Aliens (film)

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Aliens
Film poster for Aliens
Directed by	James Cameron
Produced by	Gale Anne Hurd, Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill
Written by	James Cameron David Giler (story) Walter Hill (story)
Starring	Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser
Cinematography	Adrian Biddle
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	July 18, 1986
Running time	137 min./154 min. (Special Edition)
Language	English
Budget	$18,500,000
Preceded by	Alien
Followed by	Alien³
IMDb profile

Aliens is a 1986 science fiction movie starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser. It is a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien. Directed by James Cameron from a story written by him, David Giler, and Walter Hill, the film is more of a high-paced, action adventure film than the atmospheric sci-fi horror of the first film. It was tremendously successful, following Cameron's The Terminator in helping to establish him as a major action director. The film, like its predecessor, was shot in England, this time at Pinewood Studios, with a budget of about $18 million. The production was somewhat problematic, marred by several disputes between Cameron and the film crew, which eventually led to an all-out strike late in the production.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Plot

Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only human survivor of the space freighter Nostromo, is rescued from space and revived after 57 years in hypersleep. Out of place in her new time (noted as the year 2179), Ripley has recurring nightmares about the deaths of her Nostromo crewmates, all of whom were killed by a vicious alien before she escaped.

Ripley is befriended by Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), an employee of “The Company” (actually the powerful Weyland-Yutani Company, which Ripley worked for as a member of the Nostromo). Ripley tells a board of skeptical Company administrators her side of the story: That she and six other Nostromo crew members set down on a mysterious planet to answer a distress call – all on Company orders. They encountered a derelict alien spacecraft and inadvertently brought a hostile alien with them as they started their long voyage back to Earth. The board doesn’t believe her account of the happenings, partially because of only scant evidence to support her claims, and partially because the mysterious planet in question – now named LV-426 – has had human inhabitants for 20 years who never reported any life on the rock planet, let alone hostile life. Ripley learns that, on uninhabited planets such as LV-426, terraforming colonies are formed to construct atmosphere processors and make the planet livable following decades of work.

With no family or job, Ripley takes an inglorious position at a nearby loading dock. Several weeks later, Burke contacts Ripley, asking for her help. It appears that after Ripley made her “unsubstantiated” claims, The Company attempted to contact LV-426 colonists (a message takes two weeks) just to check on things. No reply came back. To be safe, The Company is sending Burke and a squadron of Colonial Marines to the planet to check for danger. Ripley is asked to accompany the Marines as an advisor, should the worst-case scenario be true. Even after Burke tries to bribe her with an officer position within The Company, Ripley declines to go; but soon after the meeting, she accepts – hoping to end her persisting nightmares.

Aboard the military warship Sulaco, Ripley is in hypersleep with Burke and the Marines. As the ship nears LV-426, crew members are revived in preparation for their drop to the planet. The Marines, an overconfident group of gung-ho soldiers led by Sgt. Apone, are adjusting to their new leader, Lt. Gorman – an untried commander who lacks true combat experience. The only other entity on board the ship is the seemingly benevolent android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), who Ripley distrusts because of her previous bad experience with an android on the Nostromo. Ripley briefs the Marines on her knowledge of the alien, which is now named a xenomorph. Her foreboding speech is listened to by some Marines, such as Apone and Hicks (Michael Biehn), but ignored by arrogant others, such as Vasquez and the garrulous Hudson (Bill Paxton).

The Marines gear up and all board a dropship that serves as a transport to the surface. On the surface (which is inhospitable yet seemingly safe), the Marines find only abandoned buildings and empty rooms throughout the entire “Hadley’s Hope” colony complex. Despite having state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, including motion trackers, the Marines pick up no signs of human life. The first life they do find are two facehugger aliens, which are safely contained in the Med-Lab building. Ripley and the Marines soon come across their first human contact – a frightened young girl named Newt, who is almost catatonic from the horrors she’s witnessed. Newt, who hides in air ducts, says her family is dead and tells Ripley that even soldiers don’t stand a chance on the planet.

