Movie Review: Aliens

 

Aliens (1986)

I try to make it like a bit of a tradition to review an old-school sci-fi horror movie every Halloween -- something that admittedly isn't a tradition that I stick particularly religiously to because I skipped 2019. But hey, here we are with Aliens, the actionized sequel to the original Alien. And it's... it's really interesting how different the vibe of Aliens is compared to its predecessor while retaining so much of what is scary about the first. 

With a change in directors and a shift from tense, nerve-wracking horror to a completely different sort of tense in that it's a tense, action-packed survival horror, Aliens basically crafted a genre of its own. The genre that an audience several decades down the line would take for granted with the likes of Halo or Starcraft or Doom -- the genre of a group of 'Space Marines' going up against a bunch of inhuman, superpowered aliens with big chunky guns. And it's really hard to review a movie like this -- something that defined a genre of story all on its own. 

The thing is, though, the movie works well even as a sequel to the original Alien, putting aside the difference in the ways they make the audience feel jumpy. A lot of the original Alien's themes are retained, like, for example, what bastards the Weyland-Yutani corporation are and how they are willing to sacrifice people just for the chance to study (and honestly, weaponize) the xenomorphs. The body horror of the aliens' parasitic reproduction is also brought to the forefront, and while I don't necessarily think that this movie has an equivalent to the epic reveal of the chest-burster or the adult xeno's inner jaw, the visuals of the xenomorph uncoiling from the ridge-like walls while the marines walk past them has always stuck with me. And then, of course, there's the Alien Queen, which in addition to being the 'bigger boss' also ends up still playing into the fucked-up 'reproduction/maternity' theme that the xenomoprhs have.

And then there's also the contrast to Alien, perhaps most readily seen in the difference that Ripley's no longer just one member of the cast that happened to survive all the way to the end. She's a more traditional protagonist in a way, we root for her and we want to see her do cool things. That really does make Aliens feel like a completely different movie to Alien because... well, one of the coolest things about Alien is that it's not until the final 1/3rd of the movie that it really gives you any indication who's supposed to be the main character and the lack of one gets you so much more invested in seeing who lives and dies. In contrast... Aliens' "Ripley's probably safe, everyone else is up for grabs" idea also makes it equally as fun to watch.

There's also the contrast between the helpful android Bishop here compared to Alien's Ash. Technology's not all bad, see? In contrast, the Weyland-Yutani plant that betrays everyone else turns out to be the human Burke, which I thought was a great twist. And instead of a crew of what's essentially civilian transporters, Aliens features a group of crack-troop marines. Sorry, SPACE marines. The reason this works is similar to why its cousin-film Predator worked so well. Soldiers are an easy way for the average viewer to latch on and go 'oh, yeah, the peak of humanity, trained to physical excellence, trained in tactics, with the best weaponry'. And while we don't have a gratuitously over-the-top 'show how badass these soldiers are' scene like Predator did, Aliens does show the marines being highly competent. Sure, they're cocky, but you really do get the feeling that if they're up against... well, not xenomorphs, they wouldn't be wiped down to less than half their number within five minutes of combat. 

Speaking of which, yeah, instead of a single super-powerful stalker with increasingly terrifying abilities in Alien, we have a whole swarm. And I do actually like this little development a lot -- regardless of what an asshole everyone is to Ripley, the movie shows that she did give information about the Xenomorphs to her allies, thus making what was so 'alien' about the xenomorph behaviour in the first movie a lot less alien. It's still creepy and it will still kill you, but Ripley and company can quantify what the Facehuggers are, what the Xenomorphs are able to do, their love of sneaking around, that they bleed acid... but when there's a lot that comes at you? When there's an entire swarm that you can't just dodge forever? And hey, there's the goddamn queen, something Ripley never encountered on LV-426 before. 

Again, the movie is a lot more action-packed and faster-paced, making it... a lot more easy to watch. And sure, it does sound very plebeian to say that, but I do admit that this sort of movie is certainly up to my speed. It's not like this is a Michael Bay non-stop action-and-explosions anyway, because I really do appreciate the setup to this movie. Ellen Ripley finds herself asleep in suspended animation for fifty-seven years because no one found her escape pod, and the scene where she woke up to what's essentially a different generation, a different world, and a very soul-wrenching one when she found out that her daughter has grown old and died when she last remembered celebrating her like ninth birthday or something? That's some really great moment for actress Sigourney Weaver... and really puts you in the headspace of someone who's essentially lost everything, got ignored by the document-shuffling higher-ups, and is afraid that her last huge fight against the xenomorph in Alien is going to be all for naught. 

