‘Aliens’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Bill, Chris, and Sean wake up from a 57-year sleep to revisit James Cameron’s 1986 action thriller, ‘Aliens,’ starring Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, and Michael Biehn. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Where you can find the big picture with Sean Finacy.

• 0:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, sir.

• 0:14Bill Simmons?

  You can find the watch.

• 0:16Sean Fennessey?

  Fucking A.

• 0:16Bill Simmons?

  C.R. himself, Chris Ryan.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Game over, man.

• 0:20Bill Simmons?

  You can find Craig Hornbeck. We finally fixed his camera.

• 0:24Chris Ryan?

  Hey, I'm not in the bunker anymore.

• 0:26Bill Simmons?

  There it is, Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Yeah, we figured out how to not make Craig look like he's filming a hostage video. So that's good. And it is the 40th anniversary, the summer, of one of the most requested Rewatchables in the history of the Rewatchables. Aliens, a movie C.R. side-eyed me on many times. Just wondering when it was gonna happen.

• 0:47Sean Fennessey?

  Threatened to quit over.

• 0:49Chris Ryan?

  I said, I would definitely quit if he did it without me. And I would quit if there were certain films that came before it, but then we blew past that with, with the, with the summer of 26.

• 0:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, now it's the summer of C.R. It's the year of C.R. And Aliens is next. This episode of the Rewatchables is presented by the movie Mutiny, only in theaters August 21st. Our guy, Jason Statham, stars in Mutiny, the new action thriller from the director of Plane. I like that movie. When an international conspiracy turns deadly, that always happens, Statham goes off the grid on a one-man mission, I love one-man missions, to take down those responsible. And if you're a fan of The Beekeeper, The Meg, or The Expendables, guilty. This is exactly the kind of movie you want to see Statham in. You've sold me.

• 1:41Bill Simmons?

  One of the defining action stars of the last 25 years, doing what he does best. I agree with that. Think Die Hard on a Boat. That sounds great. Mutiny, only in theaters August 21st. Rated R for strong, bloody violence and language. There you go.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremfya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremfya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremfya, proper training is required. Tremfya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more, or visit tremfyaradio.com.

• 2:56Bill Simmons?

  There you go. Aliens. Producer Walter Hill, very fond of his work.

• 3:19Sean Fennessey?

  One of your guys.

• 3:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, right there. He said, James Cameron said, if, if Alien could be compared to a haunted attraction, aliens should be like a roller coaster. That was the premise.

• 3:32Chris Ryan?

  It's also the structure of the film.

• 3:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Chris Ryan?

  It's like, literally, like, how it feels watching that movie where, that whole first hour, it's an hour until you see an alien, and it's going up, it's going up, it's going up, getting to know the guys, sitting next to them, okay, Apon, okay, Drake, Frost, whoever. And then when it goes down, it goes down hard. And it then does a loop-de-loop, and you get like, one minute of like, okay, it's chill, it's chill, it's chill, and then it goes down again, and it's...

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  And people are throwing up.

• 4:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's relentless.

• 4:01Bill Simmons?

  People are passing out.

• 4:02Chris Ryan?

  And that's just Roger Ebert.

• 4:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Weirdest review I think he's ever, that I've ever read in 452 Rewatchables.

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  It sounds like he was legitimately traumatized by the movie.

• 4:13Bill Simmons?

  He really did.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:15Bill Simmons?

  He was like, that was amazing, I never want to see it again, or think about it.

• 4:18Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember having that reaction? Did you see it in theaters?

• 4:21Bill Simmons?

  I saw it on a date, which was weird.

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  On a, on a date?

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Chris Ryan?

  Really? Did she express an interest in xenomorphs?

• 4:28Bill Simmons?

  It was summer, it was the movie to go see. Everybody was talking about it, and, uh, yeah, weird date movie. Not a lot happened after.

• 4:36Chris Ryan?

  You didn't get a second base?

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 4:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, ironically...

• 4:42Bill Simmons?

  It's a drop-off at the front door.

• 4:43Sean Fennessey?

  It is a movie about procreation and motherhood.

• 4:46Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 4:47Sean Fennessey?

  You'd think maybe she would have some ideas about what could happen afterwards.

• 4:49Chris Ryan?

  Some over-the-shirt stuff, maybe, yeah.

• 4:51Bill Simmons?

  I do remember, I do remember where I saw it. I remember everything about it, and I remember just not being able to understand how they made a movie like this. This was like, I think, we, and we talked about this with other ones from the 80s, like The Terminator, ahead of their time, but still felt very 80s. This is like, there's no, like, there, I wrote down movies they made in 86, like, this is Star Trek IV, Top Gun, Cobra, Hoosiers, Back to, Back to the Future was out the year before, but there was like, it still felt like we were in the 80s. This went into like, the 2000s. And I still don't understand how they made it.

• 5:28Sean Fennessey?

  It still looks good.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  Looks incredible.

• 5:31Bill Simmons?

  Um, I mean, you like the 4K transfer, or do you like when it's grainier with the old way they had it?

• 5:35Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I think he over-corrects.

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Sean Fennessey?

  Cameron with a lot of the upgrades that he does, and I guess he's been, you know, upscaling the stuff to make it look a little bit too clean and too polished, but there clearly are some, some, some scenes where like, they're using rear screen or, or blue screen behind, and that stuff looks better. Like, when you saw, when I watched that stuff on VHS, when I was a kid, it looked fake.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the drop ship crashing.

• 6:00Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 6:01Chris Ryan?

  Looks like Jason and Argon.

• 6:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so that stuff looks better, but then there'll be stuff where you're watching just an individual scene of two people talking, and you're like, this looks too polished and shiny somehow.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:10Sean Fennessey?

  But generally speaking, like, the fucking sets, and, and tech, and, and creatures that they built for this movie, all of which are hand-built, we had this conversation about speed, it's the same thing, eight years earlier, it looks amazing. It looks so real and lived in and wet and gross and...

• 6:29Bill Simmons?

  And well-thought-out.

• 6:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's just, it's just...

• 6:31Bill Simmons?

  Like immaculate detail everywhere. I watched it on a streamer the first time, not Netflix, although it is on Netflix in September, and then I watched the 4K the second time, and it was just so many things. The set was really what jumped out, and just the detail.

• 6:45Chris Ryan?

  What's nice about the 4K, and what's nice about watching it on like, a really good, a really good physical media copy, is that I think the sound is almost as important as the visuals in this one, and the different effects, like, just the fact that, like, the way that the aliens now have like, an attacking scream, or, or, you know, like, their, their banshee call when they're like, attacking people, is so piercing if you really tweak it up a little bit and like, get it on...

• 7:12Bill Simmons?

  And the little girl screamed too.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:14Bill Simmons?

  Very good screamer, that little girl.

• 7:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah, her one and only screen performance. Um, and yeah, and the same for the James Horner score.

• 7:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like, where he creates this kind of sonic signature that means every time you hear that sound, you know an alien is striking or coming, like, and that also pops really well.

• 7:32Bill Simmons?

  That he made in 12 hours?

• 7:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's an insane story.

• 7:35Bill Simmons?

  James Horner, I felt like we just had him in another movie.

• 7:41Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's a big 80s guy for us. I mean, he's, isn't he 48 Hours, or is that Jerry Goldsmith? I think James Horner did 48 Hours. Like, he did a bunch, and I think he did Terminator? Or no?

• 7:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's Brad Fidel.

• 7:51Bill Simmons?

  We just did one where he was one of the people, anyway. 10 best sequels ever.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 7:57Sean Fennessey?

  Did you make the list?

• 7:58Bill Simmons?

  I did.

• 7:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:00Bill Simmons?

  Did you make the list?

• 8:01Sean Fennessey?

  I have a list, I don't know if it's the complete list, but I want to hear what you think.

• 8:04Bill Simmons?

  Godfather 2, Terminator 2, Dark Knight, Aliens, Empire, WIC 2.

• 8:13Chris Ryan?

  Not a WIC 2 guy. No, I'm not a WIC 3 guy, my bad.

• 8:18Bill Simmons?

  WIC 2.

• 8:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Bill Simmons?

  Lethal Weapon 2. I'm not a Lord of the Rings guy, but everybody says Twin Towers is incredible.

• 8:25Sean Fennessey?

  Two Towers.

• 8:26Bill Simmons?

  Two Towers, and Twin Towers.

• 8:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Bill Simmons?

  Two Towers.

• 8:30Chris Ryan?

  That's an Oliver Stone film.

• 8:31Sean Fennessey?

  Different film, yeah.

• 8:32Bill Simmons?

  Classic me, by the way. I'm not a Lord of the Rings guy, but everybody says Twin Towers is amazing, before Sunset.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 8:40Bill Simmons?

  And then the 10th spot, I have either Bad News Bears and Breaking Training, or Taboo 2. I don't know, you guys pick.

• 8:46Chris Ryan?

  Taboo 2.

• 8:47Bill Simmons?

  Taboo 2, considered one of the classic 80s.

• 8:49Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I have a couple of additions. The way I thought about it was best immediate sequel, which means it's the movie that comes immediately after the original.

• 8:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so not...

• 9:00Bill Simmons?

  So there's some urgency with the sequel.

• 9:01Sean Fennessey?

  Right. And so, but specifically I said that because I wanted to say, From Russia With Love, the second Bond movie, which I think is...

• 9:07Chris Ryan?

  Very good.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe the best Bond movie.

• 9:09Bill Simmons?

  That's a good point. Nobody thinks of that as a sequel, but it's a sequel.

• 9:12Sean Fennessey?

  But that's like, I think that's the best one of that era, and...

• 9:15Bill Simmons?

  Who was the girl on that one?

• 9:17Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I can't even, it's, Robert Shaw is the, is the villain.

• 9:19Chris Ryan?

  A blonde lady.

• 9:21Bill Simmons?

  Robert Shaw. Hey, Bond, you fucking pussy.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  Daniela Bianchi?

• 9:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  They had the lady with the toe knife.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Did you say Empire Strikes Back?

• 9:32Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 9:33Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Bride of Frankenstein, which is an early one, but one I would include. Uh, you didn't say Toy Story 2, but I think most people would say Toy Story 2, one of the, one of the great sequels of all time.

• 9:45Bill Simmons?

  I didn't say Rocky 2 either, which has the greatest last 35 minutes, but then you're plotting through the first hour and a half.

• 9:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a little tricky with comic book stuff, but both Dark Knight and Batman Returns are both great sequels that are immediate follow-ups to the previous story.

• 10:01Bill Simmons?

  What's your favorite sequel of all time?

• 10:03Chris Ryan?

  The only one that didn't get mentioned is, is Friday the 13th, Part 2, which I wouldn't say is like, a cinematic masterpiece.

• 10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Better than the original, I think.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  But it's better than the original.

• 10:10Bill Simmons?

  Best-looking girl of all the girls in the Friday the 13th.

• 10:13Sean Fennessey?

  Amy Steele, right?

• 10:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I liked her in that one.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  I'd probably say, I mean, like, it's not, it's not complicated, it's Godfather Part 2, it's...

• 10:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's kind of, it's kind of a number one draft pick there.

• 10:22Bill Simmons?

  Because we assassinated you a couple of weeks ago in Lake Tahoe?

• 10:25Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to, I wanted to talk to you guys. Have you revisited the film since we had that discussion?

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  No, I haven't. I was saving it for my next length trip. I thought it would be meta if I was watching that when Craig.

• 10:36Sean Fennessey?

  Were you nervous at all during the trip?

• 10:37Chris Ryan?

  No, not at all. Not at all. Look at what my guy Craig did for me, you know?

• 10:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. He killed me. He assassinated me.

• 10:45Bill Simmons?

  Craig, why are you here?

• 10:46Chris Ryan?

  That wasn't me.

• 10:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I guess most of those sequels that we talked about did what most sequels do, which is that they take the premise of the movie and they just like repeat the story and amp it up a little bit. This is the rare case where it's a different kind of movie.

• 11:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Like it's a different genre of movie, basically than the original film.

• 11:10Bill Simmons?

  It's basically what Terminator two did too.

• 11:12Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 11:13Bill Simmons?

  It took it and improved it.

• 11:14Chris Ryan?

  The things that Alien does so well is that when it starts, and especially I can only imagine what it was like to see it, why, like the first time when it came out. It's like, it's not abundantly clear that Sigourney Weaver is the hero and star of that film when you're watching it. So they kind of give Cameron a little bit of runway there, but he takes this franchise essentially now and makes it Ellen Ripley's story, you know, and flushes out that character, gives her motivation to go back to this planet, like gives her all this baggage that she doesn't have. In the first one, she's just one of six or seven people working on a mining ship.

• 11:56Chris Ryan?

  So it's just a huge, aside from the genre shift, it's a pushing all your chips in on this one character, which the series itself, the franchise itself has flitted back and forth between, is this Ellen Ripley's story? Is this a story about an alien species? Is this about a mega corporation that wants to use that species as a bioweapon? But Cameron was like, I know how to make people care about characters and you need someone at the center of this movie that people are gonna wanna watch.

• 12:28Bill Simmons?

  How many sequels were actually better than the original film, which was also fairly iconic? I only thought of five. Wick two, Weapon two, Dark Knight, Godfather two, and Aliens. Babies on both. Cause you could argue Alien is as good as Aliens just because it was original.

• 12:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think we should hash that out at the end, which we think is the superior film. Cause there's an interesting case for both movies. You know?

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  I tend to gravitate more toward originality. But this movie on its own would have been awesome and I don't even know if it necessarily, I mean, obviously she has the baggage, but I also think it completely stands alone. Whereas like Rocky two, you need to see the first one and go through all the steps. Like normal sequels, you need the baggage of the first movie.

• 13:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. This to me is like an absolute testimony to craft.

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Sean Fennessey?

  Everything, all the component parts of making a movie are at such a high level. It's not a very original movie at all. In fact, it's not just the sequel to Alien, but it's so clearly just like a Pacific theater, World War II movie. Like that's, it's using a very clear archetype from movies that were made 40 years before that and kind of just mapping it onto this sci-fi story. But that's an ingenious idea and like that idea deserves a ton of credit. But there's not, when you look at like each individual character, aside from Ripley, there are characters you've seen before in movies. The structure of the movie is somewhat similar. It's just there's an invention around the creature and there's an invention around the way of making this movie. Because Cameron is probably the single most important genre movie maker

• 14:03Sean Fennessey?

  of the last 50 years, considering George Lucas hasn't really made very many movies. I think you could incredibly call him that.

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  I get definitely, for all my issues with him, I would definitely give you that.

• 14:15Bill Simmons?

  We know your issues. Who the fuck's he are?

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  Fifteen years making cartoons. He's been directing Avatar movies.

• 14:21Bill Simmons?

  Flew too close to the sun. What'd he do?

• 14:24Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, like he abandoned.

• 14:27Bill Simmons?

  For iconic movies. Like I don't think he knew what to do with his life after.

• 14:30Sean Fennessey?

  The three Avatar movies have made like eight billion dollars collectively.

• 14:35Chris Ryan?

  He's obviously like right to do it, like financially and lots of people like those movies.

• 14:40Bill Simmons?

  That he never just made a normal movie after, I don't know, the mid 90s.

• 14:44Chris Ryan?

  But you could say he was not making normal movies when he made like Titanic or True Lies. Like he was always pushing.

• 14:49Bill Simmons?

  True Lies to me is like a normal, like Cameron movie, but just like, just make a movie where you're just directing some actors and you have some set pieces.

• 14:57Sean Fennessey?

  I feel pretty confident, I would actually put money on him making a movie, his next movie being a movie that's more in the real world. I do, I don't think he's gonna make another Avatar style film next.

• 15:10Bill Simmons?

  Do you like those Avatar movies?

• 15:11Chris Ryan?

  I don't.

• 15:12Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 15:13Bill Simmons?

  I don't. Craig, when did you see the Alien and Aliens?

• 15:16Speaker 04

  I've seen Alien many times, one of my favorite movies all time. I had not seen Aliens. I had been waiting to do the rewatchable.

• 15:22Chris Ryan?

  Oh man, this is awesome.

• 15:24Bill Simmons?

  Are you a sequels guy?

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah. I mean, I liked all those movies that you guys listed out. I was happy we mentioned Dark Knight. Yeah. I mean, if it's done well, sure.

• 15:33Bill Simmons?

  There's been a lot of bad sequels too. We didn't make that list. That's the problem with sequels. Is they feel like money grabs or they're just basically repeating the structure of the first movie.

• 15:42Chris Ryan?

  A lot of the third movies are just like really, really, really tough scenes.

• 15:46Bill Simmons?

  I mean, you could argue in this movie, they do repeat the structure of the second half of the movie in all these different ways. They're out of the same beats, right?

• 15:55Chris Ryan?

  They put Bishop in the tunnel. Like they hit a lot of the same notes.

• 15:59Bill Simmons?

  Just left with her and somebody. It's the cat in the first movie. It's the little girl in the second movie. There's a countdown.

• 16:09Bill Simmons?

  James Cameron. You call him Jim or James?

• 16:12Chris Ryan?

  Jim.

• 16:12Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy?

• 16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Big Jim.

• 16:13Bill Simmons?

  Big Jim?

• 16:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I don't even know if he's that big.

• 16:16Bill Simmons?

  Was hired to write a story for Aliens in 83 because he'd written scripts for the Terminator and Rambo First Blood Part Two. That kinda guy. Does the Terminator in 84, rips off Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator two, True Lies and Titanic.

• 16:32Bill Simmons?

  The Abyss is the worst movie of those six and still was a massive success and has a lot of Abyss fans. Yeah.

• 16:38Chris Ryan?

  I think I might like it more than that.

• 16:40Bill Simmons?

  Big swing. No, I'm saying the worst of those six. It's a pretty high floor.

• 16:44Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 16:45Bill Simmons?

  When that's the worst one, he had no stinkers. And I would argue if he had just made Terminator, Aliens, Terminator two and Titanic, and just made those four movies, that's as good of a four as anyone's ever made.

• 16:58Sean Fennessey?

  He's in the Hall of Fame. We've been talking a lot about who you can compare Chris Nolan to. After The Odyssey and the people who are taking on like these huge, big tent pole things. And I kept saying Cecil B. DeMille's name, you know, there's a very short list of people who were like, what I do is I'm the biggest filmmaker at the biggest time in movie history and I'm pushing the medium forward on the biggest stage. And Cameron was that guy for 25 years? I mean, for a really long period of time, he was the single most grand stage filmmaker that we had.

• 17:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's like, when you guys guest hosted my pod, you were talking about Nolan being the guy that pushes things.

• 17:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:38Bill Simmons?

  Ahead.

• 17:39Chris Ryan?

  Which is not something you necessarily thought he was gonna do at the beginning of his career.

• 17:43Bill Simmons?

  Right. So Cameron was the original guy and then basically passed the torch to him. Was there anybody in between?

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  Of somebody who's just.

• 17:52Chris Ryan?

  Peter Jackson.

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  Half a decade ahead of whoever else was. Oh, Peter Jackson.

• 17:55Sean Fennessey?

  That's definitely right. And similarly, I think evolved like the craft of movies and the way that like CGI looked and worked in those films.

• 18:03Chris Ryan?

  And maybe got a little lost in his toys.

• 18:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And also made movies that people thought you never would be made.

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 18:08Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the same way when you saw Titanic, you're like, I didn't think anyone could ever pull this off.

• 18:13Bill Simmons?

  I wonder what the next iteration of that is?

• 18:15Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I mean, the thing about.

• 18:17Bill Simmons?

  Just people punching you in the face as you watch the movie?

• 18:19Chris Ryan?

  Nolan, Cameron, Spielberg, is that for as much as they put a dinosaur on screen or put, you know, the Lord of the Rings on screen or put, you know, an atomic weapon goes off on screen, they all have chops, you know, like they all, to varying degrees, know like how someone is supposed to move across a frame of film and how action sequences are cut and how action sequences need to build up and then release. And there's just like genuine filmmaking chops that go back to John Ford with those guys.

• 18:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:54Chris Ryan?

  And a lot of action directors, I think modern action directors don't understand that stuff. Like the most fascinating interviews I read about Cameron or with Cameron are when he's talking about editing action sequences by far. Because he's doing things that I think are on like, kind of an almost other level than anyone I've ever read. When he's talking about how he like flops the footage that he's cutting so that he can retrain his eye to not anticipate when cuts are coming. I mean, this is just like, that's savant stuff. I mean, like to think about how the audience is gonna respond to like the tempo and the feeling of like your editing of an action sequence is remarkable.

• 19:35Sean Fennessey?

  There's something cool with him too, where he has the same background as all the new Hollywood guys that we revere like Scorsese and De Palma, where like he got started with Roger Corman. He worked in special effects and production design on movies like Galaxy of Terror and Battle Beyond the Stars. And so he was like a hands-on builder of movies before he was a movie director.

• 19:57Chris Ryan?

  Did he work on Escape from New York?

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  He did work on Escape from New York. And.

• 20:01Bill Simmons?

  Solid movie.

• 20:02Sean Fennessey?

  So he knows how every piece of the puzzle works. Like he understands how everything fits together and.

• 20:11Bill Simmons?

  Kind of like Craig with podcasts.

• 20:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. A host and a producer.

• 20:15Bill Simmons?

  Produced, he's edited, he knows how to cut social.

• 20:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 20:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He's like the James Cameron of podcasts.

• 20:20Sean Fennessey?

  He can do everyone's job better than they can.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  And he can nuke a three wood.

• 20:26Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so I think because he knows how to do all that stuff so well. Peter Jackson's not dissimilar, like started out, you know, with a lot of like very handmade movies. So there's a reason that these movies, that there's so much attention to detail. I feel this way about the Avatar movies, even if you don't like the Avatar movies. He's doing things right now that I think we're gonna look at in 25 years and be like, well, this is the person who invented this. And this thing that is much more common, and there's so many shitty versions of now. The Avatar films were paved the way for this, and that might seem like a sin, but it's actually gonna be the best example of that kind of work.

• 20:58Bill Simmons?

  Also, maybe the only Canadian curmudgeon we've ever had.

• 21:02Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 21:03Bill Simmons?

  Well. Are there other Canadian curmudgeons?

• 21:04Chris Ryan?

  If the tariffs keep going this way, we'll probably have some more curmudgeons.

