ALIENS: One Bad Mother

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: James Cameron
Writers: James Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein, Al Matthews
153 mins. (137 mins. theatrical)
1986

This is a review for the director's cut of Aliens which adds about sixteen minutes of footage. Although the pacing is bogged down by unnecessary pre-alien footage of the functional colony, the cut includes some worthwhile backstory about Ripley's daughter and a really excellent sequence involving remote turrets, so in terms of quality it's basically a wash.

As far as I'm concerned, the decades-old Alien vs. Aliens debate is clear-cut. When dozens of aliens can become cannon fodder, albeit terrifying cannon fodder, the mystique of the original is lost. Indeed, it is immediately apparent that Aliens is playing a different, and in my opinion inferior, game altogether when Ripley has a jump scare dream sequence involving a chestburster. Alien would have featured nothing so gauche as that.

Yet the more I think about it, the more I realize that it was genius of Cameron to shape the sequel this way. By shifting the genre and hyping up the tone, Aliens hews closer to his particular directorial strengths. This was the right choice; there would have been no way to improve upon the mastery of Alien had Cameron tried to replicate Scott's opus.


Regardless, I lament the swap-out of low-key blue collar workers for jacked up testosterone-fueled meatheads. It's a sensible choice, one that makes their inevitable decimation all the more effective, but the forced rapport makes the first act slightly insufferable. Their posturing shenanigans are off-putting, though it's worth pointing out that space marines have grown exponentially more cliche since 1986, in large part due to the landmark success of Aliens.

As for the synopsis--while Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been floating through space in cryosleep, Weyland-Yutani saw fit to plop a whole dang colony on the planet where the Nostromo encountered the alien. Weyland-Yutani recovers Ripley and proceeds to gaslight her regarding her actions of the previous film--she blew up a whole spaceship, remember? Weyland-Yutani's tune changes, however, when they lose contact with the settlement. Now Ripley must return to the scene of her trauma with a squad of heavily armed space marines, a sniveling capitalist, and a suspicious android. Only Ripley is mentally and emotionally prepared for what they encounter: a whole colony of aliens, and only one survivor... a little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn).

As much as I can complain about the obnoxious crew, they make for memorable characters. Cameron does an exemplary job of filling them out in short order. Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) are the standouts, whereas Burke (Paul Reiser) is cartoonishly evil, and Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) does a messier job of the hysterical role that Veronica Cartwright nailed in the first film. Beyond Ripley herself, Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is the clear standout here. He's the heart of the film, a subtle portrayal of artificial intelligence that is both less than human and more than human. The way he steadily gains Ripley's trust over the course of the film bears the fruit of an incredibly rich performance by Henriksen. He lends an air of tragedy to the affair.

The other heart of the film is the trauma-inflected family unit that Ripley builds. Hicks being the only male figure who isn't a total tool makes him a convenient husband/father figure, but it's Ripley's relationship with Newt that really resonates, especially with some of the added content about the loss of her own daughter. Some of Newt's dialogue is trite, but Henn sells it with her shellshocked eyes. Newt's paranoia is one of the many ways Cameron artfully builds tension.

For the true star of Aliens is escalation. Every scene in the 2+ hours film does the work of tightening in its own little way, be it Ripley's portentous dialogue, the marines' hubris, the motion trackers, the series of betrayals, the countdown to explosive detonation, etc. Cameron makes damn sure to communicate all the manifold tools our heroes have at their disposal at the top of the film, then proceeds to whittle away at them until their helplessness is unbearable. It's not beautiful or profound, but it is highly functional filmmaking. At times the tension is suffocating, like the tangle with the facehuggers in the locked room, or the infamous woman-on-a-mission descent into hell.

That sequence features some unreal production design by Peter Lamont. In general the film is a bounty of tangibly realized design brilliance: the marines' weaponry is compelling in its excesses, the desolate settlement is eerie, and the alien lair is the stuff of nightmares. It's impossible to say Cameron and co. topped Giger's original design, but they certainly capitalized on what makes it so evocative. The Queen is awe-inspiring in her grandiosity, especially festooned in a nest of otherworldly slime as she is.

So much of Ripley's status as the iconic sci-fi horror protagonist must issue directly from the final half hour of Aliens. In the face of countless external threats, she nonetheless strikes forth into the heart of darkness to save Newt, and she has the gall to stare down the alien queen without flinching. This sequence, protracted by her escape from the exploding complex, and culminating in the infamous face-off using the loading dock mecha ("Get away from her you bitch.") is concentrated high-octane thriller juice. The ending of Aliens is unparalleled.

When it comes down to it, the film is not quite as essential as its forebear, but it is bombastic and iconic and fun nonetheless. For a sequel to have as much impact as Cameron's did means that he knew exactly what he was doing, and that he did it impeccably.

4 / 5  BLOBS