Aliens (1986) Movie Review
Aliens (1986) Movie Review
Aliens is the kind of movie that makes you want to watch movies. If you’re about to watch this movie, which is called Aliens, and then you see it, then you get what you were looking for. There isn’t one alien, or kind-of aliens, or “there will be aliens in the sequel,” you have aliens. The aliens are up close and in your face, grabbing your attention every moment of their screen time. They’re unpredictable, vicious, and merciless killers that almost always enter the screen in a jump scare. The aliens in this movie are some of the best movie enemies ever. Just when you think you’ve defeated them, they jump back at you, screaming and slashing. Aliens doesn’t give you time to breathe that often, filling up its incredibly long runtime with constant action or suspense.
The only criticism I have for this movie is that it really overstimulates you. There’s so much going on in front of your face your mind kind of blows up. Lights are flashing, and aliens are shrieking, and gun-blazing action is happening all over the screen. And so you get a little overwhelmed. But other than that I have nothing but positive things to say about Aliens.
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is one of the best female characters in a movie ever, in my opinion. She is strong and confident, but is also a human being and not just an undefeatable action hero with no emotion. Ripley’s 15-minute charge on the alien queen is one of the best action scenes I have ever seen. It feels like it’s really happening in the best way possible. The alien queen is also a great piece of practical effects. It would be cool if an alien king would show up in a movie. Anyways. Ripley is a good character in this movie because she is afraid of the aliens, but also will stand up to them if she has to. If Ripley wasn’t afraid of the aliens at all, it would take away some of the character depth that she has. I haven’t seen Alien, but I know that Ripley’s nightmares of that alien fuel her overall fear of the ferocious xenomorphs.
The good thing about the horror in Aliens is that it’s scary while you’re watching it, but afterwards you don’t feel like aliens are going to come out of your closet or something, because they’re obviously not. And since it takes place in outer space, you feel safe from that experience happening to you. But with a movie like Poltergeist, it takes place in a house, and you feel vulnerable to all of the things in the movie. But Aliens is really only scary on screen. There are long, long moments of silence that build up the tension until finally, after about 5 minutes, there is a jump scare. Waiting during those periods of time is dreadful, but also a little bit exciting. The aliens themselves are also frightening enough to make you afraid of them, but not overdo it so that it’s just one giant horror movie, which really isn’t what James Cameron wants it to be.
He did a great job with this movie. The direction and pacing are both great in Aliens. The story is plotted out almost perfectly, the deliverance of action and thrills is well-timed and awesome. You can tell this is a James Cameron movie because of how he handles what’s going on in the movie. The color scheme is similar to Terminator 2, the camera angles look very Cameron-like, and there are little bits of electricity everywhere, which is usually present in his older movies. I think he also used the power loader as inspiration for the exoskeleton robot suit in Avatar.
The setup for the fight scenes in Aliens is great. All the wrong things are happening, all at once. The power is out, they have limited ammunition, they’re outnumbered, and they’re in a confined space. I think the fact that the power is knocked out kind of brings this sense of disparity and hopelessness that makes it all the more riveting. The colonial marines are also really cool. They’re the group of soldiers that are called in to shoot up the aliens, but as Newt (Carrie Henn) says, it doesn’t make a difference if they’re marines or not.
Hudson (Bill Paxton) brings just the right amount of humor into the movie. If there was too much more, then it would make the movie as a whole seem more top-heavy and weird. If there was too little, then Aliens would just seem more bleak and less fun. But the happy medium of jokes provides something that (I’m guessing) none of the other Alien movies have. Hicks (Michael Biehn) is just your average marine guy, but you know he’ll last till the end because he’s played by Michael Biehn. Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) also lasts a surprisingly long time. One of the best things about the marines is that you feel like you know them all personally at the half-hour mark. The scenes where you first meet them don’t really establish them as one-dimensional food for the aliens, but instead bring them in as characters you can connect with, even if you are thinking, “you are all going to die.”
