i was describing everybody's favorite childhood film uh the riveting uh sci-fi comedy horror existential crisis film called dark star dark star yeah dude everyone knows i love dark star um it is john carpenter's dark star not just john carpenter we got to give him credit it's john carpenter and dan o'bannon sorry dan john carpenter and dan o'bannon's masterpiece uh from when they were just students they were just a couple of little kids wanting to make their own

little movie yeah no everyone who hasn't seen dark star needs to go watch dark star because it's not only a piece of film history uh it's also many believe uh you included many believe that it's the origins of the alien franchise right when you watch dark star you are going to think that it is a low budget parody of alien yeah that's what it feels like that it was made before it came first it was proto-alien it's ridiculous because it's clearly a parody but it's parodying a movie that won't exist for like another 10 years or not quite 10 but yeah i mean it also you could call it a proto the thing as well because it has a lot of similarities to the thing i mean it's got a lot of beard-faced mumbly men in it i like these ones because they're supposed to be funny and you're not really supposed to like them much but you are supposed to kind of be making fun of them this movie dark star has a lot of characters and i can't tell anybody apart

so i i can tell pinback apart that's his name right well i mean i can tell boiler apart because he's blonde the rest of the boiler is the same but let's go through it personalityless bully i guess i don't know right so we got uh lieutenant doolittle he's basically in charge since the actual commander commander powell had an accident um doolittle is mean he's angry he's cynical and he basically just wants to blow things up and surf uh i kind of hate lieutenant doolittle i think he's just like yeah he's bad piece of crap um yes you mentioned sergeant pinback uh he is actually played by dan o'bannon himself which is really cool and i would call him the protagonist of this film yeah he kind of isn't just isn't in the climax of the movie but um no he's great he's he's probably the best character in the movie his uh it turns out you find out in the movie that his name is not pinback he's actually a guy named bill frugge he says you have to score 700 on the sare's

but he only got 58 so he wasn't allowed to be an astronaut uh he was instead a liquid fuel maintenance technician and he became an astronaut when the real pinback came running towards him naked and jumped into a vat of fuel and uh this guy put on the real pinback space suit and then they thought he was pinback so they pulled him on the ship well yeah he was gonna jump in and save the real pin back but they were like hey the ship's launching you got to get on and he couldn't tell anyone because he couldn't work the radio so he just ended up going on and that might kind of tell you how ship launches seem to work and ships in general seem to work in this universe everything's super blue collar yeah um and uh also everything is is super political like they're running out of supplies but but they have to wait on congress and also their messages take like seven in years no like to get back 10 years i mean honestly that's really fast for how far away

they say they are but um so there's boiler he's basically uh you you might know him as the blonde guy with a mustache and like kind of a mullet he seems to be in charge of finding new places to blow up there's talby who although he was played by somebody named andrea pasich uh he was voiced by john carpenter so that was interesting oh um yeah talby basically likes to stay up in the observation chamber all alone all the time he doesn't interact with the other guys uh he does continually try to radio them with important information but they keep ignoring him and they ignore it he just wants to see the phoenix asteroids that's all he wants i mentioned commander powell uh he's played by joe saunders but he is also voiced by john carpenter um he was killed by a short circuit in the rear panel of his chair so basically his own chair killed him uh and he was placed in cryogenic sleep so he now lives in a block of ice and they wake him

up sometimes you can still talk there is the computer which i have seen credited in multiple places as the as mother the mutter computer like m-u-t-t-e-r computer like mutter mother i mean clearly that's a mother but with like a weird pronunciation well right i just think that's weird because clearly that's supposed to be like mother computer but this is before alien so kind of odd but yeah she was played by cookie knopf and i think she had just the perfect voice um she's amazing oh my gosh yeah she's so good yeah so much better than mother in alien i know i love nothing she's awesome it doesn't take care it's not motherly at all no this computer is very motherly she takes care of them uh and then there's one more character who is the alien which is actually just a beach ball but he is apparently played by nick castle as in michael myers like the actor played michael myers i guess he was wiggling around this beach ball

yeah he clearly wasn't in that suit because uh no it wasn't a suit it was a ball and there's of course bomb 19 oh yeah there's the bomb 20 just a couple of sentient planet destroying bombs which how could that be a problem that seems like a great great idea to make those uh but no you tell us what are they doing going in that direction what is this group of misfits doing with these sentient bombs what's their job yeah so they fly around the galaxy looking for two things either intelligent life or planets that are unstable whatever that means well they're they're supposed to find what they call rogue planets um and that would be a planet that is not only inhospitable but also poses a danger to colonization efforts that may happen in the future um so they're basically looking for planets that either aren't on a in orbit that are just, like, flying around out there with no orbit or planets that are on an unstable orbit.

And if they find one, they will drop a bomb, turn on their force fields, and warp away while the bomb blows away the entire planet. The problem is that those bombs are, for some reason, sentient. Yeah, they have their own weird AI, and they're very argumentative.

