Review #61: Aliens (1986)

Cast/Notable Credits:
James Cameron (Director): Piranha 2 (1981), The Terminator (1984), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2 (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997)

Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley): Aliens Quadrilogy, Ghost Busters 1 (1984) & 2 (1989), Working Girl (1988), Copycat (1995), Galaxy Quest (1999), Heartbreakers (2001), The Village (2004)

Michael Biehn (Cpl. Hicks): Planet Terror

Lance Henriksen (Bishop): Omen 2 (1978), Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind (1977), Piranha 2, Terminator, Near Dark (1987), Aliens 3 (1992), AVP, Super Mario Brothers (1993), Scream 3 (2000), Mimic 3 (2003), When A Stranger Calls (2006)

Paul Reiser (Burke): Beverly Hills Cop 1 (1984) & 2 (1987), Mad About You T.V. series

Bill Paxton (Hudson): Terminator, Weird Science (1985), Commando (1985), Near Dark, Navy Seals, Predator 2 (1990), Apollo 13 (1995), Twister (1996), Titanic, Might Joe Young (1998), True Lies, U-571 (2000), Frailty (2001), Vertical Limit (2000), Club Dread (2004)

Willaim Hope (Lt. Gorman): Hellraiser 2 (1988), The Saint (1997), xXx (2002)

Jenette Goldstein (Vasquez): Near Dark, Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), Terminator 2, Star Trek: Generations (1994), Fair Game (1995), Titanic

Mark Rolston (Drake): Lethal Weapon 2, Robo Cop 2 (1990), Body of Evidence (1993), Eraser (1996), Hard Rain (1998), Rush Hour (1998), The Departed (2006), Saw 5

Daniel Kash (Spunkmeyer): Due South T.V. series, Exit Wounds (2001), Don’t Say a Word (2001), The Tuxedo (2002)

Trailer:



Plot:

After floating in space for 57 years after the events of the first movie, Ripley’s escape pod is finally rescued by a deep space salvage crew and brought back to Earth.

A lot has changed though. Ripley learns that her daughter has died a few years back, and humans started colonizing planets, including the planet (LV-426) where her previous crew had picked up the alien that ended wiping them out.

Ripley now faces trial for destroying her old ship, the Nostromo, by her old employer. Ignoring her story of the killer Alien, the company claims that she had blew up an expensive company ship for “no apparent reason”. Once again...money talks.

Ripley tries to convince the inquiry board that there was an Alien on board which they had picked it up on LV-426. The board refuses to believe her story, because the planet has been colonized for quite some time and so far has found no evidence of the creature she has described.

In the mean time, the company (The Weyland-Yutani Corporation) secretly orders some colonist to investigate the coordinates Ripley had given them during her story. A couple weeks later, they lose contact with the colony.

In the Special Edition of Aliens there is a five-ten minute storyline showing the colonists and the party that goes to check out the crashed spaceship. If you haven't already...you should definitely see the S.E. of Aliens...it makes the movie even better.

The Wey-Yut. Corp. gets a little nervouse and decides to dispatch a group of space marines to go investigate the sudden loss of contact. A representative of the company, Burke, goes to Ripley and convinces her to tag along for her expertise in dealing with the Alien species...if that is the cause of the lost communication...because everyone is still in denial of the species. Ripley agrees to go to LV-426.

A new ship, The Sulaco, is sent to LV-426 carrying Ripley, Burke and a platoon of space marines. When they arrive at the planet, they enter the colonist complex and find out that the colonists are nowhere to be found, except for a little girl hiding in the air ducts. Everyone had simply vanished, but there are clues of some sort of an attack with evidence of Ripley's fairy-taled Alien species.

Using the signals of surgical implanted GPS devices inside the colonist's bodies, the marines find the whole colony gathered in the lower levels of the planet’s atmospheric processing plant. The processing plant is basically a big *ss plant that makes the atmosphere livable to humans. It takes decades to transform a world into a habitable planet.

The marines’ head on over to the plant only to walk into an Alien lair. Unprepared for what takes place next, the Aliens attack...and a lot of marines die. The survivors exit the plant and take refuge in the colonist complex as they are stranded on the planet with little supplies and ammunition.

The overdue date for a standard rescue mission is 17 days. With moral and hopes down, the remaining survivors barricade themselves in the colonist community center as they attempt alternatives for rescue. Outside of the complex are hundreds of vicious Aliens searching for ways to get in the complex. Ripley and company must find a way off the planet before they become victims of the Aliens.

Villain:

The “Alien” has always been my favorite monster/creature. Acid for blood…kick ass! It’s pure evil; it attacks, hunts and doesn’t contemplate about what to do next. It just attacks! Well it does show some intellegence though.

The eerie screeching sounds the alien makes are creepy as hell. If you've never heard it before, the sounds become known as "The peacock-elephant sound". It sends shivers down my spine!

