Hollywood loves a good franchise. The movie-going public does too. Horror, action, comedy, sci-fi, western, no genre is safe. And any film, no matter how seemingly stand-alone, conclusive, or inappropriate to sequel, could generate an expansive franchise. They are legion. We are surrounded. But a champion has risen from the rabble to defend us. Me. I have donned my sweats and taken up cinema’s gauntlet. Don’t try this at home. I am a professional.
Let’s be buddies on the Facebookz!
The Franchise: Alien — concerning the expansive universe of a deadly species of creature known as a xenomorph. The creatures have thus far appeared four feature films, as well as two spin-off films, literature, comic books, and video games. For the purposes of this column we will be focusing on the primary Alien franchise – detailing the saga of Ellen Ripley’s involvement with the xenomorphs and the equally nefarious Weylan-Yutani corporation – and 2012’s Prometheus.
previous installments:
Alien
The Installment: Aliens (1986)
The Story:
We pick up with Ripley where we last saw her, in cryo-sleep aboard her escape pod. When Ripley is discovered and revived she learns that she’s been in stasis for nearly sixty years. She also learns that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation really holds a grudge — Ripley is penalized for destroying the Nostromo. But she is given a chance to reclaim her space-flight license when W-Y representative Burke (Paul Reiser) asks if she’ll accompany a team of marines back to LV-426 (the planet from the first movie) to investigate why the colony living there seems to have disappeared. Ripley accepts, and wouldn’t you know it, it is those pesky xenomorphs again! Mostly all the colonists are dead, mostly, except for one plucky feral child named Newt (Carrie Henn). A bunch of the marines die and Ripley is once again forced to deal with this shit herself. Only now her hair doesn’t look as good as it did in the first film.
What Works:
Sequels really don’t come better than Aliens. The fact that fans still debate which film is better, Alien or Aliens, clearly demonstrates this fact — especially when you take into account that Alien is easily one of the top five horrors films of all time. The film’s detractors point to the change in tone, to the dilution of the Alien itself, and to the fact that James Cameron shined a light into corners of the mythology that Ridley Scott had left in shadowed mystery. But that’s just an argument for not making a sequel altogether. Who would have wanted a lame repeat of the first film? For things to move forward questions needed to be answered. What Cameron pulls off is extremely impressive, considering the sheer amount of retconning going on, yet none of it detracts or changes anything from Alien. It is a brilliant companion piece.
Yet again the glowing success here is the construction and application of the film’s ideas. Dan O’Bannon is gone, but James Cameron (with help from David Giler and Walter Hill) effortlessly picks up the baton. He doesn’t change or negate anything O’Bannon and Shusett came up with, but merely fills in the gaps and takes things to logical expansion points. The first film never established if the Alien had acid for blood, or if only the facehugger did. But it seems logical that the Alien would too. The Nostromo crew successfully avoided touching the acid blood. So it only makes sense to have some unlucky chumps who do touch it this time around. That sort of thinking represents Cameron’s whole approach — he is amplifying. And he’s not interested in taking things one step further. He cranks this bitch to 11. (That’s going to ruin things for the next sequel, but that’s the next sequel’s problem.) Cameron obviously loved the concepts at play in Alien. And he looked at Alien and asked himself the right questions. A valid critique from detractors has always been that having so many Aliens diminishes their individual importance, rendering the horrifying Alien from the first film personality-less. Which is entirely true. The second half of Alien was a Ten Little Indians-style slasher film. Aliens is a horde film, with the Aliens effectively zombies — complete with our heroes at one point barricading themselves in a single location, Night of the Living Dead-style. But, while this may be a radical structural change from the first film, it is a completely logical extension. In Alien, Kane finds a whole room full of eggs. The only reason there is one Alien is because there was only one of him. If two men had entered the room, we would have had two Aliens. And so on. So to say that the franchise was meant to be about a lone, menacing Alien lurking in the shadows doesn’t really hold water. Whatever laid those eggs clearly wanted tons of Aliens mucking about. And what exactly did lay those eggs? The Alien itself certainly didn’t seem large enough to crap out such a sized thing. So…
The Queen. The Queen is a huge move. She completely changes the game. Again, it is true that turning the Alien into a drone, a member of a hive, drastically diminishes the power of the Alien as an individual foe, but it is a fucking amazing idea to expand the mythology. And it just seems so logical once you’re presented with it. I think part of why the idea fits so snuggly is because Cameron, Giler and Hill had knowledge the audience did not in 1986 — that there was a deleted scene from Alien which showed us that the Alien was merely abducting its prey and cocooning them for… what? I can only presume that it is from this void that the Queen sprung. In fact, much of Aliens seems to be exploring that deleted scene. The bit where the marines scan for the colonists’ tracking-implants, and find they’re all mysteriously crammed together in a single location, is just great set-up. And the discovery of why they’re all crammed in a single location is even better. It is a savvy way to re-use the deleted scene from Alien in a new context. This is also the film that gives us the word “xenomorph,” which fans glommed onto in lieu of anything else to call the Alien other than “Alien.”
We should also address the change in tone. I don’t see this change as a “success” necessarily, but it is a byproduct of the kind of story Cameron was telling. He had different creative goals than Ridley Scott did. Alien was a film. Aliens is a movie. If you follow me. Cameron’s sensibilities could not be more different from Scott’s (at least at the time). He made an action movie full of one-liners, crowd-pleasing moments, and button-pushing plot points. And this is an area in which Cameron is rather unparalleled. Like Spielberg, he is a genius at Hollywood storytelling. There is nothing naturalistic about Aliens. These seem like movie characters saying very movie character things. And being objective, if the film had been bad or merely okay, I would surely be taking Cameron to task for so brazenly stepping away from the aesthetics of Alien — which he does from the get-go, after the movie begins yet again with a slow and quiet moment of our hero in stasis, but now with Cameron suddenly interrupting with the violence and noise of a robotic arm cutting through the door of Ripley’s ship. The tonal change is big, and artistically a step away from artistic. There is also the factor that Alien was a straight-up scary horror movie, whereas Aliens is more of an action-thriller. But Aliens is just too good to deny. It may be different, but it all works so well on its own terms. It also helps that Ripley feels like the same character. She centers things, from a franchise view.