Also, you could call them, they're like a blue-collar Death Star, I guess, but much smaller. Yeah, sure. You can call it that. Blue-collar Death Star. I like it. It is an equally important part of their mission to find intelligent life. Well, not according to Doolittle. They personally don't care about that. Doolittle doesn't want to be mad about that. Like, there's a 95% chance of intelligent life on this one planet, and Doolittle's like, no, I don't want that. That's crap. Find me something to blow up. He wants to blow up some more planets. And they find a planet with 85% chance of being unstable, which is less than the chance of intelligent life on that other one, but that's where they go. Yeah, they'd rather blow up a planet. So, yeah, if this movie sounds, like, wacky and zany and, like, off the wall and really entertaining to you, please don't be fooled. It is none of those things.

So, it is alien and the thing, if they were slightly funnier. Yeah, it is everything that you would expect from a comedy, directed by john carpenter right like i mean i guess you're thinking like yeah we have like big china because that's kind of over the top we have escape from new york yeah he can do over the top but but he's not doing it here no i was gonna say it has some similarities to those but it is far more subdued than either of those movies like far more if you are as like i love this movie i feel like this movie influences so much of my writing just the way it's it's funny it's absurd and also everyone dies in the end it's like sad at the same time um so i i love everything about it i love each character's arc except for boiler who has no arc but the other three are great yeah um but even if you are a super fan like me don't watch the extended version The extended version of Dark Star has a whopping 15 minutes added, which is insane for an extended version, unless it's like John Hughes cut.

Yeah. From what I understand of Dark Star, what you're calling the extended version is actually the theatrical version. The original version. Whatever's on the Blu-ray. Well, right. So the original version of the movie was only like 45 minutes long and they made it as a student project. somewhere down the line decided that they were going to release it as like a theatrical film so they filmed another like you know close to 30 ish minutes of footage not not quite but somewhere up there to get the the film up to like an hour and it's like an hour and 18 minutes or something like that and then uh that was the version that released as far as i know the original 45 minute cut does not exist anymore no one has ever seen it except for the people who made it But there is one other version of it, which is what we would call, I guess, the director's cut. But really what it is, is essentially. It's not.

John Carpenter didn't care enough to do a director's cut. So it's a re-edited version of the movie, taking out most of the useless fluff that they added in to pad out the length of the movie. So that is the version that everyone should watch. That version is just barely over an hour. I think it's like an hour and eight minutes. Yeah, it's short. it's a lot better than it's a lot more palatable than the uh than the theatrical version but yeah very weird movie very weird history um pretty cool that we get to see like some real early work from like uh you know john carpenter and dan o'bannon we've been watching this movie since we were kids like i watched this movie i must have been like nine or eight years old probably about eight maybe even seven or eight years old um younger than that i watched it like love this um it's a fantastic movie i could not get enough of this movie i never forgot it everything about this

movie just like opened my mind to sci-fi concepts like yeah intelligent bombs why would you ever make that uh people who have been traveling for 20 years and have only aged three years due to time dilation since they're traveling at light speed a guy who is dead but has been frozen so they can keep his consciousness so they can just ask him random questions about their job the cool concept like hear from them um the all of the astronomical concepts of the movie like you know rogue planets and destroying planets to you know encourage colonization later on like all that stuff is just the mothership that just takes care of you takes care of them um all that stuff just to really, really open my mind to a whole world of sci-fi. I can't believe how good this movie is. However much effect it had on you, it must have had the same effect on Ridley Scott. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. You've described this movie to me as a pre-alien,

but that always kind of tripped me up because what does this movie have to do with alien? It was made by John Carpenter. Where does the alien connection come in? John Carpenter didn't make Alien? Dan O'Bannon wrote this. Right. And read it with John Carpenter and started it. Unless you're an alien like super fan, you probably don't know this. But Dan O'Bannon wrote Alien. So yes. He wrote it, I think. But yeah. But like I said, if you watch The Thing, clearly Ridley Scott, Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter, we're all kind of on the same wavelength. Very much so, yes. In terms of just style. But you might say that probably a lot of the initial atmosphere and setup of the entire Alien franchise came from Dan O'Bannon rather than Ridley Scott. And, you know, Ridley Scott's adaptation, of course, became more and more pronounced as the movies go on. Have you watched Ridley Scott's films? Right, yes, exactly.

He's not like what you would call an auteur. Like, he adapts his style to whatever the script is. Like, his style is all over the place. Look at Alien and look at Prometheus, look at Gladiator. i know like yeah no i agree with you i agree you're saying like he's like the steven spielberg of of cinema wait that's steven spielberg he's a steven spielberg is that no um i mentioned that there was an alien on the ship with them and well that alien was actually just a beach ball is clearly a beach ball and when i call it a beach ball that's the prop they used and it doesn't look like anything else it's literally just a beach ball they painted with kind of like a leopard they put polka dots on it it's so good um but that got has it has little talons it's got like duck near the base um but no that got the gears in my head turning when i was like wait there's an alien on this ship and what does it do it kind of tries to kill them what if that alien

