Weekend Watchlist | Aliens

Look, in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane — no, it’s a UFO! Aliens can be nice, aliens can be scary, but they always make for something fun to watch. So this week The Pitt News staff is recommending some extraterrestrial entertainment.

Zathura: A Space Adventure (Netflix) // Sinead McDevitt, Digital Manager

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher loved to read us the works of Chris Van Allsburg, the author of “Jumanji,” a book that is much less well known than the film adaptation of the same name starring Robin Williams. Another less well-known fact about this book is that Van Allsburg wrote a sequel in 2002, which was then adapted into a film in 2005. This is all to say, yes this film is Jumanji… IN SPACE, but it’s not a rip-off, it’s just less well known than its predecessor.

Two brothers, Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and Danny (Jonah Bobo), find a mysterious board game that ends up lifting up their house and launching it into space. They then have to complete the game while they, their sister Lisa (Kristen Stewart) and an astronaut they meet in space (Dax Shephard) fight off hostile aliens and killer robots to get back home.

This movie is fun and tense and makes great use of its minimal cast, and definitely deserves some love.

Destroy All Monsters (HBO Max, Amazon Prime) // Nicholas Simila, Staff Writer

Humanity has imprisoned the numerous kaiju, including Godzilla, on the aptly named monster island, which has high-tech security features in place to prevent escape. This totally genius plan goes awry when an alien species hijacks control of the security system, leaving the monsters free to wreak havoc across the globe. Will humanity be able to stop the attack of a highly advanced alien species that has control over mankind’s most ancient and powerful enemies?

This 1968 film features a sonorous soundtrack as powerful as the monsters. On the note of monsters, the intricately detailed monster suits as well as the scenes where the monsters topple famous landmarks across the world remind one of the seemingly forgotten art of practical effects. If you’re looking for a good, fun film to watch this weekend, this zany story with plenty of action sequences won’t disappoint.

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals (YouTube) // Sinead McDevitt, Digital Manager

Team StarKid began gracing theater kid YouTube with funny original shows in 2009. “The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals” is one of their recent shows and the kind of musical parody only people who listen to too many of these damn things could make.

The show was first uploaded to YouTube in 2018, and has made its way into my Halloween watch rotation with its hilarious numbers and dialogues mixed with genuinely terrifying moments. The show follows Paul (Jon Matteson), an average office worker who, as the title says, doesn’t like musicals. Unfortunately for him, aliens crash land in his small town of Hatchetfield, start taking over people’s bodies and sing and dance their way through killing and assimilating the whole town into their hive mind.

This show, like Team StarKid’s other productions, is a full-on delight and I can’t recommend watching all of them enough.