My Favorite Movies: #12—Aliens

12. Aliens (1986) 

Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller 

Director: James Cameron 

Writers: James Cameron, et. al. 

Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Carrie Henn, Lance Henrickson, Paul Reiser

Awards: 2 Oscars—Sound Effects, Visual Effects  

Metacritic score: 86 

IMDB Ranking: #68

Aliens stands out among sequels in that, at least for me, it exceeds an already great original film by taking the material in a new direction while remaining faithful to the spirit of the first movie. I'm sure that many who've been commenting on this blog series will have some ideas (The Empire Strikes Back and Godfather II come to mind), but few sequels are ever greater than a great original.

That's not the case here. Ridley Scott's original Alien was a haunted house movie set aboard a spaceship, with the monster killing off the crew one by one. All the familiar horror tropes and symbols are present, right down to the "last girl," star Sigourney Weaver's protagonist Ellen Ripley, who kills the vicious alien xenomorph and puts herself into cryosleep for her lone journey home.

But her escape ship goes off course, and as the sequel opens, she's not discovered until after almost 60 years has past. Everything about her previous life is gone, and the company that left Ripley and her crew to die in order to obtain an unstoppable biological weapon fucks her over one more time, grounding her permanently from space flight. Only her desire to put her nightmares behind her motivates Ripley to join a contingent of Colonial Marines to return to the infamous planet LV-426, where a human terraforming colony can no longer be contacted.

 

We all know what's going to happen long before it happens, but that's part of the thrill of this ultimate cinematic thrill ride. You can see the roller coaster and what it does before you strap yourself into the car, but the anticipation of the action to come only heightens the experience. In this case, it's a platoon of Marines, each character straight out of central casting, who walk right into the razor-sharp jaws of the aliens.

This is a war movie, through and through. The Marines land on the planet, discover a young girl, Newt (Carrie Henn), is the colony's sole survivor. Ripley essentially adopts Newt as her surrogate daughter as the film unfolds, and this raises the stakes for our hero as she has someone's survival other than her own as her top priority. Their first encounter with the aliens is predictably disastrous, resulting in the deaths of all but four of the Marines. To make matters worse, the nuclear reactor at the colony is damaged in the fight and becomes a ticking time bomb. Our survivors must find a way to get off the planet before: a) the reactor explodes; b) the aliens get them; c) company sleazeball Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) sells them all out for a profit.

This is, quite literally, the most intense film I've ever seen. I first saw it in the theaters in 1986, and I emerged from the showing physically exhausted. Once the aliens invade the compound to try to get the last survivors of the mission, the action is nonstop until the very end of the film. There is no time to catch your breath or wait for the tension to die down. Director James Cameron, who described this movie as "40 miles of bad road" keeps piling it on relentlessly. In a way, we experience the terror of their struggle to survive vicariously as an audience in a way I've never been a part of in any other movie.

Like any great movie, Aliens is filled with memorable moments and quotable lines familiar to anyone who is a fan of movies from the decade of the 1980s. I don't even have to quote them (but I will) because they're already echoing in your mind: "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit; it's the only way to be sure" (Hicks); "These men are soldiers; they're here to protect you (Ripley); It won't make any difference" (Newt); "Game over, man...game over!" (Hudson); "Get away from her, you BITCH!" (Ripley).

 

Watching Aliens is not an easy experience. Roger Ebert, in his original review, praised the quality of the movie but couldn't recommend others to see it because his experience was, like my own, so emotionally and physically exhausting. Again, I know of no other movie where imagination has such a profound physical effect on its viewer. James Cameron can be rightly criticized for a number of faults, but no one can deny his impact as an innovative and visionary director.