One of the best things about Aliens is that is doesn’t even really feel like a sequel. It is hailed as one of the best sequels ever made, and that it is. But it really functions on its own as a movie. Cameron built a bigger existence out of the Alien franchise that Ridley Scott only started. And thus Aliens is awesome. One character I’m not crazy about is Newt. It seems to me like she just adds problems, and doesn’t really care about anyone but herself (and Ripley at the end). I don’t feel like she’s necessary or as good of a character as some other people here. The plot of Aliens, if you want to know will be right here. If you don’t want to hear about this, then skip to the Safety Chart.
Ripley, who has been floating in space for 57 years, is discovered along with Jones, her cat, by a group of rescuers. They send her to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for information, but they don’t believe that a hostile alien attacked her ship and crew in the previous film. The same moon where the Nostromo found the alien eggs, LV-426, now has a colony on it. But the Weyland-Yutani corporation loses contact with LV-426, and a group of colonial marines is sent in to bust up the suspected xenomorphs living there. Burke (Paul Reiser) sends them there, but has plans of his own (I will get into that a little bit later). They arrive with Ripley on boards as an advisor to the actions of the marines. They arrive in a dropship on the moon, and go into the colony finding nothing but a child survivor, Newt. Later, Hudson gets signals from the colony and the marines go back in, while Ripley hangs back with Bishop (Lance Henriksen), an android, Newt, and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope). The marines come across another survivor stuck to the wall in the colony, but the survivor doesn’t survive for much longer before a chestburster comes out of her stomach. The marines soon find themselves besieged by vicious xenomorphs, and very few of them survive the extraterrestrial raid. Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez make it back to safety because Ripley saves them. A dropship tries to go into the colony and retrieve the survivors, but before it can land a xenomorph on boards kills the pilot, making the ship crash into the ground. Ripley then finds out that Burke sent the marines in knowing that the xenomorphs were inside, and his master plan was to become rich off of alien specimens he smuggled back to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Ripley almost tells everyone, but not before Bishop realizes that because of the dropship crash, the power plant on LV-426 will explode in a nuclear manner in about an hour. Bishop then crawls for 40 minutes to get to the control of the ship, the Sulaco, so it won’t explode, too. Meanwhile, Burke traps Ripley and Newt in a research lab with facehuggers on the loose because he is evil. Fortunately, the remaining marines crash into the lab and shoot up the facehuggers. Ripley then exposes Burke to the surviving marines, and he becomes to Aliens what Dennis Nedry is to Jurassic Park. Suddenly, xenomorphs crash through the ceiling, and a violent battle begins in the room, and finishes at the end of the pipe. Gorman, Vasquez, and Hudson die fighting the aliens. Newt is kidnapped by the xenomorphs also. Ripley, Bishop, and Hicks get out of the colony, but Ripley doesn’t want to leave newt behind and goes back in with her iconic pulse rifle and flamethrower. She rescues Newt, but then comes across the xenomorph queen, and Newt is captured again. Ripley gets into a power loader and engages in one of the best movie fights ever, kills the alien queen by sending her through the space vacuum, saves Newt, and leaves LV-426 with Bishop and Hicks with them. The end.
Safety Chart:
Violence: 8/10- Lots of people are killed by the aliens. The marines shoot and destroy the xenomorphs, and acid sprays everywhere. A marine’s face is scarred with acid blood. Chestbursters explode through humans’ stomachs, killing them. Bloody deaths and explosions. Lots of violence and intensity.
Language: 7/10- Lots of cursing, including the f-word.
Drinking/Smoking: 5/10- A marine smokes during almost all of his screen time. Some adult people drink.
Aliens is an amazing movie that I would definitely recommend seeing. It is fast, furious, intense, exciting, and really good as movie. The action and horror elements mix perfectly with James Cameron’s cool sci-fi touch, and the end product is nearly flawless. Sigourney Weaver is incredible in this movie and really deserves the Oscar nomination. I would give Aliens an A+ as a grade. If for some reason you haven’t seen this, stop reading. Just go watch this movie.
