Alright spooky people?

As promised, here is a review of 1986’s Aliens, the sequel to Alien! It’s part horror, part war movie and on the whole really rather good. Spoilers ahead!

Before watching this film, as you could likely tell from my preview I was expecting good things. It’s funny, because Alien was both a franchise-spawning Horror movie and an 80s blockbuster, and often the sequels to those things are decidedly hit or miss. Horror classics like Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween have plenty of dodgy sequels, and anyone whose seen Robocop 3 can tell you it’s not worth bothering with- so when looking at Aliens in its contemporary context, one could easily have imagined it might be a bit of cash-in or botch job. Indeed, future entries in this very franchise are not all critically lauded. But I had heard from both friends and the pop culture grapevine that Aliens was really quite good. Indeed Empire Magazine called it the ‘perfect sequel’. So I was expecting a pretty great film, and I got it!

Before I discuss what I liked about the film, let me give you a (spoiler-filled) run-down of the plot. 57 years after the event of Alien, protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is picked up whilst floating in space in her wreck of a ship. She has been in ‘hypersleep’, not aging and effctively in stasis whilst time moved around her. When she recounts the events of the first film to her superiors, she is not believed. Others have been to LV-426 and not encountered the aliens she’s describing. So she takes on labouring work having been disgraced and being 57 years out of touch. Shortly however, the colony that has been established on LV-426 drops out of contact, and Ripley is sent, along with a group of Marines, to investigate what has happened. As you might have guessed, Aliens happened. The Marines encounter the Xenomorphs and are quickly humiliated by them, losing several of their crew and needing to retreat. As the events of the film unfold, the Aliens close in around the survivors and their defences, they go o the run and fight to survive until finally Ripley, a Marine, an Android and a child survivor they found manage to make an escape- but not before fighting off a never-before-seen Xenomorph Queen…

Let’s talk about what I liked about this film. Before I get into specifics, unlike the films I normally write about on this blog, the film is fundamentally well made. It wouldn’t be interesting to talk about how the script, the lighting, the directing and so forth were all decidedly competent, so just take it as read that all the basics here are good. It’s the specifics of what I think works really well which set the film apart. Firstly, the use of sound in this film is brilliant. in my review of Alien, I spoke about how good the audio was and the same is true here. Through sparing use of music, quality sound design and judicious use of silence, the film is made to feel intimate and real, with the quiet noises of equipment, people and creatures all feeling very real and very close. Moreover, when it is called for, the film uses big swells of noise to put across ideas of space and tension and it really works well. Much like the dubstep-style WHOMPS that Hans Zimmer used for Inception, these swells of noise give the film a signature feel and a sense of thematic weight. The film was composed by James Horner.
On top of this distinctiveness, is the way the world of the film is fleshed out. Ideas, motifs and visual details are weaved into the world without ever being thrust at the viewer. We learn about the reputation of company men like Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) through one quick line- ‘I work for the company. But don’t let that fool you- I’m really an OK guy’. We see how the future being portrayed is grounded in a familiar past as we see Ripley’s Reeboks- space age and different, but recognisably a pair of Reebok trainers. Then there are the power-loaders which represent a very believable future version of the fork-lift truck; and there’s something very believable about humans being stuck with manual labour even in the far-future.
As so much of this film, much like the first, is about Ripley though, it wouldn’t be up to much if the central performance/ characterisation wasn’t any good. Fortunately it is! Sigourney Weaver is very good as the compassionate, steely and sensible Ripley. She keeps a cool head and determination even as the people around her fall apart. She’s suffering from some trauma from the first film, but pushes through her fear to do what needs to be done. Don’t forget, Ripley was an anomaly in 1980s blockbusters- a capable female heroine. As such, the character carried an extra burden of having to prove the doubters wrong, but the actress and film make a great success of it. Another potential hurdle is the fact that a child actor plays a prominent part. Children can feel a bit out of place in this sort of film, but Newt (Carrie Henn) is a good mixture of humour and pathos, getting better as the film goes on.
As I referred to earlier, Empire called this a ‘perfect sequel’, and there’s something to that. This films expands on the world of Alien effectively as outline above, but also treads an impressive line between doing something new with the franchise whilst making sure it feels thematically consistent. The first film was a Ghost story with an Alien, the second is more like a Vietnam story with some Aliens. But the themes and story beats of the first film are referenced and kept in tact in this sequel. Ripley’s trauma, the evolutionary perfection of the Xenomorph, Corporate greed outweighing human life, Ripley’s relationship with androids, it’s all there and calls back to the first film. I particularly like the fact that the idea of the Xenomorph being like a ghost or ‘monster’ is continued; everyone scoffs at what Ripley claims to have seen- until they see it for themselves.
Finally, I would be remiss not to point out that this film succeeds partly due to James Cameron. As the director and one of the writers of this film, he had a pretty big hand in it. And while there’s a couple of moments that feel TOO James Cameron-y (which I’ll come to later), the mixture of periods of great tension and sudden outbursts of action and terror work extremely well, and his direction is a big part of that. The blending of War film and Horror film could have fallen flat, but instead provide an interesting twist on both genres, which is impressive in of itself.