Pvt. Hudson, using colony equipment, is able to locate all the colonists after seeking out transmitters implanted in their bodies. The Marines see that all 130+ colonists are located in the same place: sub-level three under the huge processing station. As Marines enter the sub-levels of the station, they find themselves in an alien nest – with all the colonists dead after being imprisoned in cocoons (and then impregnated by facehugger aliens) around the nest. The Marines find a cocooned survivor, but the survivor has only mere seconds to live as a chestburster alien erupts from her body. When Apone scorches the newborn alien with a flame thrower, the dying alien’s screams seem to wake up dozens of soldier aliens lying dormant around the nest. The Marines are attacked from all sides and most are quickly killed. With the inexperienced Gorman paralyzed with fear, Ripley saves the only three remaining Marines by driving an armored car up to meet them during their retreat. Six of the nine Marines who went in didn’t come out, including Apone; the only ones remaining are Hicks, Vasquez and Hudson. Ripley drives them out of the station to temporary safety on the surface.

With many of their fellow soldiers dead and Gorman unconscious from a concussion, the remaining humans debate what to do next. All seem to favor Ripley’s suggestion of simply returning to outer space and nuking the entire colony site, effectively exterminating the aliens forever, but Burke protests. Burke is overruled by Hicks, now the highest ranking officer, who agrees to Ripley’s plan. The plan is short-lived, however, as aliens attack the Marine dropship pilots while the ship is in flight. The ship crashes, and the humans are left without transportation back up to the Sulaco. With a rescue weeks away, the humans build a small fortress within the Med-Lab building. While the humans expect an alien assault on their weak fortress, they soon learn about a worse danger: The processing station is now unstable and set to explode in several hours. The Marines send Bishop across the planet surface via a pipe conduit to patch into the planet antenna and acquire another Sulaco dropship using a remote. Gorman regains consciousness and joins the Marines, while Hicks shows Ripley how to operate a military M41A pulse rifle and grenade launcher.

Ripley orders the destruction of the two living facehugger specimens, but Burke intercedes, quietly promising her millions after he secretly returns them to Earth and sells them to the Bio-Weapons Division. Ripley, who wants no part of his sleazy offer, informs Burke that she knows he was responsible for the deaths of the colonists. She reveals the following: That after Ripley testified about the derelict alien craft, Burke sent colonists (actually Newt’s parents) to the ship and didn’t warn them of any danger. That first contact between the parents and the ship led to the eradication of all colonists (save Newt). Burke tries to defend himself, but Ripley ignores him and promises him jail time back on Earth. Ripley then goes to comfort a sleeping Newt (who, like Ripley, is plagued by nightmares), and the two continue to form a mother-daughter-like relationship. Afraid of Ripley’s knowledge, Burke takes the two remaining facehuggers and drops them in Newt’s room, then locking the door. Ripley manages to fend off the aliens for a few moments and trigger the fire alarm, attracting the attention of the Marines. The Marines come to the rescue and kill both facehuggers, narrowly saving Ripley and Newt’s lives.

When Burke’s guilt is proven, the Marines’ decision to summarily execute him is stopped by a power outage. The humans realize the aliens have begun their big assault on the complex. The aliens come through the roof panels and drop down on the humans, who use their remaining firepower fend off attacking soldier aliens. (Even Ripley is wielding a gun at this point.) In the chaos, Burke slips away from the group, and is killed by an alien. Hudson is also killed in the firefight. With their backs to the wall, the humans seem trapped, but Newt leads them into the air ducts and tells them how to get to Bishop and the incoming dropship. During the battle through the air ducts, Vasquez and Gorman are pinned down. They activate a grenade to take several aliens with them in a final blast. The blast does indeed serve that purpose, but it also causes Newt to slip down a chute and be captured alive by aliens. Ripley and Hicks, the only two left, manage to escape and meet Bishop on the surface just as the second dropship arrives, ready to take them to safety. Ripley refuses to leave, however, even though only 26 minutes remain until the whole area essentially explodes.

