While some great movies are followed by sequels that are less than stellar, some sequels actually rival the quality of their predecessors. While The Godfather Part II remains the torchbearer for awesome sequels, it's not the only one that is as good as the one that spawned it. There's more than a few, and among them, one of my favorites is Aliens. The sequel to the classic piece of science fiction that was Ridley Scott's Alien, Aliens continued the saga Scott started while shifting from a more horror-oriented tone to high octane action. And it is a gloriously awesome movie to boot.
Fifty-seven years have passed since an alien creature murdered the crew of the Nostromo. The ship has been drifting through space ever since, having been declared lost. But after nearly six decades, the Nostromo is found by a salvage team who awakens its sole survivor, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), from suspended animation.
Her story is met with skepticism by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, as no corroborative evidence survived. Besides, LV-426 — the planet where the Nostromo first encountered the alien — is now a terraforming colony. If the aliens were there as she claims, something would have happened by now.
But something does happen. Contact with the colony is lost, and Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) invites Ripley to join him and a crew of Marines as they investigate. Though she is initially resistant, she changes her mind and agrees to accompany them as a way to face her fears and end the nightmares she's been suffering.
They arrive on LV-426 to discover that the colony has been massacred by the aliens, the only colonist left alive being a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn). The aliens attack the Marines not long after their arrival and their shuttle is destroyed in the chaos, leaving Ripley, Newt, and the Marines stranded on the planet surrounded by vicious monsters.
Anyone who says Aliens is anything but awesome is either a fool or a liar. The only thing there is to say about the movie is that it is utterly fantastic from beginning to end. Aliens is, without a doubt, one of the best sequels of all time, and a benchmark in both action and science fiction. All the accolades and reverence it has gotten over the years are very well deserved. But why? What about Aliens makes it so worthwhile? Allow me to explain.
Helming this adventure is James Cameron, fresh off his success on the original Terminator (and his Razzie-winning script for Rambo: First Blood Part II). Cameron's style often puts a lot of focus on visuals, and as far as Aliens goes, he doesn't disappoint. The movie is amazingly put-together, its cinematography and set design making you feel like you really are on another world.
And even though Aliens is more action than horror, Cameron still maintains the suspense and scares that Ridley Scott masterfully put to use in the first movie. The scene where Ripley and Newt find themselves trapped in a room with some angry "facehuggers" is particularly tense, as is the ensuing scene where a swarm of aliens show up on the Marines' radar yet can't be seen. Cameron approaches these scenes — and the whole movie in general —with a sense that he wanted to stay faithful to what Scott did in the first movie, yet put his own spin on it. And it works gloriously.
Two versions of Aliens actually exist: the 137-minute theatrical release and the 154-minute extended version that's been released on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray over the years. It doesn't matter which one you watch, because both are fantastic. It really shows how talented Cameron is, when he can add or delete seventeen minutes from his movie and it still makes perfect narrative sense and flows smoothly either way. I've seen both versions of the movie, and while I prefer the extended version, both of them are tightly edited and have a steady pace that keeps you involved the whole way through.
But if anything can be said for Cameron's directorial efforts over the years, it's that he can take the most mediocre of scripts and at least make them look good. (Yeah, I mean you, Avatar.) But while Aliens didn't boast an award-winning script, it's still quite good. Credited to Cameron from a story by he, David Giler, and Walter Hill, the screenplay doesn't lag or get bogged down by pointless scenes. It doesn't have a trite story trying to push some kind of stupid hippie message. It's basically "Marines land on a planet full of acid-blooded monsters and it promptly hits the fan." Yeah, most of the characters are cannon fodder, just there to be killed off by the aliens. But Cameron makes them all distinct. It's one of those rare movies whose even the characters who have no purpose other than to die horribly are memorable.
But beyond the cannon fodder, the characters get the lion's share of the story's focus are handled well. You want to see what happens to them next because Cameron's writing — and the actors too —make you care about them. This is especially true of Ripley, who is transformed from the classic horror "final girl" she was in Alien into a badass female version of John Rambo. She doesn't become the punning, stereotypical action hero that Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger popularized during the '80s, as Ripley retains a certain level of vulnerability. She's fueled not by the testosterone of action stars, but by fear and rage and rage and a compassion for the characters she's trying to keep out of harm's way. Ripley is a fantastic character, one of the best science fiction has put out there. And I'd be willing to bet that Aliens is the movie that best puts her to use.
It helps that Ripley is excellently played by Sigourney Weaver. Weaver is absolutely perfect in the role, to the point that it earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. And although she ended up losing to Marlee Matlin, the fact that she was even nominated at all is evidence of how powerful her performance is. Weaver's work here is nothing short of fantastic, giving Ripley an aura of both strength and fragility. She builds Ripley into a woman that you don't want to piss off, yet you want to give her a hug because she's been through so much. The alien massacres in both movies would be enough, but there's also the deleted scene (which was reinstated for the extended version) where Ripley finds out that the six decades that passed between the two movies saw her daughter grow old and die thinking her mother had been lost forever. That's a lot to handle, isn't it?
But Weaver is utterly convincing. She makes you actually believe she really did go through all that trauma and emerged on the other side as a little bit more hardened. She basically carries the entire movie by herself, and Aliens is more awesome because of it. The movie is all Weaver's, no doubt about it.
That doesn't mean the supporting cast isn't worth talking about, though. There's some pretty good acting among them. I particularly liked Lance Henriksen as the android Bishop. Henriksen plays Bishop as being calm to an almost uncomfortable degree, which makes sense. An android wouldn't freak out or overreact to things like a human would, would they? But either way, I thought Henriksen did a fantastic job. The same can be said for Paul Reiser, who is deliciously sleazy as a corrupt corporate executive who's less than forthcoming with his true intentions in regards to the aliens. Though I'm familiar with Reiser, I haven't seen much of his work outside of Aliens. I can say, though, that I liked what he did here. He plays Burke as the biggest creep in the galaxy, and is super-effective in doing so. After a while, you're just waiting for the catharsis that would come with either Ripley or the aliens getting their hands on him.
There's also some good work that comes from Bill Paxton (who, as usual, overacts like it's an Olympic event), Michael Biehn, and Jeanette Goldstein (whose role probably would have gone to Michelle Rodriguez had Aliens been made twenty years later). But the one actor who I have hesitations about is Carrie Henn as Newt. This is the only acting work Henn's ever done, quite literally having done nothing before or since, and it shows. She seems a little stiff at times, almost as if she's unsure of herself. I will admit that Henn's not bad for the most part, but her lack of experience is evident. But it's actually kinda sad that she's never acted again, because I'd have liked to have seen where her career would have gone. But alas, unless something changes, Carrie Henn is simply a one-hit wonder.
I freakin' love Aliens. It's an absolutely fantastic movie that must be seen to understand how truly great it is. The movie is proof positive that not only can sequels be great movies in their own right, but with the right combination of passion and imagination, you can blend multiple genres into something awesome. If you have not seen Aliens, please hunt down a copy of it and give it a watch. You absolutely have to see it.
Final Rating: *****
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