Aliens (1986) - Review
- Sam Bateson
- Apr 26, 2021
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 20, 2023
Director: James Cameron | Written by James Cameron | 137m
Fifty-seven years after surviving an apocalyptic attack aboard her space vessel by merciless space creatures, Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) awakens from hyper-sleep and tries to warn anyone who will listen about the predators. Although she is ignored at first, when contact with colonists on a planet thought safe is suddenly lost, Ripley and a military team are sent to confront the aliens.
Happy Alien Day everyone! Today, we've got a review of the seminal, sophomore movie Aliens, the first example of a worthy sequel that was as good as it's predecessor.
Set 57 years after Alien, Aliens continues the story of Ellen Ripley as she tries to recover from life after the Nostromo disaster. The planetoid LV-426 has become a Weyland Yutani colony. If you've been listening, LV-426 is the planetoid that Ripley landed on and which contained the derelict ship that initially launched the franchise. Ripley is conscripted by Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) of the Company to accompany a detachment of marines to the colony after all contact is lost. She reluctantly agrees, and all kinds of Alien fun ensues.
One thing I should preface this by saying that amongst us fans, there's some hot debate about which is the best Alien film; is it the 1979 original, with its straight horror-sci/fi blend, or this, which is much more frenetic action than it is horror? If you're a horror fan, you'll get on with the original best, but action aficionados will enjoy Aliens all the more. I'm in camp Alien, and you may figure out why as you read on...
Starring a stellar cast, headed again by Sigourney Weaver, and joined by such stars as Michael Biehn as Dwayne Hicks, Lance Henriksen as the android Bishop, Carrie Henn as the child Rebecca 'Newt' Jorden, and rounded off by Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Mark Rolston, Ricco Ross and Al Matthews as the self-aggrandising Marines, the movie is well-acted. Bill Paxton as the hysterical Hudson is just crazed enough to be memorable, but sadly, his fellow Marines don't eave quite the same impact. I may get plenty of hate from the fandom, but I simply don't like the Marines, and I don't get why they're so loved. They're cocky, not badass (which I guess is the point, but none of them learn from their poor laid-back approach), they're whiny, not endearing and I simply... cannot get behind them. There were simply too many of them to remember and none of them get the character development they need to make me care; half are killed off in the initial Hive assault, and by the time the fourth act came along, whereupon most of the rest of them had met grisly ends, I realised I didn't miss any of them. The Alien franchise has always had an issue with character development, and I submit that the issue truly began with Aliens.
Among the good characters in the movie are Ripley, because Ripley, and newcomer Newt, played by one time actor Carrie Henn. Newt is a survivor of a Xenomorph attack which destroyed her colony. In the Special Edition of the movie, we get some welcome backstory, which ties into another deleted scene where we learn that Ripley's daughter has died in her mothers 57 year absence. All of this sets up a beautiful family dynamic that builds through the film as Ripley adopts Newt and joins with Corporal Hicks, played by Michael Biehn, who over the course of the movie becomes a romantic interest for Ripley; some will argue that giving Ripley a lover cheapens her character, but as the family dynamic begins to manifest, with Hicks, Ripley and Newt forming a bond, it makes for some sublime moments; Hicks teaching Ripley how to use a pulse rifle, Ripley, the badass that she is, hunting for her adoptive daughter after she gets dragged into the Hive, and the blissful final shot as the trio clamber into their hypersleep-pods and ride off into the sunset. Brilliant too, is Lance Henriksen as Bishop, the Sulaco's resident Android (or Artificial Person, as he prefers). He's a superbly creepy character who hides his allegiances, playing on the paranoia of a repeat of the Ash deception in Alien; Ripley is suspicious of him throughout the film, in a plot thread that could have been missed or left out, but which is skilfully woven into the fabric of the film such that he keeps you guessing until the very end of the movie.
Other memorable include Gorman, the out of his depth CO, who is well and truly put in his place once Ripley takes the reigns and who seems one of the few characters who learns a bit of humility. Burke, the human antagonist, transmits his villainy from his first scene, even though we're supposed to think he's genuinely out to help Ripley, making his deception entirely predictable, but luckily, he plays the character with enough sleazy sliminess that he'd be at home amongst the Xenomorphs and leaves an impact as one of the great non-Xeno villains of the franchise.
The Xenomorphs are back in force here, but if you're after the terrifying invisibility of the previous film, you're fresh out of luck. Here, the Xenomorphs are more insect-like, brainless killing machines that are only ever seen in rapidly edited set-pieces, obscured by bright muzzle-flashes, and shot to pieces in shots that are only tangentially related to the one that came before it. The Aliens here are sharper, yet de-fanged, more numerous yet less scary. Worst of all, limitations mean that most look like what they actually are; either men in suits or static models. Only the Xenomorph Queen, who is expertly realised by Stan Winston, stands as a truly terrifying adversary. The analogy of motherhood (with Ripley protective of Newt, the Queen protective of her offspring) is obvious, but serves to add depth to a movie that would otherwise have been superficial had it not been a present element. Even she, however, suffers from a case of 'I can see the wires', as out of focus rear-projections, clunky mechanical miniatures and stiff puppetry give her artificiality away. The full-size puppet however is a tour-de-force in practical filmmaking, and it's in the wide shots where she is at her most beautiful and deadly.
It is where Cameron leans into the action frenzies the movie is most memorable for that the film actually becomes uninteresting. Hampered by the fact that this is essentially an action movie set in a haunted house, and you've got the deadly trio of murky shots, ten cuts a second and a lack of geography. The tense build-ups to the inevitable shootouts are the most fun parts, as after them, the release of that tension goes on for too long and is too similar to every other shootout in the movie that you could very easily splice shots of one into another and nobody would notice. The scene in which Ripley and Newt are locked into a room with a Facehugger is the standout sequence, because it is exactly what the rest of the action should have been; heart-stopping, tense, clearly shot and story-driven. Sadly, everything else is frenetic eye-candy that is more annoying than awesome. The late James Horner provides a pulsing, no-holes barred score that keeps everything together when they threaten to fall apart - it's a genius soundtrack that at times verges on too much but never tips over, striking a balance between bombastic, militant tracks and quieter, unsettling brassy tones that creep about in the background like an enemy in the shadows...
Don't be deceived, I do love Aliens - it marks a high point in the franchise which has never been reached since. But as brilliant as Aliens is, and I can't deny, it is an amazing sequel to an amazing movie, it isn't the first I'd reach for if I wanted to watch one of the films. In fact, I'd sooner watch Prometheus, Covenant or even Alien 3, which are more engaging even though all are objectively worse. I can't quite put my finger on why; maybe it's because it is too much action in a series that has otherwise been built on horror; maybe it's because I just can't sympathise with any of the characters. Maybe, and perhaps most probably, it is because there isn't a single element of the movie that hasn't since been reduced to cliché, much like how Die Hard seems to be a fairly generic action movie only because it created many of those clichés and has been so endlessly repeated and cloned. I think the biggest problem is that it has slowly fallen apart over time; the miniatures are obvious, the Xenomorphs just aren't scary, and the action just isn't that great... the best parts of the film are where it leans into real horror; Xenomorphs climbing about in the ceiling, the entire Ripley/Newt trapped with a Facehugger sequence and the first entry into the hive. James Cameron is secretly a horror maestro; sadly, he doesn't flex those muscles anywhere near enough to make this instalment better than the first.
Sam's Score: 8
Aliens is available on home media and most video streaming services.
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