We did the double last night – Alien and Aliens.  Watching the first, I am actually not sure whether I have ever seen it, although Jonesy the cat was very familiar.  So if I have, it was a long time ago.  The second one really was fantastic.

Couple of interesting things:  I already knew about the close identification between Ripley and the queen alien, having read about that somewhere – bitches in space, both wanting to protect their children, essentially.  The other thing was, especially in the second but I think also in the first, was the frequent focus on hands. Hands creeping over a bed or a table top, trying to fnd something.  This is interesting because the larval thing that comes out of the egg, and latches onto someone’s face, looks exactly like an elongated hand.  I think this focus on hands is deliberate, therefore, to make people always unsure as to whether it is a human or an alien.  And maybe also to stress more conenctions between alien and human?

Not sure whether I have seen Aliens 3… surely I have… I know I have seen Alien Resurrection, and I’ve posted about Alien v Predator.  Hmm; might have to do the third and fourth (again), just for a sense of closure.

And truly, it freaked me out to see people smoking – inside a spaceship!  Imagine what that would do to the filters!