Say what you will about James Cameron, but he gets what a movie can and should be. He wants to entertain, but he wants to do it right. He’s everything Michael Bay is incapable off, because Cameron understands that a movie is about its characters. He has a gift for creating perfect movie characters. And Aliens is a great example of that. We don’t encounter facehuggers until 42 minutes into the film, and we don’t see our first Alien until a full hour in. Before that we just have our characters…
Burke. Burke is such a good character. And Paul Reiser is fantastic in the role. Until you rewatch the film you can forget how likable he initially is. He and Ripley are the odd ducks amongst the marines, and they seem on the same page. Cameron plays us perfectly with Burke too. Burke’s transition from friendly, slightly nerdy side-kick to one of the most hate-able characters in popular cinema is what movies like this are all about. You hate Burke more than any of the Aliens. Which makes Burke’s death one of the most satisfying moments of comeuppance in film history.
Hudson. Oh, Bill Paxton. Will you ever play a role like Hudson again? Of all the movie-like characters in Aliens, Hudson ranks as the most movie-like. And it is sublime. Everything Hudson says is a quotable one-liner, and Paxton’s delivery is applause-worthy — especially once Hudson transforms from wise-ass to panicking coward. “Game over, man,” remains an endlessly applicable movie quote.
Bishop. Forcing Ripley to play with another android is a bit hacky. But making hackwork seem fresh is really what Cameron is all about. His talent is thinking of things that seem obvious after-the-fact. Last time the android was evil. Now he’s good! Sounds obvious, but Bishop feels fresh. You want more of him. Lance Henriksen has never seemed human, so he is a great fit for the part (made more interesting if you know that he was Cameron’s original choice for The Terminator). Bishop is the anti-Burke. He just keeps getting more and more likable. By the end, you likely will cry out “Nooo!” when the Queen rips him in half.
Sergeant Apone. After Hudson, Apone has all the best lines. And Al Matthews chews the scenery even more than his ever-present cigar. Matthews is a delight. As is Jenette Goldstein as Vasquez. Making the biggest badass on the team a chick is a fun move. I especially like that Vasquez isn’t a cliche tough lesbian, and that she actually has the only real romance in the film, with Drake (Mark Rolston). The scene with Drake and Vasquez practicing with their steadycam-esque smart guns is the closest thing to a sex scene in the film.
In Alien Ripley being female was an afterthought. The role was written as a man, and nothing was changed in the script once the decision to make the part female was made. It had some ramifications, yes, but that was entirely on our part and how we viewed the film. Gender-wise, nothing was actually inverted in Alien, because all the roles had been men originally. Aliens on the other hand very intentionally plays with the gender inversion. For one thing, Ripley is now more overtly female, battling with maternal instincts. But bigger than that, Cameron emphasizes the gender swap head on. Hicks (Michael Biehn) is in essence the female lead. He may be a manly man, but he services Ripley and then becomes injured, requiring Ripley to protect him. She is the ultimate mother (which of course is mirrored by the other ultimate mother, the Queen).
Aliens is clever set-piece after clever set-piece. I love the way Cameron recycles bits from Alien, but in ways that don’t feel at all recycled. Dallas’ death in Alien, where the other characters are watching he and the Alien’s tracking blips on a scene, was extremely iconic. Cameron never attempts repeating that, but instead takes the tracking blip gimmick and re-applies it for his film. There is the aforementioned scene where the colonists are located, and then that nail-biting scene in which Hudson is tracking the Aliens progress as the creatures descend on our survivors’ barricade – “That can’t be, that’s inside the room.” And Cameron’s use of the marine’s headcams is both ahead of its time, and bravo filmmaking. The choices he makes between what to show third-person, what to show first-person through the headcams, and what to show of Ripley and the others watching the headcames on a monitor, weave great suspense throughout the lengthy and disastrous first battle sequence. At the risk of sounding simple, it is just cool. As is the entire build up to meeting the Queen. Cameron pulls out all the movie stops. We have the silly macguffin that the colony’s nuclear power reactor is going to explode, leaving Ripley barely twenty minutes to find and rescue Newt. We have Newt cocooned next to an opening facehugger egg. We have Ripley’s discovery of the nest, and first glimpse of the Queen (which is somewhat mind blowing when you first see her). Ripley’s Mexican stand-off with the Queen always brings a smile to my face, when we can see the intelligence of the Queen, telling the other Aliens to back-off. Then Ripley breaks that semi-truce and torches the place. Then we have a tensely unending series of moments of Ripley trying to get away from the Queen. Then we have a classic, “Everything is fine now” fake-out, when the Queen has stowed away on the rescue ship. And then we have the iconic cargo-loader exosuit battle, which remains one of the most entertaining and satisfying “final boss” showdowns in action movie history.
