A most unlikely concoction, this: a 1986 sequel to ALIEN (1979) written and directed by James Cameron, whose sole experience making a sequel to someone else’s movie was with the disastrous PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1981). Yet he’d also made THE TERMINATOR (1984), which turned out far better; ALIENS, produced by Gale Anne Hurd, another TERMINATOR veteran, improved on both it and, arguably, ALIEN. ALIENS has, furthermore, informed the subsequent films of the ALIEN franchise, and a great deal of modern science fiction (JURASSIC PARK bears its unmistakable influence), far more than its predecessor.
Featured in ALIENS is certainly the greatest-ever performance by Sigourney Weaver (the recipient of an Academy Award nomination that for once was richly deserved) as the rough-and-ready Ripley, and no wonder, as she was called upon to essentially play the role off-screen. It was Weaver who, according to most behind-the-scenes accounts, played mediator when the film’s British crew revolted over Cameron’s famously autocratic direction. Yes, the shoot was a fraught one, and resulted in a tough, muscular and unsparing film whose grittiness belies its special effects-filled, studio set atmosphere (and fully justifies the tagline “This Time It’s War”).
Cameron, to his credit, gets right down to business: a gory chest bursting (ALIEN’S most iconic element) occurs at around the eight minute point. It won’t be the last.
Said chest-bursting is the culmination of a nightmare experienced by Ripley, the lone survivor of a rampage perpetrated by an alien critter on the distant moon Acheron. Ripley, having just awoken from a 57 year sleep aboard an escape pod, is far more assertive than she was in ALIEN, mouthing off to a roomful of stuffy executives who dare question her story.
What follows is an expedition to Acheron with an android named Bishop (Lance Henriksen) in tow. His human companions are a band of wisecracking Marines (Jenette Goldstein, Bill Paxton and Michael Biehn), sent to assist a human colony that’s been besieged by aliens. They’re joined by Ripley, who quickly wrests control of the mission from its corporate overseers–a good thing, because those overseers are represented by Burke (Paul Reiser), a shady fellow with questionable intentions. Then there are the aliens, toothy acid-spitting critters who thrive in darkness, and prove a near-insurmountable foe.
There’s also a little girl named Rebecca, a.k.a. Newt (Carrie Henn), left alone after her colonist parents were killed by aliens. She takes the place of Ripley’s daughter, who died while her mother was in hibernation; that’s a potentially obnoxious development, I will admit, but it works due to the fact that the sentimentality is kept to a minimum. There’s also the fact that motherhood is the primary theme, with the film’s other major addition to the ALIEN mythos being an irrepressible mother alien who Ripley eventually takes on.
The ending is heavily informed by that of the previous film, in which Ripley, having stripped down to her undies, blew her alien attacker into space. That’s essentially what happens in ALIENS (minus the stripping-down), although Cameron, in keeping with the rest of the film, provides a more kinetic, action-oriented treatment.
He also offers up many ingenious devices, such as miniature motion trackers that flash and beep, machine gun extensions that attach themselves to the user’s body (Steadicam mounts, to be exact) and a forklift power suit that allows Ripley to take on the alien queen directly. There are also several classic lines—“Not Bad for a Human” (the title of Henriksen’s 2012 memoir), “they mostly come at night…mostly” and, of course, the one everybody remembers:
James Cameron obviously doesn’t possess Ridley Scott’s pictorial brilliance, and doesn’t try to emulate the visual design of the ALIEN. Yet he and cinematographer Adrian Biddle (a two time Ridley Scott collaborator) do nonetheless include plenty of visual pyrotechnics—smoky diffusion, strobe lighting, multi-hued filters—that border on overdone.
The omission of H.R. Giger, who designed ALIEN, hurts the film somewhat, as the Stan Winston designed creatures of ALIENS have a more mechanical and less textured look than those presented by Scott and Giger (something James Cameron has subsequently copped to). Another problem is with the hodgepodge of a score by James Horner, which is said to have been rushed to fruition, and contains many repeated cues and a passage that borrows heavily from Horner’s STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN score.
Yet taken as a whole ALIENS really can’t be faulted. The resolutely straight-faced, camp-free tone is maintained throughout, and helps forgive the cheap look of the some of the special effects; from the start the viewer is fully invested in the reality of the film, so much so that even substandard model work can’t efface it.
Breakneck combat action is well paired with the gore and slime that’s a prerequisite for any ALIEN flick (making me lament that James Cameron never made another horror movie), and attention (not a lot but enough) is actually paid to things like storytelling and characterization. Plus, by modern standards the film is rather stately, waiting until over an hour for the shooting to begin; this is a movie that, despite its intensity, takes its time.
One more thing: an ALIENS director’s cut that adds roughly 20 minutes onto the already-hefty 137-minute runtime has been in circulation for some time. This version really isn’t needed, as the additional footage (which includes an early sequence showing what happened to Newt’s parents) is structurally incompatible with the rest of the film, and works better as a DVD extra.
Vital Statistics
ALIENS
20th Century Fox
Director: James Cameron
Producer: Gale Anne Hurd
Screenplay James Cameron
Cinematography: Adrian Biddle
Editing: Ray Lovejoy
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein, Al Matthews, Mark Rolston, Ricco Ross, Colette Hiller, Daniel Kash, Cynthia Scott, Tip Tipping, Trevor Steedman, Paul Maxwell, Valerie Colgan