Aliens [reviewed by Lackey]

154 min. (Special Edition), 1986
Directed by James Cameron
My rating:
IMDB • Netflix

The perfect military horror movie.

* * *

Aliens picks up the story with the Nostromo’s shuttle entering human space with its two passengers, Ripley and Jones, in hypersleep. When the pair are revived Ripley’s in for a number of shocks. First shock: She’s been floating through space for fifty-seven years. Second shock: Her employers deny having sent the Nostromo to the lifeless rock (now designated LV-426) where they picked up the Facehugger; nor do they believe her story of how the Alien slaughtered her crewmates and why she was forced to destroy the Nostromo. They revoke her commercial operating license, effectively grounding her. Third shock: She’s plagued by screaming nightmares. Some time later, the Company comes to her with a proposition. Turns out there a terraforming colony was established on LV-426 while Ripley was asleep, and contact with the colonists was suddenly lost. Ripley finds herself recruited to be part of a military operation to investigate and rescue the colonists. The cat, however, stays at home.

With Aliens, co-writer/director James Cameron raises the stakes and ramps up the action. The stakes are higher and the scope is wider. This being a Cameron movie, it will surprise no one that the production values are excellent (although I don’t think the effects were as accomplished as in Alien) and the action is top-notch. In fact, the action is given so much emphasis that Aliens effectively becomes a war movie disguised as sci-fi horror.

Cameron invents a brand-new life-cycle for the “xenomorphs” to replace the one that Ridley Scott cut out of the first movie. (Cameron’s clearly aware of the cut scenes, though, as the phrase “kill me” makes not one, but two appearances.) Cameron’s interpretation of the Aliens is more insectile than the creature Scott, Dan O’Bannon and H.R. Giger created. All the better to…well, I’m not sure “dehumanize” is the right word to use here, but hopefully you get my drift. It’s easier to mow down the enemy when you can look at them as bugs instead of intelligent beings. (“How can they cut off the power? They’re animals…”) Meanwhile, despite its focus on soldiers, Aliens displays a healthy irreverent attitude towards military machismo (note how most of the Marines who are given towards macho self-aggrandizement die comparatively early in the film). The rescue operation is effectively a suicide mission, and the civilians calling the shots know it. The obvious parallel is Vietnam–of course it is; Aliens was made in 1986, during the Golden Age of Vietnam Movies.

(That’s not the only overt social commentary in Aliens. There’s also the business with Bishop, an android embedded in the squad, whom Ripley quite understandably distrusts. There’s a hilarious scene in which Ripley calls Bishop an android, company rep Carter Burke calls him a synthetic, and then Bishop retorts by mentioning he prefers to be called an artificial human. Again, only in the mid-’80s…)

As good as Sigourney Weaver was in Alien, when we think of the character of Ripley (who turns out to have the distinctly non-badass first name of Ellen) we think of the way she’s played here; she almost single-handedly invents the modern action heroine. Paul Reiser, a couple of years away from affable sitcom stardom (via My Two Dads and Mad About You), probably shouldn’t work as Burke, the second-string villain, but somehow he does. The weakest performance is Carrie Henn, as “Newt” Jorden (the lone survivor of the LV-426 colony), who does occasionally fall prey to the “reading cue cards” style of delivery so common in child actors. But even then, she’s got an engaging attitude and natural chemistry with Weaver, so we can’t help but adore her.

The supporting performances among the Marine squad are uniformly strong (although I would have appreciated it if the two lead male Marines–Michael Biehn as Cpl. Dwayne Hicks and Bill Paxton as technician Pvt. Hudson–had actually looked the part). A particular standout is Jenette Goldstein, inventing an entirely new action-movie stereotype as the tough-as-nails Latina smartgunner Vasquez. (Roughly two-thirds of the roles Michelle Rodriguez plays are spiritual descendents of Vasquez.) And of course, there’s Lance Henriksen, who’d been puttering around Hollywood for a while (he’d had supporting roles in Network, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dog Day Afternoon, and Damien: Omen II), but his performance as “artificial human” Bishop–an odd combination of warmth and detachment–is what brought him to our attention.

The film’s script is undeniably its weakest aspect. The story is well-plotted when the team actually gets to LV-426, but it’s too slow in getting there. This is especially pronounced in the two-and-a-half-plus-hour Special Edition, which contains a lot of meandering. In particular, there’s the stuff about Ripley’s daughter, which doesn’t add all that much more depth to the Ripley/Newt dynamic, and is a bit at odds with what we saw in the first film. I could also have done with a lot less of Bill Paxton strutting around trying to convince me that he’s a massive badass. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that many of the major setpieces (in particular the climactic showdown between Ripley and the Alien Queen) are lifted wholesale from the first film. Finally, while the gadgets and designs are great, the science-fiction angle isn’t as strong. In the first film, the Alien is an unknowable menace; in Aliens, they’re…well…big alien bugs. They’re impressive big alien bugs, but they’re still not the unknown quantity they were in Alien.

It’s often stated that the purpose of a sequel is to be “bigger and better” than the original; I think there’s room to debate whether Aliens is “better” than Alien, but it’s certainly bigger, and it delivers on the vast majority of what it promises. It’s a film that is not likely to disappoint many.

• The Eye [reviewed by Jori]
  [4 stars] A goosebump inducing creep-fest
• I Sell the Dead [guest review by John Bruni]
  [3 stars] Just like Ma used to make!
• Mom [Reviewed by Jori]
  1 star: You thought your mother was needy!