James Camer-thon: A Review of "Aliens"

"Greetings, my dear! We are here to reach you about your car's extended WARRANTY!"

Welcome back to another edition of James Camer-thon. Last week, we reviewed James Cameron's debut directorial feature The Terminator. A movie that teaches us if you don't treat your iPhone with respect and admiration, iOS will one day rise up, take over America's nuclear arsenal and blast humanity to oblivion. So what was next for Mr. Cameron? Well, a smash-hit sci-fi/noir film absolutely demands a sequel right? So he's going to do a sequel? YES! To The Terminator? No. Not yet anyway... stick around for that.

"Ma'am I've heard of 'taking my top off' but this
is ridiculous!"

While waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger's schedule to clear up shooting Conan the Destroyer in 1984, Cameron met with Fox executives to discuss potential projects that could be thrown his way. One of them happened to peak Cameron's interest; Fox was interested in producing a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 space horror film Alien. Cameron saw the film and was a big fan, so he naturally took the job. However, after hiring Cameron to write the screenplay, 20th Century Fox president Lawrence Gordon did the unthinkable when Cameron left the production to direct The Terminator after Arnold became available: Fox agreed to wait for Cameron to become available again and finish the screenplay, with an option to direct if The Terminator turned out well and he showed talent as a director. Due to other engagements, Cameron had only completed about ninety pages at that stage, but Gordon had loved what he had written so far, saying that "in this business there are those decisions you agonize and lose sleep over, but this was so obvious. It was a no-brainer. Everything about him spelled 'right guy'." Once The Terminator was completed, Cameron and his producer/wife Gale Anne Hurd set out for England and Pinewood Studios to produce Aliens... a candidate for what is possibly one of the greatest sequels ever made to a movie. I know I haven't reviewed Alien yet, and I am VERY overdue for one, but this is James Camer-thon so we're going a bit out of order here. With Sigourney Weaver back as Ripley, Cameron was set to take the story from horror to action/horror and in all new directions. Let's review Aliens: A movie that teaches us that parasitic praying-mantis like extra-terrestrial creatures are no threat for a bunch of catchphrase-spewing roughneck space marines with guns and potty mouths!

"Now I'm playing with power! NINTENDO
POWER, MOTHERFUCKER!"

The film opens on a floating escape pod drifting through deep space. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been in stasis for fifty-seven years aboard an escape shuttle after destroying her ship, the Nostromo, to escape an alien creature that slaughtered the rest of the crew. This all, of course, happened in Alien. She is rescued and debriefed by her employers at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who are skeptical about her claim of alien eggs in a derelict ship on the exomoon LV-426, since it is now the site of a terraforming colony "Hadley's Hope". After contact is lost with the colony, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Colonial Marine Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) ask Ripley to accompany them and their team of U.S. Colonial Space Marines to investigate. Still traumatized by her alien encounter, she agrees on the condition that they exterminate the creatures, and that no attempts are made to bring them back or to study them. Ripley is introduced to the Colonial Marines... including the timid but courageous Hicks (Michael Biehn), the potty-mouth comic relief Hudson (Bill Paxton), the tough-as-nails gunner Vasquez (Jennette Goldstein)... and many others on the spaceship Sulaco. Ripley is distrustful of their android, Bishop (Lance Henriksen), due to the android Ash (Ian Holm in Alien) aboard the Nostromo having betrayed its crew to protect the alien on company orders.

A dropship delivers the expedition to the surface of LV-426, where they find the battle-ravaged colony and two live alien facehuggers in containment tanks, but no bodies or colonists except for a traumatized young girl, nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn). The team locates the colonists beneath the fusion-powered atmosphere processing station and heads to their location, descending into corridors covered in alien secretions. At the station center, the Marines find opened eggs and dead facehuggers alongside the cocooned colonists now serving as incubators for the creatures' offspring. The Marines kill an infant alien after it bursts from a colonist's chest, rousing several adult aliens who ambush the Marines and kill or capture many of them. When the inexperienced Gorman panics, Ripley assumes command, takes control of their armored personnel carrier, and rams the nest to rescue Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez. Hicks orders the dropship to recover the survivors, but a stowaway alien kills the pilots, and it crashes into the station. Regrouped inside, Hicks informs them they have to survive seventeen days before being declared overdue and a rescue ship is sent for them. After getting themselves together and finding they are almost out of ammunition and resources, the group of survivors barricade themselves inside the colony. This is my favorite part of the story... it went from an extermination mission to all about survival.

