An excellent sequel
- Review By:
- tpb
- Date:
- January 10, 2009
- Movie:
- Aliens: Collector's Edition
- Director:
- James Cameron
- Released:
- 1986
- Good Guy:
- Ellen Ripley
- Played By:
- Sigourney Weaver
- Bad Guy:
- Aliens
- Played By:
- Aliens
- MPAA Rating:
- R
- Family Friendly Ages:
- Not for kids
This is one of those rare sequels that does justice to the original. 'Aliens' picks up where Ridley Scott's 'Alien' (1979) leaves off. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is awakened from “hyper-sleep” 57 years after she jettisoned the first movie's freak-show alien from her ship and set off alone in her pod. She tells the tale to the “Company” representatives who knew the details of the first film's events because they're an evil empire wanting to harness the power of the alien as a weapon to be sold to the military. A very young Paul Reiser portrays Carter Burke, the Company hack whose job it is to convince Ripley to go back to the planet where she encountered the alien. He accompanies her on the trip along with a group of high-tech, over-amped, unpleasant, obnoxious marines. Once again it is the Ripley character who is the standout among this group of over-the-top stereotypical, comic-page soldiers; incompetent officers; and evil capitalists. Weaver plays Ripley as an entirely believable character. She displays a perfect balance between fear and bravery; competence and ignorance; and empathy and revulsion as she battles through the now colonized alien hive trying to rescue marines; the 6-year-old sole survivor of the human inhabitants who moved to the planet 35 years after Ripley left; and herself from these deadly, lizard-looking, multi-mouthed, acid-filled, dripping, insect-emulating, nearly-indestructible, frightening creatures.
Ripley and her crew-mates discover that the creatures, who use humans as incubators for their spawn, have fashioned a nest out to the remaining structures on the planet and are protecting an egg-laying queen in its bowels. And 'bowels' is an apt description. The slimy material produced by the aliens has formed what looks like the inside of someone's large intestine that is now lining the corridors of the facility. These intestinal walls are where they store their incubators, slimed into the membrane surround, dangling above alien egg sacs. The rescuers discover them as horrified vessels who want the marines simply to kill them - a perfectly understandable request given how the baby aliens are birthed by pushing through the abdomen in a bloody, painful mess. It is this encounter and the drawn-out firefight that follows that kicks the movie into unrelenting high-gear. Prior to this scene, the movie is plodding as we see Ripley's day-to-day life after her rescue from the first movie, we learn too much about all these ultimately expendable marines, we find out how much of a jerk Carter Burke is, and we are made witness to how skilled and impressive our hero Ripley is. It's just too slow-going really during the whole first act. However, the second and third acts make up for it by ramping up the action and suspense leaving the viewer exhausted by the end and wanting to crawl into the tanning-bed travel pods with the survivors to sleep it all off. Is 'Aliens' better than 'Alien'? Difficult to say. The fact that it is open to discussion though, is a reflection on how well Weaver depicts Ripley as the 'everyman' ('everywoman'?) hero and how well the movie turns her loose in each scene as it frames and executes the set-up, the reaction, the horror, the tension, and the terror. Pay particular attention to the soundtrack throughout. It is never intrusive, never manipulative, and frequently non-existent. With this kind of quality movie-making it isn't necessary to force the viewers to feel anything. The suspense is all too real. One look at that slowly-extended, dripping, silvery, tongue-face is all it takes. Who needs additional coaxing from the orchestra?
What a suspenseful movie! I had to mark it down on characters, though, because of the high irritation level induced by some of the members of the military team. Great review!