When it comes to the first two films in the Alien franchise, people tend to either prefer the first film in the series, Alien, or its immediate sequel, Aliens. The former is the more nuanced Ridley Scott horror film that took the concept of the creature feature to the next level, while the sequel is its more action-oriented brother serving as a kind of first in a very brief trend of James Cameron making action-y sequels to horror films. (The first Terminator is much closer to a horror film than Terminator 2.)
You may not have realized it, but your preference between these two cinematic hallmarks tells certain people everything they need to know about you as a person.
So, which is your favorite movie: Alien or Aliens? Here’s what your deceptively simple answer reveals.
I’m an Alien Person
If your answer was Alien, this signifies that you are a vastly complex individual with a dizzying maze of thoughts and refined taste.
You likely have an appreciation for the humanities and fine art, with a penchant for high-concept art films that go way over most people’s heads, with little tolerance for the trivial or ridiculous. You probably prefer the ominousness of the dark to the obviousness of the light, finding a distinct black beauty in what isn’t always right there before your eyes, with a flair for the mysterious.
You find the unknown to be a pit worth pondering but ultimately existentially terrifying, from the mechanisms of a foreign creature you don’t understand to the vastness of the universe in its all-encompassing indifference toward us as a species, let alone as individuals.
You’re most likely an antinatalist in the spirit of David Benatar who believes that people should no longer reproduce and should acknowledge that life is pain. To exist is to suffer and wallow in a pit of anguish from those first flickering moments of cognizance to the deepest dark annals of our final moments.
You probably see women as the true pinnacle of human strength a la Alien‘s central protagonist, largely because of the mastery of the sex that drives us forward and enslaves the meek minds of men, and yet we as humans are a collectively weak and doomed fluke of nature’s perceivably cruel and pathetically flawed evolutionary pathology. We are no more fit to survive in an environment like that of planet LV-426 or the halls of the Nostromo than we are to survive on our “home” planet, on which we are the sole species that requires unnaturally produced coating and shelter to keep us comfortable and safe.
We are creatures born of a cold and dry womb, awaiting our inevitable extinguishment until the next doomed descendants come to face a world even harsher than we can ever fathom, as we fade into nonexistence like the worms beneath our feet we somehow see ourself as superior to, when in the end we’re all the same in that shared void.
You sit there, sometimes for hours at a time, staring at the wall and projecting an image of humanity’s inevitable demise onto that pale surface, wondering how we could have possibly come into existence when so many of us lack a conscience and the ability to cooperate with any semblance of cohesion. Corporations and monopolies exist to tighten the chains around the people at the bottom of the societal funnel, until those less fortunate are squeezed through the meat grinder they can never escape.
And you look through that wall ahead and see just how immense the blackness really is, a blackness that isn’t so much blackness but the absolute lack of it or any other shade. There is only nothing, the absence of everything we’ve come to know and that polar opposite we can’t even imagine, waiting for us with its beckoning silent call that assures us that our screams will forever remain unheard by anyone but ourselves, whether floating in the vacuum of space or the endless hallways down which lie equally infinite chasms of pure unadulterated terror.
I’m an Aliens Person
If your favorite of the two films is Aliens, chances are you’re a relatively simple person with simple pleasures. You enjoy the explosions and general audiovisual noise of an action flick with little patience for a more slowly paced film with any kind of elegance.
You’re not afraid of the unknown because your ego outweighs your intellectual capacity, so you’re far more likely to go into the dark guns blazing to ignite the space with superficial light than to actually contemplate what lies therein. You enjoy mindless video games that entail shooting and detonating things with minimal focus on anything like characters or story beyond the basics.
You’re never idle enough to think and yet your intuition that guides you is almost as inept as your thoughts, yielding unfavorable results on many occasions while you still rationalize that your successes outweigh your failures simply because you choose not to remember your failures. You might be a meathead and visit the gym to build your physical muscle as the atrophied muscle between your ears gives in to blind impulses and the decision to wander through life like a mouse in a death trap-riddled maze who can’t even see or smell the promised cheese but believes it’s somewhere.
If you see or experience something you don’t understand, you don’t bother to stop and think about it. As an impulsive person who thinks that actions speak louder than anything else, you typically let your flight-or-fight responses take you along for the ride—”fight” being your most frequent conscious and unconscious choice.
You don’t understand just how little you matter in the big equation of things. You think you’re essentially a god and nothing can stand in your way, regardless of what comes in your way to prove differently. Matter over mind is your philosophy as you moronically trudge your way through everything that truly might matter in any way. You represent the blind stupidity of those who cannot contemplate the ominous darkness or even see the point in questioning your existence as you ignorantly plow through life with blatant disregard for the forces that unfairly chose to bring you into this half-blink of an existence. And you will die having failed to achieve anything within your brief timeline worth remembering beyond what your prospective superficial children or ex-spouses might recall with equally moronic half-remembrance.
You’re a shrimp in the brackish pond who doesn’t know it doesn’t belong and so scuttles along the bottom of life waiting to curl and die, tail at the mouth.
Hopefully, in this post you learned just how easy it is to peg you based on whether you prefer Alien or Aliens. So, next time you reveal which is your favorite to anyone who asks, remember that you can essentially label your entire persona and identity as an “Alien” or “Aliens” person without the need to say any more.
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