Incidentally, speaking of Books & Culture articles about 30-plus-year-old franchises whose slide towards mediocrity was capped recently by a film that owed a little too much to Chariots of the Gods, I recently wrote another article for B&C — my first since stay-at-home daddyhood took over my life three years ago! — on Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s prequel to the Alien movies. Most of the article is behind a paywall right now, but if you don’t already subscribe to B&C, you can read the first three paragraphs (and half a sentence) here. And if you can read the article, and you’re curious about the bit where I talk about Alien‘s expert use of close-ups, you can click here for a blog post of mine from a couple months ago, where I posted screen captures of those close-ups. Enjoy.