Ripley instead goes back into the alien nest to rescue Newt; Ripley is armed with grenades, flares, a pulse rifle and flame thrower. She finds Newt in the nest and rescues her, but, while exiting, comes across the monstrous Alien Queen, who is surrounded by dozens of eggs (which she lays with a ovipositor attached to her body). After a tense standoff between the two “mothers” (with their “young” nearby), Ripley lets loose with a flame thrower and torches the entire room, eggs and all. With the room on fire and the building falling down around her, Ripley grabs Newt and heads for the surface, but the Alien Queen breaks free from her ovipositor and follows close behind. Ripley and Newt get on Bishop’s ship and take off, leaving the Alien Queen behind to die as the whole processor explodes and the area is wiped out.

On the Sulaco, Bishop sedates the injured Hicks. Just as all seems well, Bishop is impaled by a long alien tail. The Alien Queen had latched herself onto the dropship and is actually still alive. Ripley runs into the next room and thinks of a plan. The Queen searches for Newt and finds her, but before Newt is killed, Ripley comes out of the docking bay in a metal loader – the same loader she operated with skill in her job at the loading docks on Earth. Now with a somewhat even physical presence to the monstrous Queen, Ripley battles the mother beast. As the battle continues, Ripley opens the Sulaco’s outer doors and the Queen is finally sucked out into the vacuum of space. Ripley struggles and manages to close the doors and save herself and Newt. In the final scene, Ripley and Newt prepare for hypersleep. When Newt asks Ripley if it’s OK to dream on the way home, Ripley replies, “Yes. I think we both can.”

[edit] Analysis

The story adds much to the overall mythos of the series, including Cameron's introduction of an insect-like social structure and life cycle, is notable for its portrayal of women in action roles, and also re-introduces the concept of an android character, however this time in a sympathetic role. This character, Bishop, is also the only character except Ripley (and her cat, Jonesy) to appear in more than one film in the series.

[edit] Accolades

Aliens was nominated for seven Academy Awards and ended up winning two (Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects). Sigourney Weaver received her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress) for this film. Although Weaver did not actually win, it was considered a landmark for a nomination for Best Actress to even be made for a science fiction / horror film, a genre usually given little recognition by the Academy in those years.

Another actor whose career benefited from Aliens was Bill Paxton; he plays the reluctant grunt, Hudson, who later defiantly battles to the death when swarmed by the aliens. Paxton also benefited from being given many of the film's most memorable one-liners, one of these being "Game over, man. Game over!"

[edit] Impact

The depiction of the female characters as fearless warriors made a considerable impression in the North American perception of women in action films, particularly in futuristic science fiction. Females in the film demonstrated a professional competence in their military roles, a diversion from previous films where the heroine lacked such strengths and apparent senses of duty. Since Aliens, it grew to be expected in futuristic stories that the female characters be as ready to bear arms and do battle on an equal basis with the male characters.

[edit] Versions

The theatrical running time of Aliens was 137 minutes. Later, Cameron cut together a 154 minute Special Edition (not considered a Director's Cut since James Cameron was happy with the theatrical cut).

The Special Edition inserted the following deleted and extended scenes:

• Burke informs Ripley of her daughter's death at the age of 66. Ripley reveals that she had promised her daughter that she would be home for her eleventh birthday.
• At the court of inquiry, Van Leuwen reads Ripley the verdict that her commercial flight license will be revoked and no charges will be filed.
• Life in the colony is depicted. Two men in the colony discuss having sent out a survey team (a "Wild Cat" family), at the request of the corporation, to a coordinate, which unknown to them, corresponds to the site of the Derelict space ship from the first movie. Next, Newt's parents are shown bringing her and her brother along with them to the site. The parents leave the children in the vehicle while they investigate the ship. Newt's mother frantically returns to make a distress call, having dragged the father's body, who has a facehugger attached to his face, back with her.
• Burke explains to Ripley that he is going to LV-426 with the marines to look after the interests of the corporation.
• Panning views of the interior of the Sulaco before the crew is awakened are shown.
• Hudson brags about the marines' weapons as the drop ship descends.
• Hamsters set off motion detectors as the marines make a sweep of the colony.
• As the marines enter the doors of the colony, Ripley appears to deliberate for a moment before continuing on in.
• Hicks mentions that they have sentry guns and they plan out where to set them up using the blueprints. Vasquez tests a pair of sentry guns by throwing a can in front of them, causing them to shoot it. Another pair of sentry guns are shown scanning for targets in their proximity.
• Newt asks Ripley if she thinks Newt's mother had an alien growing inside her and compares it to human pregnancy. She also asks Ripley about her daughter.
• When Ripley speculates that there are hundreds of eggs and wonders where they come from, Hudson suggests that there could be a queen, comparing the aliens to ants and bees.
• The sentry guns take down countless aliens, causing the aliens to seek an alternative way to get to the humans.
• Before leaving to rescue Newt, Ripley and Hicks tell each other their given names.