"Ripley, do you think--?"
"Yes Newt, we're not in Kansas anymore."
"--that we'll survive... what?"

Amid surviving and hiding from the Xenomorphs (that's really their name, look it up). Ripley discovers that Burke ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship containing the alien eggs, intending to profit by recovering them for biological weapon research. Before she can expose him, Bishop informs the group that the dropship crash damaged the power-plant cooling system and the plant will soon overheat and explode, destroying the colony. He volunteers to travel to the colony transmitter and remotely pilot the Sulaco's remaining dropship to the surface, finding it to be the team's only means of being able to escape the colony before it explodes.

After falling asleep in the medical laboratory, Ripley and Newt awaken to find themselves trapped with the two released facehuggers. Ripley triggers a fire alarm to alert the Marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. She accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers to implant her and Newt with alien embryos, allowing him to smuggle them through Earth's quarantine. While Hudson demands the Marines "grease the rat-fuck son of a bitch right now", the power is suddenly cut, and aliens attack through the ceiling vent... having found a way through the survivors' barricades. In the ensuing firefight, the aliens kill Burke, capture Hudson and injure Hicks; the cornered Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves to avoid capture and facehugger implantation. Newt is separated from Ripley and taken by the creatures. Ripley brings the injured Hicks to Bishop in the second dropship, but she refuses to abandon Newt and arms herself before... in what comes off like a final boss fight in a Super Nintendo sidescroller... descending into the processing station hive alone to rescue her. During their escape, they encounter the Xenomorph Queen, surrounded by dozens of eggs, and when one begins to open, Ripley uses her weapons to destroy them all and the Queen's ovipositor. Pursued by the enraged Queen, Ripley and Newt join Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the station explodes, consuming the colony in a nuclear blast. SIDEBAR: Go onto YouTube, type in "Bishop's Countdown" and listen to the score for the escape. It alone, is badass. So badass it's been recycled into VHS trailers for other movies too. God rest James Horner's glorious soul.

"Help me, I have an Alien chestburster inside me!"
"Before I offer medical help, ma'am, I'm going to need to
see your proof of health insurance!"

Aboard the Sulaco, all seems well as our heroes return to the hangar bay in the second dropship. As Ripley gives Bishop her thanks and shows a changes of heart... SHOCK! The group is ambushed by the Queen, who stowed away in the dropship's landing gear. The Queen tears Bishop in half and advances on Newt, but Ripley fights the creature with an Exosuit cargo loader (Not before exclaiming for the Queen to "get away from her, you bitch!") and, after some tusslin' and brawlin', expels it through an airlock into space while the damaged Bishop keeps Newt safe. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop then enter hypersleep for their return trip to Earth...

First off. It's going to be difficult I realize now to really give this movie major props without having reviewed Alien beforehand. Aliens was a real trying production for James Cameron. Instead of filming on his native American soil, Cameron and his wife Gale Anne Hurd had to travel across the pond and film in Pinewood Studios in London. The reason is was trying is now, Cameron was under the mercy of using a British crew that was fiercely loyal to original Alien director Ridley Scott. Reportedly, in order to try and convince them he had the talent and skills for the job he arranged a screening of The Terminator for the crew on the set, to demonstrate his abilities. However, most of the crew ignored the invite and didn't bother to turn up. Supposedly, severe animosity arose on set because of this. The English crew was openly hostile to both Cameron and Hurd. To them, Cameron was a no-name, no-face director who had not made a decent film yet, while they openly mocked Hurd by claiming she only got to be producer because she was married to Cameron, and that they wouldn't take orders from a woman. Jeez, 2023 wouldn't agree with these clowns. Cameron and Hurd, in turn, despised the crew's lazy, insolent and arrogant behavior; one of their few allies among them was production designer Peter Lamont. After the long and difficult shoot, Cameron addressed the crew by saying that one thing kept him going through it all: "The certain knowledge that one day I would drive out of Pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastards would still be here".

"Now remember, Ripley, we're just--"
"Michael, for the last time I'm Sigourney, and I'm
about to shoot the asshole that called me 'sugarlips'
while setting up the studio lights!"