Apparently a key component to the Alien franchise is deleting scenes that introduce a fairly major plot point. This time around the big omission is the detail that Ripley had an 11-year-old daughter in Alien. Now, decades later, that girl is dead. Ripley of course is crushed. And that makes her fixation with Newt deeper. But… it also makes it a little creepier. While including Ripley’s dead daughter provides undeniable gravitas to the character of Ripley, as far as what Aliens is and what happens in the film, I think removing it may have been a decent idea. If I’m being anal, I don’t believe that Ripley had a child in Alien. We see no pictures, and Ripley never mentions her, even when the crew is talking about what they’re going to do when they return to Earth. That is the kind of retconning I can do without, especially because it makes Ripley’s relationship with Newt a bit sad and less heroic, as it then seems like Ripley is only going to all this trouble because she decided Newt is her new daughter. “I won’t lose two daughters, dammit!” you can almost imagine her screaming. I think removing the daughter also makes Ripley’s decision to return to LV-426 more plausible. The loss of her daughter seems like it would have left her near suicidal. Without that, I can buy that Ripley is more concerned with simply getting her life back. Plus, much of Ripley’s interaction with Newt gives the impression that she’s not used to talking with a little girl. I like that. But if Ripley already raised a little girl it seems odd, as though she just doesn’t have very natural mothering skills.
What Doesn’t Work:
Newt. The addition of a little kid to a sequel is almost never good. But here, the idea of Newt works. It’s the execution that leaves something to be desired. I won’t blame Carrie Henn, cause she was just a little kid and not even an actor. But Newt is, well, annoying. The rest of the cast is able to work magic with Cameron’s heightened dialogue, but Henn can’t. So everything Newt says just seems dopey (South Park has forever solidified this, with their mockery of Newt’s line, “They mostly come at night. Mostly.”). But worse than her dialogue is her screaming, or should I say squealing. Newt’s scream always takes me slightly out of the film, as it just doesn’t feel even remotely real. And she screams a lot. I like what Newt does for Ripley, but that’s about it.
By and large I have no problem with the changes Cameron implements, but there are some design tweaks that I did not like — mainly because they seem pointless. Part of Alien‘s effectiveness was how 20th-century everything looked and felt. Aliens feels more futuristic. Granted we never saw what human civilization looked like in the first film, but the space station sets and props we get before Ripley heads back to LV-426 look pretty cheesy, making what already felt more movie-like even more of a movie. Also – and maybe this is just a personal thing – it always bugs me when creatures are redesigned for sequels. I’m all for improving the tech/make-up that brings monsters to life, but actual design changes just become continuity changes for me. If it ain’t broke, as they say. Case in point, Cameron’s decision to get rid of the glossy dome on the Alien’s phallus head. In its place are boney ridges, which look more fittings for the animal, but part of what originally made the Alien so effective was how unnatural it looked, its bio-mechanical elements.
Kills: 13
Best Kill: Burke has the most satisfying kill. But as far as kills we actually witness, I’ll give it to Drake, who fulfills the query from Alien, “What would happen if you got Alien blood on your skin?”
Best Scare: When the cocooned colonist they find attached to the hive wall suddenly opens her eyes.
Best Line: After the disastrous first battle, when Ripley suggests leaving the planet and nuking the whole site.
Burke: Okay, I know this is an emotional moment for all of us. I know that. But let’s not make snap judgments, please. This is clearly an important species we’re dealing with and I don’t think that you or I, or anybody, has the right to arbitrarily exterminate them.
Hudson: Maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!
How ‘The Corporation’ Fucked Up: Not taking Ripley seriously. If they had, once again, they potentially could have acquired the xenomorph with fewer lost lives. By not believing Ripley, Burke was left to experiment on his own, sending the ill-prepared colonists to investigate, and then formulating a secret plan to essentially surprise the company by returning with an Alien.
Should There Be a Sequel: Yup, keep ’em coming.
Up Next: Alien 3
previous franchises battled
Critters
Death Wish
Hellraiser
Home Alone
Jurassic Park
Lethal Weapon
Leprechaun
Meatballs
The Muppets
Phantasm
Planet of the Apes
Police Academy
Psycho
Rambo
Tremors
48 comments
Aliens is a fun movie and very entertaining but it dosen’t have any real scares or the atmospheric horror of Alien. I like it for what it is but is leagues behind Alien and hated that they basically turned the creatures into bugs from Starship Troopers which seemed wrong and pretty much undid the big part of what made Alien frightening, it wasn’t really the final form of the Alien it how it came to be that made you squirm. That being said Aliens in it’s own way was very revolutionary in terms of telling a dark action movie that has been attempted many terms but never to as satisfying results so Cameron deserves a lot of credit for that. But the discussion in my opinionour which is better is silly, Alien wins this easily, he’ll Prometheus might be better but we’ll have to find out that next week!
I have a list of movies that I wish I could see again, for the first time, and this is in my top 5.
I am really glad you mentioned the line, “That can’t be, that’s inside the room.”
I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first watched this, but I can still remember this being the most insane thing I had ever heard at the time. It freaked me out.
I’m one of the people that rates Aliens slightly higher than Alien. Slightly. While I recognize the original as a superior bit of film making, I have to admit I was more entertained by the sequel—I’m sure initially seeing one at ten years of age and the other as a teenager has something to do with it. Still they’re both rock-solid 10s.
I can’t wait for the next installment of this series, as that’s when things are sure to heat up. And thank you, Mr. Miller, for not inserting the often-misquoted “out” into the middle of Newt’s iconic line of dialogue.
Sorry to come off as an anal fanboy here, Josh, but it’s pretty apparent in the deleted scene from the first ALIEN that Dallas and Brett were slowly mutating into actual eggs, and not merely being cocooned. (I know it sounds stupid, but it’s a whole lot scarier on-screen). The alien in the 1979 movie had its own life cycle separate from the one Cameron established in his take.
Granted, having a Queen lay the eggs rather than having a lone alien transform its victims into eggs was a better cinematic alternative for Cameron.
Funny, I was just watching “Aliens” when you posted this.
I think “Alien” and “Aliens” are basically perfect movies, but I do think I like “Aliens” a little more. For whatever reason, I like the characters better. It’s a subjective reason certainly, but I can’t get enough of Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, Burke, Apone and Bishop. Cameron assembled a great collection of character types and every single actor gives it their A-game.