was actually a xenomorph. What if that alien was attempting to accomplish what the xenomorphs always try to accomplish in the alien films? So that's my theory for today, is that not only is this a proto-alien conceptual movie, but also this is the first alien movie in the alien franchise with a xenomorph terrorizing these poor blue-collar space workers. What you just said does happen in this movie. It's not the only thing that happens in this movie, but I would say it's probably the storyline that most people remember from this movie the best. I like that part a lot, yeah. I mean, I was a kid, though. My favorite part. Doolittle, the acting captain of this ship, doesn't want to go and find intelligent life. He would rather blow stuff up. And when he's justifying his decision, I love how Doolittle is so mad, he's so angry that the former Commander Powell made them go 14 light years out of their way

to find a 99% probability of life where he says in the Magellanic Cloud. And he's so mad about that despite the fact that they did find it. They found intelligent life. He just hates that it's a vegetable beach ball and that it stinks when you touch it. And despite their feelings about it and the fact that they call it stupid, it is highly intelligent. It's like a very intelligent creature and they kidnapped it i feel so bad for that poor beach ball um so he mentions that they found this alien 14 light years in the direction of the magellanic cloud now if we look at the alien series it's really interesting because you'll find that all of the planets with xenomorphs on them congregate in one actual real life section of our actual universe like the you know the writers and directors they all did their research because in alien one the planet they're on which has been named archeron um it was i think originally just

called lv-426 but later they gave it a real name yeah uh that planet and then the moon lv-223 from prometheus uh those planets are both in the zeta reticuli system which is an actual star system and they are somewhere around the realm of like uh i think 30 to 40 light years from earth and if you look at this picture of the zeta reticuli system captioned reticulum right there and the large Magellanic cloud right there literally same direction um they are literally in the sky one degree from each other um which is as close as you can get as far as like astronomic distances when looking out from earth and the reticulum the zeta reticuli is not a common uh name that you would just drop when talking about sections of the sky that's like a very very specific uh star system right if you were going to say which direction you flew in to get somewhere you would very very much say we were flying towards the magellanic

cloud because that is a much larger structure in the night sky and that defines the direction quite clearly um so i think also if you wanted to actually fly to the large magellanic cloud um it's some ridiculous distance away it is literally another galaxy or it's it's actually a satellite galaxy of the milky way um it's like hundreds of light years away like a massive amount of distance whereas the uh zeta reticuli uh star system is like i said only like 30 to 40 thousand light years sorry 30 to 40 light years away um so it would make much much more sense for them to have flown in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud ended up somewhere near these planets that are being, you know, colonized by xenomorphs and potentially picked up a life form that had already been, you know, face hugged or infected by the xenomorphs. So it makes perfect sense to me. And I think it's really weird that this, you know, they very specifically just so happen to describe

a direction in the universe the universe being like so unbelievably vast we can't even describe how vast it is but they picked literally the exact same direction that all of the alien films take place in and they say we picked up an alien from there i think that's pretty interesting yeah no that is interesting i think it's great i mean for this theory obviously someone perhaps stan o'bannon likes that area and uh ridley scott um although uh i i don't i'm not sure if the aliens are colonizing that area it might be the engineers calling that colonizing that area with aliens for no i mean it is and that was what i meant when i say when i said that they're colonizing i was sorry you know just assuming that everybody knows that the engineers are doing that uh at some point during their travels storage area nine self-destructed and destroyed all of their toilet paper um which they have no toilet paper right that seems like a big problem from

just like not being able to clean themselves but also why did storage area nine self-destruct what what happened there um i assume for the same reason that uh commander powell's chair self-destructed possibly so i think rightfully they act like pinback is being so annoying by being all right i don't want to sit next to this chair it killed our commander and they're like shut up pinback he's right like it's still not and here's the thing is it's not fixed the faulty circuit that killed commander powell is still faulty it could it would kill whoever else sits in that chair they have an they have an electric chair in their ship that is like actively killing whoever sits in it and they're just not working to fix it between the three chairs that are still not electric chairs oh and all these chairs are like so cramped together they are head to toe right right right this is like a person facing a person facing a person nasa style yes like it's

very cramped and i wanted to say like to to support your theory that dark star and alien are in the same universe um i think it would make sense uh just if you look at the dark star of the spaceship and the nostromo yeah because the dark star seems to be funded by the government right which means it is severely underfunded right because whereas the nostromo is is funded by weyland yutani which is a corporation which makes sense because you know this was made in the era of like the late 70s 80s where that was kind of what was happening was like corporations were getting big and government can't do anything you know yeah it sucks politics it's crazy how that was happening and you know it stopped happening it's not happening anymore right but no what i was going to point out with this is just that very strange and catastrophic and like you know potentially lethal things are happening on this ship that they brought an

alien on board um seems like potentially something's going around sabotaging their ship which uh is kind of the behavior that might be exhibited by like a xenomorph um you know going around setting things up to kill people uh kind of what he does in the first alien movie sort of um he has help from the cat but yeah whoa again check out our alien episode find out exactly what that evil cat was up to a meteor storm is coming and it is an actual storm in that it produces lightning and despite the fact that they put up their shields and their force fields uh the lightning from that meteor storm still manages to hit the laser bay panel which causes one of the smart bombs to engage and leave its hangar. Luckily, the mother computer manages to convince it that they're not on a bombing run and it needs to return to the bay. Bomb number 20, you're out of the bomb bay again. That was my favorite line from this video.