And, of course, within 57 years, LV-426 has been turned into the colony Hadley's Hope. The movie never says it outright, but the fact that an exploration team goes off and finds the giant ship around the same time that Ripley gave her huge report to Weyland-Yutani does probably mean that it's someone from high up that sent Newt's family off to investigate... which, of course, led to the chain reaction that wiped out the entire colony of Hadley's Hope when the xenomorphs actually successfully spread. And I think that's a very cool showcase. The cast of Alien, again, only dealt with a single egg, a single specimen. This one starts off essentially with the xenomorphs winning, having successfully reproduced and created an entire hive. 

And then we're introduced to the Space Marines of the USS Sulaco, and... they're a bunch of tropes, aren't they? A bunch of likable tropes, if nothing else. Lt. Gorman is one of those by-the-books high-ranking officer who has barely seen any combat (and one could argue that his dilly-dallying is one of the biggest factor of the first massacre); Master Sgt. Alpone is the badass-but-likable field commander; Bishop's a robot; Hicks is the nice guy; Hudson's the joker of the group; Vasquez is the tough girl. There are a bunch of others too, and we do go through that tried-and-true Alien bit of making everyone faux-important until Alpone and the rest of the group get wiped out. Because they do. In-between memetic lines like 'stay frosty' and 'it's a bug hunt' and whatnot, turns out that the marines are woefully unprepared for an entire xenomorph hive, get ambushed by many xenomorphs, and between the confusion when Lt. Gorman freezes, an alien getting into their evacuation dropship and blowing it up, and when Alpone gets taken out early, the marines are reduced to basically just Gorman, Hicks, Hudson and Vasquez. Oh yeah, Bishop-the-robot, Burke the slimy Weyland-Yutani representative and Newt, little survivor girl, are with them, too.

And Ripley ends up taking command, because she's not the protagonist... but I also do like that she's not suddenly this super-competent action heroine (yet), and her first real act of taking charge basically amounts to driving the armoured truck, and the frazzled and panicked group end up hunkering down, trying to survive. The fact that the dropship crash is triggering some sort of factory meltdown gives them a timer, too, so they can't just bunker down and wait it out. 

And that's not to talk down about the actual full showcase of the terror of the xenomorph swarm either, because while it's not my favourite action sequence in this movie, seeing the marines get absolutely trounced by the xenomorphs slowly emerging from their nooks and crannies and wipe out the soldiers is pretty awesome. 

I do like the dynamic between the characters here. Sure, most of the marines sort of get reduced to one-note faces. Gorman's beleaguered and feels guilty; Hicks is the Nice Guy(tm) Main Handsome White Dude and the romantic interest; Hudson's the funny ass; Vasquez is the badass sane one. Bishop's a robot that Ripley doesn't like due to her experience with Ash, but he also acknowledges how he's technically more disposable than the rest of the humans. And Burke is just a slimy mofo. There's some minor development for some of the marines -- Gorman's way more comfortable and happy to step down for the more competent Hicks and Hudson gets to respect Ripley a bit more, but otherwise they're kinda there. 

The addition of Newt to the cast of this movie is... it's so easy to hate on Newt, isn't it? It's so easy to hate on child characters whose actors are, well, children whose directions are probably 'repeat lines, look cute'. That's why it's so easy to hate on little Anakin on Phantom Menace or Newt on Aliens. They make the badass story not so badass... but on the other hand, while Newt's more of a plot device than anything, she's pretty charming and I really do like the fact that it gives Ripley a lot of great scenes that actually makes her feel like an actual character. Sure, part of it is Ripley having lost her own daughter in a way and Newt might be a substitute, but there's also the fact that both Ripley and Newt have shared the same trauma of surviving and witnessing first-hand the terror of the aliens. That's a nice showing, and that scene of Ripley tucking Newt to sleep while talking about nightmares and dolls is very nice. Again, there's the obvious "both Ripley and the Alien Queen are mommies protecting their young" parallel, which I do like. 

 Of course, Burke turns out to be a dickbag. And, again, the audience remembering Ash from Alien might have been meant to lead up to this. Both Bishop and Burke act in overly-friendly and helpful ways compared to the more harangued and exhausted marines, but with Bishop there's always the sense of artificial politeness that comes with, well, being a robot in a sci-fi movie. Burke, on the other hand, is just a slimy actor, and he ends up releasing the Facehuggers to kill Ripley and Newt in an intent to use their bodies as basically cocoons for the xenomorph embryonic stages when they return to Weyland-Yutani... and after the action scene where the marines rescue Ripley and Newt from the Facehuggers, the good guys piece together that Burke basically plans to kill the rest of the marines during their cryosleep and hand everyone else over to his bosses. A very cool sub-plot for sure!

