Aliens
Year: 1986
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Micheal Biehn, Carrie Henn, Lance Henricksen, Paul Reiser & Sigourney Weaver
Runtime: 137 mins (Theatrical) 157 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 18
Published: 22/09/22
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Micheal Biehn, Carrie Henn, Lance Henricksen, Paul Reiser & Sigourney Weaver
Runtime: 137 mins (Theatrical) 157 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 18
Published: 22/09/22
‘Get away from her you bitch!’
I had debated the idea of opening this Aliens review with a quote like I did with my review for Alien, because on one hand I feel the film is such an icon of action cinema that I wanted to open it with an equally iconic line of dialogue…but on the other hand the best line I could think of to open it with was…well the one you see at the top of the review right now. I think that line perfectly encapsulates just how different a film Aliens is to Alien. Where Alien I opted for the marketing line ‘In space no one can hear you scream’, with Aliens it’s arguably the most badass thing to ever come out of Sigourney Weaver’s mouth at the start of the film’s final big action setpiece. I don’t like Aliens as much as Alien, for reasons I’ll explain shortly, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate that director James Cameron took a wild leap of faith in making this sequel and a lot of it works really well. So, without further ado, let’s go on a bug hunt!
After destroying the Nostromo and killing the alien that had massacred her crew, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been floating through space, frozen in stasis for fifty-seven years. When she is discovered and questioned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation as to why she detonated the Nostromo, costing them millions of dollars in investments, Ripley is stripped of her licences and cast aside owing to her unbelievable story.
Meanwhile, the planet of LV-426, the same planet the Nostromo landed on fifty-seven years earlier, is now home to the human colony of Hadley’s Hope. When an excavator discovers a mysterious alien spacecraft an outbreak of aliens, now called xenomorph’s, rips through the colony. Sent in with a squad of Colonial Marines as an advisor, Ripley must face her greatest fears as she confronts not one, but hundreds of xenomorph foes.
After destroying the Nostromo and killing the alien that had massacred her crew, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been floating through space, frozen in stasis for fifty-seven years. When she is discovered and questioned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation as to why she detonated the Nostromo, costing them millions of dollars in investments, Ripley is stripped of her licences and cast aside owing to her unbelievable story.
Meanwhile, the planet of LV-426, the same planet the Nostromo landed on fifty-seven years earlier, is now home to the human colony of Hadley’s Hope. When an excavator discovers a mysterious alien spacecraft an outbreak of aliens, now called xenomorph’s, rips through the colony. Sent in with a squad of Colonial Marines as an advisor, Ripley must face her greatest fears as she confronts not one, but hundreds of xenomorph foes.
Where Alien was a high tension, slow burn sci-fi slasher, Aliens is a bombastic, testosterone fuelled action spectacle. It couldn’t be more different to its predecessor if it tried, and in a lot of ways that’s a good thing. Whilst Alien is one of my favourite films of all time, a sequel that stuck to that same formula could have been extremely tiresome and predictable. Aliens meanwhile flips the concept on its head by making Ripley and her new squad of marines extremely capable fighters against the xenomorph threat. But that being said, it appeals to a totally different kind of audience, which is why even though I think Aliens is a great film, I just don’t like it as much as Alien because it doesn’t appeal to me in the same way.
I really love how much time is dedicated at the beginning of the film to Ripley adjusting to being nearly six decades in the future. Everyone she knew is dead, including her daughter. She suffers with extreme PTSD from her time on the Nostromo, and its exacerbated further when she discovers that Weyland-Yutani have colonised the planet that the Nostromo crew discovered the xenomorph on. The way she’s convinced to join the mission also makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t seem wrong for Ripley to want to get her own back on the xenomorphs and face her fear head on as that’s the kind of woman she became over the course of Alien.
I do feel that the plot convenience monster rears its head when seemingly days after Ripley is discovered that Hadley’s Hope gets overrun by xenomorphs, I feel like there could have been a longer passage of time but it’s a small gripe.
I really love how much time is dedicated at the beginning of the film to Ripley adjusting to being nearly six decades in the future. Everyone she knew is dead, including her daughter. She suffers with extreme PTSD from her time on the Nostromo, and its exacerbated further when she discovers that Weyland-Yutani have colonised the planet that the Nostromo crew discovered the xenomorph on. The way she’s convinced to join the mission also makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t seem wrong for Ripley to want to get her own back on the xenomorphs and face her fear head on as that’s the kind of woman she became over the course of Alien.