And this is definitely the movie where Ripley becomes the Ripley we all know and love. That’s not a knock against the first one, but “Aliens” manages to elevate her to true hero status.
The shot of Hicks poking his head up through the ceiling and seeing the army of aliens crawling towards him is still one of the all-time great moments in monster movie history. Just perfect.
I think Josh hits on the big reason why the movie works so well despite being a departure is because it feels like a natural evolution. Watching the movie just feels right. This feels more like a proper sequel to the first than either “Alien 3” or “Alien: Resurrection.” (And “Alien 3” is almost the same movie as the first, just in a different setting!)
I can’t wait for the next two reviews: both films are failures, but by God they’re fascinating failures.
I’m glad someone has finally agreed with me that Newt is fucking ANNOYING. She serves no purpose than to give Ripley extra motivation. She is the Jones the cat of Aliens. Only Jones didn’t spend half the movie squealing.
Lance Hendricks face when the Space Marines ask him to do the ‘knife thing again’ is so perfect. It’s one of the best moments of acting ever anywhere.
Put me in with the Alien Re-design nitpickers. But the loss of the cowl at least led to the invention of/delineation between Queens, Drones and Warrior castes. The cannon fodder of Aliens were NOT the same guy as in the first movie. The retcon is that a Warrior can establish a Hive on it’s own, while a Drone is just part of a Hive’s security system essentially.
Worth noting that Alien was made in the era of Halloween, while Aliens was made in the era of Platoon and Rambo. So each was a Sci-Fi spin on a dark contemporary genre popular in it’s day. The Alien was Michael Myers – mysterious and unstoppable. The Xenomorph was a gook, winning against superior firepower by sheer force of numbers and “guerrilla” tactics, requiring heavy air-cover for escape/retreat (plus all that P.O.W./torture/internment camp imagery in the Hive).
Another bit of geekery I picked up – re: Drake and Vasquez’ relationship. According to the novelization it was more a brother/sister relationship as they’d both been brought up in either an orphanage or juvie situation together. Anyway, I never got a sexy vibe off them rather a tight “fraternal” bond.
Oh yeah, it should be mentioned – If anybody ever needs more Paxton in Hudson mode, just re-watch Weird Science.
1. The idea of a Queen doesn’t make sense for a very basic reason that I actually rarely ever see discussed: The Alien that erupted from Kane would have been a Queen if that were going to be a plausible life cycle for the creature. But the Alien that is born from Kane isn’t a Queen. It’s a normal “drone.”
2. Burke’s plan for Alien “smuggling” is laughable and is really, really goddamn awful.
3. Thanks almost solely to Ripley’s hair, the movie remains the most easy to place in the time it was made.
4. People harp on the plothole introduced in the first five minutes of the third film, but I find it’s no less implausible than the Queen somehow hitching a ride in the landing gear of the drop ship. I mean, are we really expected to believe she somehow curled up inside of that space in the brief moment the landing gear got hooked on the debris?
Anyway, I find as I get older that Aliens increasingly becomes the weakest of the first three for me.
#1 works just fine – there were hundreds of eggs on the ship, the odds of getting a queen-laying face-hugger with one shot were extremely low.
Well, giving Ripley extra motivation isn’t a bad thing– I think the movie would’ve been less interesting if Ripley hadn’t had a) someone to protect and b) someone to talk to who’s neither a super-hardass nor a smarmy Paul Reiser.
Also, Newt’s presence is a big signal as to how this movie is going to be different from ALIEN: it’s survivable. The first movie is pretty grim and fatalistic– it’s just barely possible to escape alive from one of these things. That implies that if you went to a planet full of hundreds of them, you’d all be be dead in five minutes, guns or no guns. Newt having survived this far makes it seem like there’s more hope.
Having just watched the director’s cut a couple of days ago, I wouldn’t agree that it’s obvious. Dallas looks pretty goopy and Brett looks pretty far gone and unrecognizable, but to say that they are becoming pods, do you have a source for that?
Yeah, I’ll back-up Suitably Ironic Moniker: if I had not been told the Alien was cocooning them by all the behind-the-scenes info, I would not have known that’s what the Alien was up to. The scene is pretty vague and it looks like (to me) the Alien is saving them to eat them later.
One of my favorite shots in this film is the intense close-up of Bishop crawling in the pipe. It’s a wonderful shot – perfect for capturing not only the claustrophobia of that scenario, but also the fact that we’re not supposed to be sure we can trust Bishop at that point… he looks even stranger than normal in that cramped view with its lurid under lighting. The sound design there is awesome, too. A great, often-forgotten moment in the film…
I’m going to have to second all of Lucky Jim’s points. You’ve said everything I was going to say. But I think it’s also worth mentioning that the music from Aliens was used in just about every single acrion or thriller movie trailer for a good 15 years. THAT’s longevity right there.
Crap. Action! Not acrion! WTF is acrion??? I know in one of the Aliens related comics that I think came with an action figure they discussed a planet called Archeron. But I MEANT action movie trailers!!!
Jesus I am sick of this Alien vs Aliens crap. There is no way that Aliens is even in the same ballpark as Alien.
Alien is a sublime movie, almost perfect in tone, style, acting and most of all design. It holds up so well, the semi-improvised dialogue makes it sound totally contemporary. The interplay between the classes of workers is timeless and the Alien…
The Alien is… and I can’t over state this enough is INDESTRUCTIBLE… it does not die in Alien. Ripley blasts it out the airlock into the vacuum of space and it tries to get back in. It finds shelter in the rockets of the Narcissus and survives a blast that should vaporise it. Ash states clearly that it can not be killed. it is perfect.
And then in Aliens it falls to bits when a bullet hits it. Total rubbish.