She sounds like such a motherly mother. She's like chiding it. But it's not out of the bomb bay again yet. This is the first time. I was also going to point out that these guys, they don't know that things are wrong on the ship. They're just going about their business um they start hanging out doing their thing and the first thing boiler does is get out his knife and he starts doing the android thing he starts uh stabbing his knife as fast as he can between every finger which uh i kind of doesn't even happen in alien that happens in no it happens directed by by um james cameron so clearly something is going on with not the director here but the writer the only thing i know from the alien franchise is that anybody who does this knife trick where you stab in between your fingers as fast as you can with a knife is an android so i'm pretty sure that boiler is an android well and also it's a it's a nod like like in so many alien

movies that have come since they've done little nods to that knife trick thing because it's so famous to the point where in alien versus predator directed by paul ws anderson the um weyland yutani ceo or just weyland ceo who is lance henrickson he's bishop the android he does that thing goes just but he just does it kind of absent-mindedly at the end of one shot with a pen yes between his fingers as like a little uh little easter egg but like you would think that's an easter egg to alien but wait turns out it goes all the way back to dark star yes and i just have to point out that because of this scene and because of dad pausing the movie when we got to this scene and explaining the relevance of this scene in the greater context of aliens so i remember he paused and he specifically pointed out he was so excited he was like dude he's like kids this guy doing this this is important because in another movie called aliens

there's another guy who does this and he does it so fast he's so quick and later you find out that he's an android he's actually a robot and that to me was the coolest thing ever yes i was like i was like oh my gosh so you mean like anyone who is fast enough and like accurate enough to do that must be a robot and from that point on i practiced that trick with every pencil i've ever owned i was at school every day practicing even though it would be a good two decades before either of us actually watched aliens exactly never saw aliens but i was still doing the aliens knife trick at school uh took a big chunk out of my finger with my eraser once because you know how like pencil erasers have the uh like that metal thing around them you know okay yeah i guess so i sliced that into the side of my finger and took a big chunk out of it man did you bleed white yes that was the weird thing and i was like oh no and then like i i like i i just stopped being effective because

someone like lightly pushed me into a wall and i just couldn't you rolled up a newspaper yeah it's like rolling up a newspaper shoving it in people's mouths for some reason i thought that would accomplish whatever goal i had at the time basically uh the next few things that happen aren't really that important we find out that talby wants to see the phoenix asteroids do a little just wants to surf again they're all kind of pining for home uh having a real boring and kind of unsettling time on this ship uh boiler decides i guess what he wants most is to shoot the lid to the heating unit with this crazy rail gun which i don't know why they have it like i mean for some reason this whole situation the pins on the bomb i mean that's what he wants to do with it later but i don't think that's what it's for like for some reason this whole situation really irritates pinback um which i'm kind of on his side they shouldn't be shooting the heat the lid to the

heating unit yeah well finback is depicted as very neurotic he likes but he's right he's on a freaking spaceship like if anything goes wrong they die he says yeah like the everyone else on the ship is far too casual about everything like which i mean is another thing similarity to alien you know everyone has muted responses like muted emotional responses to everything happening we talked about that no i mean i don't know but all i know is that he's using a gigantic space rifle that seems to be like a rail gun and pinback says that's for emergencies only i have no idea what kind of emergency would warrant the use of this gun but um it can't be alien emergencies because they have a tranquilizer gun for that no yeah exactly around this point pinback is called away by the computer it's time for him to go feed the alien he doesn't want to feed the alien but he has to yeah uh so this is interesting they keep it in a locker room with a wall that is covered in moving

rainbow lights that seem to be sent to also be sapient animals yes so as a kid to me i always just believed those were some other aliens that they brought on board me too because like he yells at them he tells them get away and then they do yeah but like that's weird why are they just bringing tons of aliens on board what are they doing i mean that's one of their jobs well to like to study them not to bring them home like the ship the computer they're not scientists the computer didn't want him to bring the alien on board it says that he has to feed it because he said they needed to bring it on board because he said the ship needed a mascot so he had to like justify it they weren't supposed to bring it on board well and i always love the part where he feeds it um he walks up to this alien which by the way just a big old beach ball painted with some spots and big duck feet um he throws down a cabbage and he's like we don't have any of the

other stuff here eat it this is a cabbage a whole cabbage and the alien doesn't want this cabbage it squeaks and kicks it away like get rid of that cabbage i just love that he just expected the alien to eat its cabbage also i just think it's so sad because like i mean can you imagine if like you know alien abductions were real and it was just like bored aliens on their blue collar job happened to pick up a human because they thought he was like cute and then they don't actually want him around anymore so they're just like hey stupid human eat this and he's like i'm stuck here i want to go home you know like that's essentially the situation that this poor beach ball is in he didn't want to be on this spaceship he just wants to go home yeah well i mean and my question is does this creature eat cabbages has it eaten them before it certainly eats like mouse chew toys yeah so it doesn't want to eat his cabbage and instead it jumps up on the wall it waits there

