beancounter parodies: So much existential angst, so little time

Opening: Long slow moody b&w shot of a spaceship, adrift in the void.

Voiceover (Ellen Ripley): I sleep. I dream. Things I have done. Things I will do. Actions I might take. Are we free? Is God looking down on my sleep and judging me? The guilt of the Nostromo hangs over me like a midnight fog, smothering me, burying me in my guilt, tormenting me. I am a coward, I am the fallen Earth Mother, I am nothing. I sleep and dream that this cat, Jonsey, is God judging me. His purr reminds me of the sermons Father took me to as a child. The sermons. The guilt. The whitewashed walls blasting away my innocence.

Cut to: shot of laser cutting through the ship bulk head. A weird mechanical thing enters and shines a light on the cryogenic chamber where Ripley and Jonsey are sleeping.

Voiceover (Crewmember): I remember my first salvage ship, my first cut of the fee. The endless dark nights drinking my money away, the women, ah god the women, tempting me, luring me to sin and damnation. I wonder...Is God testing me by showing me this woman, this sleeping woman and her cat. Is God saying "thou shallt not covet thy neighbor's derelict ship"? her life is her own--we will get no salvage fee today.

Slow fade to crescent moon. Cut to:

Ripley and Burke, the Company agent, sit together in Ripley’s bleak cubicle room:

Burke: The Colony. All the men women and children not responding. Is God judging us for our vanity, our presumption of sending lives into sapce, of terraforming worlds, of trying to reach beyond our pettiness, our hatred, our slow descent to death?

Ripley: I am haunted by questions of revenge. Am I right to want to exterminate this species, Burke? Is God testing me in my capacity for faith, for my need to forever live out cycles of pain and nausea at the thought of this race colonizing L51? I want to know: if we go there to wipe them out, not study them, not contemplate their place in the scheme of things, will you give me absolution?

Burke slowly kneels in front of Ripley

Burke: We will wipe them out and God himself will cry for joy.

Cut to: Military ship. Camera pans over the cryogenic chambers that hold Ripley and the Marines. Various voiceovers:

Ripley: Space is cold and vast. No one can hear you scream. But can infinite space offer protection from our own self-awareness, our own mortality?

Apone: I lead warriors into battle. Still, every battle I wonder: will this be the day I am called into account for my sins, for my cigars?

Vasquez: I can do more pull-ups than Drake, and still he rejects me. When I was young Mother told me that the truly feminine woman seeks no pleasure in being in the Colonial Marines, that no man wants a woman who can kill with her bare hands. But I rejected Mother and her ways. Was God testing me when I killed that Arcturean woman? I think it was a woman. So hard to tell with Arctureans.

Hudson: I am aware that I am hibernating. Is this not a paradox? Am I truly sleeping or am I truly awake and my life in the Colonial marines the real illusion? Is Vasquez real, is Apone real? Was that time I spent in the brig real, or was God merely warning me of the punishment awaiting me? Am I really in this chickenshit outfit?

Hicks: Even in his sleep, Hudson is an asshole. I contemplate this, knowing he is my fellow warrior, and yet he fills me with disgust and loathing, knowing that he may live and I may die. What God would create a world where I die before such a sinner as Hudson? I confess that I have impure thoughts for that civvie woman who came with us. May God forgive me.

Bishop: Am I, as an android, a prisoner of my programming, or have I been given free will not to do that damn knife trick next time Hudson demands it? Or is my free will merely another level of my programming? Am I trapped forever in artificially synthesized doubt, never knowing if God is truly judging me, or is it just a programming glitch?

Well into the third hour of the movie, Ripley, forced by her utter existential nausea -- and the fact that only she, Hicks, little Newt and Bishop are alive -- must face down the alien queen.

Ripley: Get away from her, you BITCH!

Voiceover (Alien Queen): ‘Bitch’, she calls me. Is this true? I have ruled my subjects well, going from planet to planet providing nutrition and shelter for our race. Yet this woman objects to me, my egg sac, my warrior drones. Is God judging me for my colonizing the universe? I remember Father, so shiny. "Bear many eggs," he said to me before the Predators came to exact their revenge. Did God judge them as well, did they feel remorse when they cut his head off for a trophy? For every face-hugger I have bred, I feel doubt and pain. Is this all being alive offers? I am dangling over infinite space right now and what reason have I to live, to continue this misery? None, I now know. I let go, I fall, I relenquish. Let it end, let it end.

Alien Queen falls into space, drifting farther and farther away until she's just a dot.

Cut to: Ripley and little Newt preparing for hibernation.

Newt: Is to dream now?

(Ripley smiles, takes out a chess board and lays it before Newt.)

Ripley: Chess is like life -- opposing forces in collision, absolute black and white at war. When you sleep, always wonder -- are you a small child who survived a horrible alien encounter, or are you an alien merely dreaming that you are a small child who survived a horrible alien encounter. God's ways are mysterious and unfathomable. We are born, Newt, we grow old and die, not knowing if this is truly what the Lord has planned for us. Yes, you may dream....

Newt takes her pawn and moves it one square of the board. Ripley smiles and the film fades to credits.

- Anthony