~ We were reviewing ‘Aliens’ in preparation for ‘Prometheus’ and we made a ‘discovery’: When Ripley goes down to the reactor to search for Newt, what is the point of Ripley burning the eggs and wasting all of her pulse rifle ammunition and grenades on the Queen?
Ripley and the Queen have reached an agreement; Ripley won’t torch the eggs, and the Queen will hiss to the other xenomorphs not to attack. The whole settlement is about to be destroyed in a nuclear explosion anyway, which we all know because of the constant reminder on the loud speakers, so Ripley could just calmly take the elevator to the landing platform and escape, letting the processor explosion take care of the nest. Instead she empties her guns and has to run from the queen, gets Bishop chopped in half, and loses a cargo-loader.
The answer is probably just ‘Because that’s what happens in the story’, since they needed an explanation for an egg being on the Sulaco at the beginning of the third movie.
~ from our yet to be published philadelphia infrastructure fanzine:
And, in a repeat of a line he often repeated on the presidential campaign trail here four years ago, McCain joked about Zsa Zsa Gabor’s sex life…..”I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s fifth husband. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know how to make it interesting.”
A few feet away, Romney let out an awkward giggle.”I thought we only brought one actor and comedian here today,” Romney told McCain when it was his turn at the mic. “Gosh, that was quite a repartee there, senator. That was fabulous.” [Yahoo!]
of course what mccain said was inane and not amusing, and there are doubtlessly numerous other articles to cover that. however, that is not the point here, repartee is not just a single (tired, awkward, or otherwise) one-liner, fool! it is a witty conversation between two sharp thinkers, such as the great cafe tableaux on the road show podcasts 2011, not a musty soundbite read from a cue card by a dead man.
repartee : n. adroitness and cleverness in reply –definr