And the terrible stereotypes at play in Aliens is insulting… evil corporate goons, macho soldiers.. and Ripley… Ripley that went from being a three dimensional WOMAN, who at times is terrified, furious, confused, desperate… becomes defined by her maternal instinct. SHE’S A WOMAN SO SHE WANTS TO PROTECT THAT AWFUL NEWT. She is entirely defined by her sex…it’s so sexist and old fashioned it makes me sick.
Don’t you guys see it at all? It’s a studio wet dream sequel –
Only one alien in alien… now we have loads
What? No guns? GUNS GUNS!!
A surrogate mother protecting an innocent child? Lets have her take on another mother!
Lovely semi-improvised, realistic non-speechy dialogue, fuck that! We want catch phrases!!
Slow subtle build… we’ll have that for a bit but lets get to it.
A showdown where Ripley slowly straps into a space suit whilst desperately try to stay as calm as possible by nervously singing a song to herself – er… GAY! GUNS! CATCH PHRASES, MUSCLES, Robot power loaders that have been foreshadowed with sooooo little subtly.
Man sized Alien that doesn’t die? FUCK THAT I want to see them EXPLODE!
That acid is a threat but no one is ever killed with it? What’s up with that. ACID ACID!
As for the special edition… even worse, over long and tedious… our Ripley’s suddenly a mother and thats why she likes Newt…
And here’s the main flaw – Ripley, no matter what, would NEVER EVER GO BACK!
I hate what they do to the Alien so much, they have absolutely no understanding of it. They utterly de-sexualise the movie. Alien is dripping with sex, from the womb like state of the Nostromo and computer called mother, to the derelict that has three vaginal openings and is constructed in the shape of a fallopian tube… and then the Alien itself… a fucking monster with a penis on it’s head that has teeth. Absolutely amazing.
And in Aliens they’re weak assed insects that fall to bits super easy but wait, there’s a bigger one… so that’s okay. Except the design is awful, it never looks like a threat.
Urgh… are you all so blind to this?
Plus Alien has a black guy that almost makes it to the end, and this film was made in the 70’s.
Aliens is so shockingly dated, horrible acting and terrible terrible special effects… crap models and dreadful blue screen… Alien has only maybe two slight special effect weakness, both of which are split second shots, one which is the head of Ash.
The planet is Alien is meant to be tiny… TINY! And they build a shake and bake there and no one notices the the derelict… well they do because Aliens is basically a piss poor BIGGER BIGGER BIGGER copy of Alien.
C’mon people, grow up and stop loving a load childish crap that Cameron shits out. He has no subtly in his work, and it ages terribly. Everything in Aliens is EXPLAINED… EVERYTHING. Nothing is a mystery. Nothing, for a nano seconds even comes close to the awesome majesty of the Space Jockey…
And don’t get me started on Alien 7 (Prometheus)… pointless… beyond pointless…
From the commentary track:
“…they’re morphing, metamorphosing, they are changing into…being consumed, I guess, by whatever the Alien’s organism is…into an egg.” – Ridley Scott
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always wondered why they never mentioned the horseshoe ship from Alien to Aliens. If it’s the same planet, where did it go?
If I remember correctly there’s a deleted scene depicting Newt’s father visiting it in a rover, where he’s promptly face-hugged. And they do mention it in the theatrical cut. It’s part of the “I made a bad call” line of dialogue that Burke spits out. Ripley checks the communication logs and finds out Burke sent Newt’s family to check out the derelict craft.
Sorry, but if you’re counting either of the AvP films as proper sequels, then you’re only hurting yourself.
The thinking is that the face hugger would have produced a queen embryo in the absence of any living queens to generate a new “hive.”
Yes, I remember that part, I should clarify, I meant what happened to it after they found it again? Obviously WY Corp did something to it.
Or maybe the Aliens infested the colonists too quickly, so the ship was still there? I don’t know, it just seemed like such a big missing plot point to me.
I’ve always used the Deleted Scene from Alien as a means to bridge this gap in logic. Think of the embryo being spawned as random; could be a Queen, could not. In the event that it’s a drone, they start capturing victims and the life-cycle follows Direction A: rather than using for the victims purely for facehuggers, some will start to morph into eggs a la Brett/Dallas until one produces a Queen facehugger. Once a Queen is produced, Direction B that we see introduced into Aliens comes into play. And I liken the idea to a pond full of same-sex frogs who will, by the sheer will of nature, start changing sex in order to continue reproducing.
Everything was NOT explained in Aliens, Herge Smith. Example: Who was eating that soggy doughnut Drake comes across in the office?
Do we know how far from the colony was the craft? Maybe we are meant to assume that the craft was destroyed in the meltdown. Bishop did say that ‘this place is going to be a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska’ so we don’t really know exactly the fate of the derelict ship.
Regardless, its not something that ALIENS has to explain. Seems like a bigger problem for the sequel, which goes to lengths to get Ripley herself, instead of just going back to LV426, so i guess that means according to canon, that the ship was destroyed.
I don’t count ANY of the sequels as proper… I’ve yet to see a proper sequel…
That is an excellent point… I’d completely forgotten about the soggy doughnut… and how exactly did it get so soggy?
That seems like a fair assumption. Look, Lambert said in Alien that the derelict if on a planetoid. LV427 or whatever is tiny… she said 1200km… which I assume isn’t a reference to how far the Nostromo is from it as that would mean they were basically on it, but the diameter, which makes it about a third of our moon.
I’ve been calling Prometheus Alien 7 all week…I’m such an asshole.
**to the derelict that has three vaginal openings**
Are you sure you aren’t confusing this with Cinemax’s late night offering, Alien Hobo?