• 21:09Bill Simmons?

  Canadians are like famously good natured, but maybe after about 12 beers, we're ready to throw down.

• 21:15Chris Ryan?

  He is an old school, this is not a democracy filmmaker. When it comes to like how he wants it to look. Like, it sounds like he's pretty collaborative in some ways, but.

• 21:24Bill Simmons?

  Not with English people.

• 21:25Chris Ryan?

  When it comes to, yeah, he does not like.

• 21:27Sean Fennessey?

  You must love that.

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  Tea time. This is.

• 21:30Bill Simmons?

  I've never been more down with James Cameron than doing the research of this. The crew being like, no, no, this is what.

• 21:36Chris Ryan?

  Take a tea break in the middle of this movie.

• 21:38Bill Simmons?

  This is where we take our tea break. He's like, what? Motherfuckers, get to work.

• 21:43Chris Ryan?

  Um, the other thing I really love about especially his early period and kinda hearkens back to uh, an earlier era of filmmaker, although Scorsese and lots of people are like this, is he has his guys. And his guys are in his movies, and he picked the right guys.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  That's how I would be if I was a director, but I would just have.

• 22:03Bill Simmons?

  Who's like Michael Bean.

• 22:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I wanna talk about Michael Bean.

• 22:06Bill Simmons?

  Just like, I'm throwing, oh, James Remar flamed out, I'll get my guy Bean.

• 22:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Bill Simmons?

  Here he is.

• 22:11Sean Fennessey?

  You do have your guys. You got Sal, you got House, you got Jaco, you got your team. You got CR.

• 22:16Chris Ryan?

  What about you?

• 22:17Bill Simmons?

  What about Sean?

• 22:18Sean Fennessey?

  You got me.

• 22:18Bill Simmons?

  Sean?

• 22:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Bill Simmons?

  Craig? Christopher Guest is like that too. He's like, I love Fred Willard. Every movie I make, he's gonna be in it.

• 22:24Sean Fennessey?

  True, and he was never wrong to do so.

• 22:26Bill Simmons?

  Bomback with Eric Stoltz.

• 22:28Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 22:29Bill Simmons?

  Nolan has a bunch of his guys.

• 22:31Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt.

• 22:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But yeah, I like, who are Tarantino's guys?

• 22:35Sean Fennessey?

  Sam Jackson. Who delivers?

• 22:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, Sam Jackson's too pricey now for him.

• 22:38Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 22:39Bill Simmons?

  You need a more like.

• 22:40Chris Ryan?

  Tim Roth, Sam Jackson.

• 22:41Bill Simmons?

  Tim Roth is a Tarantino. That's a good Tarantino guy.

• 22:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Uma Thurman.

• 22:47Bill Simmons?

  Um, did the two Aliens movies change how we regarded outer space? This is a theme I wanna throw at you guys because I'm older than you.

• 22:56Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 22:56Bill Simmons?

  And when I was growing up as a kid, outer space was Lost in Space, the TV show. It was Star Trek.

• 23:05Bill Simmons?

  It, it was a little scary, but not too much. It's friendly. We were in control of things out there. We landed on the moon. Maybe there's some stuff out there, but I think we're okay.

• 23:17Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:17Bill Simmons?

  And then right around here, it's like, there's some shit out there, dudes.

• 23:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, but right around here, we're also getting ET, right?

• 23:24Sean Fennessey?

  That was what I was gonna say too.

• 23:25Bill Simmons?

  But ET was friendly. He wanted to help us.

• 23:27Chris Ryan?

  Saying is like.

• 23:28Bill Simmons?

  We're getting close encounters. Like, we just wanna study you guys and not hurt anyone.

• 23:32Sean Fennessey?

  I know. I think that the Alien franchise has this interesting relationship to Spielberg and Spielberg's conception of extraterrestrials. Cause ET feels a little bit like, it's not a direct response to Alien, but it's like a, a bounce off of the fear that Alien drives, stokes in the culture.

• 23:48Bill Simmons?

  It's a glass half empty.

• 23:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 23:50Bill Simmons?

  ET.

• 23:50Sean Fennessey?

  And, and this movie is kind of like the rejection of the warm, fuzzy Alien creature. That comes more into the fore in like movies like Explorers and like, there's a bunch of movies that come out in the eighties that are all sort of post ET. They're like friendlier.

• 24:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Sean Fennessey?

  Alien life movies.

• 24:04Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 24:04Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie is a rejection of that, but this movie, I also think is so. It, Jurassic Park owes this movie so, so, so much. Because everything that you see in the Stan Winston creature design and the way that the world is built is, and the way that the chases and the fear works, like the, I had never really realized how much the, um, kitchen sequence with the raptors in Jurassic Park owes to the chase sequences through the lab and the tunnels in this movie.

• 24:33Chris Ryan?

  Like when Burke traps her with the alien in the med bay.

• 24:36Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. Like those, and it's the same creature designer. It's Stan Winston, who is like a genius of designing these, these creatures and putting them on screen. And I, there's this interesting thing where this franchise in particular is like one of the only things in the culture that can kinda go toe to toe with Spielberg over this period of time. And it almost feels like they're in this unspoken, like one upmanship game that I really like.

• 24:58Bill Simmons?

  And on the other side, you have like Star Trek IV.

• 25:01Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 25:01Bill Simmons?

  Where they're like, beam down there and we'll just shoot some aliens and beam back up.

• 25:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Bill Simmons?

  And we'll call it a day.

• 25:07Chris Ryan?

  I think there's probably also, one of the things that I think is really influential about this iteration of the Alien story is like, creating a real cynicism about institutions and about companies and about companies that get too big and companies that exist outside of the law. And that's been something that I think the TV series that just came out on FX, Alien Earth, is very focused on is like, why would a company want something like that and bring it back to Earth? What, what's the hubris it would take to think that you could control that? So I think that that also has something to do with Jurassic Park where it's like, these guys who are like, I can master the thing that can't be mastered, you know?

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  Would you compare this to how the fantasy guys did the fantasy draft order for our league this year?

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  You know, honestly?

• 25:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Thoughtless.

• 25:57Chris Ryan?

  As a shareholder in the fantasy draft.

• 26:00Sean Fennessey?

  Thoughtless.

• 26:01Bill Simmons?

  The hubris.

• 26:02Sean Fennessey?

  Why, we, why were we not asked to participate?

• 26:05Chris Ryan?

  Were you gonna wrangle 12 people to come in and swing golf clubs?

• 26:08Sean Fennessey?

  We're doing it on Friday.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  And you're not coming.

• 26:12Sean Fennessey?

  I had to sign up until I, until I knew my fate was gonna be relying on DK shanking it into the Pacific Ocean.

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  He didn't know it was your ball. It's randomized. It's just literally random. It's just a fun way to pick out of a hat.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Like freely admitting he'd never swung a golf club. It's tough.

• 26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Shameful.

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  Kelly, it was random. Hit for hyphens, right? The balls were random. We didn't know which balls we were hitting. We all took four shots each. We had no idea whose ball it was.

• 26:35Sean Fennessey?

  Same, same sin as last year.

• 26:37Chris Ryan?

  When you hit mine, there was a little bit of like, Luke Skywalker put the blast shield down. Yeah, I felt you in my, in my ear.

• 26:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's, it's overconfidence in your own ideas. There was no, there was no vetting with the rest of the crew, how this should work.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  This is Avatar.

• 26:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. It's a Cameron-esque move.

• 26:54Bill Simmons?

  Does your, Craig, does your generation fear outer space or like it?

• 27:00Chris Ryan?

  Well, to speak for my entire generation.

• 27:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, 35 and under. Outer space.

• 27:05Chris Ryan?

  To be honest with you.

• 27:06Bill Simmons?

  Glass half full or glass half empty?

• 27:07Chris Ryan?

  Well, I feel like it wasn't until Elon started talking about going to Mars that, that it felt relevant to us. I feel like space has been irrelevant.

• 27:13Sean Fennessey?

  Say that. I was gonna say, does it, is it, we don't think about you at all with space?

• 27:16Chris Ryan?

  Space has not really been a part of my, my childhood and my experience.

• 27:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I feel like American culture just pressed pause on, on space in general.

• 27:24Bill Simmons?

  It felt like the eighties. There was just so much conversation about it.

• 27:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Bill Simmons?

  What else is out there? Then the movie stars, the TV.

• 27:30Sean Fennessey?

  And you just did Apollo 13, and I feel like in the nineties, there was this kind of swoon of nostalgia for astronauts.

• 27:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Sean Fennessey?

  And then that is right when it kinda started to trickle off.

• 27:38Chris Ryan?

  To me, honestly.

• 27:39Bill Simmons?

  Conspiracy culture didn't help.

• 27:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 27:41Bill Simmons?

  I think we go at all.

• 27:42Chris Ryan?

  The fact that all of the like mega rich dudes are the ones leading whatever space race there is now. It just makes me feel like, I'm either never gonna be able to afford to go there, or if I do wind up there, I'm gonna be mining on Mars. You know, like I'm gonna be working on some like farm for like.

• 27:59Sean Fennessey?

  And that's what these movies, Total Recall is about, the same thing, right?

• 28:01Chris Ryan?

  You know? But, but like.

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  Total Recall is really important for this conversation too, cause that's four years later. It's equally like really cool, not as, not as detailed as Aliens, but a really awesome movie.

• 28:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Bill Simmons?

  But that's like, now we're like, okay, weird shit's out there. This could go really bad.

• 28:17Sean Fennessey?

  And all that cynicism that Chris is talking about is in that movie too, where it's sort of like, you're just a cog in the machine and there's bigger forces at play that are controlling you. And even if we have created a society where we can get to outer worlds and travel across the universe, it's still the same old shit as it is here on Earth.

• 28:35Bill Simmons?

  You know what's interesting though, with the books and the radio shows from like the thirties, forties and fifties? There's a lot of outer space stuff and like War of the Worlds and, but I think part of the problem is we just couldn't make movies and TV shows that looked realistic for what we would have thought like going to a planet would be.

• 28:51Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 28:52Bill Simmons?

  So we didn't really have the technology until this movie.

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of Total Recall.

• 28:55Bill Simmons?

  ET doesn't go anywhere. It's here.

• 28:56Sean Fennessey?

  Cameron had the whole cast read Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel, which I think was written in like the early fifties. And then was eventually made into a movie in the nineties, which is a movie that it owes like a huge debt to Aliens. And that was written by the same author that wrote Total Recall, right?

• 29:12Bill Simmons?

  You like that movie?

• 29:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh no.

• 29:12Sean Fennessey?

  Oh no.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  Dick did.

• 29:13Sean Fennessey?

  No, you're right. You're right.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but still.

• 29:15Sean Fennessey?

  Same, sorry, same director as Total Recall.

• 29:17Chris Ryan?

  Kind of speculative ideas about like, yeah.

• 29:21Sean Fennessey?

  So it's all there, it's all related. And this movie is just like insanely influential in terms of like what a sci-fi action movie can be.

• 29:29Bill Simmons?

  It is a, it's a before, after movie, and there's different genres for that. Like even Halloween is a before, after movie. It's like, they make Halloween, horror movies are just different after Halloween. I think the same thing for this. There's one other interesting thing that I never really considered until I was doing all the research for this, about this movie, that I just, I mean, I wasn't smart enough when I saw it in high school, but there's like a weird Vietnam parallel to this movie.

• 29:54Chris Ryan?

  This is very funny, cause like I was reading about, I was doing my research and you know, Cameron's pretty heavy on this. Like, he's like, this is about like a guerrilla force.

• 30:04Bill Simmons?

  This is an allegory for what happened.

• 30:05Chris Ryan?

  And then if you read Paxton interviews, Bill Paxton's like, I don't know about that shit.

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  But this was at the tail end of the, like, we did a podcast about this, the kinda reckoning of America and Vietnam, which basically starts with movies.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  When are we doing Nam month?

• 30:23Bill Simmons?

  Would you be interested in Nam month?

• 30:25Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 30:25Bill Simmons?

  We get that sponsored?

• 30:26Chris Ryan?

  By who?

• 30:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, you, you gotta consider. Two things.

• 30:31Bill Simmons?

  Sponsored by Michelob Ultra.

• 30:32Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I feel like this is a huge line of conversation about this movie. So obviously he'd just written Rambo Part Two.

• 30:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Sean Fennessey?

  First Blood Part Two. And so that's on his mind as he's writing that movie, cause that's what that genre, Rambo character is about.

• 30:45Bill Simmons?

  Coming out about, we gotta go back, we have guilt about what we did.

• 30:48Chris Ryan?

  Missing in action.

• 30:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is eighty-six. This is the year of Platoon. This is like, this is when this is all happening. And there's these great stories about these two guys who turned down parts in Full Metal Jacket to do Aliens.

• 30:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Sean Fennessey?

  And they're kind of the same movie. I mean, they're, they're about many of the same things.

• 31:01Bill Simmons?

  We shouldn't go back. Why are we going? What are we getting out of this? This was stupid. We're trapped here. We can't get out. Basically the same thing.

• 31:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Bill Simmons?

  Pretty interesting. I missed it for 40 years, but now I'm here.

• 31:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it seems obvious, but I think it's just as simple as launching you a hundred years into the future and putting you on another planet, and you get so swept up in that world that you're only viewing it about the consequences of the characters right in front of you.

• 31:24Chris Ryan?

  Coming out of the walls, stuff, all the like, I was short, I was gonna be out of here in four weeks. Like you could, you could take that dialogue and put it in a Vietnam War movie.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  Sigourney Weaver.

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  One of the all time fearless, great action movie performances by an actress. Linda Hamilton, T2, Charlize, Fury Road.

• 31:48Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:49Bill Simmons?

  Uma, Kill Bill, Sigourney. I think that's Mount Rushmore. Anybody else?

• 31:53Chris Ryan?

  Awesome list.

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  It's like the four that stand out above anything else you could throw. It's the movie I always wanted Angelina to make and she never made.

• 32:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we were, we were talking about that with Flops where it was like she has a couple where you're like, she's scratching at it, but she never got there.

• 32:07Bill Simmons?

  She was, but there's a six year run. Yeah, Tomb Raider, like, but she never had a movie like this, but it's, this is, that's like once a decade.

• 32:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is the filmmaker. This is the only one that's ever been nominated for best actress. That's the other thing is that this kind of performance doesn't get acknowledged in a wider way. It's just, it's kind of just like set to the dustbin of genre. But she, you know, she's in this place where she's this highly skilled actor who can work in a lot of different kinds of movies. And a couple of years later, she wins an Academy Award for Guerrillas in the Mist. And she's also coming off of Ghostbusters. So like, like, is there a more versatile actress in all of Hollywood at this time?

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  Marlee Matlin wins for Children of a Lesser God. Ciara and I just did this for about last night as we wondered if Demi Moore could have snuck in there.

• 32:55Sean Fennessey?

  I honestly thought you were just gonna say, we just did Children of a Lesser God. On the Rewatchables and I didn't know about it.

• 33:00Chris Ryan?

  You were there.

• 33:00Bill Simmons?

  Jane Fonda, Morning After, Sissy Spacek, Crimes of the Heart, Kathleen Turner, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Sigourney for Aliens. I, at the time, I don't think it was controversial and I think, I think Marlee Matlin's really great, that movie. So I'd say it's a tough one, but it's, I don't know who else could have been in this movie in 1986.

• 33:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a historic Oscar win. There was a really good documentary about Marlee Matlin that came out a couple of years ago. And like, when you learn about what her relationship with William Hurt was like and what she was going through, like, you know, it's, I had a lot of empathy for her life and experience, but it's an easy one to be like, no one has seen Children of a Lesser God. Like, it's a movie that kind of disappeared from the culture.

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, five year Oscar, she probably still wins, but I think if we go forty year, forty years later Oscars.

• 33:46Chris Ryan?

  This is also a very cool story of Sigourney kind of betting on herself and being like, if you want me, you're gonna have to see TC. And I have some notes about what I think the characters could do.

• 33:57Bill Simmons?

  It's like what you pulled was CR year.

• 33:59Chris Ryan?

  That's right. Well, Rich was a very effective negotiator.

• 34:02Bill Simmons?

  Like, I need my own month for the Rewatchables. I need LeBron James in a Sixers uniform.

• 34:08Chris Ryan?

  I'm just imagining.

• 34:09Bill Simmons?

  I need to do Aliens.

• 34:10Chris Ryan?

  Rich on game, game over, doing like a whiteboard of like, here are all the places Chris could go.

• 34:15Sean Fennessey?

  Also, the name of his show is Game Over, man.

• 34:19Bill Simmons?

  Max is like, so you're dealing with a talent like Chris Ryan. How much are you talking to him every week?

• 34:29Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you busted out your Kellerman.

• 34:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Is it something where you go back and forth with Bill Simmons and then you talk to Chris Ryan? How do you handle that? Uh, can I give you Sigourney's 79?

• 34:41Chris Ryan?

  Would you blind call Max Kellerman?

• 34:43Bill Simmons?

  I might bring Max in later for the director's commentary. Alien, Ghostbusters, Aliens, and Working Girl were her four best in like an 11 year span. But she also had Eyewitness, You're Living Dangerously, Deal of the Century, Guerrillas in the Mist, Ghostbusters 2.

• 34:58Sean Fennessey?

  You could, only Deal of the Century is bad. All those other movies are good.

• 35:02Bill Simmons?

  And Eyewitness is like just a 10 out of 10 to be movie. See it on Tubi, just press play.

• 35:08Sean Fennessey?

  So at my, uh, at, at my birthday party that you were at the other, like, couple of weeks ago, a friend came and he pulled the, I'm trying to get you some physical media that you don't own. And he gave me three discs and one of them was a copy of Eyewitness, which is very rare. And I didn't own it. He, he nailed it.

• 35:27Bill Simmons?

  Was it Elon Musk?

• 35:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it was not. He was not invited to my birthday party.

• 35:31Bill Simmons?

  So I didn't prep you for this. I didn't prep you for this and it's gonna make you mad that I didn't.

• 35:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, great.

• 35:37Bill Simmons?

  You can make a case that Sigourney won the eighties as for actresses. I'm gonna go through the seventies, eighties, nineties, zeros and two thousand.

• 35:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's Meryl. I think it's Meryl.

• 35:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, here we go.

• 35:47Chris Ryan?

  For the eighties?

• 35:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, cuz we just did this on the big picture.

• 35:49Bill Simmons?

  Hold on. Seventies. It's Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda in the finals.

• 35:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 35:56Chris Ryan?

  Diane Keaton's not in there?

• 35:58Bill Simmons?

  I don't think so.

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  Diane Keaton's in The Godfather and Annie Hall.

• 36:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't think she's as big as either of those two.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  He doesn't get Diane Keaton.

• 36:05Bill Simmons?

  I do get Diane Keaton. I just don't think she was as big as Jane Fonda.

• 36:09Chris Ryan?

  Can we slip Annie Hall into Vietnam Month?

• 36:10Bill Simmons?

  Jane Fonda was leading major movies for 10 years and getting Oscar nominations and.

• 36:15Sean Fennessey?

  As was Diane Keaton. Yeah, all, all true for Diane Keaton as well.

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  I would say second half of the seventies for Diane Keaton, all the way through for Jane Fonda.

• 36:24Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe.

• 36:24Chris Ryan?

  Continue your list.

• 36:25Bill Simmons?

  Same for Faye Dunaway.

• 36:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think all three of them are in a healthy conversation.

• 36:29Bill Simmons?

  I have Diane third for that one.

• 36:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  Eighties, Sigourney versus Meryl Streep in the finals. Sigourney, more movies that would be on this podcast.

• 36:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I was gonna say.

• 36:42Bill Simmons?

  Meryl with the hardware.

• 36:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Sean Fennessey?

  Sigourney is in better films at that time, but having just watched like Cry in the Dark for the first time, I'd never seen that. Meryl Streep's performance in that movie is astonishing. It is like she, there's a reason that she is who she is. And so as a.

• 36:58Chris Ryan?

  Dingo ate my baby?

• 36:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I'd never seen that movie and.

• 37:01Bill Simmons?

  I mean, Silkwood. I was randomly watching.

• 37:05Sean Fennessey?

  Soobies Choice is in the eighties.

• 37:06Bill Simmons?

  I was watching Heartburn on Pluto this week.

• 37:09Sean Fennessey?

  Great movie.

• 37:09Bill Simmons?

  She's fucking awesome in that movie.

• 37:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:11Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what Jack Nicholson's doing in that movie, but it's enjoyable. I don't know what he's going for.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  He's playing Carl Bernstein.

• 37:16Bill Simmons?

  We might have to do that on Rewatchables.

• 37:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really good race.

• 37:20Bill Simmons?

  Um, nineties get interesting because there's no like dominant awesome actress unless you wanna go back with Meryl. But you basically, it's down to Julia, Meg Ryan, and Rene Russo, who I think actually you could make a case wins the nineties. Cause she's in the most fun movies.

• 37:34Chris Ryan?

  In The Line of Fire, Lethal Weapon 3?

• 37:37Bill Simmons?

  She's in Tin, Tin Cup.

• 37:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Thomas Crown Affair.

• 37:40Bill Simmons?

  Thomas Crown, like she's got bangers year after year after year. I think even, can't remember if Major League was that or not, but um, she's just all the way through. She's in everything. Uh, the zero zeros, I think it's Winslet or Angelina. And it's probably Kate Winslet wins.

• 37:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, at what point?

• 37:58Bill Simmons?

  Tougher one for actresses.

• 37:59Sean Fennessey?

  At what point does Cate Blanchett get into this conversation too?

• 38:02Bill Simmons?

  Maybe third place. And then the tens, I think Emma Stone wins the tens.

• 38:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  J Law's in there, but not totally. It probably could have been better. But anyway, the point is Sigourney's in the finals in the eighties.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 38:13Bill Simmons?

  I knew this would blow my mind.

• 38:14Sean Fennessey?

  Wish I'd prepared for this.

• 38:15Bill Simmons?

  I know, I'm sorry.

• 38:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um, lots to take, to take.

• 38:17Bill Simmons?

  I thought of it this morning as I was having coffee.

• 38:19Chris Ryan?