on the wall staring at him for a while and then right when it sees its opportunity it launches itself onto pinback's back it is yeah back hugging him um yeah so and then also it does crawl up his back towards his head and starts pulling his hair it's trying to get through his mouth dude he acts like it's hurting like it's biting him yeah somehow we know it has a mouth down exactly probably two two mouths if we know anything about xenomorphs i mean so he gets it off of him and then it runs away like real quick for a beach ball i love this beach ball i love this alien anyway then he's trying to lure it back in oh and he's like here i got your toy and holds out like a rubber rat and throws it to the alien yeah which doesn't seem smart since he's trying to lure it toward him or whatever and it stands on top of the rat and this is when we learn that it has some sort of it's got like a squid beak under it somewhere that we don't see

but you can hear it chewing and burping and it eats the uh the rat sorry the toy mouse that was always like hilarious to me that he's like trying to get it to come back with this toy and he throws the toy down and then it just eats the toy i'm like i don't know i just that was really funny it makes me wonder if this creature is even even an herbivore i don't know if it's even interested in cabbage to me because the toy is like a has like a symbol of defiance it's like i don't want your stupid toy jerk i'm gonna eat it i i wouldn't eat your cabbage yes i would eat that but i will eat this toy this one thing that i apparently like to play with i would rather eat this than that cabbage somehow it seems to like sting him by bopping his finger with its uh its rubber ball part but he's like ow yeah but this is interesting though but it does kind of sort of make sense from um from doolittle's earlier description of this uh he does say that

the creature stinks when you touch it so you know maybe it has like some sort of like you know it can emit some sort of things well i was thinking it's like a stinging nettle kind of plant thing right like it emits some sort of like sap and if you get stung by it it hurts right and it also stinks i don't know uh well i mean it sneaks up behind him and grabs his legs i don't know what's gonna do there but he starts to beat it with a broom and then it takes the broom and starts to beat him with the broom i don't know how it takes the broom it's just got feet on the bottom of it but it somehow managed to outmaneuver him grab the broom and start chasing him down the hall with it i love this alien it's so great so there's more evidence that this alien is a xenomorph it then leads him into the ventilation shafts of the ship oh that's what xenomorphs do and it's very similar to all the alien movies of this alien running into the ventilation shaft and then the

person having to kind of hunt it down uh it lures pin back past the elevator shaft into the emergency airlock room where it then runs past him crosses the elevator shaft and pulls away his bridge that he used to cross it so he's now effectively stuck in that side of the ship so you know this thing's not stupid it's exhibiting you know pretty clever very smart and then as after it does this it sits there guarding the exit on that side of the shaft so that even if he could get over he can't get out it's sitting there won't let him through yeah um and attacks him like just flies out yeah well it only does that after he starts kicking it though it just it just sits there until he starts kicking it he manages to just barely cross on this teeny tiny ledge uh he makes it to the other side he tries to kick it out of the way and then it jumps at him and whatever it's doing to him is apparently quite uncomfortable and is like pushing him down and eventually causes him to

fall we don't really know what it's doing it to him it seems like a ball just like vibrating on his back but he doesn't like it probably because that's all it was tickling him all right that's so he's barely clinging onto the edge and then it back hugs him again and starts tickling him it's trying to get him to let go but then here's so that's that's evidence that you know it's a xenomorph it's like jumping on people and you know hugging them um but then just as the elevator is about to start moving again it leaves it gets out of the way of that elevator which again is evidence of you know pretty decent intelligence like it knows when to leave and when to stop tickling him even though it clearly wants to kill him so he uh pinback barely manages to climb up and as he's climbing up the elevator comes down and mushes right up against his face it seems like it stopped because it senses him there but then it keeps like trying to descend

and like pushing his face back until he has to fall and like grab onto the elevator itself after pinback is stuck on the elevator it then the alien makes its way back into the airlock on the other side of the elevator and then in the airlock we find out is that laser panel that got zapped by the meteor storm and it pushes past that panel and starts messing with the laser mechanism like the piece of the ship that got broken during the storm uh it's really weird it's like using its duck feet to manipulate this laser like and i don't know if it's trying to fix it or what but either way it gets zapped and then the bomb activates again but i kind of think that this alien understands that something bad happened that will lead to it dying and that's why it started acting up and trying to get past pin back to get down here because it's like i gotta fix that laser it's gonna cause the bombs to you know blow us up you might say that doesn't sound like a xenomorph

except that the xenomorph on the Nostromo somehow knew the ship was about to explode. And in doing so, what did it do? Number one... It took a nap. No, number one, it sat there guarding the exit of the Nostromo to the escape pod. Just like this alien sat there guarding, you know, the other door past the elevator, right? It entered the escape pod and kind of wedged itself in the safest spot in there, which apparently was the wall. Just like this alien seemed to know where the cause of the problem was and then did its best to diffuse that problem. Just saying, these xenomorphs seem to know when there is imminent danger and then they do their best to either get out of there or stop the danger. So it seems like xenomorph kind of behavior to me. Pinback has a real hard time with that elevator. He manages to unscrew the bottom panel and climb through halfway, Which, by the way, this dude has some major arm strength.

