Aliens Review
“You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage”
Alien was such an amazing movie and it seemed to do pretty damn well for itself but how do you make a sequel that’s even close to being as good as the original, you take 7 years to do it I guess. You also add a shit ton more Xenomorphs and a fucking queen! James Cameron came along and added some interesting mythos to the Xenomorphs and an injected some more fire power. Was taking Alien and making it more action orientated a bad move? Nope but let’s talk about it.
57 years after the events of Alien, Ripley and Jonesy are found in deep space. LV-426, the planet where the alien ship was found in the first movie was discovered by others and has since become colonized, which Ripley has concerns about and rightly so, the contact to the planet goes dark and Ellen goes in with a small army of marines as a consultant. Of course the planet is overrun with Xenomorphs but that’s not all, some more cooperate sabotage, an orphaned child and a rather special Xenomorph later, Ripley has had a pretty bad time.
Sigourney Weaver is great in Aliens, just like she was great in Alien. James Cameron does a perfectly good job in keeping the character true to herself and she’s not the only good character once again. Hicks played by Michael Biehn is pretty charming and handsome…*cough*…man crush. Bill Paxton (Yes, from Predator 2) plays Private Hudson and he’s fun, he spouts funny lines and pulls the funniest faces. Vasquez played by Janette Goldstein is fun, pretty much everyone is fun. Our android character is played by Lance Henriksen, an actor I really like and he’s actually quite great in Aliens. And of course little Newt, Newt is a kid played by Carrie Henn that Ripley starts to take care of on LV-426 after she’s found alone and orphaned, she’s really likable and she’s not too talky but when she does talk, it’s always some of the best dialog in the movie. So yeah, Aliens holds a victory in characters, they are all different enough and lovable to the point I was upset to see some of them die.
James Cameron does a pretty great job with the direction too. Aliens is taken in a much more action route than horror but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any horror in it, the horror moments unfortunately never match up to anything from Alien but they are there and are effect enough. The action scenes themselves are actually pretty awesome and the images of Xenomorphs scurrying down the hallways by wall or by roof are really cool. The overall look and feel of the movie is also pretty good, not as effective as Alien but mainly just because that was the first and you have to make it look like the same world. It’s certainly more pretty than Alien³ or Resurrection. Shout out to Ripley’s Reeboks by the way, I’ll have a pair of those.
The aliens have a pretty big design change here, the main change being the dome head. Instead of the smooth classic dome they have a more stretched out head with ridges going down. Do I like it more than the original design? No but I think it’s a really good way of making them look like the queen’s soldiers and speaking of the queen, god damn is she pretty. One of the coolest designed monsters in like ever, the queen alien is a massive crowned Xenomorph with the ability to produce eggs and control the other Xenos. She looks awesome and the puppeteer effects are so amazing that I feel like a child watching her big scenes.
All in all, Aliens is fantastic and adds enough to the Aliens mythos, I also believe it was a good step to take in making the alien franchise. I’m a fan of all the characters and really enjoyed its direction and the alien queen is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in practical effects. The soundtrack is also pretty nice and the movie has so many quotable lines it’s like a Schwarzenegger film. I do wish the scene with the news about Ellen Ripley’s daughter was kept in though and they also cut a really effective scene with Newt’s parents.
Rating: *****
Better than > Predator 2 Worse than > Alien (I guess)
Main pros
-Characters
-Direction
-Style
-Effects
-Script
-The Queen
Main Cons
-None, I don’t have any big issues with this film but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
Aliens is such a cool sequel. It’s fun, filled with life and it’s really hard to say Alien is better, I’ll probably like Aliens more tomorrow.