  No argument from me. I mean, it's, it's, it is an incredible run. It was really an incredible run.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  I like what you said too. I mean, she's, well, one, she still works with Cameron. She's in all the Avatar movies. And she's still active. She's in, she was in like three movies last year. She's in her seventies and she can do any kind of part. She can still, she's such a unique looking person. There's no one who looks like Sigourney Weaver.

• 38:38Chris Ryan?

  She's in the friggin Mandalorian, right?

• 38:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she was. Very tall, very physical, very, but not like muscular per se, but just like imposing, but also very sensitive, can be really deep. There's just great stuff with, with a little girl in this movie that is like, you know, that sequence where the little girl asks her about, did you have a daughter? And she tells him, she says she's gone, you know, like that scene is really, that's like a.

• 39:00Chris Ryan?

  She gets to be a much different person in, in Aliens than she was in Alien. I mean, not just because of the 57 year nap, but because of like.

• 39:08Bill Simmons?

  Ciara, did you ever date anyone as tall as Sigourney?

• 39:10Chris Ryan?

  I only dated one girl taller than me. It was awkward. It was awkward.

• 39:14Bill Simmons?

  How'd that go?

• 39:15Chris Ryan?

  Awkward. Yeah.

• 39:16Sean Fennessey?

  Say more.

• 39:17Bill Simmons?

  How tall?

• 39:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, like three inches, I think.

• 39:22Sean Fennessey?

  I thought you were gonna say like 6'8".

• 39:26Bill Simmons?

  6'8" volleyball player?

• 39:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he had the climber.

• 39:29Bill Simmons?

  Three inches?

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  I think so, yeah.

• 39:31Bill Simmons?

  Do you feel like you had to wear like, like thicker sneakers on the bottom?

• 39:34Chris Ryan?

  No, but it was just, it just like, it was awkward in the way you would imagine.

• 39:37Bill Simmons?

  Craig, what's the shortest girl you ever dated?

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  Hmm, maybe a 5'4".

• 39:43Bill Simmons?

  Four, okay.

• 39:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's the, the shortest girl you ever dated?

• 39:46Bill Simmons?

  Cause Craig's like a sneaky 6'2 and a half.

• 39:48Chris Ryan?

  Have you ever dated somebody you couldn't, like you'd have to.

• 39:51Bill Simmons?

  My girlfriend in college was six feet.

• 39:53Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding?

• 39:54Chris Ryan?

  No shit.

• 39:55Bill Simmons?

  Tall, skinny Irish lady.

• 39:56Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 39:56Sean Fennessey?

  Lady?

• 39:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she was great.

• 39:58Sean Fennessey?

  Was she an athlete?

• 39:59Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 40:00Sean Fennessey?

  Just tall?

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Chris Ryan?

  Tall, skinny Irish lady. You still in touch?

• 40:04Bill Simmons?

  Nope.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 40:04Bill Simmons?

  Not in touch with anyone.

• 40:05Sean Fennessey?

  This wasn't the Aliens girl though.

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  No, it was that. Uh, let's take a break and we'll talk about, uh, the one and only Bill Paxton. I'm gonna look right to the camera for the break for this. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be a lot harder than finding a decent movie, but that was before Quince. Quince has staple pieces made from premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere. And everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. It's the perfect place to start building a cozy fall outfit without any absurd markups. For instance, I love a good vest. They have a lightweight down packable puffer vest, which is an easy fall layer. Although nobody loves layers more than Chris Ryan.

• 40:50Bill Simmons?

  Uh, you can throw it over a sweater, long sleeve, whenever you wanna make an outfit feel a little more seasonal. Simple, classic, one of those pieces that works with pretty much everything that's already in your closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order, 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of. Major depressive disorder. I carry sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I wanna make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.

• 41:43Speaker 06

  Paid partnership with Johnson and Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 41:54Speaker 07

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone. Proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone. Building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only.

• 42:11Speaker 06

  Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Capletta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects. Ask your doctor about Capletta. Learn more at capletta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 42:48Bill Simmons?

  Bill Paxton.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  From Weird Science to this.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  I just wrote down, immediately goaded.

• 42:58Chris Ryan?

  His perception of this character was that it would be a person that the audience couldn't wait to see die. And I've never heard someone lack perspective on their own performance like this in my life.

• 43:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  One of the greatest crimes ever committed against America's cultural inheritance and legacy is that Hudson doesn't get in an escape pod and go off and have other adventures that we can have 10 movies just with Private Hudson traveling the galaxy.

• 43:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have that category, right? For could this movie?

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  Sequel, prequel, spinoff.

• 43:31Bill Simmons?

  It's the proof of life, David Caruso category.

• 43:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  Should we have, should this character have been spun off?

• 43:35Chris Ryan?

  Is there any movie that Private Hudson crash-landing into and going, "What the fuck are we gonna do now, man?" Like, wouldn't that make every movie better?

• 43:44Bill Simmons?

  Rom-coms, thrillers.

• 43:45Chris Ryan?

  Boogie Nights.

• 43:46Sean Fennessey?

  There's a, there's a case that this movie has more potential winners of that category than in any movie that we've done.

• 43:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Sean Fennessey?

  Because there's so many people who you'd want to see on intergalactic adventures.

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  It makes it, the reason this movie works is because you care about 80% of the people who get got. You're just like, "Oh, no, not this guy." You're like.

• 44:08Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think of a-

• 44:08Chris Ryan?

  Not Worsbowski.

• 44:10Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think of a- We talked about it a little when he died, but I was trying to think of a non-A-lister who had a higher approval rating.

• 44:17Sean Fennessey?

  I was just thinking about this with Dolly Parton.

• 44:19Bill Simmons?

  Like, what person? Well, Dolly Parton was an A-lister, though.

• 44:22Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, non-A-lister.

• 44:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he got close, because he was in so many big movies. He's in fucking Titanic, you know?

• 44:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:28Bill Simmons?

  He did Twister, Titanic.

• 44:30Sean Fennessey?

  He was real close.

• 44:31Bill Simmons?

  It's weird, because I never feel like he was like a Hanks, Costner, Cruise level. But he's like an A-minus lister.

• 44:38Sean Fennessey?

  But like, all the way up to, was Edge of Tomorrow his last movie? I can't remember what his last movie was, but, you know, same thing, seeing him in that movie, I was like, "This is gonna be a good movie."

• 44:44Bill Simmons?

  Always fun to just see him.

• 44:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Bill Simmons?

  Like, "Oh, Bill Paxton's in this."

• 44:49Bill Simmons?

  I was wondering, there's definitely a new rewatchables category for him, just from this movie.

• 44:56Bill Simmons?

  We've danced around this for over 450 movies. Craig suggested it a couple of times.

• 45:04Bill Simmons?

  That it's, it's better than a Dion Waiters, because he's in the movie too much.

• 45:08Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:08Bill Simmons?

  So it can't really be a Dion Waiters. So it's almost like, I wrote down the Private Hudson game over man category for kind of a full movie Dion Waiters.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like-

• 45:19Bill Simmons?

  I'm not, it's like, almost like Belushi in About Last Night.

• 45:22Chris Ryan?

  It's like the sneaky star of the movie.

• 45:23Sean Fennessey?

  That's, I was, Chris and I just talked about Tony on the pod. And Leah Woodall is in Tony, and he's like the third lead of Tony. And the way I think about it is the guy who picks up the movie and walks away with it.

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Like, the person who doesn't net, like, if it's not the right actor, then you wouldn't think as much about their character. But when you're watching Tony for 20 minutes, you're like, "This guy's the star of this movie." And there's times when you're like, Hudson is the most entertaining person on screen, and he's on screen with the woman who'll be nominated for an Academy Award, and Michael Bean, who's like one of the coolest action stars of the 1980s.

• 45:52Bill Simmons?

  So who's the basketball version of that? It's almost like Porzingis in the 24 playoffs for the Celtics.

• 45:58Chris Ryan?

  I couldn't care less.

• 46:01Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it was, it was OG Ananobe for the Knicks this year.

• 46:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a really good one.

• 46:04Sean Fennessey?

  He wasn't, he wasn't an A-lister, but there was a moment in the playoffs where he took over and he was everyone's favorite Nick, and he was the one who was deciding games.

• 46:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yes, that's a perfect example.

• 46:14Bill Simmons?

  I don't want to name a rewatchables category after a Nick.

• 46:17Chris Ryan?

  So we'll give it to the 2024 Kristaps Porzingis.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  Maybe not either. I'll figure out a good one for this, but it might just be the Private Hudson game over man.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Bill Simmons?

  For, like, it's like a full, it's like a Dion Waiters 2.0.

• 46:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 46:31Bill Simmons?

  He played like 35 minutes, he's doing all kinds of shit.

• 46:36Sean Fennessey?

  Also, does he have

• 46:39Sean Fennessey?

  all of the most memorable lines from the movie?

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  I have, for my flex, I have 10 of them.

• 46:44Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 46:44Sean Fennessey?

  There you go.

• 46:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Bill Simmons?

  We'll come back to him later. We also have Michael Bean as Dwayne Hicks. Most unlikely Dwayne in a while.

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  And the funny thing is-

• 46:54Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of a Reggie Cleveland.

• 46:55Chris Ryan?

  James, James Remar is not a Dwayne.

• 46:57Bill Simmons?

  Dwayne Hicks is like, the Browns took Dwayne Hicks, he's gonna be a great defensive end.

• 47:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  He went to University of Miami. Instead, Michael Bean is Dwayne Hicks. Paul Reiser is Burke.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  Ingenious.

• 47:08Bill Simmons?

  A lead film performance. We're in prime Paul Reiser territory here, because he's between two cops.

• 47:12Sean Fennessey?

  This is his first act, his first movie performance.

• 47:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, he was in Cop 1, wasn't he?

• 47:17Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right, right, right. He was in Cop 1, very, very briefly.

• 47:19Bill Simmons?

  Cop 2, very important.

• 47:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 47:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Bill Simmons?

  And then eventually I'm mad about you, a show that was mocked for years and years by people my age.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Not bad.

• 47:27Bill Simmons?

  Very sappy.

• 47:28Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  Lance Henriksen as Bishop, the android, can't wait to talk about him. Carrie Hen as Newt.

• 47:38Bill Simmons?

  I think this was it for her.

• 47:38Sean Fennessey?

  Her one and only.

• 47:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then, uh, Mark Ralston as Drake.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Mark Ralston.

• 47:45Bill Simmons?

  I could be a friend to you.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  Anybody come at you yet?

• 47:56Bill Simmons?

  Oh, sweetie.

• 47:59Bill Simmons?

  He played Boggs in Shawshank.

• 48:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 48:02Bill Simmons?

  The head of the sisters, the rebus.

• 48:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Sean Fennessey?

  One of your favorite film characters.

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, know you're really, you're going when I come in and Ralston's just like-

• 48:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's like glamour headshot.

• 48:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Bill Simmons?

  Last I heard, he was eating his food through a straw. So he's in this. And then, uh, I don't know if you have any William Hope as Gorman thoughts?

• 48:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, he, he was the other guy who was trying to decide between doing Full Metal Jacket and this.

• 48:30Bill Simmons?

  Never really fully happened for William Hope.

• 48:32Chris Ryan?

  He's, he's, he's definitely like a worker.

• 48:34Bill Simmons?

  And then finally, Jeanette Goldstein.

• 48:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 48:38Bill Simmons?

  As Vasquez. A casting that just would not happen.

• 48:41Chris Ryan?

  Our greatest Mexican thespian, yes.

• 48:43Sean Fennessey?

  Right, truly a cinematic icon. I think one of the most exciting, life-changing characters of the 1980s for many men and women.

• 48:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Sean Fennessey?

  And also a wildly politically incorrect choice.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  I, I gotta say, I didn't know, I didn't know for 20 years that she wasn't Latina.

• 49:05Chris Ryan?

  You were like, "Who's, I wonder who Jeanette Goldstein plays in this movie."

• 49:09Bill Simmons?

  I just thought like her, her mom was Mexican or something.

• 49:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  I didn't know.

• 49:12Sean Fennessey?

  No. I knew a lot of Jeanette Goldsteins on Long Island, I can tell you that.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  Were you attracted to Vasquez, Craig?

• 49:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'd probably pick Ripley.

• 49:21Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 49:22Chris Ryan?

  Lane Ripley.

• 49:22Sean Fennessey?

  You like him taller.

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  Sure. I was attracted to Vasquez, in case you were curious.

• 49:27Bill Simmons?

  I love Vasquez. She pops.

• 49:30Sean Fennessey?

  How could you not love Vasquez?

• 49:31Bill Simmons?

  Couple of categories for her later. Just quickly, I don't want to go through all the details about how hard it was to make this movie, but we had, they're gonna make a sequel. Alan Ladd Jr.'s president of Fox, he leaves. Replacement doesn't want to make it, thinks it's too expensive. The two producers from the first movie, Walter Hill and Gordon Carroll, start suing Fox for unpaid profits for Alien, so now the movie's dead. Cameron writes a treatment anyway. Studio, eh, they try to sell it. The sequel to my guys, Mario Kassar and Andrew J. Baj, Andrew G. Bajna, who I still don't think were real people. I think they were fronts for, for the, an Iranian movie company or something.

• 50:12Sean Fennessey?

  Some of your favorite movies ever, right?

• 50:13Bill Simmons?

  Just two of the, two of the goats. Lawrence Gordon takes over Fox. He's like, "Let's, what are we doing? Let's do this."

• 50:20Chris Ryan?

  He's like, "I would have had Alien 2 up and running two years ago."

• 50:23Bill Simmons?

  Cameron's like, "I can't do it yet, because Schwarzenegger was making Conan the Destroyer, which he was contractually, uh, forced to make, delays Terminator for nine months, so now they're just on hold."

• 50:36Bill Simmons?

  And that gives Cameron more time to basically develop the whole story. So it turns out to be the best thing for the movie. See, he's got nine months to basically work on this. He wants to direct. They're like, "Who the fuck are you? You've made Pirata 2, that's not happening." Terminator comes out. They're like, "You'd love to direct? That sounds great."

• 50:56Bill Simmons?

  He's married to his producer, Gail Anne Hurd.

• 50:59Chris Ryan?

  Dating or married?

• 50:59Sean Fennessey?

  They're, they're not yet married.

• 51:01Bill Simmons?

  About to get married.

• 51:01Sean Fennessey?

  They're about to get married.

• 51:02Bill Simmons?

  They want a budget. Fox lowballs them, they quit. So now it's dead again. And then, resuscitated. They want Sigourney Weaver. Fox is like, "She's gonna want too much money, can't do it." They quit again, comes back, they get married. Movie gets greenlit.

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  There's one really great wrinkle of the Sigourney negotiations that gets reported a bunch, which is that they're going back and forth about her salary and whether she's gonna do it, and it seems like she's not, and they're hitting some sort of deadline. And Cameron calls Schwarzenegger's agent and is like, "Well, we're gonna quit, because it sounds like she's not gonna do it, or she's taking too long." And it leaks back to Sigourney's agent. And so Sigourney then is pushed to-

• 51:46Sean Fennessey?

  Was it that, or was it they were inquiring about Schwarzenegger's availability?

• 51:50Chris Ryan?

  No, I think it was, because like, the, the threat he used- The threat he used was that like, Newt would be older and would be the star of the movie.

• 51:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I see.

• 51:58Chris Ryan?

  And that they would get a different person and basically transpose a lot of Ripley stuff on the Newt.

• 52:04Bill Simmons?

  For CR, the year of CR, you made it clear to Barstool

• 52:12Bill Simmons?

  that CR might be interested in potentially leaving.

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  How did you play that out with The Ringer and Barstool?

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  If you went to Barstool, would it be it's the Chris Ryan show with Chris Ryan? Or would you like, how would you, would you like seek your own kind of micro empire? Like, how would you want to do it?

• 52:28Bill Simmons?

  Would you be Barstool CR or Barstool Chris?

• 52:30Chris Ryan?

  I would, I would just go to be Dave's Andy Richter. I think that would be, I think the lure of the feet of the master.

• 52:35Bill Simmons?

  You're on the side when he's eating pizza?

• 52:37Chris Ryan?

  Like when he's doing emergency press conferences, molding the key light.

• 52:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's a great one, El Pres. Love that.

• 52:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, they make the movie and it goes terribly during the movie. And people are quit. He fires his AD.

• 52:59Sean Fennessey?

  Horrible shoot.

• 53:00Bill Simmons?

  I rarely in the rewatchables research does somebody fire their AD and their cinematographer.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  We could just say he shot this at Pinewood in England. The deal with Pinewood back then, I don't know if it still is, but back then is you shoot at Pinewood, you use Pinewood people, like the, the crews there that are there, a lot of the artisans that are there.

• 53:19Bill Simmons?

  And they're used to doing it their way.

• 53:21Chris Ryan?

  And so Cameron would show up and Dick Bush, a great name, shot Sorcerer, was the cinematographer. And he was like, cool, like I'm going to light this. Like you can have your ideas, but I, we light things in a certain way and I'm going to, and Cameron was like, what the fuck are you doing in my movie? And finally got rid of him, brought in Adrian Biddle, who's Ridley Scott cinematographer at the time.

• 53:43Sean Fennessey?

  He's not yet.

• 53:44Chris Ryan?

  He's not.

• 53:45Sean Fennessey?

  He's only on commercials. It's a great story about Adrian Biddle coming in because Biddle was the focus puller on Alien. And so he's working.

• 53:52Chris Ryan?

  He was only the camera guy.

• 53:53Sean Fennessey?

  He was only the camera guy. He tries to hire the cinematographer from Alien and he's not available. So he hires this guy, Adrian Biddle, who was a, like a professional swimmer in the sixties and an underwater, underwater photographer noticed his skills and hired him to work on, on Her Majesty's Secret Service to take photographs. And then he gets involved in photographs, filmmaking. He starts working for Ridley. He's the cinematographer on the 1984, uh, Apple commercial.

• 54:21Chris Ryan?

  No way.

• 54:22Sean Fennessey?

  That blows up. And then his first movie that he gets is Aliens on Ridley's recommendation. And then he goes on to shoot Princess Bride, Belleman Louise, Event Horizon. He goes on to make all these great movies. So it's this amazing like sliding doors thing where also Ripley and Cameron have this like, they respect each other.

• 54:39Chris Ryan?

  But not like.

• 54:40Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little chilly.

• 54:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Sean Fennessey?

  And, but, but he does give him Adrian Biddle.

• 54:45Bill Simmons?

  It's like he's making Aliens two, you're kind of rooting against it if you're Ridley Scott.

• 54:49Chris Ryan?

  It is kind of weird. It's like, we don't really see this a lot. I guess maybe the Star Wars sequels had a little bit of this, but we don't really see franchises that go up for grabs. Like usually someone's like, I fucking own this. Like Chris Nolan's like, I run this Dark Knight trilogy. Like this turned into like Ridley had been interested in making another one. He gives like a 1984 interview where he essentially broadly sketches out, Alien two would be basically what Prometheus winds up being.

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:18Chris Ryan?

  It's like the origins of the alien species and all the mythology behind it. And well, I, that I disagree with you there, but the point being.

• 55:27Bill Simmons?

  That should have been Alien two.

• 55:28Chris Ryan?

  But then like Cameron coming in, well, I'll, I'll save this for later, but Cameron coming in like changes who's the author of the franchise.

• 55:35Sean Fennessey?

  The truth is, is that the real authors, not authors, but the real controllers are Guylor and Walter Hill.

• 55:39Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 55:39Sean Fennessey?

  That the guy, those producers, those are the guys who have been allowing this to kind of continue to roll out over the years. And there's been a lot of, you know, Daniel Bannon is a figure in this too, in terms of like, who really owns the ideas of Alien?

• 55:51Bill Simmons?

  Fuck up by Ridley Scott. I'm not letting go of the Alien franchise.

• 55:53Sean Fennessey?

  And he's not letting go of it now. Like he keeps coming back to it now because it's such a big part of his legacy.

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  Guys like let go from the sequels because.

• 56:00Sean Fennessey?

  Today it was announced that he's developing another Alien movie around David, the Michael Fassbender character from Prometheus.

• 56:06Bill Simmons?

  So this movie took so long to finish that it barely got done. They barely scored it in time. They didn't even have time to test it, et cetera, et cetera.

• 56:18Bill Simmons?

  Doing a category before we even get to Roger Ebert, the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. Filming concludes at Pinewood. Cameron tells the crew, quote, "This has been a long and difficult shoot fraught by many problems, but the one thing that kept me going through it all was a certain knowledge that one day I would drive out the gate of Pinewood and never come back and that you sorry bastards would still be here." So that's how it closed the shoot.

• 56:47Sean Fennessey?

  BS's last day at Spotify.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  Cameron. I mean, that really should have been my last day at ESPN.

• 56:53Chris Ryan?

  That's how Sean quit The Ringer Fantasy League.

• 56:54Bill Simmons?

  Said that and left.

• 56:57Bill Simmons?

  I said, why didn't I think of that? Could have flown into Bristol, uh, guys meeting.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Amazing stuff. Alien universe, two more sequels, three in resurrection, Alien Romulus, TV series Alien Earth, Prometheus.

• 57:15Chris Ryan?

  Covenant.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  And then Covenant.

• 57:16Bill Simmons?

  Just keeps going.

• 57:17Sean Fennessey?

  Covenant. Have you seen Covenant?

• 57:20Bill Simmons?

  Do I need to?

• 57:21Chris Ryan?

  I think you would like it. It's very scary.

• 57:23Sean Fennessey?

  Really cool. Yeah. And it's, it's actually the one that is pretty close to this, just in terms of it's like insane violence.

• 57:30Bill Simmons?

  How many years ago?

• 57:30Sean Fennessey?

  And intensity. It's 2017, I think.

• 57:33Bill Simmons?

  Eighteen point five million dollar budget made allegedly 183 million dollars. I have to think it made more than that. It's probably some shaky accounting.

• 57:42Chris Ryan?

  Printed money since it's, it's had like 15 different releases over the years.

• 57:46Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing. You have the, what you allegedly made from the movie, but if you spawn 10 sequels, I feel like that's.

• 57:51Chris Ryan?

  I think I've accidentally bought this movie like eight times.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is this movie rated R?

• 57:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:57Sean Fennessey?

  I can't remember. If it is, it's got to be one of the hot, the, the highest degrees of we, I snuck into this movie.

• 58:02Bill Simmons?