This movie has it's share of aliens and face-huggers...oh did I mention you get to see what the Queen alien looks like? A lot of carnage and dead things, both of which makes a good creature flick. Still...I would never want to come across one of these mother fuckers in my life…unless I had one of the kick ass pulse rifles in the movie.

Cast:

Aliens featured an awesome cast! Just look at the movies they've all appeared in. Leading the cast is Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. If Jamie Lee Curtis defined the role as a "Scream Queen" then Sigourney defined the role as "Tough chick". Just look at her handle one of the marine's M41A pulse rifles...better watch out boys...there's a new sheriff in town!

Sigourney delivered a memoriable performance for the ages in this flick. She kicked aside the stereotype of damsel in distress and took on the "I'm gonna do something about it" role.

Sigourney took charge in a pinch and showed that she had the guts to take on the Alien species. Sigourney also delivered one of most recognizable lines in the franchise when she took on the Queen Alien:

"Get away from her you BITCH!"

Starring along with Sigourney are a couple of great characters in the film. Michael Biehn stars as Corp. Hicks. Hicks is a tough "cool cat" space marine who works well with Ripley on screen. They develop a deep connection which can be considered as close as a love story that you can expect from an Alien movie.

Other key members of the cast include Bill Paxton as Private Hudson (the smart ass marine), Paul Reiser as Burke (the greasy snake-like company man), Jennette Goldstein (the tough female marine), Carrie Henn as Newt (the little colonist girl survivor) and many, many more.

If there were ding here, then it would be Newt screaming like a little bitch half the time. But I guess that's what frightened little girls do. Give the Henn credit, she was like nine or ten when she did the film. The many different personalities of marines kick ass and in turn...get their ass kicked.
"Game over man. Game over!"

SFX/Gore:

Since I didn’t rated TNA for this movie (if there was any to grade…then that would be awesome), so I doubled the SFX/Gore category just because the FX were really, really ahead of it's time and just plain awesome.

I remember seeing this movie in the theater and was blown away with the military technology it created. The weaponry is realistic and state of the art for a futuristic setting. I loved the M41A pulse rifle featured in the film.

I think that it's the best Sci-Fi weapon ever...at least from a realistic perspective. The S.E. has a coule of deleted scenes featuring some really bad ass remote centurion machine gun units.

The APC carrier (Armored Personnel Carrier) was a cool looking transport vehicle (Pictured Left). I always loved that thing as a kid. It was a blast seeing Ripley ram that thing into the Alien lair.

I wasn't too impressed with the design of the mother ship, The Sulaco, but I did like the designs of the drop-down ships. The design of the ship was inspired by the looks of a F-4 Phantom II fighter jet and an AH-1 Cobra helicopter. They were pretty sweet lookin'!

The human robotic exosuit cargo loader was another terrific idea by the film. It was great to see Ripley battle the Queen with one. On top of all those mechanical FX, the movie had terrific creature FX, explosions, and other cool looking models.

As far as the gore section goes, there were at least a dozen human deaths and countless Alien deaths. Aliens had a great blend of military and monster movie action and war sequences in it.

TNA:

This category was not really rated. Afterall, it was a good ole' fashion guys shoot out with guns and monsters so I doubled the SFX/Gore category. I'm not a huge fan of Sigourney Weaver, so if it makes you feel better, the little chick Newt (Carrie Henn)...well here's a pretty picture of her grown up. (Pictured right)

T.Gun's Take:

James Cameron did a superb job on this flick (like most of his movies). Return to the alien crash site planet with unsuspecting colonists, throw in a couple of egotistic marines, and strand them there with hundreds of aliens crawling around…hell yeah!

Honestly this would be my #1 horror movie of all time, but after thinking about it, this movie is more sci-fi than horror...but it works on both levels. So I pushed Friday Part 2 just a head of it (just because it’s an actual horror movie). But not by much.

I have always loved this movie. It’s probably in my top ten of all time (including all Star Wars, L.O.T.R.’s – that’s nine already). If I was ever bored, I could throw this movie on to past time and still love it. Unfortunately for Aliens 3, this movie set the standard so high…that I was soooo disappointed when the third movie came out.

I believe that Aliens holds up well over time. I can watch it and still be amazed at the awesome job they did on the film. I highly recommend checking this film out...and if you can...watch the S.E. or Director's Cut of the film.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
- Filmed opened on July 18, 1986 and made $85.1 million at the box office ($10 million opening weekend)...and I was one of them!
- The word "fuck" is used 25 times in the film...18 by Hudson (Bill Paxton)
- All of the marine cast (except Michael Biehn) attended a military training course before filming. They were instructed to read Robert Heinlein's novel, Starship Troopers, to help with the military mindset. If you're thinking...yes that novel ended up into a kick ass movie...at least I liked it.