I do feel that the plot convenience monster rears its head when seemingly days after Ripley is discovered that Hadley’s Hope gets overrun by xenomorphs, I feel like there could have been a longer passage of time but it’s a small gripe.
In fact, the entire first hour of Aliens is fantastic. From the aforementioned opening exploring Ripley’s damaged psyche, before moving to Hadley’s Hope with the Colonial Marines to investigate why the colony has gone radio quiet. This is where Aliens begins to ratchet up the tension similar to Alien’s first act, with spooky music and lighting to keep you on the edge of your seat. But once what remains of the colony is discovered and the xenomorph nest is disturbed, bullets begin to fly and Aliens throws caution to the wind in favour of explosive action.
It's only once the film hits its halfway point where Ripley, young colonist Newt (Carrie Henn), Weyland-Yutani representative Burke (Paul Reiser), and the few surviving marines Hicks (Michael Biehn), Hudson (Bill Paxton), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), and their android Bishop (Lance Henricksen) barricade themselves inside a building that the film starts to put on the brakes, and I think it goes on for a bit too long. It feels like they’re here forever, close to forty minutes in fact which is far too long.
Thankfully the film does pick up again in its final act which sees Ripley venturing into the xenomorph nest once more to rescue Newt and come face to face with the fearsome xenomorph queen.
This brings me onto my biggest issue with Aliens, and that’s the length. With the theatrical cut coming in at just shy of two hours and twenty minutes and the director’s cut weighing in at an exhausting two hours and forty-five minutes, it all feels far too long. Even Alien was beginning to overstay its welcome at two hours, and I can see how ramping up the pace may allow for Aliens to feel like it could have a longer runtime, but especially when so much of the film is spent just hiding in a bunker I kind of start to lose interest.
When you mix this with a cast of characters that just aren’t as interesting as the crew of the Nostromo then the entire film rests on the shoulders of Ripley. Weaver can absolutely carry that weight, and she does, but I personally don’t find the characters of Hicks, Burke, and Bishop as compelling as those of Dallas, Ash, and Parker.
The dynamic between Ripley and Newt works really well though, and I feel introducing the element of motherhood into Aliens really helps ground Ripley as a real human being in a film where she is otherwise just a female Rambo. I really don’t like how Hicks becomes a crowbarred in love interest in the final act, I feel like Ripley does just fine without a big strong man in her life and to me it feels like Hicks is pandering to studio executives who think the only way women will come to see the film is if there’s romance involved.
All of the marines are little more than stereotypes, and for the majority of them that’s fine because they’re the canon fodder. But Vasquez, Hicks, and Hudson I feel should be more than just tropes. Vasquez is the ‘tough chick’ trope, which really didn’t need to be there because Ripley is already the most badass character in the whole film; Hicks is the sensitive one and is the only guy with his head screwed on properly; and Hudson should have been killed off much earlier on because he’s basically this films Lambert and just spends the whole time complaining. I do wish we had seen more between Bishop and Ripley, as her apprehension towards androids following Ash on the Nostromo is a great plot point I don’t feel gets enough screentime.
It's only once the film hits its halfway point where Ripley, young colonist Newt (Carrie Henn), Weyland-Yutani representative Burke (Paul Reiser), and the few surviving marines Hicks (Michael Biehn), Hudson (Bill Paxton), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), and their android Bishop (Lance Henricksen) barricade themselves inside a building that the film starts to put on the brakes, and I think it goes on for a bit too long. It feels like they’re here forever, close to forty minutes in fact which is far too long.
Thankfully the film does pick up again in its final act which sees Ripley venturing into the xenomorph nest once more to rescue Newt and come face to face with the fearsome xenomorph queen.
This brings me onto my biggest issue with Aliens, and that’s the length. With the theatrical cut coming in at just shy of two hours and twenty minutes and the director’s cut weighing in at an exhausting two hours and forty-five minutes, it all feels far too long. Even Alien was beginning to overstay its welcome at two hours, and I can see how ramping up the pace may allow for Aliens to feel like it could have a longer runtime, but especially when so much of the film is spent just hiding in a bunker I kind of start to lose interest.