  I think it was, I think it was, Ritter. Ebert, three and a half stars. I've never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long. It's like being on some kind of hair raising carnival ride that never stops. The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease, disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside. I didn't want to talk to anyone. But then he said, it is a superb example of filmmaking craft. Raj, tough summer for Raj on the rewatchables.

• 58:33Bill Simmons?

  He's really been all over the map.

• 58:34Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's interesting to read accounts from back then of this movie because Gail Anne Hurd has a story of like going into a screening of it somewhere and like a couple's on a date and the woman's gripping like the chair so hard that she breaks the armrest. And I'm like, I think this movie is really intense. I find Alien in some ways more

• 58:55Chris Ryan?

  like terrifying, you know, and, and more like difficult to deal with.

• 59:00Bill Simmons?

  I think the scene when, uh,

• 59:03Bill Simmons?

  the, the scene at the breakfast table when it comes out. Yeah.

• 59:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  I think that's scarier than I think in this movie.

• 59:10Bill Simmons?

  But this movie is very scary.

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, it's not really trying to be scary, except for a couple of key moments. There's the moment, the, the dream when she, the chestburster hits her at the beginning of the film.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  That's our first rewatchable scene.

• 59:24Sean Fennessey?

  And then there's the, the first moment when they're sort of, they're, they appear, the xenomorphs and they, but like, I guess when they're crawling through the ceiling a little bit, but generally speaking, like it is really more of a warm.

• 59:34Bill Simmons?

  The scariest moment is when the little girl's in the water.

• 59:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that is the number one.

• 59:38Chris Ryan?

  Monster comes up on her.

• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  Classical.

• 59:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's a horror movie.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  Most rewatchable scenes quickly. Ripley's Nightmare, yet again, proven that cats are evil. See how the cat acted in that? Cats.

• 59:50Chris Ryan?

  Cat.

• 59:51Bill Simmons?

  Cats suck.

• 59:52Sean Fennessey?

  I like cats.

• 59:53Chris Ryan?

  I do.

• 59:54Bill Simmons?

  Next one, we meet the crew. We get some Vasquez pushups.

• 59:58Chris Ryan?

  Pull ups.

• 59:58Bill Simmons?

  Pull ups, I mean.

• 59:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Meet the Marines, incredible scene.

• 1:00:02Bill Simmons?

  Did anyone ever mistake you for a man? She flips it on the guy. We get the knife trick with Bishop. And then Ripley finds out Bishop was an android, not happy.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  We also got the, uh, Apon giving the like wake up speech. She was like, all right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed.

• 1:00:19Chris Ryan?

  The glory is staying in the core.

• 1:00:21Bill Simmons?

  That was a, that was like a mildly racist eighties trope of the black, like troop leader crossed with the black police sergeant that would just get mad at whoever a hero was. Yeah. But remember Bernie Hamilton was in like five police movies? Just like, Bethany, get in here.

• 1:00:37Chris Ryan?

  You think this is Inspector Todd in space?

• 1:00:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, basically.

• 1:00:40Sean Fennessey?

  Memorably parodied in Last Action Hero, right? He's got, Jack Slater's got one of those guys.

• 1:00:45Bill Simmons?

  Ripley just did not like that Bishop was an android. Not a fan.

• 1:00:48Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:00:49Bill Simmons?

  Unhappy.

• 1:00:51Bill Simmons?

  The next one, crew finds the facehuggers and realizes the little girl's on board. Pretty good scene. You have one before that?

• 1:00:59Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I mean, I have a, a bunch.

• 1:01:01Bill Simmons?

  I was, I was trying to narrow it down to like eight or nine.

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  Potential of like, you could go through each scene and be like, here's why this one's rewatchable.

• 1:01:08Bill Simmons?

  Next one I have is we've got a live one. When they find the woman in the cocoon.

• 1:01:13Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  Kill me. Alien comes out of her stomach.

• 1:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a 25 minute stretch here.

• 1:01:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I don't even know what to do with this kind of scenes. Ripley's making the deja vu face as she's watching from the monitor.

• 1:01:25Chris Ryan?

  It's the ambush. I would, I would also say that this ambush scene.

• 1:01:30Bill Simmons?

  Something's moving, but it ain't us.

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  Trying to remember what, uh, cause I didn't know this at the time, but now when I was watching, I was like, is this the first found footage horror movie since Cannibal Holocaust and really the second ever?

• 1:01:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great call, seeing it from that perspective.

• 1:01:46Chris Ryan?

  You're right. It is. They're watching it all through. You only get like, there's a couple of cutaways, but you mostly get it through their cameras.

• 1:01:52Bill Simmons?

  They're all around us, man. Coming out of the walls, man. Gorman, I wrote down, he melts down like the Aaron Fox in the finals.

• 1:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Bill Simmons?

  Just, just repeatedly driving at Carly and three towns.

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you for your service, De'Aaron.

• 1:02:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then Ripley takes control of the Tesla SUV, first Tesla SUV.

• 1:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  It is, it, it does look like a cyber truck.

• 1:02:14Bill Simmons?

  And then Boggs dies.

• 1:02:17Chris Ryan?

  Fox does die. Yes.

• 1:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  Among others.

• 1:02:19Chris Ryan?

  Sprayed with acid.

• 1:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, where's Bowski Frost? They all go down.

• 1:02:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:02:23Bill Simmons?

  That whole scene is, this is when the movie's like, oh, oh, my God.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Bishop volunteers to go back to the, uh, the transmitter. This is just, uh, Pax is just cooking.

• 1:02:37Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe you're, maybe you aren't up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal.

• 1:02:42Bill Simmons?

  You could just count me out. And he goes, yeah, man, Bishop should go. Good idea.

• 1:02:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, great idea. Bishop should go.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  Uh, he's so fucking funny in this movie. The, uh, oh, here come the alien scene when they have that little meter thing. What's that thing called?

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  The trackers.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three.

• 1:03:04Chris Ryan?

  That's inside the room.

• 1:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:06Bill Simmons?

  And they look over the ceiling. They're coming.

• 1:03:08Sean Fennessey?

  This movie has great, simple tech.

• 1:03:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Like the, the sentry scene, which I'm sure is coming up, where you can see how many bullets are left, where it's just like, the, our dumb brains are just like, well, going to zero is not good.

• 1:03:19Chris Ryan?

  The sentry scene is only in director's cut, or is that?

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think so, yeah. And I, I watched the director's cut for this.

• 1:03:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  And which I think is the way to see the movie now.

• 1:03:26Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:03:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's, it's two hours and thirty-six minutes.

• 1:03:29Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  But I think it is so much better.

• 1:03:32Chris Ryan?

  Really interesting. You said, I completely disagree, but that's fascinating.

• 1:03:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm a traditionalist. I like the original movie.

• 1:03:39Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I think director's cut, so there's so many things in it that I, we can talk about things I like in it.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  We did a director cuts of this. I should have been like, ah, man, we should have done five more Rich Paul minutes. I'm gonna go back and re-edit them.

• 1:03:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's not too late.

• 1:03:52Bill Simmons?

  Um, Ripley realized the aliens are above him. That part where fifteen meters, twelve meters, ten meters. There's just no better gimmick than that.

• 1:04:03Chris Ryan?

  You read it wrong.

• 1:04:04Bill Simmons?

  Burke just goes full asshole. We're like, oh, my God, this guy. I love when the, the bad guy, who is now revealed as the bad guy, does the thing like where he locks everybody else out.

• 1:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:04:16Bill Simmons?

  But you know, at some point, it's gonna backfire enough. Hudson has the best death scene ever. I mean, are we, do you wanna litigate this now?

• 1:04:23Chris Ryan?

  He's finally a hero. He's finally brave, right?

• 1:04:26Bill Simmons?

  It's nice and quick.

• 1:04:27Chris Ryan?

  He's been, he's been the scaredy cat, and he's been the one that's just like, this is fucking bullshit. I want out of here. And then when he finally gets confronted by these things, he's like, let's fucking go.

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  Burke dies, and then Gorman blows up himself in Vasquez. And this all happens in six minutes.

• 1:04:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's also a great death scene. I mean, the Vasquez and Gorman together. When did she say you always were an asshole?

• 1:04:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, or Gorman, yeah.

• 1:04:47Bill Simmons?

  This has to be, at least for me, most rewatchable scene.

• 1:04:50Chris Ryan?

  The trackers in the ducks is, is the best.

• 1:04:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Chris Ryan?

  To me.

• 1:04:53Sean Fennessey?

  The cut when.

• 1:04:55Bill Simmons?

  Craig, were you holding on for dear life during this part?

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I watched this last night at one AM on my laptop. She's having, having her real time.

• 1:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  When Michael Bean pops his head into the vents and looks, and very quickly, you see them coming out of the shadows. It's like, ah, fuck.

• 1:05:10Bill Simmons?

  Especially for nineteen eighty-six.

• 1:05:11Chris Ryan?

  That's Gordo.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  So good.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, seeing his eyes peek above.

• 1:05:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so good.

• 1:05:14Chris Ryan?

  With the sound.

• 1:05:16Bill Simmons?

  Quickie mentioned Newt dropping into the water. And you're like, just get back in the water. We're gonna come get you. And you're just like, oh, man.

• 1:05:24Sean Fennessey?

  That was what I had written down for Gordo, was the creature ride from the water.

• 1:05:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, great scene.

• 1:05:29Sean Fennessey?

  This is nineteen eighty-six. Like, the fucking creature work in this movie is insane. It's so far beyond anything that was happening in movies at this time.

• 1:05:35Bill Simmons?

  Ripley goes back to save Newt. Um, and she realizes she's in Alien Egg Arowan, basically.

• 1:05:42Chris Ryan?

  Alien Egg Arowan.

• 1:05:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:05:46Chris Ryan?

  The Hailey Bieber egg zone?

• 1:05:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Sean Fennessey?

  These seem fresh.

• 1:05:50Bill Simmons?

  Rambo. Uh, Bishop shows up just in time. Punch it, Bishop. And then, uh, the whole ending with Bishop getting disemboweled.

• 1:06:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Sean Fennessey?

  Have some thoughts on that.

• 1:06:02Chris Ryan?

  It's like a lobster claw.

• 1:06:04Bill Simmons?

  Get away from me, you bitch.

• 1:06:07Bill Simmons?

  The holding on while you might get sucked out of space.

• 1:06:11Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:12Bill Simmons?

  A classic.

• 1:06:12Sean Fennessey?

  The airlock.

• 1:06:13Bill Simmons?

  Always, always where Total Recall had the same thing. A lot of movies have done this gimmick. I feel like every time you're getting sucked out, I don't think you're just like, oh, I'm gonna hold on to the ladder. Like, it's gotta be.

• 1:06:24Sean Fennessey?

  And since two thousand one, it's in, there's a version of it in Project Hail Mary.

• 1:06:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:06:28Sean Fennessey?

  Gravity has it.

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  And then Bishop saves the day with one of the great ideas in the history of any of these movies, the disemboweled guy.

• 1:06:35Chris Ryan?

  Grabbing.

• 1:06:36Bill Simmons?

  Grabbing the arm, Android, I should say. Um, what do you got for most rewatchable CR?

• 1:06:40Chris Ryan?

  The tracker scene, uh, all the red light, they're coming through. I would see that or the ambush, but I think it's the tracker scene.

• 1:06:47Bill Simmons?

  John?

• 1:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  To me, it's the, the, the ambush, the penetrating the alien hive, and the, like, the genuine fear on the faces of these guys and women who are presented as the meanest motherfuckers in the galaxy.

• 1:06:59Chris Ryan?

  Especially after they're told they can't use their guns.

• 1:07:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:02Bill Simmons?

  It's a very Vietnam-esque, Vietnam movie-esque scene.

• 1:07:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, it's more on unknown terrain. We don't understand the enemy or where we are.

• 1:07:11Bill Simmons?

  CR, what are your top five movie disembowelments?

• 1:07:16Bill Simmons?

  The Hitcher?

• 1:07:18Chris Ryan?

  I get.

• 1:07:19Bill Simmons?

  This is a big year for embowelments.

• 1:07:20Chris Ryan?

  There's not one that jumps to mind, I'm sure, like listeners.

• 1:07:23Bill Simmons?

  It's gotta be this one, right?

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  It's a great one. I mean, he, to me, he gets like twisted in half. It's not even.

• 1:07:29Sean Fennessey?

  My, my gondoli was actually the sound that Bishop makes when he's torn apart, which is like between a pop and a thwip. Like, I've never really heard that sound in a movie before, but it's so burned into my mind.

• 1:07:43Chris Ryan?

  Also, the fact that, like, Android anatomy is basically like a bunch of milk with squid. It's disgusting. It's like a bunch of chowder just comes out of the guy.

• 1:07:53Bill Simmons?

  It's so good. It's such a holy shit moment. Most eighty-six thing about this movie, I, I was gonna say the Vietnam overtones for me.

• 1:08:01Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:02Bill Simmons?

  Um, and then the fact that a female lead action character being a badass was considered to be this novel amazing concept for a movie. Now it's like.

• 1:08:12Chris Ryan?

  I had Michael Bean replacing James Raymar.

• 1:08:15Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one.

• 1:08:16Chris Ryan?

  In a major role in a movie.

• 1:08:19Bill Simmons?

  Uh. Because James Raymar had a incredible cocaine meltdown.

• 1:08:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, was he arrested?

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  He was arrested for drug possession, but they made it, they said it was for family reasons.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  Eighty-six was really the peak for terrible cocaine stories, good, bad, um, people surviving, people not surviving.

• 1:08:36Chris Ryan?

  Those are two guys, too, where you're just like, James Cameron handed it to you, like, you know?

• 1:08:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, really tough. What do you have, Sean?

• 1:08:44Sean Fennessey?

  Burke's styling, the way that Burke dresses, which is like, technically, this is supposed to be, what is it, twenty-one, thirty-three or something? It's years in the future, but it looks, looks like he just walked off the set of Beverly Hills Cop with his weird blazer. Um, Metroid? Did you play Metroid as a kid?

• 1:09:00Bill Simmons?

  I didn't.

• 1:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  I loved Metroid. One of the very first NES games I ever got. And one of the amazing reveals was that Samus, I think Samus, the, the, the lead character from Metroid, who was like an astronaut who wore a helmet. If you won the game, it was revealed, or if you got to a certain level in the game, that Samus was a, a woman. And that that character in the video game was directly inspired by Ripley. That, that's not something that you would have seen in a video game before that, that the character could be a woman. And I think that game came out in eighty-six or eighty-seven.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  And Samus was a big Super Smash Brothers character, and then you could change and play her as a woman or the person inside the suit.

• 1:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  There you go.

• 1:09:37Bill Simmons?

  The gondola butter in my ass, saliva pops in my mouth award. What do you have, CR?

• 1:09:40Chris Ryan?

  Soldiers getting ready.

• 1:09:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:09:43Chris Ryan?

  All the, like, outstanding shit, like when they're all, like, locking and loading and getting ready to go in. It's just, it's never not cool.

• 1:09:51Bill Simmons?

  I have, uh, people waking up from pods in movies like this, 'cause I always think about what's realistic and what's not. Like, I just have trouble waking up at a normal morning, but if you'd been sleeping for fifty-seven years, I don't know, what's your morning breath like?

• 1:10:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, your, your eyesight might have gotten better in the intervening time.

• 1:10:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, true. Would my eyesight get better?

• 1:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:15Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 1:10:16Sean Fennessey?

  There's a good version of this in Covenant, the wake-up scene.

• 1:10:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Bill Simmons?

  Everyone comes out, everyone, they always like make them dress weird in these things, but, uh, I was, I always think that's like a good scene.

• 1:10:26Chris Ryan?

  I had this in Picky Nits, but I can't believe they don't let these guys shower after a fifty-seven year nap, or however long they've been asleep. She was asleep for fifty-seven years.

• 1:10:33Bill Simmons?

  I was thinking about the Borat Saginaw, uh, rancid body odor award. You know, a couple of these people got a little gamey, I think.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think the breath would have been an issue.

• 1:10:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the breath.

• 1:10:42Chris Ryan?

  I honestly, Ripley, Ripley's apartment probably smells worse than anything we can possibly conceive of. It's a airtight, one-bedroom place. In a space station with a cat and a chronics and a, a chain smoker.

• 1:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I didn't think, yeah, the chain smoker.

• 1:10:58Chris Ryan?

  It's Grey Gardens in there. It's out of control.

• 1:11:00Sean Fennessey?

  Truly.

• 1:11:01Bill Simmons?

  Never see her actually puff from the cigarette.

• 1:11:03Chris Ryan?

  She holds it, like, she's just always holding it, though.

• 1:11:05Bill Simmons?

  That, I wasn't impressed.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Noticed an absence of cigarette-related categories.

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  Our guy behind Sean.

• 1:11:12Bill Simmons?

  Sunny. That's how you do it. Um, Todd Parker award for best character as a trans for Vasquez, comes right out of the pod, just fucking doing pull-ups, talking shit. It's like, who's this?

• 1:11:24Sean Fennessey?

  Love it.

• 1:11:26Bill Simmons?

  Uh, all right, what's aged the best?

• 1:11:30Bill Simmons?

  What do you got?

• 1:11:31Chris Ryan?

  I talked about this before, but just the, the roller coaster structure. And the idea that you don't see a xenomorph for a full hour. Like you get the hint of it when they show like her nightmare, you see it in the, in the medical cage or in the medical, you know, test tube. But the first action, it takes an hour to get to that. You would never get away with that now.

• 1:11:54Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. It's a good point. You'd probably, what you'd have now is you'd have a five minute segment from the middle of the movie that is pushed into the front.

• 1:12:01Bill Simmons?

  Any streamer, we're flashing forward to when they're descending on the aliens and then we go backwards.

• 1:12:07Chris Ryan?

  Your point about the director's cut, they would have had the colonists discovering the hive first. You know what I mean? And getting attacked or something.

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think is such an interesting and useful scene in the movie, but anyway, um, I have a bunch of these. I mean, one timeless war film, like hostile armed forces entering unnavigable terrain against an enemy they don't understand. That's every foreign conflict the US has been in for like the last hundred years. The physical production of the movie, which we talked about, you know, the miniatures and the sets. The tagline of this movie is incredible. It was just this time it's war. Which like, put that on a poster, that's fucking awesome.

• 1:12:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Sean Fennessey?

  The other one is casting a comedian as the villain, which I couldn't think of an example of this before this. But then, you know, you've got Robin Williams in Insomnie and One Hour Photo, you've got Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, Dennis Leary in Judgment Night, Dan Aykroyd in Ghost Point Blank, Monique in Precious. You've got Steve Carell in Fox Catcher.

• 1:13:03Bill Simmons?

  Did you say Jim Carrey in Batman?

• 1:13:04Sean Fennessey?

  Jim Carrey as a Riddler. Like this is something that happens all the time. Danny DeVito in Batman Returns.

• 1:13:09Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. Yeah. I can't think of another one.

• 1:13:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's such an inspired idea.

• 1:13:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like Richard Pryor never played a villain.

• 1:13:15Sean Fennessey?

  He did. He did. Well, not, it's in Harlem Nights a little bit, a little bit.

• 1:13:20Bill Simmons?

  That's the end of his career. Yeah. Like Don Rickles really missed it. He could have been Burke in a different thing. Those are good ones. Um, I had a couple. I thought, you know, we have when we do these sequels, when we move into the second movie, how they tie the first movie in, like Rocky II, they're just basically like, we're just gonna play the end of Rocky I again. Karate Kid II did that. Most sequels either do that or they try to do some, this one is so organic.

• 1:13:49Chris Ryan?

  They find her skipping out across the galaxy.

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  It really makes, it feels like a continuation of the first movie, which I think is like the single hardest thing to do. Godfather II actually is good with this too. Where we just start at the big wedding, like we did with the first one, but everybody's older. And Connie's dating some schmuck and Fredo's wife is being a dick and you can see Michael's got, but it's, it feels like a continuation. I think that's so hard.

• 1:14:15Sean Fennessey?

  This has always been one of my biggest frustrations about Alien Three is that, you know, the Alien Three opens with basically the information that Newt and Hicks are dead.

• 1:14:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  And that Bishop isn't there. And that was what I wanted it to be. Like when, I don't, I didn't want them to be dead. Like Alien Three is an interesting movie and a very flawed.

• 1:14:36Chris Ryan?

  We can do this now. I mean, the, the vision for Alien Three was to be part of Alien Three and Four at one point, where Hicks was gonna be the star of Three, working with like space communists to like fend off an alien invasion. And then Ripley was gonna come back big time in Four. Michael Bean, but more so James Cameron, were fucking livid when I watched Bean's podcast that Cameron went on about Three. They were just like, you motherfuckers. Like we did two and a half hours of like showing why these three people mattered, showing why what they do for each other gets them to the end of the rainbow. And you fucking wipe out all of that equity we built up with like a title card in the next movie.

• 1:15:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's just such a mistake.

• 1:15:22Chris Ryan?

  And it sets the tone for just how like, for as much as like, there's tons to admire in Alien Three, it is such a toxic, like angry movie.

• 1:15:32Bill Simmons?

  I only saw it once. I don't remember what happens.

• 1:15:34Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's a fascinating development story, just because so many different people took a shot at writing the script. So like William Gibson wrote, the guy who wrote Neuromancer wrote like a whole like screenplay you can read online about Hicks for Alien Three.

• 1:15:50Sean Fennessey?

  They just, they, they had something special with those three people and I, I, I concur with Michael Bean.

• 1:15:56Bill Simmons?

  Ripley FaceTimes Burke in the beginning. I think that invented FaceTime.

• 1:15:59Sean Fennessey?

  I was wondering about that too.

• 1:16:00Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was Total Recall, but I forgot it was Alien.

• 1:16:02Sean Fennessey?

  2001 has a version of that, the video call.

• 1:16:06Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Remember when he calls his daughter on our birthday?

• 1:16:08Chris Ryan?

  They got holograms in Star Wars. I mean, people were messing around with this.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  This feels like a straight FaceTime.

• 1:16:15Sean Fennessey?

  Do they have this in Blade Runner Two? Isn't there video phones?

• 1:16:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:16:18Sean Fennessey?

  Like phone booths?

• 1:16:19Chris Ryan?

  I think so.

• 1:16:20Bill Simmons?