Like, he's just been hanging on to ledges for, like, the past 20 minutes. This is Dan freaking O'Bannon here. I guess so. This guy's been typing away on his typewriter, writing scripts for a long time. Oh, he's got some strong fingers. He's got grip. Whoa. He tries to get into this elevator, but he gets stuck halfway through. He can't use the phone in there because it's out of order. There's a control panel on the wall that mostly... It's not out of order so much that mother can't speak from it and say this phone is out of order. Yeah, so clearly he could contact the computer through it. But anyway, there's a control panel on the wall that seems to mostly turn on like that figado figado song as loud as possible, which again is pretty useful. And then he finally finds the button to initiate the elevator cleaning procedure, which I just love when the computer is like, good for you. You've decided to clean the elevator.

she's so supportive she's like no one else does well right when when these when these stupid blue colored dudes do something good she really has to like give them positive reinforcement she's like good job you're cleaning the elevator you're so cool she's a good parent um but either way cleaning the elevator apparently causes the explosive charges blowing up the bolts in the floor plate where he's stuck right so he gets blown up but he's fine either way it gets him out somehow but now he's mad so he goes and grabs the anesthetic gun which shoots sleeping darts he finds the alien in the vents and he says it's time to go sleepy by you worthless piece of garbage and then he kills the poor alien he shoots it and it pops it's clearly a balloon shoot a dart at it dude you know it's a beach ball why would you shoot it with a dart anyway that's the last you see of this poor poor alien it uh it deflates flies around the room and then he picks up its

deflated corpse and then he tells everyone all about it and they don't want to hear it they don't care at all they're not listening he's like okay maybe i just won't talk about it and they're like i think that would be a good idea pin back they just don't want him to talk just to support your theory uh i don't know if we talked about this yet but aliens look like what they infect yes so an alien that infects a human is very humanoid an alien that affects a predator has like weird mandibles and like dreadlocks which i think is stupid they shouldn't get dreadlocks they should have the same alien head but whatever an alien that infects a dog as we see it becomes a weird dog head alien thing yeah yeah um there's also alien cubed um there's also one other really good example of this was the xenomorph frog basically it was created by a chinese artist named li chang chung and posted online and i think it was sort of like concept art for

one of like the new alien movies potentially um but the photos of this alien xenomorph frog leaked online and people thought that it was like a real frog like some new species that had been discovered even to me it kind of looks like it's clearly just like made of like painted clay but anyway um so yeah you know technically that could exist even if it's just concept art if there was a frog big enough to get face hugged then yeah we would get a xenomorph frog that's what we get if there was some alien living out there in you know the direction of the magellan clouds that was Mostly beach ball in nature. If it got face hugged, it would produce a mostly beach ball xenomorph. That's what would happen. So there you go. I guess. And then to support your point that aliens are smart and they can try, they'll try to find ways to escape. In Alien Resurrection, one alien is smart enough to know that it can kill its friend and use the acid to melt through the floor and escape.

That's so cool. I don't care what anyone says. Alien Resurrection is a masterpiece. I love the heck out of that movie. Well, it's at the very least better than Alien 3. I don't understand why people write 3 higher. I can't understand not liking Alien Resurrection. I can't understand rating Alien 3 better. Like, Alien 3 is just not great. No, Alien 3 is just not great. Alien 3 is just Alien 2 again, but it sucks, and everyone you liked dies, including Ripley. And Newt. No, but Alien Resurrection is worth watching just for those underwater scenes. Those must have been so incredibly hard for them to film. No, so there is a very good story that Sigourney Weaver told, which I know because I was a archivist for the American Film Institute, and I listened to all the interviews. Sigourney Weaver was being interviewed, and she told this story where she had been filming the underwater scenes, which are really intense if you watch that movie.

It's crazy. like this is like it's like a 20 minute segment of that movie where everything happening is underwater like that would have been ridiculous because like it's not cgi water they're actually like the actors diving for minutes had to dive and they had to swim the route uh-huh and they would have people they could go to for air and like tap them for air um and it was i mean it was dangerous and crazy and really intense and sigourney weaver came home one day really tired from doing this and she said to her husband she was like i don't know if i can keep doing this this is hard it's crazy i can't go back there shoot more underwater scenes i can't do this and her husband said to her you know what you're right you can't do this but ripley can and she was like okay and she went back and she finished the movie because she had to do it because ripley could do it dude that man did not marry sigurney weaver that man married ellen ripley

he must be like the biggest alien fan ever that's so cool i don't even know who her husband is probably like jason alexander or something that's most people's husbands oh boy that's such a good story i love that story ripley can you can't do this before ripley can because yeah because ripley's an actor i think that probably i think he's learning weaver is more suited to this he knows how good an actor his wife sigourney weaver is and if she can truly embody ripley she can become a badass like in real life she can fight those aliens the rest of the movie is more or less about them dealing with the issues that arise because of that meteor storm causing a bomb one of the bombs wants to go off a lot of things happen that are avoidable which could easily be overcome if they just communicated with each other basically Talby they're really bad at talking Yeah, I know. Talby figures out what the problem is. He figures out that the communication laser, whatever that is, is malfunctioning and that this is going to cause problems with bombs. So he tells them and he puts on a star suit to go into the emergency airlock to investigate. Unfortunately, they basically ignore him and they're just like, yeah, whatever, Talby.

