Aliens Movie Review: Alien to the Nth Degree

James Cameron’s (Piranha II: The Spawning) Aliens is the second entry in the Alien franchise and a direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. The film takes place six decades after the events in Alien where Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) was the sole survivor of a catastrophic interaction with a race of aliens while on a deep-space mining mission with her crew. For 57 years she was in cryosleep until finally rescued on the outskirts of the solar system and brought back to Earth. She is horrified to discover that, presently, the exomoon where they found the aliens, LV-426, is now an Earth outpost that is being terraformed and is home to over 75 families working for the behemoth Weyland-Yatani Corporation.

The Corporation is skeptical of Ripley’s story and has no plan to stop construction on what it perceives to be an especially lucrative position on LV-426. Ripley goes to work in the docking bays until one day when a representative of Weyland-Yatani, Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), explains to her that they have lost all contact with the colony, and that a contingent of Colonial Marines are going to investigate. Burke wants Ripley to return to the exomoon with them as a consultant. There is, understandably, a lot of arm-twisting, but once Ripley believes the goal of the mission is to exterminate the alien species, she agrees to accompany the marines and Burke to LV-426.

Cameron takes everything that worked in Alien and amplifies those attributes as far as he can take them. In Alien, the crew has to rig their own weapons from mining equipment; in Aliens, we get the feeling the best of the best Marines have been sent to tackle the job with the best armor, ammunition, and vehicles. In Alien, we slowly watch the crew as it is winnowed away by the deadly creature; in Aliens, there are twice as many characters, some to love and some to hate, and their deaths are quick and often. In Alien, there is only one alien on the ship to be dealt with; in Aliens, the crew has landed in the middle of a hive consisting of several hundred aliens, several hundred unhatched eggs, and a monster of a queen. Cameron also tosses in some romance and extra comedic moments through Bill Paxton’s character, Hudson.

Alien had more horror elements than Aliens does. Aliens is more concerned with the science-fiction aspects and action-adventure. Its roots are more in line with the swashbucklers of Hollywood’s Golden Age. While everybody is scared, they are also great combatants who have a job to do and plan to do it well. Ripley was a survivor in Alien, but in Aliens she is a force to be reckoned with. The entire cast carries their weight, but Sigourney Weaver, especially, is a bright and shiny star. Highly recommended.