  Every time I see Michael Bean in any movie, I want him to go, I came across time for you, Sarah. It's just great to see him.

• 1:16:29Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think I'm having him on the pot on Friday. Cause he's in this new movie that Chris and I saw called Onslaught, which is very connected to these James Cameron eighties movies. And his, his career is so freaking fascinating to me.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  He just never got over like that Hanks Costner hump.

• 1:16:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Bill Simmons?

  He's like right underneath.

• 1:16:50Sean Fennessey?

  He's in, like three of the most iconic movies ever. Yeah. And then Tombstone and he plays an amazing villain.

• 1:16:56Bill Simmons?

  Bean, you wouldn't call him Michael. He's Michael Bean. You'd say his whole name.

• 1:16:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. But like Lords of Discipline, Terminator, Aliens, Rampage, Seventh Sign, Abyss, Navy Seals, K2, Deadfall, Tombstone. 10 years, all big Hollywood movies, some good, some not so good, but some all timers. And then like nothing.

• 1:17:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Bill Simmons?

  Let's take a break. We'll do more What's Aged the Best. When the sun goes down, the appetizers come out. Yeah. You heard that right. Late night, half price appetizers are here at Applebee's. Saucy, sweet and spicy boneless wings, crispy cheesy mozzarella sticks, creamy spinach and artichoke dip. Your favorite apps half price available every single night because why should appetizers have curfews? Tap the banner to learn more. Dining only for a limited time at participating locations. Restrictions apply. Copyright 2026 Applebee's Restaurant LLC.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers. Oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the Meta pant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com slash Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. One more What's Aged the Best for me. This could be another Hudson Award, the Hudson from Aliens. Are you a good guy or a bad guy? Because I'm still not sure. Award. He's right dead center in the middle and he's neither. And I don't know how I pulled it off. I was trying to think of other characters who did that.

• 1:18:34Chris Ryan?

  I was, I mean, just this last time I was thinking about whether or not this is the most like electrifying pairing of guys, the Hudson and Hicks pairing of like pure courage under fire and sensitivity and leadership with like chaotic fear and energy and comedy. And it's like a really like electrifying like combination of a guy, of guys.

• 1:18:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny that it's in the same year as the phone Berenger and Platoon where like, obviously neither of those guys are very funny, but they are like Alpha and Omega figures too.

• 1:19:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You're gonna do some quotes later, right?

• 1:19:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:19:09Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:19:11Bill Simmons?

  Uh, movie wasn't shot in sequence, which I was like for What's Aged the Best and they saved that first scene when they're all hanging out for the last scene of the film, cause they all knew each other.

• 1:19:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I like when they do that. Um, this is just from, uh, from IMDb trivia.

• 1:19:28Bill Simmons?

  Jack Goldstein, um, little more buxom than the character had to strap her assets down.

• 1:19:35Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, to have that not overpower her scenes. And eventually went on to fund a clothing company that made giant bras for particularly buxom people.

• 1:19:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's ironic because one of my big takeaways when I saw this movie as a teenager was she's got a great rack.

• 1:19:57Bill Simmons?

  Her guns are loaded.

• 1:19:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's not surprising.

• 1:20:00Bill Simmons?

  Even more loaded. There was more ammo in the, in the closet, apparently.

• 1:20:03Chris Ryan?

  How do you think that conversation, do you think Gail Anne Hurd took, took that conversation on? Or you think Cameron went direct to the source?

• 1:20:08Bill Simmons?

  Probably not a Cameron. Probably that was a Gail Anne Hurd. Like, hey. Yeah. Anyway.

• 1:20:14Chris Ryan?

  Here's some electrical tape we'd like you to look into.

• 1:20:18Bill Simmons?

  And the 15 minute countdown at the end is exactly 15 minutes. I always enjoy when they do that too.

• 1:20:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:24Bill Simmons?

  Great Jack Gordo. What do you have, Sean?

• 1:20:26Sean Fennessey?

  Either the alien emerging behind Newt in the water, or I do think when Ripley emerges in the power loader at the end, there's a slight, a thrilling movie moment.

• 1:20:36Chris Ryan?

  I love Bean obviously going through the ceiling panel and the aliens coming at him. There is a shot in a really random scene in this movie where they've got Burke dead to rights. They've got Burke sitting and all of the Marines and Ripley are like basically circled around him standing. And there is one shot where it's like, you see three of the Marines and Ripley's like telling them what Burke did to them and how he was gonna try and get embryos into them. And then Paxton just leans into the frame and he goes, fuck, he's dog meat. You're dead. And it, but it is like so much better than it needs to be where it's like this master shot of all the living characters. And then he's just like, he's dog meat.

• 1:21:21Bill Simmons?

  This is his best performance, right? Cause it's, it's a pretty loaded list.

• 1:21:25Sean Fennessey?

  So funny in True Lies. So.

• 1:21:27Chris Ryan?

  I really like him in One False Move as like a different kind of performance, but yeah, this is fucking awesome.

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  Cause we did True Lies. Were you on that one?

• 1:21:34Sean Fennessey?

  I wasn't.

• 1:21:36Bill Simmons?

  Sorry.

• 1:21:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's okay.

• 1:21:39Sean Fennessey?

  He's so funny in that movie. The, the, the, the scene when he pisses himself is unbelievable.

• 1:21:46Bill Simmons?

  Great shot, Gordo, word. We did that. We did not do the Sean fantasy word for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm.

• 1:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  I have like at least five.

• 1:21:55Bill Simmons?

  Should we get Spring Spielberg again?

• 1:21:57Sean Fennessey?

  I'll try to keep it super tight. One, the knife game that Bishop plays is also played in Darkstar, which is John Carpenter's first movie.

• 1:22:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Sean Fennessey?

  And that movie was written by Dan O'Bannon, who also wrote Alien. Was that a conscious homage? I think so.

• 1:22:17Chris Ryan?

  I, I think so.

• 1:22:19Sean Fennessey?

  The second thing is, there's a, in the extended edition, when we are learning about the colonists, there is a little kid riding a big wheel that is a very conscious homage to The Shining, where the kid rides on the big wheel right past the Waylon Yutani sign.

• 1:22:35Chris Ryan?

  Very much so. Which funnily enough, because Kubrick's shooting Full Metal Jacket in England at the same time.

• 1:22:42Bill Simmons?

  That was minus one eighty on Fanduel for what you were gonna pick. But keep going, you have three more.

• 1:22:46Sean Fennessey?

  There's a probe at the very beginning of the film when they enter Ripley's little escape pod that is a very conscious mimic of the probe that we see at the top of the alien spaceship in nineteen fifty-three's War of the Worlds.

• 1:23:00Chris Ryan?

  The one that has a kind of almost like liquid gas going across the, okay.

• 1:23:04Sean Fennessey?

  There is a very overt structural San Saba Iwo Jima nod where you've got the tough sergeant, the leatherneck persona, the mission structure, all of the, those specific beats are pulled directly from that movie. I already did my Adrian Biddle bit.

• 1:23:22Sean Fennessey?

  And then just the First Blood Part Two and this movie being written simultaneously together are the perfect match of Vietnam War storytelling.

• 1:23:30Chris Ryan?

  Got one more.

• 1:23:30Bill Simmons?

  Murdock.

• 1:23:32Chris Ryan?

  One more fantasy criteria orgasm is the dissolve from Ripley in her sleeping pod to the planet during two thousand and one, Baby in Space.

• 1:23:42Sean Fennessey?

  Fantastic.

• 1:23:43Bill Simmons?

  Wow. It's multi, multi-orgasmic film.

• 1:23:46Sean Fennessey?

  Many orgasms.

• 1:23:47Chris Ryan?

  It's more like the Sean fantasy jizz room in the Criterion.

• 1:23:51Bill Simmons?

  Bring in Caleb Wilson.

• 1:23:55Bill Simmons?

  Chaz Rockwell, Brock Landers, what were best character name?

• 1:23:57Chris Ryan?

  I have Apon.

• 1:23:59Sean Fennessey?

  One of my unanswerable questions is it, is it Apon or a pone?

• 1:24:03Chris Ryan?

  Apon.

• 1:24:03Sean Fennessey?

  But when Hicks is like, when he's down, Hicks is like, a pone, a pone.

• 1:24:09Chris Ryan?

  And I guess Gorman, is he Canadian? Like, is he a Canadian actor or an English actor?

• 1:24:14Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:24:14Chris Ryan?

  Okay, well, I like.

• 1:24:15Bill Simmons?

  I like Bishop. I thought Bishop was good.

• 1:24:17Chris Ryan?

  Bishop's a good name for.

• 1:24:18Bill Simmons?

  Bishop, good android name.

• 1:24:19Sean Fennessey?

  What about Spunk Meyer?

• 1:24:20Bill Simmons?

  Good dog name.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Spunk Meyer?

• 1:24:22Chris Ryan?

  Spunk Meyer's incredible.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  Vasquez is good too, except for the completely political incorrect part that we'll get in a second. Was there a better title for this movie? Obviously, no way. Cameron really pushed for it.

• 1:24:33Sean Fennessey?

  Can I pitch you a couple of ideas?

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Sean Fennessey?

  Motherfucker?

• 1:24:38Bill Simmons?

  Asterisk?

• 1:24:41Sean Fennessey?

  Or Alien colon motherfucker?

• 1:24:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Or aliens with a money sign.

• 1:24:45Chris Ryan?

  Like Cameron drew on the whiteboard, yeah.

• 1:24:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he would do the, the dollar signs on the S to make it clear that had to be a thing. What do you got for a flex here?

• 1:24:53Chris Ryan?

  I have the Jesse Eisenberg. That's good. You should be proud of that right there. Don't worry if you don't make it any further award for the best line reading, which goes multiple times. Bill Paxton as Private Hudson. Yeah, right, man. Bishop should go.

• 1:25:09Chris Ryan?

  Fuck. He's dead. You're dog meat, pal. What do you mean? They cut the power. How could they cut the power, man? Seventeen days? Hey, man, I don't wanna rain on your parade, but we're not gonna last seventeen hours. Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal. We're on an express elevator to hell, going down.

• 1:25:40Bill Simmons?

  That's my favorite.

• 1:25:41Chris Ryan?

  And then in the director's commentary, when they use the sentry guns, he's like, maybe we got him demoralized. But obviously, the greatest one is all, all the, all the game over, man. Dropship crashes and, and all the, all the.

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  How has Hudson not been in the director's commentary category?

• 1:25:58Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:25:58Bill Simmons?

  This whole time. What were we doing?

• 1:26:00Sean Fennessey?

  He, do you think that all the mans and pals that he puts at the end of every line were in the script or is he adding that?

• 1:26:06Bill Simmons?

  I think he, I think he was cooking.

• 1:26:07Sean Fennessey?

  Pure Paxton.

• 1:26:09Bill Simmons?

  Cooking.

• 1:26:11Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girlfriend, a word weak link in the film.

• 1:26:13Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about this.

• 1:26:14Bill Simmons?

  So mine is Burke's plan to smuggle a xenomorph back to.

• 1:26:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you think that's a bad, that, that's the weak link?

• 1:26:22Bill Simmons?

  I just think it's one of the worst plans in the history of movies.

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  I had that in picking this.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  What could go wrong? Let's, let's bring, let's bring this alien back who has been proven to inhabit other people and destroy colonies. We'll bring him back our way.

• 1:26:35Sean Fennessey?

  You could argue that's like the criticism of the brain-dead corporate state is that they would think that their emissary would think this is a good idea.

• 1:26:43Chris Ryan?

  Big thing for this is at what point did he come up with this plan? Was this always the plan? Cause he knows, we know, we know from that scene and also from the director's cut that they know that this is happening up there. So was he like sent up there on purpose to put embryos in whatever he could get into and then bring it all back? Or was that?

• 1:27:06Bill Simmons?

  All of it's insane.

• 1:27:07Chris Ryan?

  Was that an audible he called at the line when things started going wrong?

• 1:27:10Bill Simmons?

  What are they gonna study? The thing's just gonna turn into an alien and fuck everybody up?

• 1:27:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, they're gonna, they want bioweapons. They wanna train it to make it a weapon.

• 1:27:16Sean Fennessey?

  But they can't control it.

• 1:27:17Bill Simmons?

  Terrible plan. What was yours?

• 1:27:20Sean Fennessey?

  This is in the director's cut, but Newt's parents, like going to examine the crashed spaceship site, but they bring their kids with them?

• 1:27:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:30Sean Fennessey?

  What the fuck is that? If, if there's like a loud noise at my house, I'm not like, Alice, wake up, we gotta go explore this. What the fuck are they doing?

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  Heard something outside.

• 1:27:40Chris Ryan?

  This will be a character building experience. Maybe they didn't have childcare that night.

• 1:27:43Sean Fennessey?

  Clearly they didn't, but one of them should stay home.

• 1:27:46Chris Ryan?

  I think the idea is that if they find it, they get like a piece of the discovery.

• 1:27:50Sean Fennessey?

  Why did their kids have to be there?

• 1:27:51Chris Ryan?

  Look, I, I would say, how do you guys feel about Newt?

• 1:27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, shit.

• 1:27:58Bill Simmons?

  We're doing this now?

• 1:28:00Chris Ryan?

  What is this? What's, what's, where would it go otherwise?

• 1:28:02Bill Simmons?

  First of all, what little kid gives themselves a nickname?

• 1:28:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, you're not supposed to do that.

• 1:28:09Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen it happen. I've seen, I'm, I, not in my family, but I've seen it happen.

• 1:28:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm just going my real name if you find me in an alien colony hiding from the aliens.

• 1:28:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm Bill, Bill Simmons.

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  Call me BS, though.

• 1:28:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, my name is sports guy.

• 1:28:23Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. Yeah. This movie's a little new heavy.

• 1:28:26Chris Ryan?

  Call me the Isle of Dr. Simbo.

• 1:28:30Sean Fennessey?

  What birdmester is this on LV two four seven?

• 1:28:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. There's a scene missing.

• 1:28:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, there might be in the director's cut. What scene do you think is missing?

• 1:28:42Bill Simmons?

  Ripley goes from zero to a hundred with, I am now the mom for Newt.

• 1:28:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but in the director's cut, you find out she had a daughter who died.

• 1:28:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:28:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, which I think is so important to the fucking movie. I don't know why they cut that out.

• 1:28:54Bill Simmons?

  So maybe that is, maybe that is what the director.

• 1:28:57Chris Ryan?

  Primary theme of the movie.

• 1:28:59Bill Simmons?

  That change the movie for you?

• 1:29:00Chris Ryan?

  I still bought her motherly instincts with the daughter with Newt, but that would certainly help. Yeah, of course.

• 1:29:06Bill Simmons?

  I think when Newt gets taken down by the O, I'm like, Bishop, we're getting out of here. It was good to know Newt, but I'm out. She's been nude for like two days.

• 1:29:14Sean Fennessey?

  If you don't know that she's lost a daughter and that she's driven by that loss and that bonding with this little kid is replacing something that is essential to her being, then the movie doesn't, that's why I think the director's cut is the only way to go.

• 1:29:27Chris Ryan?

  The colonists who bring Newt along, was Ripley going on an off-world mining trip really the best use of her parenting time at that moment in Alien One?

• 1:29:37Sean Fennessey?

  No, of course not, but she had to to make money. That's the thing is she had to, that, that, that character, that informs that, that whole idea of the movie, which is like, these are these grunts, these like workers who have to earn.

• 1:29:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So you're saying Ripley's backstory, it's like if you don't know that CR lost Ben Simmons.

• 1:29:53Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:29:54Bill Simmons?

  Leading to how happy he was for Jaylen Brown and LeBron James. Without that backstory, he just seems like a happy basketball player.

• 1:30:01Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly right.

• 1:30:02Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't, you don't get the backstory of Ben Simmons melting down in twenty one.

• 1:30:05Chris Ryan?

  LeBron comes to your team?

• 1:30:06Sean Fennessey?

  Setting aside AI taking the Sixers to the finals, is your favorite Sixers team of the century, the Iguodala team that went to like the second round of the playoffs?

• 1:30:17Chris Ryan?

  It's the, it's the first iteration of the young Sixers, young process Sixers that was like.

• 1:30:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the late two thousand teens.

• 1:30:23Sean Fennessey?

  Michael Carter Williams?

• 1:30:24Chris Ryan?

  No, the Simmons and Bede, Covington, JJ.

• 1:30:27Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I see. Okay.

• 1:30:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst? Vasquez, which was Jeanette Goldstein's first feature film role. She gained ten pounds of muscle.

• 1:30:41Bill Simmons?

  She also wore dark contact lenses.

• 1:30:45Bill Simmons?

  She also underwent an hour of makeup every day to darken her white skin to portray a Chicano character. She also studied Mexican-American gang interviews to devote her demeanor and accent. And Cameron has recently acknowledged the controversy and said, we would get crucified if we did this today. Yeah.

• 1:31:05Sean Fennessey?

  A long and storied history of this happening throughout Hollywood his, history.

• 1:31:10Chris Ryan?

  All of the eighties is like Italian guys playing Cubans. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's pretty frequent.

• 1:31:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm not getting hollering now about it. It's just a funny outcome that Jeanette Goldstein played Vasquez. I was trying to think like, what would have been the worst movie for this to happen? And it's clearly the first Fast and Furious. Where they would have had to make tan with Michelle Rodriguez, but it was Jeanette Goldstein there. And by, by the six one, people are like, what the fuck? Like, how do you not have, and they're like, ah.

• 1:31:38Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing is it's so evident in Terminator Two when she comes back, right, as the, as the foster mom. And it's like, oh, well, that's Jeanette Goldstein. That's what Jeanette Goldstein looks like.

• 1:31:49Chris Ryan?

  Where she takes a liquid sword to the head. Yeah.

• 1:31:52Bill Simmons?

  What's your other, some of your other favorite Jeanette Goldstein performances?

• 1:31:55Chris Ryan?

  I only know of two.

• 1:31:56Sean Fennessey?

  No, she's in, uh.

• 1:31:57Bill Simmons?

  She's in a lot of stuff.

• 1:31:58Sean Fennessey?

  No, she's, she's in.

• 1:31:59Bill Simmons?

  She's in the Persidio?

• 1:32:00Sean Fennessey?

  No, the Bigelow vampire movie, Near Dark.

• 1:32:02Chris Ryan?

  Near Dark.

• 1:32:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she's in. Her IMDB is extensive.

• 1:32:08Bill Simmons?

  For a What's Age the Worst, you mentioned the backstory with Ripley. I think that is a What's Age the Worst, that that seems pretty critical, that that's never mentioned, and that's why she likes Newt. And then James Horner not having to write the score. This is a good one. In the shooting script, there's a coed shower scene with the troops getting ready to kind of show that they're all equals. And a couple of the actresses were like, hey, can we cut this?

• 1:32:35Sean Fennessey?

  But that.

• 1:32:36Bill Simmons?

  Then they use it for Robocop.

• 1:32:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's also, I think it's taken from Robert Heinlein and they do it in Starship Troopers as well.

• 1:32:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Bill Simmons?

  I think a coed shower scene when I was on a date in nineteen eighty-six, I don't know how that would have played.

• 1:32:51Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, your date would have gotten a look at Michael Bean.

• 1:32:53Chris Ryan?

  She would have seen all of Apon.

• 1:32:55Bill Simmons?

  I think I would have killed over.

• 1:32:59Bill Simmons?

  Any other one's age the worst?

• 1:33:00Chris Ryan?

  I mean, killing Hicks and Newt for Alien 3.

• 1:33:05Sean Fennessey?

  I just wrote all action movies since.

• 1:33:09Sean Fennessey?

  Right? I mean, so few movies can hold a candle to this movie.

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  Ruffalo Hannah Ribnik Partridge over acting award. Do we just put Vasquez in here now?

• 1:33:20Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote Paxton makes over acting an art form.

• 1:33:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Cause he's the only one who's really doing it.

• 1:33:25Bill Simmons?

  How about Vasquez with the gun?

• 1:33:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's gestural.

• 1:33:30Chris Ryan?

  You say that now.

• 1:33:31Bill Simmons?

  What is she doing?

• 1:33:31Chris Ryan?

  When we were watching it then, I was like, this is, this is incredible.

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  I will say this, she's really going for it in every minute she's in this movie.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  The shot early on when she and Boggs are getting ready and she turns the gun up and the camera is like lovingly photographing her guns, all of her guns.

• 1:33:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Sean Fennessey?

  Is, I think it's worth it.

• 1:33:51Chris Ryan?

  Camera was really into her, obviously.

• 1:33:53Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a flex?

• 1:33:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I had a couple. I had the Sasha Jenkins Award for actor who you can't believe didn't become bigger star for Michael Bean. But also the David Crusoe Award that we talked about, Stuff of Legends for character who definitely should have been spun off into their own sequel. Also would watch a Vasquez immediate prequel. Like what, what was Vasquez doing?

• 1:34:13Bill Simmons?

  Vasquez and Boggs?

• 1:34:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:34:16Chris Ryan?

  Boggs and Vasquez.

• 1:34:19Bill Simmons?

  That just sounds like an ABC show from me. It is Boggs and Vasquez.

• 1:34:22Sean Fennessey?

  Just bouncing from planet to planet, you know, terminating bugs.

• 1:34:26Chris Ryan?

  Isn't that what the video game is basically? The Colonial Marines video game? Do you ever play that? Never mind.

• 1:34:34Bill Simmons?

  Sierra thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harris support. How does take a word? I'll go last cause my takes. My takes, uh, an Inferno.

• 1:34:42Chris Ryan?

  Aliens might be the best Alien movie, but it was bad for the Alien franchise.

• 1:34:45Bill Simmons?

  Ooh.

• 1:34:47Sean Fennessey?

  Like that.

• 1:34:48Chris Ryan?

  The first film was a horror movie. Uh, it's like a slasher action film, but the aliens were of inexplicable origin. And there was all this ambiguity and mystery around them. And it's like, yes, like you basically leave that movie and you're like, that was a great,

• 1:35:05Chris Ryan?

  like horror experience, but you were also like, what the fuck was that? And why did it have a spaceship? And what was it doing in that chair and all the stuff about it? And Cameron just basically makes it a Ripley franchise for what winds up being three films, you know, going forward, which is totally cool, but I think what should have happened is Ridley should have made his movies and then there should have been like Ripley movies, but there, there should have been like Ridley Scott's 1986 Alien 2 would have been incredible, I think.

