For a brief moment in the early ‘80s, it looked as if the brave new world of Alien studies was going to splinter irreconcilably on the issue of Officer Ripley’s panties — the anti-panty camp accusing the pro-panty wing of uncritical phallocentrism, the pro-panty caucus accusing the anti-panty wing of repressive and self-defeating assumptions about what constitutes sexism.

This is a fine literature review of studies on Alien, even if most of these works are over 20 years old. One hell of a series, considering three of the Aliens films are, let’s face it, pretty terrible. Grantland might have attempted to suggest that Prometheus is “better than good”, a radical position. But at least it gets it right when it says Aliens is the weirdest blockbuster series in history.