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Aliens
(1986)
This immensely popular film is a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic Alien. It opens fifty-seven years after the events in the first film, with that film’s survivor, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), in suspended animation in an escape craft for that entire time, until she is rescued and taken to a space station orbiting Earth. After being tried and penalised for destroying the ship (in Alien), Ripley learns that the planet LV 426 where they picked up the hostile creature has now been terraformed and is home to an Earth colony. However, sometime later contact is lost with the LV 426 colony and a platoon of Space Marines is sent to investigate, along with an initially reluctant Ripley as an advisor and Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a representative of the sinister and all-pervasive “Company.” Arriving on LV 426, the Marines find only one survivor, a young girl named Newt (Carrie Henn), but the aliens are still there. Hundreds of them.
Whereas Alien was basically a horror film in space, this changes tack completely and is instead an all-action war film in space. The film starts quite slowly, but when the action kicks in at the end of the first hour it doesn’t let up at all. The cramped, messy interiors of the colony where much of the action takes place creates a really claustrophobic feel, as the Marines hole up and wait for the aliens. The action is very fast moving, with a lot of quick cutting, mostly in dimly lit smoky interiors, which creates a chaotic feel. The film is not nearly as scary as Alien, but then it’s not really supposed to be, it is satisfactorily gruesome and violent though. Certainly the huge Alien Queen is a memorable and frightening adversary.
The characters of the Marines are quite clearly and sharply defined in the early scenes aboard the craft taking them to the planet. The film has themes of corporate greed, and also maternity.
The film exists in two version, the original theatrical cut and a “Special Edition” restoring seventeen minutes of cut footage that was released on video in 1992, which tends to be the version most often shown today. Along with Blade Runner (1982), this was one of the first films to release an altered “director’s cut” on video. Certainly the restored footage helps the film by deepening the characters. Fans of the British TV comedy show Red Dwarf (1988-1998) may recognise the actor Mac McDonald (who plays the Captain on the show) in a small part in the early scenes in the colony, which are only in the “Special Edition” cut.
This is one of the great action films of the 1980s, and is a more than worthy sequel to a modern classic. It was later followed by Alien3 (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997) and semi-sequel AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004).
-Robert
Foster
Other
Thoughts: Mark Moreland 
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
James
Cameron
Writer: James
Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill, Dan O’Bannon, Ronald
Shussett
Starring: Sigourney
Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henricksen, Paul Reiser,
Bill Paxton
Distributor: 20th
Century Fox
Runtime: 137
min
Rating: R
Release Date: July
18, 1986
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