• 1:35:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting because it's sort of similar to Star Wars where they can't get away from the Skywalker saga, even though there's this huge world that they're creating and they're presenting, but people get so attached to those characters that everything kind of feels stuck. Like even Alien Romulus, which was a pretty cool kind of reboot, I think takes place between Alien and Aliens. Like they can't get too far away from that period of time.

• 1:35:59Sean Fennessey?

  I, my hottest take, and I'm not sure if I believe this, but I'll share it here that this is a better Vietnam movie than Full Metal Jacket.

• 1:36:05Bill Simmons?

  Whoa.

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  Now, it may not be a better movie than Full Metal Jacket.

• 1:36:10Chris Ryan?

  You got the.

• 1:36:11Bill Simmons?

  It's a good hottest take.

• 1:36:12Chris Ryan?

  Phil just did the Alonzo Mourning gif.

• 1:36:14Sean Fennessey?

  Because Full Metal Jacket is one of the great training to be in the military movies. And then the second half of the film, which is excellent, but is not as good as of a Vietnam movie experience.

• 1:36:24Chris Ryan?

  And is obviously shot in England.

• 1:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:36:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Similarly to this movie.

• 1:36:28Chris Ryan?

  It's a pretty good one.

• 1:36:32Bill Simmons?

  Get away from her, you bitch. Terrible line delivery. One of the worst parts of the movie.

• 1:36:37Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  And it became super famous and iconic.

• 1:36:41Chris Ryan?

  That's why he's him.

• 1:36:42Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think they needed another take. And there's reasons they didn't have another take because of how they're filming it.

• 1:36:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Bill Simmons?

  I think it cost her the Oscar. Get away from her, you bitch. It's just bad.

• 1:36:54Chris Ryan?

  But it's become an iconic line.

• 1:36:56Bill Simmons?

  Sure, but I think she needed a second take. I think there's a reason Kubrick, Fincher, some of these guys like, let's run that back. Sigourney, one more time. You didn't quite get it. I think it should have been way more down, more like, get away from her, you bitch. Like.

• 1:37:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that was.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  Lower. She's just, it's just, it's bad.

• 1:37:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think Sigourney said that Cameron wanted bitch to be low key, not to be up. Cause the delivery is get away from her, you bitch. And yet he wanted it to be down.

• 1:37:25Bill Simmons?

  It's just bad. It's tacky.

• 1:37:27Sean Fennessey?

  I like it.

• 1:37:28Bill Simmons?

  Thumbs down.

• 1:37:29Chris Ryan?

  Do you like the whole fight with her and the loader?

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Craig, I think from going forward, you have to be on hottest takes since you're the king of the hottest take.

• 1:37:39Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:37:39Bill Simmons?

  I think you just have to be ready for this category from now on.

• 1:37:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Good to know.

• 1:37:43Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have any hot takes?

• 1:37:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no.

• 1:37:45Bill Simmons?

  No, he's got a.

• 1:37:46Chris Ryan?

  I don't think so for this one.

• 1:37:46Bill Simmons?

  Craig's like, he's like Chang. He needs to cook. He's there all day. He needs a sous chef.

• 1:37:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's got a marinade.

• 1:37:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Bill Simmons?

  Hans Gruber scale villain ranking? Riser like a six and a half?

• 1:37:59Chris Ryan?

  I think he's pretty high. I think he's eight and a half.

• 1:38:01Sean Fennessey?

  Where do you put the mother alien though?

• 1:38:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, she's just doing what, what biology wanted her to do.

• 1:38:05Sean Fennessey?

  Not a villain?

• 1:38:06Chris Ryan?

  Just laying eggs and protecting the hive.

• 1:38:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm sympathetic to the mother alien.

• 1:38:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Bill Simmons?

  Casting what ifs, you mentioned Weaver, uh, wanting a million bucks, which was a lot of money back then gets it. Bill Paxton lined up to be in Police Academy 2.

• 1:38:22Bill Simmons?

  Then got this movie. The role of Zed from Police Academy 2 goes to Bobcat Goldthwait.

• 1:38:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:31Bill Simmons?

  What a fucking sliding doors that is.

• 1:38:32Sean Fennessey?

  Truly.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  James Remar, my guy.

• 1:38:37Chris Ryan?

  Right there.

• 1:38:39Bill Simmons?

  Gans and 48 Hours, Ajax and the Warriors. I love James Remar.

• 1:38:44Bill Simmons?

  Lives in my neighborhood. I have seen him in Larchmont.

• 1:38:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, 20 times.

• 1:38:50Chris Ryan?

  Do you think you would ever go up to him and be like, what's the, what's the Alien story?

• 1:38:53Bill Simmons?

  No, I think this is gonna happen. I think now that I know this Alien thing, this will prompt me to be.

• 1:38:58Sean Fennessey?

  You've not, never approached him before?

• 1:39:00Bill Simmons?

  No. I don't like bothering celebrities.

• 1:39:03Sean Fennessey?

  Same. He's having a moment. Oppenheimer and, and the Odyssey.

• 1:39:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:08Sean Fennessey?

  He's Thereseus, you know, the.

• 1:39:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm aware.

• 1:39:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that's, he's back. Remar is back.

• 1:39:13Bill Simmons?

  Remar has never left.

• 1:39:14Chris Ryan?

  There are shots in the movie that you apparently can see his back, but yeah.

• 1:39:19Bill Simmons?

  So apparently had a severe cocaine problem. Was arrested for drug possession during the filming.

• 1:39:25Sean Fennessey?

  Is there any other kind?

• 1:39:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, so they're filming this in.

• 1:39:28Chris Ryan?

  Recreational.

• 1:39:30Bill Simmons?

  They're filming this in London on some weird set, right? How do you get arrested? Like what, what kind of cocaine level was he at?

• 1:39:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably.

• 1:39:37Chris Ryan?

  Buying like, buying cocaine from somebody he shouldn't have. Yeah. Out in the open.

• 1:39:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. An undercover bobby.

• 1:39:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Bill Simmons?

  Being available, showed up within a few days.

• 1:39:48Chris Ryan?

  And then it was like Friday and he was like on the set on Monday.

• 1:39:51Sean Fennessey?

  And it's so clear, I, Bean is perfect for this part. And I don't think Remar would have made as much sense. Remar is, there's something kind of hard and tough and like not vulnerable about James Remar. And Bean has got, he, he is, he's courageous, but he's not the leader. Like Ripley is ultimately the leader in the movie. So I, I think it's worked out for the best.

• 1:40:11Bill Simmons?

  This is a borderline cast of what if, but Al Pacino is filming Revolution in the studio next door and came and visited the set. I had coffee with Macaulay half an hour ago. Only he would say Ripley.

• 1:40:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can you do?

• 1:40:24Bill Simmons?

  Could they have fit Al Pacino in this movie?

• 1:40:30Bill Simmons?

  You dog meat pal.

• 1:40:33Bill Simmons?

  You're dead. You're dog meat pal. Ripley, you know what you signed up for, baby.

• 1:40:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Al Pacino is Burke. This species has a lot of financial value to the company.

• 1:40:49Bill Simmons?

  I think they could have made it work.

• 1:40:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that would have been great.

• 1:40:54Sean Fennessey?

  Revolution, that's a film.

• 1:40:56Chris Ryan?

  Al needs to sell out more like in movies like this. Like I wish we had gotten Al as like the bad guy in Con Air, you know?

• 1:41:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. That's why I love Devil's Advocate. That's where he's really going for it.

• 1:41:08Bill Simmons?

  You know why you care about Ripley? Cause she's got a great ass. And you got your head all the way up it.

• 1:41:16Bill Simmons?

  Vasquez. That should have been the special edition. What are you doing with that tape?

• 1:41:24Chris Ryan?

  Now we're just yelling.

• 1:41:25Sean Fennessey?

  What if he was, what if he was Apon?

• 1:41:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, that would be good.

• 1:41:28Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 1:41:30Bill Simmons?

  Hey, listen, he could have been every part. Joey Pants award, best that guy. Mark Ralston, we're done. Boggs.

• 1:41:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:41:36Sean Fennessey?

  I do like Paul Maxwell as Van Lewin. The guy from the company.

• 1:41:40Chris Ryan?

  We didn't really talk about Waylon Utani in there. I guess it can come up in questions and myths.

• 1:41:44Bill Simmons?

  Mark Ralston, Hall of Fame that guy. You just see him, you're like, that's Boggs. Dion Waiters award, I think.

• 1:41:51Chris Ryan?

  I have Al Matthews as Apon.

• 1:41:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:41:53Chris Ryan?

  And also because we went to an Aliens screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, like before COVID, like 2018, 19, something like that.

• 1:42:02Sean Fennessey?

  It was Granland era.

• 1:42:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:42:03Sean Fennessey?

  Early days.

• 1:42:04Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, like all the Marines showed up to like hang out at like to introduce the movie and it was so awesome.

• 1:42:11Sean Fennessey?

  Hysterical screening. Uh, Chris and I went with Eileen and Phoebe. And I'm almost, Chris and I were like sat up like stock still, like perfect posture, watching the movie on the ground at Hollywood Forever. And I'm pretty sure both Eileen and Phoebe fell asleep within 15 minutes.

• 1:42:25Chris Ryan?

  Eileen fell asleep within the, the opening credits. Yeah. Cause we had been waiting for like four hours.

• 1:42:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. But also, I mean, you, you've been on it, but also like at Hollywood Forever, you just like drink wine while you're watching the movie. So they were just getting hammered and we were like, Apon.

• 1:42:40Chris Ryan?

  Yo, Jack, Janet Goldstein's not Mexican.

• 1:42:44Bill Simmons?

  Recast the catch director city.

• 1:42:46Chris Ryan?

  Boston.

• 1:42:51Speaker 04

  Where would the queen be laying her eggs in Boston?

• 1:42:55Bill Simmons?

  Southie.

• 1:42:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:57Sean Fennessey?

  Not Combat Zone?

• 1:42:58Bill Simmons?

  Southie or Over the Hill in Charlestown.

• 1:43:01Sean Fennessey?

  What if Kubrick and Cameron switched jobs?

• 1:43:04Speaker 04

  Oh, Sean.

• 1:43:08Speaker 04

  Well, first of all, they'd still be shooting aliens.

• 1:43:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they never finish aliens.

• 1:43:12Sean Fennessey?

  But Kubrick's aliens and Cameron's Full Metal Jacket is an interesting.

• 1:43:15Bill Simmons?

  It's really good.

• 1:43:18Bill Simmons?

  We all like Michael Bean. We're all fans.

• 1:43:23Bill Simmons?

  Can I offer you a young Kevin Costner as Hicks?

• 1:43:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 1:43:28Bill Simmons?

  Perfect time for him, right? It's a year before No Way Out.

• 1:43:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Bill Simmons?

  Hasn't really broken through yet.

• 1:43:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't have the Terminator baggage.

• 1:43:35Sean Fennessey?

  Did he ever play a soldier, like a proper soldier?

• 1:43:38Bill Simmons?

  You would have felt like he might take a.

• 1:43:40Speaker 04

  Not like modern.

• 1:43:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I guess that was it, yeah.

• 1:43:41Bill Simmons?

  Would have felt like he might take a crack at Ripley at any point during the movie, because he's Kevin Costner.

• 1:43:46Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:43:48Speaker 04

  Then they wouldn't have fucking killed him in Alien 3.

• 1:43:50Bill Simmons?

  And I think they keep him for Alien 3, if it's Kevin Costner.

• 1:43:54Sean Fennessey?

  I'll do you one better. Drew Barrymore is Newt.

• 1:43:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's great. Firestarter era Drew Barrymore?

• 1:44:00Sean Fennessey?

  Similar age.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Good one. Craig Flex.

• 1:44:05Speaker 04

  Hmm, I got a couple.

• 1:44:06Bill Simmons?

  With their own camera now. First Flex with the new camera.

• 1:44:09Speaker 04

  I kind of wanted to invent a new one for Bishop, which is the William Defoe, this creepy looking guy turns out to be nice.

• 1:44:15Sean Fennessey?

  Really good.

• 1:44:16Bill Simmons?

  That's a really good one.

• 1:44:18Sean Fennessey?

  Really good.

• 1:44:19Bill Simmons?

  I didn't trust it the whole time.

• 1:44:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, the second I saw him, I was like, no shot. And then I was like, wow, what a pleasant surprise.

• 1:44:25Chris Ryan?

  That's like the guy in Silence of the Lambs who's like the butterfly expert, you know, or whatever. Yeah.

• 1:44:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:31Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. Is that yours?

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Bill Simmons?

  I thought you had two.

• 1:44:33Speaker 04

  Uh, well, the other one, I wanted, this is, I get why they did it, but it's a mini Marion Cebrety pizza cutting award. Why did they stop this on set? So 57 years later, Ripley's still just wearing like wife beaters and little underwear. 57 years later, she's the same look.

• 1:44:47Sean Fennessey?

  There's. She's got personal style.

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  I get that they want her to.

• 1:44:50Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it swung back.

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  I get that they wanted to look like that in the movie for like, you know, just because.

• 1:44:54Chris Ryan?

  One of my unanswerable questions is what's, what's up with lung cancer in this future? Because they're all smoking.

• 1:45:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Chris Ryan?

  They're smoking indoors.

• 1:45:03Bill Simmons?

  Kind of what's happening now in 2026.

• 1:45:05Chris Ryan?

  Also, the tech is like exactly the same. But are we supposed to imagine that they've cured it and now everybody's back doing darts?

• 1:45:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they cured it. AI.

• 1:45:14Bill Simmons?

  AI figured it out. Figured out lung cancer.

• 1:45:18Sean Fennessey?

  I really hope that happens.

• 1:45:20Bill Simmons?

  That'd be great. Half Fester Internet Research, we've mentioned a bunch of this stuff.

• 1:45:24Chris Ryan?

  If you and I are doing rewatchables in 2035 and AI's cured lung cancer and we're just smoking.

• 1:45:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, that'd be like Frost Nixon.

• 1:45:36Chris Ryan?

  There's just a fucking ashtray.

• 1:45:38Bill Simmons?

  Full ashtray right there, leaning over.

• 1:45:41Sean Fennessey?

  What's the smoke gonna look like with these 4K cameras?

• 1:45:44Chris Ryan?

  Oh, God.

• 1:45:47Bill Simmons?

  The tea situation, the tea breaks, the British film industry tradition. I, I just can't get over this.

• 1:45:53Sean Fennessey?

  Very good.

• 1:45:54Bill Simmons?

  Was my favorite Half Fester Internet Research in a while. Another good one was they made a cast dummy of Newt. Because Sigourney Weaver had some back issues and couldn't carry Newt because Newt was, you know, a 10 year old girl or however old she was at that point. So they made a light dummy and you can actually see it. I looked for it a second time. There's some scenes where it's like she's, it's like Naked Gun. When, uh, remember at the end of Naked Gun when he's going down the stairs with Priscilla Presley and he's just swinging this man? It's a little, it's a little like that.

• 1:46:28Chris Ryan?

  I, I really liked the note about how Carrie Han, who played Newt, kept biffing takes on purpose when she's supposed to slide down.

• 1:46:38Bill Simmons?

  Right, because she loved going down the slide.

• 1:46:40Chris Ryan?

  And so finally Cameron's like, if you just please like bathe yourselves, you can ride down the rest of the day.

• 1:46:45Bill Simmons?

  There's, I mean, this could be 20 minutes and it's not going to be, but if you want to know about how they built the set, how they used the replica, the miniature stuff, like it's all, it's a pretty good deep dive. I'm not gonna do it here.

• 1:46:57Sean Fennessey?

  There's a four hour documentary called, is it Aliens Expanded?

• 1:47:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:00Sean Fennessey?

  That you can watch with many, many interviews of many, many of the people who worked on the movie, including Cameron, all the stars. It's really good.

• 1:47:06Bill Simmons?

  One of the things we talk about sometimes when we do these movies from the 80s and 90s is before CGI, which Cameron talks about. If I had CGI, I would have done this, this and this in this movie, but they just kind of had to figure out shit.

• 1:47:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Bill Simmons?

  So they're doing the alien and it's 14 puppeteers like moving the alien pieces around and now it'd just be a button.

• 1:47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they said it was the largest marionette ever created for a film production.

• 1:47:32Bill Simmons?

  The guns weighed 65 to 70 pounds, which you can really feel like when they're trying to, and it's like, man, have any of these people held a gun? But it's because they were crazy heavy. And then, um,

• 1:47:48Bill Simmons?

  oh, Lance Henriksen caught food poisoning from the milk, yogurt and cream thing he had to spew up. Because the set was hot and the stuff, like the bacteria got in and he got like super sick. And then, um,

• 1:48:04Bill Simmons?

  the Alien Nest set kept intact, used in Batman.

• 1:48:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Bill Simmons?

  It's the Axis Chemicals set.

• 1:48:11Bill Simmons?

  And then a lot of stuff about Cameron and, and HJ. And then there's a whole thing about, they had this whole reel, the movie's like three plus hours. There's a whole reel of a backstory with Newt in her colony and all that. And they couldn't figure out how to cut the movie down. And then Gail Anne Hertz like just cut that part. And he did the thing where he took it out and watched the movie and it was like, oh, that makes so much more sense. So it's just gone.

• 1:48:33Chris Ryan?

  But it's worth noting that Sean's pointed out that the Ripley stuff in terms of, uh, her backstory with her daughter, there's a little bit more stuff with Burke in the beginning. All that stuff got cut out. Weaver was really pissed about that.

• 1:48:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Chris Ryan?

  She thought she did great work or like that was really important for the character. And then Cameron was like, when I watched Alien 3, a lot of the stuff that she had been asking for is in Alien 3. So she obviously was able to be like, if you want me to come back, ironclad, I have to do X, Y and Z in Alien 3, including Die.

• 1:49:09Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:49:10Bill Simmons?

  The film takes place in 2179.

• 1:49:15Bill Simmons?

  But then, um, they've kind of retroactively changed that and made it 21, 22, 57 years before Aliens. So there's some, for the aliens nerds, there's some.

• 1:49:26Chris Ryan?

  Timeline stuff.

• 1:49:27Bill Simmons?

  Some timeline stuff that does not fit.

• 1:49:29Sean Fennessey?

  Well, related to that too, there's a video game that takes place between Alien and Aliens that stars Amanda Ripley, which is Helen Ripley's daughter. And she, they get word that her, there's like information, like a log from her vessel. So she goes out looking for her mom. And that's the premise of the whole game. That to me is like, that also could have been a movie.

• 1:49:51Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 1:49:52Sean Fennessey?

  It still could be a movie.

• 1:49:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:53Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain, Sigourney.

• 1:49:57Bill Simmons?

  Two years after Ghostbusters. This, I'm gonna say yes. Working Girl's the next year.

• 1:50:03Sean Fennessey?

  She parlay's it into Working Girl and Gorillaz in the Mist in the same year and wins the Oscar for Gorillaz in the Mist.

• 1:50:07Bill Simmons?

  I think this is a yes. Cameron, no.

• 1:50:10Speaker 04

  No. Bean?

• 1:50:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Bill Simmons?

  Bean, probably yes. Terminator, then this.

• 1:50:17Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 1:50:18Bill Simmons?

  If we're, if you're doing like Big Picture exists 40 years ago and you're doing biggest male movie stars.

• 1:50:23Chris Ryan?

  We joke about the Luke Wilson thing, like he did have Harrison Ford juice to him for a minute there.

• 1:50:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I wonder what, you gotta ask him if you have him on the thing.

• 1:50:32Sean Fennessey?

  I am, yeah.

• 1:50:35Bill Simmons?

  Paxton, no.

• 1:50:38Chris Ryan?

  Twister, is that what you would say?

• 1:50:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's in Twister, Titanic.

• 1:50:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:43Bill Simmons?

  Alien movies?

• 1:50:45Chris Ryan?

  Of the Alien franchise or all Alien films?

• 1:50:47Bill Simmons?

  Alien movies where we go outer space.

• 1:50:49Sean Fennessey?

  No, ET is a bigger.

• 1:50:51Bill Simmons?

  ET is still the best. Alien franchise, yes.

• 1:50:55Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:50:57Sean Fennessey?

  So hard.

• 1:50:58Chris Ryan?

  I, I think I'm back on Alien. I think I was like.

• 1:51:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:51:01Chris Ryan?

  I think for the most of my life, it was Aliens.

• 1:51:02Bill Simmons?

  After you made me feel guilty that we hadn't done Aliens forever, now, now you're back on Alien?

• 1:51:07Chris Ryan?

  The second best Alien movie is still a lot better than About Last Night.

• 1:51:11Bill Simmons?

  You know, like. Unbelievable.

• 1:51:14Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just saying, you know how like as you go over in the course of your life, you just are like, sometimes you're a godfather, sometimes you're a godfather too.

• 1:51:20Bill Simmons?

  We do Hunt for Red October. He's like, I don't know, I still like Kate 19, The Widowmaker a little more.

• 1:51:27Sean Fennessey?

  I, I would go Alien as well.

• 1:51:29Bill Simmons?

  Jeanette Goldstein?

• 1:51:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:51:32Bill Simmons?

  Asset strapping?

• 1:51:35Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 1:51:36Sean Fennessey?

  There's some other examples of this. I'm trying to think.

• 1:51:38Bill Simmons?

  Some good ones.

• 1:51:39Sean Fennessey?

  I mean.

• 1:51:39Speaker 04

  Didn't Jon Hamm have to holster it and a couple things?

• 1:51:43Bill Simmons?

  Hammie.

• 1:51:44Chris Ryan?

  You think he taped it to the thigh there?

• 1:51:45Sean Fennessey?

  A nut sling?

• 1:51:46Speaker 04

  I've heard some things.

• 1:51:47Sean Fennessey?

  He had, he had a coxling?

• 1:51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:51:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's.

• 1:51:50Chris Ryan?

  Affleck's like tamed that thing up a little bit, man.

• 1:51:54Chris Ryan?

  Gotta remember who the star of this movie is.

• 1:51:57Bill Simmons?

  Just one of the guys, Joyce Heiser.

• 1:52:00Sean Fennessey?

  She does.

• 1:52:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:01Sean Fennessey?

  She does.

