“Whoever wins … We lose,” runs the tagline for last week's top-grossing movie, “Alien vs. Predator.”
That's also the best description of the 2004 presidential election featuring Alien Kerry vs. Predator Bush.
(Spoiler alert: For those who still haven't seen this masterpiece, some plot elements are revealed below.)
John Kerry obviously is the Alien, because of that protruding jaw. Whenever I see Kerry speak, I expect that second Alien jaw – the one that juts out from the bigger jaw – to extend out from the television screen and start snapping and drooling at me.
Like the Aliens, Kerry also is a parasite. I won’t describe how the Aliens are hatched inside humans because it's too gruesome, but if you've seen any of the Alien movies, you know what I mean. However, it is less gruesome than the fetal stem cell research he supports and wants to spend your money on.
George W. Bush obviously is the Predator. Imagine some Predator dreadlocks on him. Both are imperialist and inarticulate.
In the new movie, the back story is that thousands of years ago the race of Predators built a Pyramid under the ice of Antarctica. They also have created a race of killer bio-machines, the Aliens. Young Predators come from outer space to the Pyramid to prove themselves in combat with the Aliens, who are hatched for the occasion. Humans are the bait for the combat and are slaughtered like mice thrown to piranhas.
Bush Predators have a similar rite of passage.
In 1991, Daddy Predator (G.H.W. Bush) went to Iraq/The Pyramid, slaughtered some humans – U.S. troops and Iraqi troops and civilians – then went up against the real foe, Alien Bubba. Daddy Predator lost.
In the aftermath under the rule of Alien Bubba, about 500,000 Iraqis died from sanctions. The price, Alien Queen Albright said, was “worth it.”
Today, Predator Bush faces off against Alien John Kerry, with the outcome still being decided. Nearly a thousand American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives so far have been sacrificed to his rite of passage.
The movie Pyramid, where the battle takes place, features chambers and passageways that change every 10 minutes, the same as for politicians' promises. And yes, dear Republicans, Predator Bush flip-flops as much as Alien Kerry. Remember the 2000 promise of a “humble” foreign policy?
The movie's web site even has an election, “Choose Your Side, Vote Now…Click Here to Vote…Tell Us Who Will Win,” which has more relevance than the November 2 presidential election.
What about the movie's tagline, “Whoever wins…we lose?” Never mind.
But whatever Web creature wins the online vote, the actual movie already decided the matter by having the humans side with the Predator. So the movie vote is just as much a sham as the movie plot – and the November presidential election.
In the murky plot, if the Predators don't kill all the Aliens, then the Aliens will swarm over the earth and the Predators will have to nuke the planet. So the humans side with the Predators.
Put into the context of the presidential lection, that sounds like a GOP advertisement: If voters don't side with Predator Bush, Alien Kerry and his Democratic Alien cohorts will swarm over the earth, etc.
In the real world, there's no point siding with either Predator Bush or Alien Kerry. All of us are just their bait. As the movie's secondary tag line has it, “It's our planet….It's their war.”
What America really needs is what's in the top movie of this week: “Exorcist: The Beginning.”
August 25, 2004