When you mix this with a cast of characters that just aren’t as interesting as the crew of the Nostromo then the entire film rests on the shoulders of Ripley. Weaver can absolutely carry that weight, and she does, but I personally don’t find the characters of Hicks, Burke, and Bishop as compelling as those of Dallas, Ash, and Parker.
The dynamic between Ripley and Newt works really well though, and I feel introducing the element of motherhood into Aliens really helps ground Ripley as a real human being in a film where she is otherwise just a female Rambo. I really don’t like how Hicks becomes a crowbarred in love interest in the final act, I feel like Ripley does just fine without a big strong man in her life and to me it feels like Hicks is pandering to studio executives who think the only way women will come to see the film is if there’s romance involved.
All of the marines are little more than stereotypes, and for the majority of them that’s fine because they’re the canon fodder. But Vasquez, Hicks, and Hudson I feel should be more than just tropes. Vasquez is the ‘tough chick’ trope, which really didn’t need to be there because Ripley is already the most badass character in the whole film; Hicks is the sensitive one and is the only guy with his head screwed on properly; and Hudson should have been killed off much earlier on because he’s basically this films Lambert and just spends the whole time complaining. I do wish we had seen more between Bishop and Ripley, as her apprehension towards androids following Ash on the Nostromo is a great plot point I don’t feel gets enough screentime.
One final issue I want to address is that of the xenomorphs. Now I understand that for Aliens to be an action film there need to be action sequences. But Alien was so effective because one of these things was smart enough and dangerous enough to wipe out an entire crew that were armed. Aliens of course throws hundreds of these xenomorphs at our marines, and they’re mowed down like insects. The xenomorph’s acid blood does come into play when they die explosive deaths, often taking down a couple of marines with them…but I feel like Aliens makes them out to be less threatening and easier to kill than they should be. The xenomorphs in Aliens are intimidating because there’s so many of them, but the xenomorph in Alien was terrifying because it was unkillable…do you understand the disconnect here?
Despite these problems, Aliens is a special effects powerhouse. The vast majority of the special effects appear to be practical and done very well at that. Miniature sets with model spaceships are the films bread and butter, and they often don’t look too out of place. This was also the dawn of CGI special effects and so you do get the occasional digital effect thrown in for good measure. They more often than not lack detail and look rubbery, but thankfully Cameron has kept these effects to a minimum and are never given too much focus allowing for them to usually slip by relatively inconspicuously.
I’m not as much of a fan of the score in Aliens as I am in Alien. James Horner’s heart pumping action themes never gave me goosebumps in the way that Jerry Goldsmith’s more chilling tracks did. That being said it’s still a good score, it gives the film a lot of momentum and pays homage to Goldsmith’s work whilst changing the genre akin to what Cameron did to the film as a whole.
Aliens is a great action film, and it’s easy to see why it became one of the 80’s most beloved films. The amount of modern action films that pay homage to Aliens is crazy, and the degree to which it succeeds in being a good sequel to Alien whilst also being nothing like it is worthy of praise. But I do prefer Alien, and I think I always will. It’s tighter, the script and characters were more interesting, and the threat more intimidating. Whilst I love the way Aliens expands on the universe, sometimes keeping things small is considerably more effective.
Despite these problems, Aliens is a special effects powerhouse. The vast majority of the special effects appear to be practical and done very well at that. Miniature sets with model spaceships are the films bread and butter, and they often don’t look too out of place. This was also the dawn of CGI special effects and so you do get the occasional digital effect thrown in for good measure. They more often than not lack detail and look rubbery, but thankfully Cameron has kept these effects to a minimum and are never given too much focus allowing for them to usually slip by relatively inconspicuously.
I’m not as much of a fan of the score in Aliens as I am in Alien. James Horner’s heart pumping action themes never gave me goosebumps in the way that Jerry Goldsmith’s more chilling tracks did. That being said it’s still a good score, it gives the film a lot of momentum and pays homage to Goldsmith’s work whilst changing the genre akin to what Cameron did to the film as a whole.
Aliens is a great action film, and it’s easy to see why it became one of the 80’s most beloved films. The amount of modern action films that pay homage to Aliens is crazy, and the degree to which it succeeds in being a good sequel to Alien whilst also being nothing like it is worthy of praise. But I do prefer Alien, and I think I always will. It’s tighter, the script and characters were more interesting, and the threat more intimidating. Whilst I love the way Aliens expands on the universe, sometimes keeping things small is considerably more effective.