• 1:52:01Bill Simmons?

  She's gotta strap him down.

• 1:52:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, we literally watched Brandon Tina do it in Boys Don't Cry. That's like a whole scene in that movie.

• 1:52:08Bill Simmons?

  Paul Reiser, no. It's coming though.

• 1:52:11Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, not Paul Reiser's Apex Mountain?

• 1:52:14Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's Mad About You.

• 1:52:15Bill Simmons?

  It's Mad About You. That show is being watched by 25 billion people a week. It's a massive, massive hit.

• 1:52:20Chris Ryan?

  But you don't like it?

• 1:52:21Bill Simmons?

  I never liked it. I always used to make fun of anyone I knew who liked it.

• 1:52:24Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:52:25Bill Simmons?

  Thought it was a lame show.

• 1:52:26Chris Ryan?

  Cool.

• 1:52:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:27Sean Fennessey?

  Out on Pankow.

• 1:52:28Bill Simmons?

  I, I was younger. I was, you know, it was, it was, the zag was to not like that show.

• 1:52:32Chris Ryan?

  I always liked Helen Hunt though, on that show.

• 1:52:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, it was, it was like in a bad Woody Allen movie stretched out to 900 episodes. But like, I kind of like bad Woody Allen movies, so.

• 1:52:46Chris Ryan?

  Do you know that they did like a reunion series that was like on Spectrum cable? Like it was like DirecTV?

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  They got Pankow back.

• 1:52:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:54Bill Simmons?

  Mad About You had one of the best crossfire annihilations ever. When George got whipped on Seinfeld by his girlfriend at the end. And realized he made a mistake. Him and Jerry decided they were both gonna get married, but then Jerry backed out. And then George stayed with his whatever. And, and he's just in some room bummed out and she's like, George, Mad About You's starting. And he's just like, and then he kind of swamps over.

• 1:53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Right?

• 1:53:23Bill Simmons?

  Yes, Susan.

• 1:53:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  But I always thought that was like unnecessary crossfire, because that was an NBC show.

• 1:53:29Chris Ryan?

  That is tough.

• 1:53:30Bill Simmons?

  But that was the sentiment of Mad About You. It was like you're, basically your significant other made you watch it.

• 1:53:35Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think, will you take the money for the 20 years from now, Spectrum funded reunion of the rewatchables cast? Where everybody who hasn't seen each other in a long time is just like.

• 1:53:45Bill Simmons?

  That'd be great.

• 1:53:45Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Van Lathan, Kyle Brand.

• 1:53:48Bill Simmons?

  That'd be great.

• 1:53:48Sean Fennessey?

  Craig, you're all grown up. He'll do it.

• 1:53:51Bill Simmons?

  It'd be great. I'm, I'm never letting you guys go, so it won't be a reunion.

• 1:53:55Chris Ryan?

  What if you can't make my rate at that point?

• 1:53:57Bill Simmons?

  By who?

• 1:53:58Chris Ryan?

  What if you just can't make my rate at that point? You can't hit my number?

• 1:54:00Sean Fennessey?

  Rich Paul shows up on your behalf.

• 1:54:06Bill Simmons?

  Rich, when you realize Bill Simmons couldn't meet CR's rate anymore.

• 1:54:13Sean Fennessey?

  Is that a per-episode rate?

• 1:54:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:54:16Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:54:18Chris Ryan?

  Um, I had Cruise as Burke.

• 1:54:21Sean Fennessey?

  Whoa. I have, I have Cruise as Hicks and Hanks as Hudson.

• 1:54:26Bill Simmons?

  Hanks as Hudson?

• 1:54:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:27Bill Simmons?

  Eighties Hanks. That's pretty good.

• 1:54:29Chris Ryan?

  That would be awesome.

• 1:54:30Bill Simmons?

  But if you could only have one, who do you have?

• 1:54:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think Cruise is Hicks.

• 1:54:35Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 1:54:36Chris Ryan?

  I kinda like Hanks in this movie more.

• 1:54:37Bill Simmons?

  I like Hanks as Hudson.

• 1:54:39Chris Ryan?

  Hanks as Hudson's fun.

• 1:54:40Bill Simmons?

  Good backup.

• 1:54:40Sean Fennessey?

  They both would be good.

• 1:54:41Chris Ryan?

  I just think Cruise going, "This is clearly an important species."

• 1:54:46Chris Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:54:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you're working on your cruise?

• 1:54:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's good. 1994 Demi Moore, 2003 Angelina, 2014 Charlize, or 2026 Zendaya?

• 1:54:59Bill Simmons?

  For Ripley.

• 1:54:59Chris Ryan?

  I had, uh, 14 Charlize.

• 1:55:02Bill Simmons?

  I had as well.

• 1:55:02Sean Fennessey?

  I had Angelina, and it made me think, you made that, that great point about how this becomes Ripley's franchise. And I wonder if there was a way to pivot this after she dies after three, because they try to give you like Winona Ryder in Resurrection. You know, Romulus is giving you Kaylee Spahney. They never quite found.

• 1:55:20Chris Ryan?

  Catherine Waterston.

• 1:55:21Sean Fennessey?

  Catherine Waterston, yeah.

• 1:55:22Chris Ryan?

  Kinda like Zendaya.

• 1:55:23Sean Fennessey?

  Charlize's in Prometheus. Like, you never quite get the, a real inheritor of Ripley's throne.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  Zendaya has, has that secret height.

• 1:55:30Chris Ryan?

  Physicality.

• 1:55:31Bill Simmons?

  It's just like 5'8".

• 1:55:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I think she's taller than that.

• 1:55:34Bill Simmons?

  5'9"?

• 1:55:36Chris Ryan?

  Depends on what the part is.

• 1:55:38Bill Simmons?

  Just a lot of her with the gun going.

• 1:55:41Sean Fennessey?

  Making the Zendaya face.

• 1:55:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:45Chris Ryan?

  Ruin space.

• 1:55:46Bill Simmons?

  The Ru face.

• 1:55:47Sean Fennessey?

  Has Ru face replaced Shamet face?

• 1:55:51Bill Simmons?

  The Rick Chiketti? Who is it? Rick Chiketti?

• 1:55:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is your category. Yeah, but yes.

• 1:55:58Bill Simmons?

  I know, but it's, a reader sent it in.

• 1:55:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Bill Simmons?

  I forgot what movie it was. The Guard Beat Award for most memorable death by a security guard or other bystander.

• 1:56:06Chris Ryan?

  But you're like, who is it? Derek? Derek Gray? Derek Black? Derek White? Right? Like, when you, when you lose the Celtics?

• 1:56:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Chris Ryan?

  We'll have to have an intervention.

• 1:56:15Bill Simmons?

  Whatever, however you pronounce that name, it goes to the helicopter crash.

• 1:56:20Chris Ryan?

  Spock, Meyer, and Faro. Can I also say Faro?

• 1:56:23Bill Simmons?

  Just going to save some people. All of a sudden, there's an alien ripping through my heart.

• 1:56:26Chris Ryan?

  Dropship pilot, Faro?

• 1:56:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Chris Ryan?

  Throw my life away for her.

• 1:56:30Bill Simmons?

  Wow!

• 1:56:30Chris Ryan?

  Aviator sunglasses? Get out of here.

• 1:56:32Sean Fennessey?

  She's in the Tina Wheeler Nicholson category.

• 1:56:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:56:36Bill Simmons?

  It's a good, good stretch for CR here.

• 1:56:37Chris Ryan?

  If Faro wants to fly me to the moon, let's go. Yeah.

• 1:56:41Bill Simmons?

  Picking nits.

• 1:56:44Bill Simmons?

  I mean, obviously, the first one is, this is just a classic. And it's a sequel device, but nobody's listening to Ripley on this?

• 1:56:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:53Bill Simmons?

  She's more experienced in knowledge than all of you combined, and they're like, "I don't know." It's like, don't go back there to the colony, and they laid eggs, and.

• 1:57:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:01Bill Simmons?

  It's really bad, and they're like, "Yeah, whatever."

• 1:57:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of the great gaslighting scenes in movie history, that when she has to testify in the inquest, and she's giving them all this information, and there's the woman who's like.

• 1:57:11Chris Ryan?

  IQ suddenly drops.

• 1:57:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, where like the woman repeats the thing, where she's like, "So you're telling me that there's a species that ingests," you know, like, that whole thing is so, as the viewer, you're so on Ripley's side.

• 1:57:22Bill Simmons?

  Our guy there, our guy McLean, that was like the next four diehards, right? Each time, they're like, "Ah, what do you know, John McLean?"

• 1:57:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we have a.

• 1:57:29Bill Simmons?

  Who's foiled five terrorist attacks.

• 1:57:31Chris Ryan?

  We have a Washington DC airport to run here.

• 1:57:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:34Chris Ryan?

  Um, speaking of that scene, the, the sort of, I guess, deposition scene, or whatever she's doing with the board members. And that woman is like, nothing has been documented, like what you're describing, and however many hundreds of worlds that we've surveyed. But then when those guys, the Marines, are in the mess hall in the beginning of the movie, they're talking about having sex with aliens?

• 1:57:55Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:56Chris Ryan?

  So which one is it? Is it that there are aliens, but they're nice and they have sex with you, or that that's like a little bit of a mistake, or?

• 1:58:04Bill Simmons?

  More questions than answers.

• 1:58:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd say so. Arcturian pussy. That's what he's talking about.

• 1:58:11Bill Simmons?

  They, didn't they have to scale back one of the things? Because it looked a little vulva-y. One of the alien things?

• 1:58:17Chris Ryan?

  They did not scale back. It looks like.

• 1:58:19Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, the plunge against the glass.

• 1:58:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:23Bill Simmons?

  Would Ripley really get back to work after a 57-year hiatus, or would she maybe think of some other stuff to do professionally?

• 1:58:30Chris Ryan?

  They've really jobbed her. I think that's in the director's cut, is like, they're basically like, "You're not financially liable, but we've like suspended all of your money-making ability, and you have no money."

• 1:58:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'll just say one more time, if you're gonna re-watch this movie, I encourage you to watch the director's cut.

• 1:58:47Bill Simmons?

  How did the little girl survive by herself on the alien spaceship?

• 1:58:52Bill Simmons?

  Just kinda make and do?

• 1:58:53Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, that point is made by the characters, um, at a certain point, you know? It's like, if she was able to do it, then, then we can do it, but.

• 1:59:00Chris Ryan?

  Put her in charge.

• 1:59:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:04Bill Simmons?

  Why did Ripley blow up the eggs when they were blowing up the whole spaceship anyway, or the whole thing anyway?

• 1:59:09Chris Ryan?

  I thought that that was.

• 1:59:10Bill Simmons?

  Just get the fuck out of there and then blow it up?

• 1:59:11Chris Ryan?

  Ripley tried hanging on the rim at the end of the game there. And I honestly, like, I, I just feel like that was a, you have plenty of time here to get out of there.

• 1:59:21Bill Simmons?

  So it was a breakaway, and she tried to do the 360 dunk instead of just laying it in?

• 1:59:25Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I read that differently. I read that as like she has this primal expression of revenge.

• 1:59:30Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:59:31Sean Fennessey?

  That she's like.

• 1:59:31Bill Simmons?

  Mom versus mom?

• 1:59:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, like, "I have to take out this force that is responsible for destroying my life."

• 1:59:37Bill Simmons?

  She, Sophie Cunningham pointed at her.

• 1:59:39Sean Fennessey?

  She did.

• 1:59:40Chris Ryan?

  She did.

• 1:59:40Sean Fennessey?

  She did with a, with, with a.

• 1:59:42Bill Simmons?

  She's blowing up the big round.

• 1:59:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:45Bill Simmons?

  Walking around.

• 1:59:46Sean Fennessey?

  That, that whole moment in the movie, which we probably didn't talk about enough, but the way that the sound and score goes quiet as we watch the eggs get laid, and then we, it's revealed the shape and size of the mother alien.

• 1:59:59Bill Simmons?

  Like the tube?

• 2:00:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it is, fuck, and they built all that stuff.

• 2:00:03Bill Simmons?

  It's really cool.

• 2:00:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's so cool.

• 2:00:04Bill Simmons?

  It looks great on the, uh, the 4K too. I think for a picking nit, Ripley loses the last fight with her dumb contraption that she's in, which she's exposed all over the place. Like, alien tentacles can come flying in five different areas to attack her.

• 2:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  Thing I do like about her fight style, though, this is pure Pacquiao, it's all anticipatory jabs. Like, everything is like, she's getting ready to clock the alien before the alien can even recover from the shot.

• 2:00:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know, where she's like, she, you can feel her rearing back, so that as soon as it recovers, she can go in again.

• 2:00:35Bill Simmons?

  What'd you think about this?

• 2:00:36Chris Ryan?

  The giant, what, what is it called?

• 2:00:38Bill Simmons?

  Fight strategy.

• 2:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  The mother alien, oh, the power loader?

• 2:00:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Kinda Avatar-esque, also from Cameron. There's a lot of visual. Yeah, very similar.

• 2:00:47Bill Simmons?

  Little rock'em, sock'em, robot sesh?

• 2:00:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:49Chris Ryan?

  Sort of a slow-mo Pacino and Cruising dance.

• 2:00:56Sean Fennessey?

  Twice in one week for that.

• 2:00:57Bill Simmons?

  My only other nitpick was that everyone gets sucked out at the end.

• 2:01:00Sean Fennessey?

  The airlock.

• 2:01:01Bill Simmons?

  There's any survivors.

• 2:01:01Chris Ryan?

  I.

• 2:01:02Bill Simmons?

  That airlock is just, I can't even imagine the gravity.

• 2:01:06Chris Ryan?

  I wish there was just one more beat to get this across, but when Ripley doesn't let them fucking execute Burke, when it's been kind of discovered that he's the one.

• 2:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just shoot him in the head.

• 2:01:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, Hu- Hudson or Hicks wastes that dude, and she's like, "No, we have to bring him back to Earth so that he can be accountable for his crimes against humanity, and Whalen Yutani can be brought down." But you, I think they needed a little bit more explanation of that, and I also think Marines would have been like, "Fuck, fuck that. This guy's getting smoked."

• 2:01:35Sean Fennessey?

  Torched him, yeah.

• 2:01:36Bill Simmons?

  Especially, he was taking insurance claims, and he was supposed to only report 3%, but he was reporting 40.

• 2:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  Whalen Yutani bought the Dodgers.

• 2:01:44Bill Simmons?

  Letting Magic Johnson buy one of his funds.

• 2:01:46Chris Ryan?

  Loans against future xenomorphs.

• 2:01:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:49Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like.

• 2:01:49Bill Simmons?

  He really played it out. He was playing the long game.

• 2:01:51Sean Fennessey?

  Whalen Yutani cost us the 2027 baseball season. It's fucked up.

• 2:01:55Bill Simmons?

  Any, uh, any other nitpicks? We hit, we hit almost all of them.

• 2:01:59Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I always found that for as much as it's my favorite scene in the movie, and for as iconic as it is, it's pretty stupid that they don't think about the ceiling in the tracker scene. Where like, where could they be coming from? It's like, just, it's, it's like, doesn't even look like it's a ceiling. It's just like, like, poster board up there.

• 2:02:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's all drop ceiling everywhere, yeah.

• 2:02:19Bill Simmons?

  Any nitpicks from you?

• 2:02:21Chris Ryan?

  I think I was just slightly underwhelmed by the skill of this marine crew.

• 2:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:25Chris Ryan?

  I didn't feel like they were that different from the guys from Alien One, which were not Marines. Felt like it was a very similar kind of strategy.

• 2:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's part of why it's a very good Vietnam critique, because, you know, going into Vietnam, there's a lot of confidence about the power of our military, and it was quickly revealed that they were not well-suited to that fight.

• 2:02:42Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 2:02:43Sean Fennessey?

  Given the circumstances. Um, and so I feel like that's baked in, that no matter how badass Vasquez is, she doesn't really stand a chance.

• 2:02:50Bill Simmons?

  Do you feel the same way about the guys who run the Ringer Fantasy Football League?

• 2:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, I think they're a little over their skis with all their.

• 2:02:57Bill Simmons?

  Lot of swagger.

• 2:02:58Sean Fennessey?

  Rules and declarations and certitude about how things should be played. I don't, you know? How about running past some more experienced men?

• 2:03:06Chris Ryan?

  We can't get anybody to respond to our texts in the group chat.

• 2:03:10Bill Simmons?

  That's what, Burke should have said that.

• 2:03:14Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast, untouchable. They basically did.

• 2:03:17Chris Ryan?

  I mean, we have to go all black cast, because they've done everything else.

• 2:03:20Bill Simmons?

  They've done every other version.

• 2:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  Seven sequels to this movie.

• 2:03:23Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Zane Lowe, Robert Evans, Dr. Charles Nichols, Ted Levine, or someone else?

• 2:03:30Chris Ryan?

  Ripley, you've been asleep for 57 years. You lost a daughter, you've been held liable for the detonation of a spaceship.

• 2:03:37Sean Fennessey?

  Stop looking me in the eye.

• 2:03:38Chris Ryan?

  And now you've, you've returned to LV426.

• 2:03:43Chris Ryan?

  But I think what's at the front of everybody's minds is, who is this Ellen Ripley who we meet now? What kind of music is she making?

• 2:03:53Chris Ryan?

  He did a uh.

• 2:03:55Bill Simmons?

  That's really good.

• 2:03:56Sean Fennessey?

  He shouldn't pivot to that, this kind of interview style.

• 2:03:59Chris Ryan?

  Interviewing Ellen Ripley?

• 2:04:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, just like getting figures on that have done this kind of work.

• 2:04:03Chris Ryan?

  I think it's for you. I think you should get a much more comfortable chair in the big picture room and you should start getting like, like Hannah Oenbinder.

• 2:04:13Sean Fennessey?

  And just adopt his accent?

• 2:04:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:04:15Chris Ryan?

  Or my accent of his accent. You've been talking about wanting to revise this category a little bit.

• 2:04:20Bill Simmons?

  What was the other one I had?

• 2:04:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, it was Barney from The Vanishing. I think we could bring Hudson into this.

• 2:04:26Sean Fennessey?

  Barney?

• 2:04:27Bill Simmons?

  Barney from The Vanishing. Hello Ripley?

• 2:04:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm who you're looking for?

• 2:04:34Bill Simmons?

  I'm Barney.

• 2:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's very good.

• 2:04:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think we could refresh this.

• 2:04:40Chris Ryan?

  I think we have a couple of guys.

• 2:04:41Bill Simmons?

  Maybe some, maybe the listeners could send some suggestions.

• 2:04:44Chris Ryan?

  You have anybody you've been thinking about?

• 2:04:45Bill Simmons?

  We've done some limitations over the years that we just forget about.

• 2:04:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we've never done it before, but I always love Frank Hackett in Network, the Robert Duvall part where he's like, "I've got a big fat, big titted head!

• 2:04:57Sean Fennessey?

  And Ronnie can't tell me anything anymore!" Like, Duvall going ape shit is my favorite.

• 2:05:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we gotta, probably have to work Duvall in at some point. Um, yeah, we gotta revise the category. We've kind of, although Fergie the Florist still has some.

• 2:05:10Chris Ryan?

  Fergie has some juice. I think it's always nice to get Zane in there, Dr. Charles Nichols. I think we've put, put Wayne into like waiting for Bernthal zone, you know?

• 2:05:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, we, now we have the Odysseus, uh.

• 2:05:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, it's her guy, Eggman nine.

• 2:05:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:27Sean Fennessey?

  Metaleus.

• 2:05:27Bill Simmons?

  Metaleus, we can use him.

• 2:05:29Sean Fennessey?

  What, um, what would be the best movie to do with Bernthal? Is it, is it a Bernthal movie or is it something he loves?

• 2:05:35Bill Simmons?

  I would say a military movie.

• 2:05:36Chris Ryan?

  Gorillas in the Mist.

• 2:05:39Sean Fennessey?

  Or like, like could you do Platoon?

• 2:05:41Chris Ryan?

  You've got mail.

• 2:05:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it's some military thing where he gets to talk about the training and how that, the grip and how hard it is to do the shooting scene.

• 2:05:54Chris Ryan?

  He's somebody who I think would be good to talk to about movies he's been in. I know that people are sometimes reticent to do that, but I bet if he did Sicario or if he did, I don't know, he, he would, he would be good.

• 2:06:03Sean Fennessey?

  Fury.

• 2:06:04Bill Simmons?

  Shot caller.

• 2:06:04Chris Ryan?

  Wolf, Wolf of Wall Street.

• 2:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  Wolf of Wall Street.

• 2:06:06Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her, who gets it for you guys?

• 2:06:08Chris Ryan?

  Cameron.

• 2:06:08Sean Fennessey?

  Big Jim.

• 2:06:10Bill Simmons?

  Big Jim for director?

• 2:06:11Chris Ryan?

  For director. This is an astonishing act, direction.

• 2:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  No shot, Oliver Stone.

• 2:06:17Bill Simmons?

  Got to see who else was nominated.

• 2:06:20Sean Fennessey?

  This movie won two Oscars, right? For special effects and sound editing?

• 2:06:24Bill Simmons?

  Best director, Stone wins, David Lynch, Blue Velvet, Woody Allen, Hannah and her sisters, Roland Joffe, The Mission, James Ivory, Room of the View.

• 2:06:32Sean Fennessey?

  All, all, all great movies.

• 2:06:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:36Chris Ryan?

  When are we gonna do The Mission on rewatchables?

• 2:06:39Bill Simmons?

  I haven't seen it in forever. Is that?

• 2:06:41Sean Fennessey?

  Beautiful movie.

• 2:06:41Bill Simmons?

  Tubi or somewhere better?

• 2:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little quiet.

• 2:06:44Chris Ryan?

  It is gorgeous score though.

• 2:06:45Sean Fennessey?

  Great. Anymore, Conny?

• 2:06:47Bill Simmons?

  Unanswerable questions?

• 2:06:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:51Bill Simmons?

  Watch this movie on a streamer. Sigourney's teeth look yellow because it's like classic eighties, like the compressed white strip smoker, all that stuff. Then in the 4K transfer, sparkling white.

• 2:07:04Chris Ryan?

  That's Big Jim. That's attention to detail.

• 2:07:05Bill Simmons?

  Big Jim?

• 2:07:06Sean Fennessey?

