Derik Badman's Journal

2020-06-13 16:09

Saturday afternoon of another week at home. After 13 weeks of not going into another building, I finally went somewhere yesterday to give blood (which seems like a good reason to go somewhere). It was even the first time I was anywhere I felt I needed to where a mask (since otherwise I've only been at home or walking outside in mostly empty areas).

Eric was running an adventure he wrote for Mothership this afternoon, which is kind of sci-fi/horror, so I decided to finally watch Alien this morning. I've seen the sequel long ago but never the first one. I ended up giving up just past the halfway mark. At first I found it interesting and suspenseful, with its 70s sci-fi look (so many lights and buttons and switches) and slow burn suspense. But there comes a point in the story where the characters start acting so stupid. In one scene the facehugger alien has disappeared off the first guy that has run into them. Three other characters go into the medbay to try to figure out where the creature went but... they don't turn on the lights. No apparent reason, just... clearly the creators wanted it to be dark and spooky. Later, they are looking for the alien that burst out of the one guys chest and... they split up. Even after the captain specifically said to stay together and in communication, the one guy wanders off to find the cat and doesn't stay in communication and doesn't seem concerned when he finds the aliens's sloughed off skin and then, of course, gets killed. Stupid. Lazy writing in my opinion. If you can't build suspense without writing characters that are idiots then that's bad writing.