Technically, I don’t think the creatures in Aliens were that much of a full re-design. They used the same exact molds that Giger did for the suit, BUT they did change the hands and add that extra bone sticking out from the forearm. As for the head, the bony ribbed head was also part of Giger’s design and molds too, it was always there in Alien, but just barely noticeable underneath the translucent dome. Stan Winston originally had the domes over the ribbed heads but they kept breaking during action shots, so the decision was made to remove them. There was an official Fox website about the Alien life cycle that launched around the time Alien 4 came out, and it explained that the Aliens were born with a clear membraine over their heads that eventually came off as they aged. I always thought that made sense. I know it’s not exactly canon since that was never said in the movies, but I always thought it would be cool to see both domed and ribbed headed Aliens at the same time in a future sequel.
Yeah I see what you’re saying GQSioux, and I have read this about the holds but they do actually look very very different to the Alien in Alien. I guess a lot of this is due to the amount of screen time they get in Aliens, we just see them more, and for longer shots… but the penis head is totally lacking in Aliens, lifecycle or no… the translucent dome makes it all the more disturbing… a big penis with teeth coming at you…
I’m also aware that at one time the alien was going to have eyes, but again the decision not to use these makes the creature.
My comparison of insects in Aliens is valid… and by making them more understandable and relatable to us with the queen /egg / drone dynamic removes so much of the otherworldly-ness of the alien.
Having a not quite clear life cycle in Alien (with or without the cocoon scene) is genius.
You make some really good points though.
Oh man, that is the true sequel to Alien!
I stand corrected. Still, I like Cameron’s way better and since this was only in the DC and not the original, I’ll go with JC’s interpretation of the lifecycle.
“Having a not quite clear life cycle in Alien (with or without the cocoon scene) is genius.”
I fully agree with you here, Herge. Years back, I commented here at CHUD in the “I’ve Outgrown Aliens” thread saying that, in my opinion, to quantify a logical life cycle for the Alien is to largely miss of the point of Giger’s work. He’s not a Terryl Whitlach (although she is also an amazing artist), he’s drawing nightmares directly from the underside of the human mind. Giger’s Alien is meant to disturb and upset at a primal level, not to stand on a sensible scientific foundation at an intellectual level.
The Alien not having eyes is perfect example – it’s not particularly sensible, but it’s so much scarier and unsettling. A sightless monster that can still see you…
In the case of the Alien, I think that the more incomprehensible it can be, the more terrifying it becomes. Most of the franchise heads firmly in the opposite direction, though…
Here’s a question…
i’ve read a lot of speculation about the derelict and whether it was carrying the eggs as a form of weaponry. Now I’ve seen Alien hundreds of times and it has always seemed to me that the Space Jockey got infected and somewhere along the way an Alien was destroyed and melted through the hull into the cave beneath.
The ship looks big, but not large enough to have that MASSIVE cave that contains all the eggs. Kane describes it as a cave as well and as he descends into it t looks like it’s carved from rock.
So… and taking into account Lamberts question about what happened to the rest of the crew of the derelict and the cocooning life cycle suggested in the Directors Cut, do you guys think it’s possible that the rest of the crew fell victim to the Alien a la the Nostromo and all the eggs are the remains of the space jockey crew?
Look, I know what Ridley Scott has said about the ship and the space jockey and that but judging by the crappy directors cut of Alien he really has forgotten what was good about Alien in the first place… want an example, he adds in a bit of Parker and Ripley seeing Brett being taken into the ducts so it makes sense when in the next scene they tell the rest what they saw… BUT IT IS COMPLETELY REDUNDANT… no one ever wondered how they knew… we used our brains, plus it dramatically undercuts that beautiful moment when Brett is lifted away and she the cat watching it happen…
AND… as for Prometheus Scott has repeated said, “I was always surprised that no one asked about the space jockey” – YES WE DID, we just knew it was so wonderfully bizarre and ALIEN that no explanation would ever match our imaginations…
Until now…
Last word I promise… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE re-watch Alien and then Aliens and just see how miserable Aliens is in comparison…terrible acting, cliched characters, piss poor special effects (so much horrible rear projection),a basic retread of the main plot beats of Alien and yet ZERO ZERO ambiguity…
Micro changes in air density my ass…
Very last thought about Aliens… I know a couple of you have already said this but Bishop is excellent, and this is down entirely to Lance who seems to be acting as if he is in a much better movie… like Alien.
I don’t know that I’d quite eviscerate Aliens as completely as Herge Smith does, but I have always been surprised by the high regard in which it’s held; there’s a fair amount that I like about it, but it’s never felt to me like the action-movie pinnacle of its reputation.
In addition to the incongruities/retcons from movie to movie, and the superfluity of much of the Extended Edition, Aliens really began to lose me right after the introduction of the Marines– there’s some charm and cheese here and there in the performances, but after five minutes you realize that the film has no intention of even trying to make this incompetent clusterfuck into plausible foes for the creatures; then their ammo is taken away, and they might as well be teenagers being stalked by a slasher. I realize they need to be taken off the board so Ridley can have her final showdown, but if you’re going to make the shift from horror to action movie, with all that entails, a more well-matched battle would have been welcome.
I certainly don’t hate Aliens (just finished watching it again tonight), but it seems significant that what sticks with me about Alien are haunting images, while my memories of Aliens consist mostly of catch-phrases.
Last night my wife and I watched the first two flicks back-to-back, and I must admit, I don’t understand any of your outrage, Herge. “Aliens” is a stellar movieand holds up very, very well.
I think your primary beef is that it’s not “Alien,” but you can’t fault the movie for that. You must judge it for what it is, not what you want it to be. A decision was made to create a different kind of sequel, and as far as I’m concerned, it was the smartest thing they could have done. They were never going to match the first film’s atmospheric dread. Going full-tilt action-horror was the perfect solution.
By the way, did “Aliens” invent the action-horror genre?
Anyway, both films are terrific, classics of their genres, and I’m happy to have them both. I kind of hate myself, so today I’m going to watch 3 and 4. But I will not subject myself to the AvP films, sirs. I will not do that.
