On screening Aliens for a slumber party of 11 year old boys:
"I like the way this looks," one said. "It's futuristic but it's old school. It's almost steampunk." "This is like Team Fortress 2," another remarked. "Dude, shut up, this was made like 20 years before Team Fortress 2," said the kid next to him. "This is, like, every science fiction movie ever made," another said, as Ripley operated the power loader for the first time.
I love works of culture that bisect their genre. There were symphonies before Beethoven, and symphonies after Beethoven. There were comedies before Animal House and comedies after Animal House. For action and sci-fi action movies, there were movies before Die Hard and Aliens, and there are movies after.
In all of these cases, the pieces after are a wholly better ballgame because the piece bisecting the genre changed it so completely.
