I started 2021 with an online feud, one which had been brewing for a while. It began as an innocent and innocuous tweet, as these things often do, as to which movie was the better one: Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) or RoboCop? (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Fellow author, Kit Power (GodBomb!, A Warning About Your Future Enslavement That You Will Dismiss as a Collection of Short Fiction and Essays and A Song for the End) led the case for RoboCop, whilst I remained steadfast in my views about Aliens. As our argument rumbled on, complete with a poll where others could vote, we knew what we had to do. It was time to put our opinions into a series of essays and build a sturdy case for both. We would let the public decide, once and for all, which was the Best Movie Ever Made.
Four, fantastic sci-fi and horror blogs agreed to host our grumbling and sniping, with some extra support drummed up via Twitter and Facebook. You can read all the published essays via the links below, and please do consider following all the blogs and their social media.
Essay one – The Opening Statement – at Ginger Nuts of Horror
“Despite all the guns, gore and military ‘grunts’, ALIENS is really about a mother who has lost her child and a child who is in dire need of one. It shows just how far a woman will go to protect her ward. And if you go ahead and flip that on its head, you realise that the Alien Queen has exactly the same prerogative. It’s an epic showdown between two formidable matriarchs. Survival of the fittest.”
Essay two – The Case Against – at Ink Heist
“Satire uses humour, irony and exaggeration to ridicule and expose with the intent to shame individuals or corporations into bettering themselves. This is exactly where ROBOCOP fails. By melding man with machine in an attempt to create a more efficient method of law enforcement, it suggests that this is the very solution that these aforementioned companies need.“
Essay three – The Corporation’s Legal Teams Get Involved – at Divination Hollow Reviews
“You state that my use of the name of “ED-209” is in flagrant violation of OCP patents and copyright. I ask that you prove to me exactly where I have used this name inappropriately or incorrectly. Need I remind you that OCP created a giant, artificially-(semi)intelligent robotic machine-gun which malfunctioned in a crowded boardroom and gunned down one of their employees, and they called it a “peacekeeping machine”. A little naïve, I feel.“
Essay four – The Final Battle – at Sci-fi & Scary
“It mirrors the time-honoured human tradition of knowingly sacrificing a group of people if it appears to serve the greater good. ALIENS shows us that while war might seem unavoidable, it comes with an incalculable price. The number of weapons you have and troops you command mean nothing; the real tally of conflict is human lives.”
You can place your own vote via Twitter at:
You can also leave a comment on social media via the Best Movie Ever Made Facebook Group or on each blog’s online space.
With massive thanks and appreciation to Jim at Ginger Nuts of Horror, Shane at Ink Heist, Elle and Ellen at Divination Hollow Reviews and Lilyn at Sci-fi & Scary and everyone on the blog teams for helping to make the start of the new year just a little bit more fun and interesting.
#TeamAliens forever.