Alien: The Archive (and Updated Checklist!)

I’ll also go back through the Checklists, archive their posts, and update them to the current list. Again, this is a lot of work for me without as much benefit for you, but the whole point of the checklists is to create a robust data set that I can mine for all sorts of purposes, which means they all need to be the same version. We’re going back to one of the earliest checklists here, which means I had a lot fewer follow-up posts about each movie. I should go back and generate some more.

• The Ultimate Story Checklist, v6: Alien
• Straying from the Party Line: Alien (I used to do these all at once)
• Morally Ascending in Alien (This is in reference to a question that’s no longer on the checklist, and I don’t really miss it, but it’s interesting to see what’s gone.)

Of course, the new checklist is a little shorter than the others (my book editor wanted to slim it down).  For the most part, we cut out questions that weren’t providing good answers, but sometimes I’ll have to cut out good answers, like this one:
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Are unrealistic genre-specific elements a big metaphor for a more common experience (not how life really is, but how life really feels)?

Yes: the horror of childbirth, the evil of corporations, the dangers of mining, etc.

I do kind of miss that question.  Sorry buddy, that’s the price of progress!