Captain Mal, I was forced to do the same thing last night by Doctor Girlfriend and best friend. So sick were they of hearing this week how disappointed I was with Alien 7 that after agreeing to watch the much more superior original theatrical cut of Alien we should also watch Aliens… and worse still the dreaded special edition.
Both agreed that it isn’t awful but both were surprised that Aliens was made so long after Alien, especially as it looks so dated compared to Alien.
And heres my thing, it’s not so much that it stinks (which I firmly believe it does, but then the only film by Cameron that really doesn’t is Terminator), but by as Jeb Delia says ‘the high regard for it’, and in particular comments here and everywhere when the films are discussed that Aliens is in some way a superior movie.
Captain Mal, could you see any of the points I was making after watching them back to back? –
1. Aliens is poorly written. You can feel the actors trotting out bombastic line after bombastic line… it never feels like real dialogue. Not a problem in itself, plenty of films suffer this, but after the naturalistic dialogue in Alien it feels incredibly jarring.
2. The Directors Cut is SOOOOOO long and repeats so much of Alien, poorly. The Scene where Newts family finds the derelict is a classic example. It reduces what was an awe inspiring scene in Alien into pretty much nothing, ‘oh, we can make loads of money out this… don’t argue kids’.
3. Cameron utterly de-sexes the movie to the point I get he’s really not comfortable with subtext, which of course he his… you’ve all seen Terminator 2, True Lies, The Abyss, Titanic and the hideous Avatar… every film is on the nose and 100% surface. ‘
Alien on the other hand quite literally is dripping with sexual subtext –
– The Nostromo computer is called Mother and the crew sleep in a womb like room, being born as the movie opens.
– The Derelict is formed in the shape of falopian tubes.
– It has three vaginal openings (also totally exorcised from Aliens… same ship but the parents enter via a torn hole in the side… couldn’t possible have then enter via a vagina… what would that say?)
– The ship itself is wet, coated literally in KY jelly.
– The Space Jockey is fused with a chair with a massive phallus sticking almost directly out of him.
– The face hugger face rapes Kane, forcing an intubebational penis down his throat.
– He then gives birth to the Alien in a shockingly violent manner.
– The alien has a big smooth cock as a head.
– The cock head has teeth, an inversion of vagina-dentata .
– Again, the alien is dripping wet with KY jelly.
– The duct system the Alien hides in is punctuated CLEARLY with opening and closing sphincters
– Ash bleeds cum from his head
– Ash tries to mouth rape to death Ripley with a fucking porn mag…
– The Alien rapes Lambert to death, possibly anally.
So much… it’s filthy really and a beautiful representation of nightmare sexual imagery of H R Giger.
In fact the only place sex isn’t present is between the crew, with only one innuendo from Parker.
Aliens on the other hand only has sexual reference when grunted by the cardboard characters in a weak attempt to develop them…
4. The theatrical version of Aliens with the marines finding an already destroyed colony is admittedly pretty cool. Very very similar to MacReady and Doc investigating the ruins of the Norwegian camp in The Thing… again it’s all about letting out imagination fill the gaps. But as it turns out this one cool moment is more due to financial pressure to cut the horribly bloated film down to a size which can be shown more times each day at the cinema. The directors cut has that horrible stilted exposition scene at Hadleys Hope where the director says something along the lines of, ‘I just follow orders and if i’m told to send a family out to a location as dictated by the company then i do it.’
This of course ultimately undercuts any suggestion that Burke may be legit. It’s already established BEFORE THEY EVEN LEAVE FOR LV427 that the company sent Newts family to its doom.
5. Did I mention the dialogue?
Alien dialogue –
“i just wanted to mention the bonus situation, this has never been on what you may call an equitable level”” You get what you contract for” “yeah but everyone gets more than us”
“Quit gripping” “I like gripping”
“Complete forfeiture of shares… no money”
“Has anyone got anything to say? (before they launch Kane into space)…” No one says anything.
Aliens dialogue –
“God dammit that’s not all, because if one of those things gets down here, then you can kiss all this goodbye”
“A day in the corp is like a day on the farm…”
“Have you ever been mistaken for a man?” “No, have you?”
“I’ve told you I don’t want you playing in the ducts…” “Everyone does it mommy” (subtle…)
“Stop your grinning and drop your linen”
In fact anything any of the marines says is painful…
Great to quote but not a patch on beautiful Alien script.
6. Special Effects.
Alien has only really two moments where the effects are a bit ropey –
– Ashes decapitated head looks a bit dodgy to be fair, but once it’s Ian Holm again it looks terrific.
– The post chest burst Young Alien dash across the dinner table doesn’t look great and slightly undercuts the power of the scene… only very very slightly mind you.
Everything else in a movie almost 35 years old is amazing. The model work is bliss, the landing of the Nostromo on the planetoid fantastic, the derelict and space jockey, the descent into the cave, the fucking alien… just exceptional.
And here’s the thing, two very different artists creating two very different worlds was just genius.
The effects in Aliens from the ‘oh it’s a dream’ Ripley chest burst scene to ALL, and I mean ALL of the shocking rear projection stuff looks like a 1970’s cop show
The model work is awful, they contain zero weight and look like Cameron just borrowed some thunderbirds to get the point. Even the derelict looks rubbish… and don’t even mention the drop ship…
7. That kid.
8. The Aliens in Aliens… look I can kill it with my hand gun…
Okay yes I can clearly go on and on…
But my point remains., i wouldn’t give a shit about all Aliens weaknesses if it wasn’t a sequel to Alien and it wasn’t held in such high regard.
I feel like the geek community (of which I am a paid up member) has such a massive blind spot for James Cameron that they can’t see what a B-grade special effects artist hack he is…
I would be the first to cheer (I wouldn’t really) if there really was a half decent sequel to Alien but there never has been because NO ONE really gets what made Alien so remarkable.
