Viking Night: Aliens
By Bruce Hall
December 5, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Cameron's take on the Alien universe is full of the all the brawn and verve you'd expect from the man who brought us The Terminator. As a result, it lacks the sense of grandeur present in Scott’s movie, but it manages to create a distinct identity for itself while maintaining an almost ideal balance of visual and narrative continuity with the original. In fact, when we see first see Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) again, she's wearing the same clothes she had on back in ‘79. But from her perspective, 57 years have passed as she drifted through space, awaiting rescue.
Many things have changed about the world, but corporate greed isn't one of them. Ripley's employer doesn't seem excited to hear her stories of chest bursting space beasties, because they’ve since colonized the planet she visited. Hysteria is bad for business, so they send her home with a pink slip. There she might have stayed, and Aliens might have been two hours of Ripley driving a forklift. Luckily the colony vanishes, and the company sends a smooth talking executive named Burke (Paul Reiser) to talk Ripley out of retirement. Of course he succeeds, and off they go to investigate - along with a phalanx of bored space marines, all itching for some action.
They find it when they land, and discover signs of intense combat. Something has killed off the colonists, but not without a fight. Ripley acts as adviser as the Marines conduct a search and stumble into a veritable shit-storm of alien activity. A firefight takes out the two top Marines, the colony's cooling system and the ship they all landed in. With no ride home it's left to Ripley, Burke, a mysterious android and the remaining Marines to find a way off the planet before everything blows up, they kill each other out of frustration, or just end up taking turns watching each other's chests explode.
So it all comes down to a race against time, pretty much like the first film. But of course, there isn't just one alien, there are hundreds. And there's the added twist of a kid thrown into the mix - the colony's sole survivor and the essential narrative "X" factor that transforms Ripley from Avenging Angel to Mama Grizzly. To me, Newt (Carrie Henn) is the most critical difference between Aliens and its predecessor. Yes, one is an action film and one is a horror film. True, the shit-talking Space Marines in the second film are roughly 11 million times cooler than the characters from the first one.
In fact, Space Marines are cooler than just about anyone I can think of. Except one. Alien made it clear - to anyone who still had doubts - that a woman could kick ass as well as a man. But Alien the Second gives Ripley a chance to be something even Chuck Norris never could - a mommy.
Ripley struggles to find a place for herself on a mission where she doesn't seem to be needed - until she IS needed. Forced (again) into leadership, she handles herself as well as she did before but now, she wears a hat that holds particular significance at the film's climax. And it also lends the story a level of humanity it otherwise wouldn't have had. Listen, this movie is absolutely chock-full of cigar chomping Marines and hyper aggressive extraterrestrial murder machines. Arms, legs and heads are ripped off. Thousands of rounds of ammo are fired. Harsh language is used. So Ripley's own heroism might have been whisked away like a drop of oil in this sea of machismo, but for that one relationship.
And while some see it as a predictable contrivance, I see it as an inspired way to define the high point of the film as something other than just another boss battle, or one more hero-versus-villain struggle to the death. Good thing it works as well as it does, because Aliens convulses with the kind of unsubtle post Vietnam symbolism that was popular in Hollywood at the time. This results in some very massive gaps in logic, as the Marines do just about everything possible to get themselves killed. This is not a crime, but the movie might seem less visionary than it does without the very human relationship between Ripley and Newt.
Of course, our snarky bunch of Space Grunts are more or less the same generic roughnecks we’ve seen in a hundred other films. That’s also not a crime, but it's hard to make stock characters stand out - so it’s worth pointing out that here, some of them really do. Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) is a memorable novelty. Hudson (Bill Paxton) is an acquired taste. And Michael Biehn brings the same world weary kindness to Hicks that he did to The Terminator’s Kyle Reese. Hicks strikes me as the kid who just joined up to go to college, and let the time get away from him. Ten years later he’s a lifer, dutifully fighting killer space bugs on some godforsaken rock with Sigourney Weaver.
For the most part the visual effects remain easy to look at, although even the best miniature work begins to look ugly over time. And although the aliens are more numerous than before, they mostly - and wisely - stick to the shadows. The real terror of this animal is in NOT seeing it, and this makes for a great reveal at the end when Cameron finally throws down his cards. And it all works well because it takes place in such a convincing world. Humanity’s gleaming future is threatened by a remorseless enemy, seemingly carved from our own hubris. Shiny new starships are populated by characters who still smoke cigarettes and make airline jokes. And of course giant corporations still put profits ahead of people - only now they do it in space!
And in the middle of it all is Ellen Ripley, the tough as nails forklift operator with the heart of a lion and the compassion of a single mom. It’s one of Cameron’s best written stories, and it contains some of his most memorable characters. Best of all, it was a worthy continuation of the original, expanding it in a way that set up the franchise for many years of solid, chest burstingly good entertainment. Too bad it didn’t work out that way. But Aliens is the second swing of a hardcore one two punch that yes, remains relevant today. Not a week goes by where I don’t drop a quote from Aliens in casual conversation. Strange? Perhaps. But there’s a reason for it - Aliens is that damn good.