And then the aliens attack again. I do like the fact that the marines aren't completely helpless, either -- one of their biggest body-counts takes place basically off-screen and done with the aid of a remote-controlled turret, and the biggest reason why the xenos get the jump on them is because they move through the ceiling and from railings and whatnot. Again, the visuals of these sleek, oblong-headed, jet-black chitin beasts moving through cramped corridors and hallways is just pretty cool. The cast gets thinned out one by one. Burke gets a karmic death. Hudson gets a game-over-man and gets swarmed. Vasquez and Gorman get a badass suicide/sacrifice moment... but just as it looks like the main heroes are home-free, Hicks gets injured and Newt is captured. 

And then, again, the final act of the movie has Ripley alone against the aliens. Nearly all the space marines are dead, and the main-action-hero type dude Hicks is injured. But so much of Ripley's character arc in the movie has been, well, around her befriending and protecting Newt, so it's really no surprise that Ripley goes back into her own personal hell to rescue this little girl she's taken as her foster daughter. The set and the shots of the Alien Queen as we pan up her ovipositor and how she's this giant termite-queen version of the regular xenomorphs, with her abdomen suspended with icky goo... that's still an amazing visual, and I really do love the Queen's crest. We get the confrontation, Ripley saves Newt, burns the Queen's eggs when a Facehugger attacks Newt, and buggers off. 

And this scene is pretty cool! Unlike the Xenomorph from the first movie, which is more of a stealthy assassin, or the swarms of this one, the Queen is a literal juggernaut when she chases Ripley here. Far larger and shown to be pretty intelligent (she knows to get into the elevator!), the Queen chasing Ripley and Newt as they try and wait for Bishop's airlift is pretty intense. And then the colony blows up and our heroes escape, right? 

Wrong! The movie's not quite done yet, because the Queen's stuck around in the ship's landing gear, because, well, she's a pretty damn smart one. In one of the more iconic scenes from the movie she stabs Bishop with her blade tail and rips him into two (robot brutality!) but then Ripley just goes off and dons a giant exo-suit (which the movie foreshadows earlier) which I thought was pretty damn badass. "Get away from her, you bitch!" indeed. Sure, the action scene might look a bit dated in today's standards... but honestly? Honestly I really do think it holds up well. Bishop (well, half of Bishop) helps out in saving Newt, while Ripley jettisons the Queen into space. Happy ending for everyone!

And... and overall, the movie's story is honestly not that complex. A lot of the twists and turns come from the tension of 'oh shit the aliens are here/the queen is alive'. And sure, throwing Newt into the story is an easy way to get a reaction out of the audience 'oh no the little girl oh no' because we're inherently more predisposed to panic when little children are being attacked by monsters. But honestly? It's the execution. It's the iconic scenes, settings and concepts that other sci-fi movies down the line would copy, and it's the fact that the characters, even the secondary ones, do feel like people. The banter between the marines, Bishop's general dorkiness, Newt's PTSD, Burke's corporate subplot... all of these go a long way in making the movie feel more than just a brainless 'survive from evil space monsters'. Unfortunately, this is arguably the last good Alien movie we'll get for a long, long while. It's one hell of a movie, for sure, though!

Random Notes:

• One thing I don't stress enough is how much I really do like the aesthetic of the Aliens world. Between the design of the colony, the ships and the weapons, I do really like that special brand of futuristic-but-frumpy style it's got going on. 
• So how did that one xenomorph get into the dropship? The marines didn't encounter the xenomorph hive until they, well, went into it. Did the aliens actually realize what's going on and was setting a trap so the bulk of the marines enter their nest where the numbers and terrain work in their favour, and sent an advance scout to blow up the escape route? 
• Newt being a survivor mumbling about how the hive-mind aliens work, and only fellow survivor (and fellow civilian) Ripley realizing this is actually a nice little way to give our heroes exposition and information. The marines being too dismissive at the shell-shocked child and too panicked later is also a believable reason of them ignoring Newt until Ripley brings her to their attention. 
• I don't say much about him in my review, but Hudson (Bill Paxton, who would go on to play the equally-fun John Garrett in Agents of SHIELD) is absolutely hilarious and is a minefield for quotable lines. "Game over, man, game over!"
• "Hey, Vasquez, ever been mistaken for a man?" "No, have you?"
• I equally don't really have much to say about Bishop, but he's extremely likable. "I'm synthetic, not stupid."
• The Alien Queen mostly alternates between either scary or badass or both... but there's that just hilarious little 'eh' tilt of her giant crested head when she sees the elevator ding. 
• I do actually like the confrontation between Ripley and the Queen. Ripley seems to be 100% willing to leave with Newt and didn't go ballistic until that one egg hatches (and it's heavily implied that the Queen's telepathically controlling them). Then again, the Queen doesn't know about the reactor overload...
• I don't think I've ever seen a Facehugger actually skitter on the ground like a giant spider outside of Aliens, and it's equally hilarious and terrifying at the same time. 
• I'm not sure if I'll do Aliens 3 or Alien Resurrection next year. I'd rather do a good movie, like Prometheus, or Predator, or, hell, even the first AvP. We'll see.