And that ‘no one’ most definitely includes Ridley Scott.
My list of Alien films in preference –
1. Alien
2. None of the others…
3. Maybe a bit of Alien 3
4. Alien 7
“By the way, did “Aliens” invent the action-horror genre?”
It borrows heavily from THEM. But there were plenty of SF movies in the 50s where army guys fire guns at invading space aliens and monsters.
Acheron is either the name of the planetoid the derelict is on in ALIEN or the name of that giant planet nearby. I don’t think it’s said in the movie though.
Herge, you make a couple good points, and some that I don’t understand. I’ll address them in the order you wrote:
1) I do not agree that “Aliens” is poorly-written. You address this point twice, but since you focused on the dialog further down, I’ll talk here about the structure and plot. “Aliens” excels as an action-thriller, and has probably never been surpassed in terms of execution. The tension is set up early on, and is slowly cranked, incrementally, until the shit finally hits the fan. The early comedy gives way to fear and paranoia, and the interpersonal dynamics of the characters become increasingly frayed as the cast gets smaller and smaller. The threat level increases while the playing field slowly shrinks. The characters’ plan is clearly laid out, and every event follows naturally from the preceding events or from set-ups earlier in the film. There are no, “WTF are they doing?” moments. As released in the theatres, it’s a very tight, and brilliantly-constructed screenplay.
2) The Director’s Cut. I agree, it’s terrible. This was the first time I remember seeing a director’s cut and realizing, “Oh, sometimes the theatrical version is better.” The mother/daughter stuff with Ripley is superfluous, the early scenes on LV-426 undercut the tension when the marines arrive, and they are also redundant of what we’ve already seen in the first film.
3) I agree with you that the first film is “dripping with sexual subtext,” but do not understand why you hold this against the sequel, which, as noted, is a different kind of film. Ridley Scott was making a creepy horror film, designed to make us squirm in our seats, and squishy, Freudian, sexual allusions are some of the tools he used to do that (and very effectively). Cameron was not going for that. He was making a thrill-ride, and therefore chose a different set of tools. Different flicks, different vibes. (I might point out that “Alien 3” was also dripping with sexual subtext, and it’s a pile of garbage, so sexual subtext isn’t a virtue, in and of itself.) With this point, you seem to be criticizing the film for not being what you want it to be.
4) This point is a re-hash of why the Director’s Cut is inferior, and I agree with all of your points. Nevertheless, I don’t watch the Director’s Cut, so none of this is relevant for me.
5) The dialogue. “Aliens” is one of the most quotable movies of it’s era. “Get away from her, you bitch,” “Game over, man,” “It’s the only way to be sure,” “They mostly come at night, mostly,” “Why don’t you put her in charge,” “Have you ever been mistaken for a man? No, have you?” These are all memorable lines, well-delivered. No, it’s not naturalistic. Yes, it’s movie-speak. No, I don’t mind that. 🙂
6) The special effects are a bit dodgy in some places, including, yes, the rear-projection stuff. You can’t, however, hold that against the film, given the era in which it was shot. The Star Wars films, long held as the standard by which special-effects films were judged, also have some very dodgy looking shots, including miniatures and compositing. The first “Alien” film didn’t suffer from this, because it wasn’t nearly as ambitious as the sequel, but it does suffer from it’s own special-effect inadequacies — including the two bits you pointed out, but also including the full-grown creature, which looks very much like a guy in a rubber suit.)
7. The kid doesn’t bother me. She doesn’t have enough lines or screen time to ruin the film, and some of her scenes are actually quite good, considering.
8. This bit is debatable. I don’t know the first film as well as you do, but do we have any reason to believe the alien would be impervious to bullets? I know Ash says something like, “It can’t be killed,” but I always assumed he was speaking from a natural perspective (i.e., there are no evolutionary predators for the alien). Obviously, anything living can be killed.
I’ve never seen “THEM,” but it sounds like I’ll have to look into it.
As for those 50’s flicks, I guess I always considered those sci-fi and/or fantasy, not horror. Perhaps that’s just because they seem so quaint to my modern sensibilities.
You know, there’s one thing about Aliens that I really don’t care for, and that is the depicted communication between the queen and the “standard” aliens. I guess it all ties back into the idea of relating the aliens to a colony structure model (which I don’t much care for either), but having what is basically a conversation take place just de-mystifies the hell out the aliens.
Ripley basically cuts a temporary deal with the queen – which means that the queen can reason as we reason, and so that communication is possible. One of the great things about the organism in Alien is that it’s not presented that way at all… it’s simply a force of nature, doing what it does remorselessly. Ash pegs that about it. You certainly don’t get the idea in Alien that you could reason with it somehow if only you had the right leverage. That’s part of why it’s so scary… there are no deals to be cut. If it finds you (and it will come looking) you’re in big trouble, guaranteed.
I feel that having the alien’s life cycle and motivation be largely incomprehensible (and Ridley barely even shows us the whole creature) makes it all the more psychologically terrifying, and the more aspects of it that are made relatable and understandable simply dilute its power to frighten.
I accept Alien and Aliens as two different type of movies and find that both of them work very well for their type (horror vs action). But I do have an issue with the queen. The logic jump from “Kane said the ship was full of hundreds of those eggs.” to “Where are all these eggs coming from?” thus establishing the need for something to be laying the eggs simply cripples my brain. Ripley states the first fact from the original movie then quickly forgets it later to allow Cameron to wedge his queen character into the film. There was no need to make that leap. The original idea was that the humans are cocooned to become eggs. While that was left out in the theatrical version it gave Cameron the wiggle room necessary (or unnecessary) to add more of his own vision.
That always bothered me more than anything else in the movie and something that hit me immediately during my first viewing in the theater. Otherwise I thoroughly enjoy the movie (except for maybe Newt).
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.