My place in space is mainly on your face.

I see that the film ALIEN is in re-release right now, and that over on AICN everybody's in a lather because the most fanboy-wankish project of all time, Alien Versus Predator, is apparently going to be a bad movie. (That they are surprised by this defies my imagination. How could a movie like that not suck?)

Anyway, I figured this would be a good time to drop an earth-shattering bombshell upon my loyal readers: I hate the ALIEN movies.

Yeah, I know, the first one's a classic of horror, but it just doesn't do it for me. Sure, it was effective the first time I saw it, but the couple of times I've bothered to watch it again it was rather like riding "Space Mountain" with the lights turned on: a movie whose entire reason for being is gross-out stuff and "beastie jumping out from behind things" scares loses something when I know what's coming. And unlike, say, Jaws, which has other strengths going for it - - theme, character - - ALIEN is like the wind-up toy that is a lot less interesting after playing with it for five minutes.

Then there's the sequel, ALIENS, which, again, everybody loves but me. It's slick and well-made, but the plot is just one predictable complication after another, so even while I was watching the first time (on video, in college) I found myself ticking off every culmination of ham-handed foreshadowing early in the movie. And quite frankly, the entire last third of the movie just drags on and on and on. In his review, Roger Ebert likened this part of the film to a roller coaster ride that lasts for half and hour. Personally, I liken it to one of my favorite lines from The West Wing: "I'm sorry. I hung in there as long as I could, but you've long since past the point where I stopped caring."

Finally, there was the third one, in which we go right back to beasties jumping out from behind things and lots of nastiness and drooling and whatnot. I never bothered with the fourth one. So, there you go. My deep, dark secret is out.