and then later that night the computer warns them the computer confirms what talby says it's like yes i also found that this uh communication laser is malfunctioning and do not engage the bomb drop procedure until this is fixed but nobody hears it and talby is yeah he talby may have heard that but he's already trying to fix it so they didn't hear it so they decided to drop a bomb on this uh rogue planet i love their ridiculous spacesuits with the unbelievably long neck portion and the tiny bubble view on the top of that i love their stupid spacesuits that actually leads me into one point i wanted to make which is if this movie isn't parodying alien which it could not be what is it parodying i don't know because it clearly is parodying something so i mean and And after watching this, it is definitely parodying 2001 A Space Odyssey, which was made in 1968. This was in 1974. Space Odyssey had a huge effect on all of cinema, especially on film students, I would imagine, in the 70s.

And I'm sure John Carpenter loved Kubrick's work, although John Carpenter himself has said, I don't think he dislikes The Shining, but he considers it to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious horror films ever made. And he thinks it is not scary in the slightest. Yeah, well, I think that about The Thing. So there, take that, John Carpenter. More like John's stupid face. No, actually, I agree with him. I love The Shining in every way. It's like one of my favorite movies of all time. And it is pretty hilarious. it's also pretty terrifying but it's just it's a hilarious movie i love the shining i think that this is obviously making fun of 2001 a space odyssey yeah and i think those spacesuits are are a huge nod to that because the spacesuits in 2001 are pretty stupid too not quite that stupid but i think that that's kind of the design that we're basing it on mother computer is like no

mother computer isn't hal the bombs are hal 9000 she's like right but she's like intentionally the opposite of how right yes that's the most helpful nice computer that ever existed well and then it's great because well you've said this before that the characters in 2001 a space odyssey are not humans they are robots right in that yeah every single instant of every single day they are always doing exactly the right thing right and doing it as perfectly as possible human character and they're not emoting right so like what what is this guy doing uh right before breakfast he's literally running like infinite laps around the ship to keep himself in good shape right and then what do they do they they have perfect interviews with the government that loves them so much right like everything about this is just showing how perfect the situation is and how pristine space travel is going to be and then you got dark star which is the absolute opposite no interviews government

doesn't care about them it's not even going to send them radiation shielding for the radiation leak that is currently on their ship um the people never do what's right they don't exercise they go and grab a gun and start shooting at the heat lid right like they're always doing the wrong thing um the computer actually takes care of them but then we've also got the bombs which are going to kill them because they're sentient so i mean it's it's a really good parody of 2001 A Space Odyssey. I think it's pretty much, you know, perfect as far as that's concerned. Talby is trying to fix the malfunction. He's in the airlock. He lets them know, but freaking Doolittle just mutes him. Talby starts a laser test, and he's trying to adjust the Q switch, but then he taps the laser beam with his suit on accident, causing like a bright flash that blinds him. And then he stumbles into the path of the laser beam, which the ship tells him definitely

don't do that and apparently she was right because that causes like multiple computers to start on fire and also absolutely destroys the bomb drop mechanisms now the bomb is stuck in the ship even though they've already armed it so yeah they're in big trouble now one of my favorite all-time parts of this movie was always the bomb did not drop alarm i always love that sound when he says three two one drop and then it goes like that was a great alarm like it sounds so it sounds so deflated like oh we couldn't do it oh man i am very impressed that the ship then contacts them and is like i'm heavily broken now so i can't do much but i have activated somehow automatic dampeners which will confine the explosion to a one mile diameter which is unbelievable for a planet destroying bomb i don't know how she's confining it but jeez louise like this bomb destroys planets and she's gonna keep it within one mile

and she does because several of them survive when it explodes later on spoilers um but yeah um yeah they don't know what to do so do little's like i gotta ask powell what to do um powell being the frozen former captain uh powell says they need to teach the bomb about phenomology which is like the philosophy of existence which do little does i don't know if he does it in the right way though he yeah and again i always love this conversation as a kid just because of like the philosophical ramifications and like he's not wrong in anything that he says but also i don't know if he's getting the desired result but basically he convinces this bomb that it exists but nothing else does nothing else does he's like you know you exist but you can't be certain that any of your sensory inputs are correct therefore you have no proof that anything else exists no reason to explode but i'm also like then he has no reason

not to explode that doesn't seem like the right the right angle but anyway pinback and boiler have a little fight over the gun because boiler wants to shoot the uh lock mechanisms on the bomb in the bomb bay i don't know how he's gonna do that if he's gonna like put on a space suit and go out in space i have no idea they don't manage to do that because do little manages to convince the bomb to go back into the bomb bay unfortunately in the bomb bay when boiler contacts the bomb to try and disarm it uh it tells him that it has decided that he is false data and it will ignore him um and then it has also decided that it is the only thing that exists and therefore it is god in the beginning and therefore and i moved upon the darkness in accomplishing its one purpose which is to explode it must be creating creation creating the universe which is actually a pretty decent conclusion if you've concluded if you are you know following the logic that you're the only