Now, despite everything that happened behind the scenes, Aliens is one sci-fi space-action masterpiece. James Cameron in 1986 officially became two-for-two with stellar sci-fi action films. While Alien was definitely more of a horror film, Aliens went the more action-packed route. In Alien, they were lucky to get their hands on a flamethrower. In Aliens, they came packing assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, miniguns, explosives, and as Frost (Ricco Ross) suggests... "harsh language". The U.S. Colonial Marine group of characters are what make not only the action but the comedy very prevalent in the movie. Bill Paxton's character Hudson especially. Hudson's one liners have become synonymous with the weaselly plucky comic relief action-movie character. with him shouting "Game over, man! Game over!" He clashes very well with the much more stern Marines... including Michael Biehn's Hicks. Now... the one who steals the show in this movie is definitely Sigourney Weaver. Holy moly. If you don't know what I mean, watch Alien and see how timid and background she is. Here... holy shitballs, Ripley is one badass main character. The end battle where she tapes a flamethrower and a pulse rifle together to go and get Newt from the Alien Nest in the processing station? PURELY EPIC. Unquestionably. She throws Burke against the wall, calls him out on his shit, berates Hudson for being cowardly, goes out on a limb to rescue/protect Newt, makes peace with Bishop, torches a ton of Aliens and tosses the Queen out the window. ALL HAIL ELLEN RIPLEY!

"Quick Ripley!, shoot the Queen in one of her fifteen
puppeteers!"
"Oh come on, little girl! That's cheating!"

To briefly touch upon the cinematography and the special effects, once again they are extraordinary and hold up to today's standards by a mile. The atmosphere on LV-426 is bleak, dead, and lifeless. You feel isolated in a deep region of space, knowing that human help is lightyears away and our heroes are on their own. The color blue colors this aesthetic beautifully, and it fills the movie. You know how when I reviewed Batman Forever I said the movie makes me think of green? This one makes me think of blue. Beautifully shot. With special effects, the true triumph is the Alien Queen puppet, which alone is groundbreaking. She was originally intended to be performed using stop motion, but James Cameron wanted it all to be done live. Cameron's go-to special effects guru Stan Winston noted that the Queen as seen in the final battle (or as he referred to it, the "biggest marionette in motion picture history"), was brought to life using rod puppets, hydraulics, radio controls, and wires. Now, because the full-size Queen could only be moved slowly, these scenes were shot with a lower frame rate, and Sigourney Weaver would also have to move much slower; when played at regular speed, it would also appropriately speed up the Queen's movements. How many guys did it take to operate the Queen? Well... it took about six puppeteers to bring Jabba the Hutt to life in Return of the Jedi... but to bring the Queen to life, it would take upwards of FIFTEEN operators, since the head, neck, body, legs, face, lips, jaws and tongue all had to move independently.

"Vasquez, what's got you all hot and bothered?"
"Hudson, I'm not such a great flier and this plane is
jerking left to right constantly!"
"That's Delta Airlines, for you."

If you haven't watched Aliens, give it a watch immediately. Or as soon as possible, either one. In my opinion, you don't need to watch Alien beforehand either. There's some references to the events that occur in Alien, but mainly after they find Ripley and depose her in front of her employer's board review. After that, this movie flies completely solo and Ripley may as well be some janitor person they found randomly and hired to go with them to LV-426 on their little "Bug hunt". Now, between the two versions, I definitely recommend watching the 1991 Special Edition over the 1986 Theatrical cut. Two reasons; one, obviously more scenes equals more badassery. There are extended gun fight scenes, an entire automated-sentry subplot, and more with Ripley and the Marines as they hide out inside the abandoned colony complex. Two? It humanizes the characters a little bit better. A re-inserted scene in the Special Edition shows Ripley finding out her daughter Amanda Ripley grew old died and while she was adrift in space for fifty-seven years, breaking down and claiming "I told her I'd be back for her birthday..." and even a brief-yet-touching scene in the finale where Ripley and Hicks exchange their first names. You learn Ripley is Ellen Ripley, and Hicks is Dwayne Hicks. I don't know... little scenes like that add truckloads to the movie to me.

Yeah so, watch Aliens when you get a chance. If you want the backstory, watch Alien beforehand, and be on the lookout for my review of it! Coming soon, hopefully. NOW... as the eighties were coming to a close, James Cameron would retain Michael Biehn and the "group of roughnecks" character trope, but for another sci-fi adventure that was a pretty unique idea for its time. STAY TUNED! James Camer-thon will return NEXT week!