So as you can tell, I have a lot of praise for this film and did very much enjoy it. There were a few minor issues I had though, which I’ll outline now:
At the beginning of the film, when the Marines are all cocky and, well, alive, I found them pretty irritating. They are brash, dick-swinging macho types who, if they were alive today, would definitely have a few videos up on Facebook where they smash lager tins against their foreheads in Wetherspoons. This is a criticism tempered, however, by recognition that it’s sort of the point. Classically, in horror films (particularly ‘slasher movies’), characters that die early are made out to be pretty objectionable or ‘bad’ so that the audience doesn’t mind their loss too much- even cheering for the killer/ monster if they’re charismatic enough- and I feel like that’s a device used here. I did not mind losing a couple of those jerks. Additionally, the fact that they’re all so cocky makes their humiliation at the hands of the Xenomorphs all the more effective. Nonetheless, it did grate a little.
The other problems I would group into one larger group of problems that reflect the context of the film’s creation. For one thing, Ripley gets her kit off again. I understand you need to be dressed down for hypersleep, but would a military vessel really put Marines and civilian men and women all next to each other all in their underwear? I doubt it. Just seems like a good excuse to gawp at Weaver in her pants. Another thing, and this is what I referred to as too ‘James Cameron-y’, a film that succeeds so much in subtlety and moments of tension doesn’t benefit from the bombast of lines like: ‘Get away from her YOU BITCH’. I know its a classic line to the franchise and its fans, but it felt forced to me. Lastly, I hope that, if this film was made today, Ripley’s trauma and its affect on her would be explored in more depth. I think it would have added to the film if there was a deeper exploration of her attempting to overcome it to defeat the Alien menace and it would be a good thing for people to get to see a better exploration of mental health issues- Sci-Fi is the perfect vehicle for exploring very real human problems in analogous and fantastical settings.
But these are all pretty small complaints in truth!

The last thing I want to talk about is the ‘Big Themes’ that I wondered in my preview whether I’d spot. Some of those I’ve seen identified are: Motherhood; The Nuclear Family; Evolution; and a Feminist Heroine/ Sexual politics. I think I can see where each of these apparent themes have been identified. The Alien Queen and all her Eggs vs Ripley and her surrogate daughter Newt, as well as the bloody and painful method of the aliens ‘birth’ both this theme. The Nuclear Family makes an appearance through Ripley, Newt and Hicks being the last (human) survivors. Evolution is something I’ve already mentioned, as technologically advanced humans fail to really defeat a perfect hunting organism. And the sexual politics side of things is pretty obvious with Ripley being an arse kicking, trail-blazing woman heroine fighting of legions of decidedly phallic aliens. I must confess I thought, from the way the reviews I read sounded, that the film would have something profound or complex to say about these things, In truth, it doesn’t, they are simply laced throughout the film as ideas that come up- more of a: ‘look at this thing’ situation than a: ‘here’s what I think about this thing’ one. And that’s fine!

To summarise I liked Aliens a lot. I think if I absolutely had to choose I liked Alien slightly better, but would (and will) happily watch either again!

4 stars!: ****

-Tom