Movie Notes: Aliens
= 4 stars
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn
Directed by James Cameron
Synopsis
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the sole survivor from a spaceship encounter with a highly dangerous alien, returns to Earth and tries to put her life back together. Unfortunately, due to corporate ineptitude she finds herself returning to the planet where the original alien hailed from to fight an entire colony of them, with a squad of marines.
The Good
- Since the crew of the first flick was ill prepared to deal with one alien, we now get to see if a full-fledged military unit can take out an entire alien colony. The military angle also provides more opportunity for humor that was missing in the original, plus some ridiculously huge weapons and machinery used by a jacked-up future military primed for interplanetary ass-kicking.
- Weaver is asked to move into a stock action hero, and she delivers. The last sequence between Ripley in a big mech suit and the mother alien is extremely tense and effective.
- While I wasn’t into the Newt character on my initial viewing many years ago, I can better relate to the maternal instinct she evokes in our heroine.
The Bad
- The corporate subplot is just an excuse to get Ripley back in a situation where she must fight aliens.
- Not as big a fan of Cameron’s bombastic, epic directing style — I preferred the calmer, tense, Scott channeling Kubrick of the predecessor, which I should also add, is scarier.
Conclusion
While the first flick combined horror and sci fi, this one replaces the horror with action spectacle as in lots of gross things exploding in large, epic ways. It delivers on those terms.
IMDB: Aliens
Wikipedia: Aliens
Rotten Tomatoes: Aliens 100%
Oh man, ya just gotta watch this for — if nothing else — Bill Paxton’s Hudson character… “I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but we just our asses kicked, man!”
The mech fighting scene is great. Yeah, the plot is terrible if you stop and think about it but this movie is more about the action and special effects. I’ll agree the first one was scarier but the action in Aliens is great!
Heh — yeah the whole military squad of misfits was definitely funny. Bill paxton will always be the older brother in Weird Science to me
The Oligarchy is Machiavellian in structure, does one thing to appear gentle and kind, another thing to maintain it’s powerful strength and Patrician Power structure. Already, democrat or republican, we have an inherited ruler class.
One of the best “guys movie”. Great action and suspense.
[…] that in order to differentiate itself, the makers were going for more mainstream action, perhaps Aliens, as seen by the young kids and a military heroine — well, they were […]