thing that exists and you have one purpose that purpose must be to create the universe right so it says let there be light and then it explodes and everyone dies except for do little and Talby because they're already out of the spaceship well not just them so I always loved Doolittle's comment which was oh hey the skipper made it as this block of ice floats past he's like man the skipper was always lucky I mean no he wasn't he was the least lucky what are you talking about you stupid moron he's dead he's sitting in a block of ice and now he's floating through space he's not so unlucky anyway um the the movie ends in what i can only describe as a true cinematic masterpiece with talby getting exactly what he wanted full circle they get what they wanted he gets to go with the phoenix asteroids and explore the universe with them forever and do a little grabs a piece of the ship and rides one final wave into the atmosphere he surfs his way

down to the planet as a falling star um just an amazing ending like oh my gosh what a good ending i love it i don't even like and then it plays that uh that ending song which is a kid i loved that song even though i thought that it started with it came from arizona but i think it says in pace in arizona yeah now that i listen to it sounds way too country i was gonna say that song it's like really country and not very fitting i know but uh as a kid though i thought it was like wow like it came from arizona now they're ending space and they're blowing up the planets and they're dying here hey is that what you thought that song was about yeah basically whoa anyway uh i mean i think uh the other evidences from everything i just described that this is in the alien universe would basically come down to um how everything is going wrong uh there are preventable problems that you could have fixed just by better communication but the people aren't

communicating and they're not uh typically extremely i would say proactively competent at their jobs anyone who hasn't seen dark star i highly recommend it it's it's a great way to just you just grab your significant other turn on this film no and bore the crap out of them make them wonder why they ever married you don't ever make anyone watch the the long version of it find a version that's only like an hour long and then follow it up by making them watch disney's the black hole like that'll be even better we should cover that movie that's a weird black hole has no excuse that we didn't even watch the extended version it's just boring yeah but uh no it's a great movie everyone should watch it and any fans of how would they not like the black hole there's like so much dude the black hole so much robot rape in that movie nuts like yeah there's a lot of robot rape going on and then like a lot of ending up in literal hell going on like geez what

a weird movie how is that movie disney what were they even doing it's so sad because like disney it's like disney thought they wanted star wars yeah they thought they were funding like the next star wars and then the director was like no no no this is actually my weird like a hard sci-fi just weird existential existential heaven and hell metaphor i was like oh those poor disney execs they had no idea anyway uh we could talk about that i'm sure that put the fire underneath them and many many decades later they bought star wars and then they ruined star wars because they had no plan no ambition they didn't know what to do they just wanted money needed someone with some like life in heaven and hell philosophy to to tell them what to do well they just needed someone with any sort of ambition like i i mean seriously jj abrams not jj the dude does not care about anything he makes he's literally just trying to like shock the audience and then get money you

know anyway okay sorry music for this episode is provided by christine hope you like this episode If you did, make sure to rate us, give us a high rating, give us a give us a review. Tell your friends about us, because, you know, the more of your friends who listen to this podcast, the more people you'll have to talk about these awesome fan theories and the more people we will have to spread the word of all these crazy things that nobody actually knew until until we revealed them. It's it'll be great. We'll we'll turn the whole world into our own little fan theory, fan theory, fan club. And if you really love what we do, you can always support us. We've got a Patreon. Get in there. Send us whatever support you're willing to send. We would appreciate it so much. It would mean the whole world to us. And as a perk, if you do that, you can even hear some of the outtakes of our episodes. You want to tell them about the outtakes, Leif?

I mean, what can be said that wouldn't turn into an outtake itself?

Yeah. You know what? Every time we record, we record for about twice as long as what you hear, if not three times as long. Yes. And sometimes the things we cut out are actually good. Yeah. And if you want to hear those little nuggets that maybe are actually good or funny or interesting. Well, yeah, if you want to peek behind the scenes of how it is when we record an episode, if you just can't get enough of our voices and want to hear a little more, get on Patreon, send us your support and you will get exclusive access to those clips. It's a lot of fun. I think it's fun. I could listen to us talking for like literally, you know, an entire day. I love it. Yeah, we love it. Yeah. So you would too if you're listening to this, clearly. I mean, you're still listening and we're in like the ending spiel. Like if you're still listening now, this is for you. So what are you doing? Get on Patreon.

Get over there. And until next time, remember, the popcorn isn't real.

In a world of shadows and dreams Nothing is quite what it seems We're the fools in a midnight reel The popcorn isn't real Chasing clues through the silver screen Wishing for a tale that's unseen Hold my hand through this hazy spiel The popcorn isn't real Behind the curtain, there's nothing to feel The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment, that will never heal The popcorn isn't real

The craft of fiction within fiction's mind Searching for secrets we'll never find Every clue, just a future we steal The popcorn isn't real We whisper theories, but they all fade A fleeting ghost in a midnight parade Holding on to that surreal appeal The popcorn isn't real Behind the curtain There's nothing to feel The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment That will never heal The popcorn isn't real

We'll see you next time.