Aliens (1986)
“Aliens” is one of the best adventures ever put to film. It is a masterpiece of terror and intensity, of action and special effects, yet it never for an instant loses sight of its human protagonists and what motivates them. “Aliens” creates about a dozen clear-cut, sympathetic characters, traps them in a futuristic-Gothic nightmare world, and pits them against some of the most hateful monsters cinema has ever known.
The world of the original “Alien” (1979) and “Aliens” is among the more interesting cinematic views of the future. Their universe is one in which outer space has been deprived of its fascination and completely commercialized by the omnipresent and megalomaniacal Company. No one looks wonderingly at the stars. Hints are dropped that other life forms have been found in the cosmos, but since they have apparently no commercial value no one seems interested in them. Space is traversed not by wide-eyed explorers, but by blue-collar freighters moving product from one planet to another, as if the NASA-types have been and gone and capitalism has replaced them.
Absent are the clean, exciting spacecraft of “Star Trek” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (also absent is “Star Trek’s” required knowledge of nooks and crannies from previous films in the series and television episodes; “Aliens” requires the audience have only a minimal knowledge of “Alien”). In place of elegant spacecraft are grimy, ungainly vehicles, factories crossed with dump trucks crossed with warehouses. The residents of the future still dress, smoke, and swear more-or-less like we do. They live their lives inside metal cans, be they space stations or spacecraft or some squat, ungainly outpost on a far-off world-but always present, despite their attempts at denial, is the infinitely deep abyss of outer space, holding infinite secrets.
In this universe lives Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), a survivor of the original “Alien,” in which her space freighter was put under siege by a nearly-invincible killer beast that dripped slime and had acid for blood. Lucky for her the alien was essentially an animal and could be outwitted and defeated as such. At the beginning of “Aliens” we find Ripley’s lifepod drifting off course while she is in suspended animation. She has been in deep space for fifty-seven years, asleep. Her daughter grew old and died. A lesser movie would have used this as a plot convenience, but not “Aliens,” and definitely not Sigourney Weaver, who presents us this heartbreak and gives us the cry of a failed mother.
Now she’s back-not to Earth, but at least she can see Earth from her window-and the Company does not believe her claims that her cargo freighter had to be destroyed in order to kill the beast and save the crew. They don’t believe her because she has no evidence, and the planet where she claims to have picked up the alien has had colonists living on it for nearly two decades without incident. That is, they don’t believe her, until something goes wrong . . .
Ripley is recruited by a band of colonial marines to return to the doomed planet and try to make contact with the missing colonists. The marines are a motley, obnoxious, and utterly likable band of men and women (“Aliens’” future is nothing if not equal). They are sharply and quickly drawn; like all good character actors they imply histories and opinions without having to spend time on details.
The colony on the doomed planet is a masterpiece of art direction: the colonists live in a flat, giant complex of cold steel, surrounding an enormous machine that has changed the planet’s atmosphere from poison into breathable air. This may sound complicated and far-out, but “Aliens” is adept at explaining its science-fiction and making the audience feel that they, too, could live in this future world. Inside the complex are endless tunnels and service shafts, air vents and tight corridors, all poorly-lit and strangely organic looking, all suggesting a beast lurking around every corner.
I wouldn’t dream of revealing what Ripley and the marines find the aliens doing there, just that “Aliens” becomes an all-out war between the two species, as spaceships crash and generators overload and power goes out. Director Cameron knows that suggestion is more terrifying than sight; we see evidence of the monsters, then we see blips on a motion tracker, then we hear them scurrying around our heavily-armed but terrified heroes, then we hear automated machine guns trying to stave off their relentless assault.
The violence is intense and graphic, but not as gory as in more recent films, which have chosen the easy routes of being descriptive and surgical instead of the more difficult road of actually being scary. The musical score by James Horner is completely appropriate, with fiery brass interludes during combat sequences, as well as one of the most effective and certainly the most imitated of chase pieces. But Horner is even more appropriate during moments of calm, when suspense is building behind the eyes of all involved. The same less-is-more approach goes for the aliens themselves, who are shadowed more often then not, and whose history is left nameless and lost in the history of a fifteen billion-year-old universe, as if God Himself were slapping us down for thinking there’s nothing more interesting in the cosmos than self-obsession with our own capitalism. If I have been short on description of the monsters, it is to preserve the unfolding of “Aliens’” secrets, culminating in the dialogue “there must be something out there we haven’t seen yet.”
“Aliens” knows that we may be here to see the monsters, but they’re not our heroes. Among those fighting alongside Sigourney Weaver is one of the best ensemble casts assembled for an action picture. Michael Biehn is a cool-headed and professional corporal, Lance Henriksen is a twitchy, soft-spoken android, Paul Reiser is perfectly cast as a Company crony, and Jenette Goldstien is a hard, seemingly invincible marine with the biggest gun. And in one of the film’s many masterstrokes, the marines find a survivor at the colony, a little girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn), who is both innocent and hardened from watching everyone she every knew die, and whom Ripley adopts as an eerie surrogate for her own dead daughter. But perhaps most memorable is Bill Paxton as Private Hudson, who has the reaction we’ve all been waiting for in movies like this when things start going wrong: “what the f-k are we gonna do now?” Together they immortalize about a half-dozen quotes into pop culture, among them the mission statement that “a bunch of colonists need us to save them from their virginity.”
“Aliens” is one of the most intense and unrelenting films ever made, not just about monsters and gore, but about courage under fire and under exhaustion. As such, it is not suitable for all viewers, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. But for those willing to spend two hours watching humankind reassert its right to survive, they will find “Aliens” is one of the best films of the '80s.
P.S. The director’s cut of “Aliens” is available on DVD and is as good as the theatrical release. There is a bit of trade-off, however: the theatrical release is more urgent and driven, pulsing toward the terror even before we’ve seen it on screen, while the director’s cut loses some of this intensity to give us many more interesting details about Ripley, about the marines, about the colony, and about the monsters themselves.
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