Aliens
Year:
1986
Directed by:
James Cameron
Rated:
R
Country:
United States
Runtime:
2 hrs. 17 min.
Production Company:
Twentieth Century Fox
Written by:
James Cameron
David Giler
Walter Hill
Starring:
Sigourney Weaver
Carrie Henn
Michael Biehn
Paul Reiser
Similar Films:
Cameron's thrilling follow-up to Alien.
Alien was a perfectly paced and smartly made horror film that set out to genuinely terrify you. Aliens takes the plot's premise, the alien species, and runs with it, becoming a totally different kind of movie, a full-blast thriller, in fact. It will be best appreciated by those who have seen the first installment and who understand the true horror of the creature, but this movie will leave anyone feeling like they have been dragged through a gauntlet of bloodthirsty extra-terrestrials.
It is fifty-seven years after the events of Alien, and, in a sequence that just might be an homage to the opening moments of Star Wars: Episode IV -- a large ship tractor-beaming a craft and torching its door -- Ripley's escape pod is discovered, its contents thankfully still cryogenically frozen. After an eventually inconsequential series of events, Ripley is convinced to return to LV-426, the planet on which the alien species was discovered by her crew. The planet has since been colonized. There have been no signs of trouble until, extremely coincidentally, now. (This coincidence is given even more implausibility considering that the film makes such a point that it was amazing luck to discover Ripley in the first place.) Anyway, the colonizing company has lost communication with the inhabitants. Try to guess what happened to them. Whereas the first Alien movie built up suspense by slowly, though certainly not subtly, letting the horror creep in, Aliens spends the first hour building suspense, at which point it releases an explosion of thrills directly in your face. This one also fills some of the blanks in the Alien mythology -- such as where the eggs come from, and, for those who haven't seen the first film's deleted scenes, the fate of the aliens' captured prey.
Instead of a blue-collar freight crew, this time Ripley is in the company of the Marines. This means more firepower, more gung-ho attitudes, and more clichés. There is corny marine banter, a cigar-sucking sergeant, and a totally masculine female. She works out when the others are still trying to shake off cryogenic sleep, she checks out her own biceps, she mocks others, and she carries the biggest gun of them all. However, her annoyingness actually illuminates another dimension of Ripley's character. When we are turned off by this cliché "hardcore marine chick" masculinity, we also realize that we admire Ripley not just because she's an ass-kicker. There is something else, perhaps her distinct maternal nature, which this film explores, that makes us like her.
Unfortunately there is a heavy dose of stupidity, too. The marines constantly blow aliens' heads off at point-blank range, apparently forgetting about the acid coursing through their veins, even though they've been warned and have even seen the consequences first-hand. There is also a scene in which Ripley has to explain to a laughably moronic lieutenant why inadvertently blowing up the facility's enormous "primary heat exchangers" would be bad. The baffled lieutenant replies, "So? So what?!" Where did they get these guys?
But perhaps I am being too tough on this film. These flaws that I am pointing out are bad things in a movie that, for the most part, will leave you either frozen stiff or curled in your seat. Alien had everything right because it had to. In the case of Aliens, things like impressively ubiquitous clichés, confusingly low I.Q.'s, and wildly horrible acting (I'm talking to you, Bill Paxton) just are not too detrimental because it is a movie designed to do little more than make you have to gasp for air. The pacing is largely to thank for this. We spend some time with the characters before anything major happens. Then when something, such as a death, does happen it is an experience in which we take part rather than only a gory scene. For thrills, director James Cameron does better than give us battles between humans and aliens -- he gives us situations where the humans have to escape or be slowly killed. Instead of proving themselves more powerful (because they aren't), all the characters can hope for is to escape these horrid creatures. This is set up chillingly in an early sequence in which the marines find a group of people captured by the aliens. One half-conscious captive begs, "Kill me," with what little energy is left. It establishes a pervading horror by showing what will happen if our characters are captured. This pacing and investment in the characters make for a film that is genuinely tense.
If you have seen the first film (and you should, though it is not entirely necessary for following this one), the fear of being captured by these things is exacerbated. We fear the aliens so much not just because of the ease with which they can kill us but because we fear what the drawn out experience of dying by one of these monsters would be like. They don't just jump out and kill you. They wrap you up, keep you barely alive, lay eggs nearby, and use your torso as a womb. Furthermore, it is always clear that the aliens are hunting the humans -- not the other way around. This forces viewers to be always on their toes.
