One From The Crypt : Aliens

It is said in certain circles that so much testosterone was fused into the very film used to shoot James’ Cameron’s Aliens that if you play the movie backwards it will give you an abortion. That being said, Cameron’s Aliens is a “what if” scenario film that takes big and makes it even bigger. Bigger guns, bigger ships and bigger Aliens. It does so in such a fashion that it literally date rapes the original’s stifling sense of isolation and confinement and gives us a whole new world to play with. And that is the name of the game with the sequel to Scott’s classic scifi shocker, EXPANSION.

Aliens is not so much the sequel to Alien as it is the sequel to the late night diner conversations about Alien. It gives us the coolness and the novelty of the original by taking those ideas and questions and expanding them. What is the world of Alien like and how does it differ from the world now? What kinds of weapons do they have in this world? What if instead of bluecollar workers the alien(s) was up against a band of gun-toting, foulmouthed, trigger happy space marines?!?!?

Our story opens with sole survivor of the first film Ripley, still in a heavy cryosleep as a salvage team finds her and her cat 57 years after the events of the original. After recounting the events that left her crew dead she is held accountable for her actions of self preservation which, coincidentally, resulted in the destruction of corporation property totaling in the tens of millions. The Weyland Yutani corporation quickly revokes our heroine’s flight license telling her that the planet whose distress signal they responded to has been colonized for the last twenty years therefore throwing her testimony out in an act of true douchebaggery. Fastforward to Ripley taking the only job she can on the loading docks when out-of-the-blue… Weyland Yutani loses contact with their colony. Asking for Ripley’s help the corporation leverages the reinstatement of her flight license and Ripley, along with company rep Paul Reiser and a group of surly, firepower packing marines is on her way to LV-426.

The rest of the film follows a core group of the soldiers, along with Ripley and Reiser’s character Burke, as they attempt to escape the legions of aliens on LV-426 with their lives. Although we are treated to a “who survives and what will be left of them” formula, Cameron’s approach almost singlehandedly redefined the sub-genre of sc-fi action. There is a giddy love and reverence for Scott’s universe that makes Cameron’s film approachable and, in some terms a more mainstream and digestible approach to the franchise.

Cameron’s soldiers are stereotypes,sure but are still likable and we genuinely want to see them live to fight another day. Ripley is stronger and somehow her wisdom in the face of Weyland yutani’s greedy naievete makes her ever more the hero. Henricksen’s take on the human-loving android Bishop AGAIN brings our audience to sympathise with yet another character, this one almost incapable of complete destruction, yet somehow we still fear for his safety. AGAIN, we are dealing with EXPANSION, this time of the classic character archetype.

SO it might all seem like glitz and spent shells but Aliens introduces an interesting social narrative into the film that continues throughout the rest of the series. The aliens, as vicious as they are, represent an investment and corporation’s like to earn a return on their investments. As Ripley and the colonial marines fight for their lives, reiser’s Burke fights for a sinister corporate agenda and the real monster finally makes it appearance. It is Weyland Yutani’s deception and ultimately inhuman lust for profit shares that makes our character’s struggle that much more personal.

It has often been said that to compare Scott’s Alien to Cameron’s Aliens is like comparing apples to oranges. I disagree. I think the inability to compare the two should be a hallmark of any great episodic story. Not only did Aliens set a benchmark for genre sequels, it also set a benchmark for Cameron’s career as he went on to direct the current top two worldwide grossing films of all time.

My only criticsm of Aliens is not a fault of its own, but in that its iconic action movie portrayl of the marines has been so over-used and copied over the last 26 years that in retrospect it is almost a parody of itself. Well, that and the director’s choice not to use Queen’s Killer Queen when we first see the queen alien, which would have been balls-out awesome. 

Tags: HR Giger, James Cameron, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Sigourney Weaver, xenomorph, Aliens