The original theatrical cut introduces an element of uncertainty into the proceedings - the backstory about Newt's parents is not shown, and the audience is (at least for first time viewers), unaware of what has transpired there beforehand. The scenes with Ripley's daughter and the robotic gun sentries provide subplots in themselves.

This Special Edition was first released on laserdisc and VHS in 1992 and in The Alien Legacy in 2001. Both versions of the film were released together for the first time in the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set.

[edit] Music

Composer James Horner stated in an interview that he felt that James Cameron had not given him enough time to write a musical score for the film. Because of this he said he was forced to cannibalize previous scores he had done as well as adapt a rendition of "Gayaneh Ballet Suite" for the main and end titles. (This may be misdirection: the music for the opening sequence, where Ripley's lifeboat is discovered, is a fairly literal adaptation of the opening of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony.) Horner stated that the tensions with Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. Cameron, however, was so impressed with Horner's score from Braveheart that he later asked him to compose the score for Titanic.

[edit] Trivia

• The 19-foot queen alien model is currently on display at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, as of 2005. It is on loan from its owner and an advisory board member of the museum, James Cameron.
• The Alien nest set wasn't dismantled after filming. It was unused until several years later when it was used as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman in 1989. When the crew of Batman first entered the set, they found most of the Alien nest still intact.
• "Sulaco" is the name of the town in Joseph Conrad's "Nostromo," which was the name of the ship in Alien. Scott is an admirer of Conrad.
• The weapons used by the marines are all based on real, fully functional weapons. The pulserifle is made from a Thompson SMG with an attached Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun, while the smartguns carried by Vasquez and Drake are based around the MG-42 machinegun, and are maneuvered with the help of a steadicam harness.

[edit] Editing and other errors

• Shortly after an alien puts its hand through the windshield of the APC, you can clearly see that the windshield is undamaged again.
• When Ripley is putting the pulserifle and flamethrower on the table before going to save Newt, the order in which she pulls the weapons from the wall is not the same as when she is putting them on the table. This has not been corrected in the SpecEd.
• When Ripley is telling Gorman to get the team out of the breeding chamber, from one shot to the next the position of her headset's cord changes.
• In the SpecEd, when Vasquez and Hudson are testing the sentries, in the first front shot you can see Hudson behind the sentries, but in the next you can't. Also the door behind the sentries is closed.
• When the aliens later attack, the magazines of the sentries are still at 100% even though they spent some rounds in the testing.
• During the scene where the Marine character "Frost" gets hit with a burst from a flamethrower and falls over a railing, just before the camera cuts away you can see a boot appear from the edge of the screen as someone goes to help the actor
• When the android character Bishop gets impaled by the Queen's tail you can just see the wire used to pull the foam tail through the already precut shirt of actor Lance Henriksen.
• During the scene when the Alien Queen is sucked out of the Sulaco's airlock, the dismembered Bishop grabs for Newt to prevent her from being sucked out in the process. While he is grabbing for her, you can clearly see the hole in which the rest of his body is actually hiding.

[edit] Prequel

• 2004: Alien Vs. Predator

[edit] Alien Quadrilogy

• 1979: Alien, directed by Ridley Scott
• 1986: Aliens, directed by James Cameron
• 1992: Alien³, directed by David Fincher
• 1997: Alien: Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

[edit] Cast

[edit] Crew

[edit] External links

• Aliens at the Internet Movie Database
• Harry Harris, owner of the largest collection of screen used props as seen in Aliens.
• Aliens first draft script
• Classicscifi.com, in-depth review.
• The USCM Charter, The USCM Costumers Website
• The Aliens Legacy Aliens props and movie discussion

Alien, Predator and Alien vs. Predator

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