  Probably.

• 2:07:07Chris Ryan?

  Him and, him and Fincher.

• 2:07:08Bill Simmons?

  I Googled it and looked for it and they were like, they did not, he did not do stuff like that. I think he did.

• 2:07:14Sean Fennessey?

  They deploy AI to make some of these decisions though, too. To, to sort of like encourage color grading in certain sequences, so.

• 2:07:21Bill Simmons?

  Because I think in general, the movies from the seventies, eighties, like the, the coffee cigarette teeth is really bad. And I think they definitely mess with that. Um, hibernation pods, can we just talk about this?

• 2:07:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Bill Simmons?

  What's going on here?

• 2:07:36Chris Ryan?

  Do you want them or do you think that they're, like, if you could go into hypersleep and wake up in the future, would you want, would you want to experiment with that?

• 2:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Let's really talk about the mechanics here. Fifty-seven years, so. No bathroom.

• 2:07:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:07:49Bill Simmons?

  Never wake up. You're just out. Then you wake up. Do you immediately have to go to the bathroom?

• 2:07:55Chris Ryan?

  I think that this is an incredible point because it would be one thing if she woke up and she had crazy amounts of tubes in her where it's like a catheter.

• 2:08:01Bill Simmons?

  You had to pee an hour ago.

• 2:08:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:05Bill Simmons?

  So is she like, oh, hibernation, oh my God, I have to pee so bad.

• 2:08:10Sean Fennessey?

  I, to me, I thought about hunger. It's like, do you just, do you just need a fucking hoagie as soon as you get out of there?

• 2:08:15Bill Simmons?

  What are, so you come out of the hibernation pad, what's the first thing you're doing?

• 2:08:18Chris Ryan?

  Taking a shower?

• 2:08:21Bill Simmons?

  I think I'd be on my phone just trying to figure out who won the last fifty-seven NBA titles. And I was like, then I'm gonna pee.

• 2:08:29Chris Ryan?

  What I would like to do.

• 2:08:30Bill Simmons?

  2044, the Clippers? They did it?

• 2:08:36Chris Ryan?

  At the aspiration dome, no less.

• 2:08:39Bill Simmons?

  But they, everybody seems so unfazed when they wake up and fifty-seven years have passed.

• 2:08:44Chris Ryan?

  I don't think they're asleep for fifty-seven years. She was asleep for fifty-seven years because she's, was like, spinning out. I think they went to sleep for like a year or something to get out there.

• 2:08:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but she did fifty-seven at the start and wakes up and she's like, is, is my apartment still there? I have my stuff.

• 2:09:00Sean Fennessey?

  In, in, in my version of Aliens where I'm Ripley, I wake up and I look at the sports results over the last fifty-seven years and I realize that I, the Jets did in fact win the title. They won the Super Bowl.

• 2:09:12Bill Simmons?

  Be so mad.

• 2:09:12Sean Fennessey?

  But then I realize it's a nightmare and a chestburster breaks through and then I wake up and then I check again and the Jets still haven't won.

• 2:09:18Chris Ryan?

  No Super Bowls. I would like to be the guy who basically didn't go to sleep and was like watching the ship for the time that everybody was asleep so that like I could get good at, really good at one thing. And when you guys woke up, I would be like, oh yeah, I can, I can draw a golf ball now.

• 2:09:34Chris Ryan?

  I'm actually a plus five.

• 2:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  Let's go to the range, I want to show you something.

• 2:09:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I just think.

• 2:09:42Chris Ryan?

  My short game is basically like airtight.

• 2:09:45Bill Simmons?

  You could make a movie about somebody just waking up from the hibernation pod in their next ninety minutes.

• 2:09:49Chris Ryan?

  Isn't there a comedy about that? Rocketman? Isn't that what the premise of that movie is?

• 2:09:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right. The Harlan Williams movie, yeah.

• 2:09:55Chris Ryan?

  That was funny.

• 2:09:55Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if I know that movie.

• 2:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the guy who's like six squirrels sitting on a nut, the guy from There's Something About Mary.

• 2:10:03Bill Simmons?

  Worst ways to go in a movie, being cocooned? It's gotta be top five.

• 2:10:09Chris Ryan?

  Would you rather get cocooned or torn in half?

• 2:10:11Bill Simmons?

  Torn in half because you die immediately.

• 2:10:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, unless you're an android.

• 2:10:14Bill Simmons?

  Cocooned is like, that's.

• 2:10:15Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it's being implanted.

• 2:10:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, having the alien pop out?

• 2:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's even worse to me.

• 2:10:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because you don't die right away.

• 2:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  Observing it and then you have to bleed out.

• 2:10:24Bill Simmons?

  The cocoon is a slow death though.

• 2:10:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:28Bill Simmons?

  That, I mean, that could be like eleven days.

• 2:10:30Chris Ryan?

  That was actually, so in the.

• 2:10:32Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 2:10:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if it's in the director's cup, but it is a deleted scene where Burke, Ripley comes across Burke and he's been cocooned. But they were like, we can't do that.

• 2:10:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's in the director's cup.

• 2:10:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there were, there was like a whole reason why they were like timeline wise, he would not be cocooned at this point.

• 2:10:48Bill Simmons?

  I think the worst way anyone's ever died in a movie is the guy from Seven who got starved.

• 2:10:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Bill Simmons?

  And then they went, they thought the guy was dead, but he, he like, he breathed and they got.

• 2:11:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:00Bill Simmons?

  That guy had the worst death of any movie ever.

• 2:11:02Sean Fennessey?

  John McGinley's like, dicks! It's my favorite line reading in that whole movie.

• 2:11:07Bill Simmons?

  My only other in answerable was, uh, what did Bishop's next few years look like?

• 2:11:13Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 2:11:14Bill Simmons?

  He's just basically a torso and a head.

• 2:11:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, they, they connected in the prison planet.

• 2:11:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's rebuilt.

• 2:11:20Chris Ryan?

  And then at the end of Alien Three,

• 2:11:24Chris Ryan?

  Bishop's creator who looks just like Bishop shows up.

• 2:11:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh, so they, they saved them?

• 2:11:30Chris Ryan?

  No, it's just like, he's like David where it's like they're made in the image of like the person who made the, the android, kind of.

• 2:11:37Bill Simmons?

  You think they just wheeled him around for the next couple of years?

• 2:11:39Chris Ryan?

  It'd be fun, yeah.

• 2:11:41Bill Simmons?

  Put like a little like burlap bag around his intestines so they didn't leak.

• 2:11:44Chris Ryan?

  Bishop, could you still do the knife trick?

• 2:11:46Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's like, just like C-3PO in the Star Wars movies too, where like he gets like torn apart and then put back together.

• 2:11:52Bill Simmons?

  Memorabilia you'd most want from the movie?

• 2:11:54Chris Ryan?

  One of the armored plate vests that they have.

• 2:11:57Sean Fennessey?

  I had Vasquez's headband.

• 2:11:58Bill Simmons?

  Nice. Oh, that's really good.

• 2:12:00Chris Ryan?

  Not Vasquez's tape?

• 2:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I, I take that too.

• 2:12:03Bill Simmons?

  I think one of the guns would be pretty cool.

• 2:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:05Bill Simmons?

  Like the fire gun. What would you want, Craig?

• 2:12:07Chris Ryan?

  Gun is, a sixty-pound gun, just like up here in the studio.

• 2:12:10Bill Simmons?

  Put it right next to Gabe Kaplan.

• 2:12:14Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi wear best worst life lesson. Don't go back to your personal hell.

• 2:12:18Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Seems wise.

• 2:12:20Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes you just gotta nuke the site from orbit just to be sure.

• 2:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm just out on cryosleep. That's a takeaway. Just maybe don't participate in that.

• 2:12:30Chris Ryan?

  Because you just never know when you're gonna wake up.

• 2:12:32Sean Fennessey?

  I don't want fifty-seven years to go by.

• 2:12:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:35Bill Simmons?

  Best double feature choice? Alien.

• 2:12:38Chris Ryan?

  I have Alien.

• 2:12:39Sean Fennessey?

  I have Alien as well, but also Platoon.

• 2:12:42Chris Ryan?

  Really? I like this, I like the Vietnam bit today. Nice, nice work by you.

• 2:12:46Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks.

• 2:12:47Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 2:12:49Chris Ryan?

  I think Sigourney Weaver.

• 2:12:50Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 2:12:53Sean Fennessey?

  My gut is Cameron because he elevates to the highest class with this. I mean, is there a more blank checky movie than The Abyss? It's like a crazy weird premise idea and like he getting to do, and you know, it's like, it doesn't totally work, but it allows him to go on and on and on. So I feel like.

• 2:13:10Bill Simmons?

  It's like drowning his actors.

• 2:13:11Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it's Cameron.

• 2:13:12Chris Ryan?

  My argument for it is that Ripley becomes like a much more iconic character after Aliens than she did after Alien and that like I think Sigourney Weaver is associated with this giant blockbuster franchise for most of its existence until Ripley comes back.

• 2:13:29Bill Simmons?

  So we have one Cameron vote, or one Weaver vote, one Cameron.

• 2:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think?

• 2:13:32Bill Simmons?

  I vote Cameron. Um, I think Weaver's short-term, Cameron long-term.

• 2:13:37Chris Ryan?

  I mean, on a personal level and on a like, every time I re-watch, I get excited, it's Paxton.

• 2:13:43Chris Ryan?

  But, but I, I think argue, like objectively, I think it's either Cam- Cameron or.

• 2:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Paxton was the late eighties zag take, like when people thought their replacements were better than R E M, same thing.

• 2:13:56Sean Fennessey?

  Settle down.

• 2:13:56Bill Simmons?

  Just saying.

• 2:13:57Sean Fennessey?

  This has been a very friendly, cordial, entertaining podcast.

• 2:14:00Bill Simmons?

  One of Aliens, it's like, cool.

• 2:14:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's getting a little afraid that we're gonna leave him.

• 2:14:03Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 2:14:04Chris Ryan?

  So he's gonna.

• 2:14:06Bill Simmons?

  We'll poke the pod. We'll poke. Where are you guys going?

• 2:14:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's not going anywhere.

• 2:14:11Chris Ryan?

  Spectrum has made a really good offer.

• 2:14:13Bill Simmons?

  What's happening?

• 2:14:16Bill Simmons?

  Tiebreaker vote?

• 2:14:18Chris Ryan?

  In the movie itself, I like Weaver.

• 2:14:21Sean Fennessey?

  And now it's two, two. Did you ever put who won the movie to like a public vote?

• 2:14:30Sean Fennessey?

  It would be an interesting, in instances like this where it's like you've got two clear icons coming out of the movie.

• 2:14:36Speaker 04

  We used to do polls in the past, but sometimes it was like an easy answer, so we wouldn't put it up. But when it's a true split, we should do it.

• 2:14:41Sean Fennessey?

  This is a cool one. It's a good debate.

• 2:14:42Chris Ryan?

  I'd like to know. I'd like to know that.

• 2:14:44Sean Fennessey?

  Also, see for Alien or Aliens.

• 2:14:45Chris Ryan?

  I'm just gonna say the same thing, yeah.

• 2:14:46Bill Simmons?

  It would be funny if we do this and then it turns out like with the WNBA, when people, people parachute in because they can politicize it.

• 2:14:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this Cantor is gonna weigh in on this.

• 2:14:58Bill Simmons?

  And this Cantor is like, we've got to protect James Cameron. He's won the movie.

• 2:15:03Sean Fennessey?

  But all the MAGA people are like protecting Jeanette Goldstein's right to portray Vasquez.

• 2:15:08Speaker 04

  Cantor identifies as a xenomorph.

• 2:15:12Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you've never seen this movie?

• 2:15:13Speaker 04

  No, I've been waiting a long time. I loved it. I love that, I love that they feel separate, Alien and Aliens. You don't have to choose because they're such different movies. It's a little bit of like Dune and Dune 2 to me. Like the quiet opening story and then like the full-fledged action movie in the sequel. I think I lean Alien. I think Alien is like perfect.

• 2:15:32Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you, do you think it had anything, did you watch Alien also on a laptop?

• 2:15:36Speaker 04

  I've seen Alien multiple times on my TV. Last night I was strapped for time. I couldn't blast Aliens at like 1 a.m. in my apartment. So I had to watch it on my laptop. So maybe that hurt it.

• 2:15:46Sean Fennessey?

  We fucked up because they just ran Aliens on 70 at the Village Theater, I want to say, all the way on the west side.

• 2:15:55Bill Simmons?

  And Cameron went to it, right?

• 2:15:56Sean Fennessey?

  And Cameron showed up. And Cameron introduced the movie and then he sat down in like the third row and watched it with everybody.

• 2:16:01Bill Simmons?

  That's the kind of shit I would do if I was a famous movie director.

• 2:16:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's, I mean, it's-

• 2:16:06Bill Simmons?

  Just show up at your own screening. It's like, what, what, what better feeling could you have?

• 2:16:10Speaker 04

  You can still do that. You can come do a Sixers game and watch Jalen Brown.

• 2:16:14Speaker 04

  You know what's crazy about this movie? I was looking at, the budget being $18 million. And it's like, sure, it's the 80s. If you adjust that to now, that's only 54. I'm like, a sequel to a movie like Alien now, like if you were to, it would have cost $200 million. I can't believe that even in 1986, after a follow-up to a hit, they only spent $18 million on this movie and it looked as good as it did.

• 2:16:36Bill Simmons?

  This was Speed.

• 2:16:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:37Bill Simmons?

  Speed was 31 and they blew up like five parts of LA.

• 2:16:40Speaker 04

  But at least Speed was original. And so like you didn't know if it was, I mean, the fact that this is Aliens coming off a director who made The Terminator and it's only $18 million to me is just crazy, the, the scale, like how much it's jumped.

• 2:16:51Chris Ryan?

  I think some of it had to do with cast, like it's, they're not using $20 million movie actors. Like, Sigourney Weaver has to fight to get a million dollars and some box office participation on this one. Michael Bean and Bill Paxton and, you know, Jeanette Goldstein are not major movie stars. Paul Reiser's-

• 2:17:09Bill Simmons?

  It's also, it's a sci-fi horror movie, which there's just not a track record of-

• 2:17:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like this was gonna be a big movie, right? Like people knew.

• 2:17:16Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you said at the beginning, it was one of the biggest movies of the summer, one of the biggest movies of the year, but it was not, there was not no expectation that it would be a franchise because it has such a, it's kind of a bummer of a movie. The original Alien, you know, it's a very kind of sad, contemplative-

• 2:17:33Bill Simmons?

  Pretty early for sequels, just in general. This is only like a 10-year run of us wrapping our head around-

• 2:17:40Chris Ryan?

  You can keep making these.

• 2:17:41Bill Simmons?

  A sequel might actually be good.

• 2:17:42Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's also that classic thing of like, you mentioned Alan Ladd going out at the studio and the guy coming in and the guy who came in just didn't get it. He didn't, he wasn't a part of Alien the first time around. He didn't have any vested interest. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:17:53Chris Ryan?

  And that's like, but you know, Cameron's big thing was, I can't remember who told him this, I think it was Julia Phillips, but it was like, you shouldn't do Aliens because if anything goes right with it, people will be like, well Ridley Scott, that's all Ridley Scott's idea. And if anything goes wrong with it, you'll get blamed. But, so it is like a real risk for him to do this.

• 2:18:12Bill Simmons?

  This is the rare- Like Chris Connolly.

• 2:18:20Speaker 04

  Spicy, I like that.

• 2:18:21Sean Fennessey?

  Indeed. Um, I, can you think of another example of a franchise where the first and second movies are arguably as good as each other? And they're made by different directors?

• 2:18:32Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 2:18:36Sean Fennessey?

  Cause usually what you get is-

• 2:18:37Bill Simmons?

  It's basically impossible.

• 2:18:38Sean Fennessey?

  You get Batman Begins and Dark Knight or Batman and Batman Returns or-

• 2:18:42Speaker 04

  But you never want that. You always want the same director to handle the trilogy.

• 2:18:45Sean Fennessey?

  Godfather 2.

• 2:18:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes it would have helped. Like I think Escape from LA would have been better with a different director.

• 2:18:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:18:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I mean-

• 2:18:52Bill Simmons?

  And I love John Carpenter.

• 2:18:53Chris Ryan?

  I really like Die Hard 2, but in no way is it close to Die Hard 1.

• 2:18:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. It's not. I mean, you know, the Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back is, they're different filmmakers, but it's all from Lucas is-

• 2:19:03Bill Simmons?

  I guess Taboo 2 had two different directors from Taboo 1.

• 2:19:08Chris Ryan?

  That's true. Top Gun Maverick?

• 2:19:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 2:19:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:13Speaker 04

  Albeit quite a long time after Top Gun.

• 2:19:16Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I prefer Maverick to the original.

• 2:19:18Bill Simmons?

  I've been cranking it.

• 2:19:21Speaker 04

  Cranking Top Gun Maverick?

• 2:19:22Sean Fennessey?

  Cranking it to Top Gun Maverick?

• 2:19:24Bill Simmons?

  It's on a lot.

• 2:19:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:26Bill Simmons?

  It's on, I think-

• 2:19:26Sean Fennessey?

  On what?

• 2:19:27Bill Simmons?

  The four Showtime channels.

• 2:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  You, I can't believe you're still doing this.

• 2:19:31Bill Simmons?

  I love the guide. I love jumping into movies.

• 2:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  Do you still do this?

• 2:19:34Chris Ryan?

  I have it.

• 2:19:35Sean Fennessey?

  But do you, do you like go what's on the movie channels right now?

• 2:19:38Chris Ryan?

  You know, I did for a while and then I think like the amount of DVDs and also just like, just work watching.

• 2:19:44Bill Simmons?

  You guys are missing out. Showtime is basically just showing both Godfathers and Top Gun Maverick. And they're just on all the time. And it's amazing.

• 2:19:52Sean Fennessey?

  What does that tell you about what people want from them?

• 2:19:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they know. They know what's going on. They know the drill. And then HBO 3 is now just doing marathons.

• 2:20:02Chris Ryan?

  Of their shows, right?

• 2:20:02Bill Simmons?

  They're just like, we're running the wire this week. We're running The Sopranos.

• 2:20:05Chris Ryan?

  I saw Thrones was on for a while.

• 2:20:07Bill Simmons?

  We're doing Curb. We're running the whole. I like what's happening. Cable Guides are back. Pluto's back. Tubi, like the whole like, let's jump in and I get to, you're picking the stuff for me.

• 2:20:18Sean Fennessey?

  When is the CR and Joanna Sopranos pod happening?

• 2:20:22Chris Ryan?

  What's that? Oh, because we haven't watched Sopranos?

• 2:20:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, start to finish.

• 2:20:27Bill Simmons?

  It's unforgivable.

• 2:20:28Chris Ryan?

  I've seen The Sopranos. I just didn't watch it contemporaneously and I haven't seen every episode.

• 2:20:33Sean Fennessey?

  You dropped a Vito reference on the pod this week and you were like, you guys haven't seen Sopranos. Like, we can't let it die.

• 2:20:39Speaker 04

  I've seen Sopranos. Hyphens hasn't seen Sopranos. Or he watched it out of order.

• 2:20:42Bill Simmons?

  Hyphens just did his 40-year-old virgin smile when I brought up Sopranos.

• 2:20:49Bill Simmons?

  Next week on the Rewatchables, I'm off. Craig is Captain Phillips-ing it.

• 2:20:56Speaker 04

  But not with Captain Phillips.

• 2:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  For Captain Phillips?

• 2:20:59Bill Simmons?

  No, he's, the Fantasy Guys are doing Talladega Nights next week.

• 2:21:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, nice.

• 2:21:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, get us ready for football season.

• 2:21:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm sure the Mets will fuck that up too, just like they fucked up the draft.

• 2:21:09Speaker 04

  You're entitled to feel how you want to feel.

• 2:21:15Bill Simmons?

  And then we'll be back. We have some good ones. Good ones. We have a, kind of planning a horror movie month right now for October that I think is gonna be pretty spectacular.

• 2:21:24Sean Fennessey?

  Exciting.

• 2:21:24Bill Simmons?

  Be banking on both of these.

• 2:21:26Speaker 04

  In Red October, we're gonna do that?

• 2:21:28Bill Simmons?

  Listen, what else do you want from me, CR?

• 2:21:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Rich comes calling again. If we don't get Red October, we're gonna have big problems over here.

• 2:21:36Bill Simmons?

  We did Sicario, we did Aliens. What else do you want? What else, Nate?

• 2:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  You're, the-

• 2:21:43Bill Simmons?

  What's left?

• 2:21:44Sean Fennessey?

  Then the, then names are coming off the board now, though.

• 2:21:47Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 2:21:47Sean Fennessey?

  Like it's getting whittled down, all the long time requests.

• 2:21:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I still have my list, but yes.

• 2:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  After Hunt for Red October, is there anything?

• 2:21:56Chris Ryan?

  Apocalypse, no.

• 2:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  Somebody asked me on a pod-

• 2:22:00Bill Simmons?

  We have some good ones. Scarface is left, too.

• 2:22:01Sean Fennessey?

  Somebody asked me this week if I could do any movie, what would I want to do? And I said, I want to do The Master, but just me and you.

• 2:22:08Bill Simmons?

  The Master?

• 2:22:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:09Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 2:22:12Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, uh, CR, thank you. Fantasy, thank you. Craig, thank you. Thanks to Gahow as well. And we'll be back next week with Talladega Nights.

• 2:22:32Speaker 07

  Want to know you're on the best path to the right car? At CarMax, the price you see is the price you pay. No negotiating, no last-minute surprises. Every car is CarMax certified and backed by a 10-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy with confidence. Want to shop from home? Go for it. You can come in when you're ready, take it for a spin, and buy however works for you. No pressure, no haggling, just the right car, your way. Visit carmax.com for details. Want to drive? CarMax.

• 2:23:03Speaker 07

  Walden University is where working professionals like you get the W. With Walden's Tempo Learning, which is available in select programs, you earn your degree at your own pace. No set weekly deadlines, no rigid schedules. Gain practical skills through real-world scenarios. Learn from faculty with real-world experience. And count on support from your very first class all the way to your career. Walden University: Set a course for change. Ready to start? Visit waldenu.edu today. Certified to operate by CHEV.