ALIENS - 1986
20th Century Fox
Ratings: USA: R |
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It probably doesn't happen often, but if for whatever reason the phrase 'seventeen
days' comes up in conversation, do you react by saying:
"Seventeen days?! We're not gonna last seventeen hours!"
Some of you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of you nod. We understand
each other.
ALIENS, the second movie in what has come to be known as the Alien
Legacy series, was directed by the masterful James Cameron (THE
TERMINATOR, TERMINATOR 2) and written by Mr. Cameron, David Giler (ALIEN, ALIENS [story]) and Walter Hill (ALIENS [story]).
At the end of the first film Ripley (Sigourney Weaver: ALIEN [all]
GHOSTBUSTERS [all]) and Jones the cat are the only survivors from the cargo ship Nostromo. This movie opens with Ripley and Jones in hypersleep (suspended animation) on board a lifeboat spacecraft. A much larger ship approaches and docks and someone cuts through
the lifeboat airlock. Spacesuited figures come aboard and seem disappointed
to discover Ripley is alive, because that means the loss of their salvage rights.
Ripley wakes up in a hospital apparently in orbit around Earth. She's told, by Carter
Burke (Paul Reiser), a representative from Weyland-Yutani (The Company), that she's been in hypersleep for 57 years.
Ripley the survivor, admirable for her strength that got her through the events of
the first film, is a basket case. The story feels that much more real
and Ripley more like a real human being because of her vulnerability.
She made it home but the nightmare she went through is still with her.
Severe post traumatic stress syndrome.
And that's not her only problem. The cargo ship Ripley blew up in a failed attempt
to kill the Alien warrior was property of Weyland-Yutani (worth
$42 million in adjusted dollars, we are told). An inquest is held
and nobody believes Ripley's story about the creature. She's assumed to
be at fault and her career as the 22nd century equivalent of an officer
in the merchant marines is over.
I say 22nd century just as a guess, because the events in the first movie seem at
least a century in the future. Add 57 years of hypersleep and you're talking
late 22nd / early 23rd century. You'd think Ripley's career would be over
anyway because her skills would certainly have been made obsolete by advances
in technology. Not that she couldn't be retrained.
When Ripley asks why the Company doesn't just check out her story by sending someone
to the planet where her crew found the derelict Alien ship, she's horrified
to hear that during her long sleep the planet has been terraformed (made
earthlike) and colonized. She's told 60 or 70 families have lived there for years.
Ripley starts her life from scratch, working as a cargo loader in a docking bay. Not
great work but better than being chased around by Alien monsters. Then
Carter Burke shows up again, accompanied by Lt. Gorman (William
Hope: HELLRAISER II)
of the colonial marines. The colony on LV-426 (didn't
anyone ever get around to giving this planet a decent name?) has
gone silent. The marines are being sent in to find out what's going on
and Burke (a nominal civilian but Gorman defers to him, giving a clue as to the Company's clout) wants Ripley to
come with as a consultant. He offers her reinstatement as a flight officer.
She refuses outright at first but eventually says yes. Why? Actually, it makes a certain
kind of psychological sense. Traumatized Vietnam veterans often found
themselves volunteering for another tour of duty in the place that had
so damaged them. It becomes an obsession. It's all you can think about
anyway - you relive it in your dreams every night anyway - so going back
finally becomes a comfort in a terrible way.
An apparently
fully automated troop ship, the Sulaco, brings Ripley, Burke and Gorman's
platoon of colonial marines to orbit around LV-426. Immediately some soldiers
stand out, including Hudson (Bill Paxton: THE TERMINATOR, NEAR DARK, PREDATOR 2, FRAILTY),
Hicks (Michael Biehn: THE TERMINATOR, MEGIDDO: The Omega Code 2)
and Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein: NEAR
DARK, TERMINATOR 2). Also on board, much to Ripley's dislike, is an android (who prefers being called an 'artificial person') named Bishop (Lance Henrickson: THE TERMINATOR, NEAR DARK, ALIEN 3, ALIEN VS. PREDATOR). Ripley's previous experience
with androids (the character 'Ash' in the first movie) has made her a bit skittish around synthetics.
In an awesome sequence a dropship brings them to the surface and the troops cautiously
approached the apparently abandoned settlement. The power is still on
and there's no outward signs of damage, but the people are gone. All but
one: a half-crazed little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) who clearly has been living here alone for some time.
So where is everybody? I can't tell you that, so to make up for it I'll give you a
!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
I've heard other (lesser) science geeks point
to the dropships "drop" from the Sulaco as a mistake. They were
in orbit - and thus in free fall - and simply releasing clamps on the
drop ship should not have caused it to fall so precipitously from its
mother ship. I have no problem with this scene because clearly (given
the way people are moving around on the ship) these people have
generated gravity technology. Given that, it's easy to imagine that the drop ship is accelerated by a pulse from the gravity generator,
giving the appearance of a dramatic "fall" from the Sulaco.
Too bad this movie also has an
!!!UNFAIR
RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT!!!:
There are plenty of black folk and a white woman who plays a Hispanic.
They are all of course, slaughtered in the time honored Horror movie cliché
of Kill All The Black People/non-whites. This is not to say that the movie
doesn't have its share of white characters getting killed too. It does.
The UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT is to let you know that,
no matter how many victims or how many people from different races in
the movie, the whites and ONLY the whites were cast as the survivors.
For a complete list, go to UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ
ALERT.
This is THE sci-fi/Thriller movie that other films aspire to be. Of course
Ripley faces her worst fears and then some, and we learn a great deal
more about the Alien life-cycle. There is heroism and betrayal, courage
and cowardice. It's just one of those movies that no matter how often
you see it, you never get tired of it. That, by definition, makes it worth
5 shriek girls. ALIENS definitely earns the big 5.
This review copyright 2003 E.C.McMullen Jr.
Go to the ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION Review
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