When Aliens first got access to human ships the thing that surprised them most was the sheer number of safety systems on board. Surely a species as tough as humans would not need to be protected from anything?
But everywhere they checked they found multiple failsafes, safety protocols, and safety nets protecting everything from the weapons system to the coffee machine.
Some of these systems were so specific they wondered why or how the humans had come up with them and why they spent the effort fitting them to their ships.
Their questions were answered when humans first started working on an alien ship.
Within the first month the human crew members had:
Burned themselves
Stabbed themselves
“Strategically amputated” an arm (then reattached it without much fuss)
Spaced themselves on more than one occasion
Been electrocuted by the food despenser
Exploded four computer terminals
And secretly grown a cat in one of the science labs
After that the Aliens sent a request to the human council for a copy of their safety protocols
And also learnt the meaning of the term “idiot proofing”
“At one point, there was a scene between me and Riz, where the realization was that it wasn’t just about these men discovering their masculinity but also the men before them and their fathers. That there’s a real shadow - a real ghost of each one of their fathers in the midst of the story. And I think what is really interesting is this sort of profound search for what it is to be a man when there are so few models outside of convention. And I think convention can be tremendously destructive and misleading. I think that that was the idea and I can’t really speak to it except to say that Morris was a character that had many incarnations in many drafts before I even came in. You know? And his relationship with Warm is… there’s that look that they have. That look that you caught where they look at each other for what feels like an eternity where Warm looks at Morris in that moment. And you rarely see a man look at another man like that, you know? Without it having some sort of homoeroticism to it. And maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t, but you rarely see an intimacy and a love where you go like, ‘I’m looking at you, I love you…’ Right? And it’s minus the sexuality. And maybe it isn’t, I don’t know. That wasn’t the concern necessarily - the intimacy was very important and it’s an amazing moment that you see.” — Jake Gyllenhaal
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) dir. John M. Stahl
No Regrets for Our Youth (わが青春に悔なし), Akira Kurosawa, 1946.
I’m not obsessed with him. I’m just very observant.
Carol (2015) dir. Todd Haynes + Edward Hopper Influences