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Review: Aliens (1986)
James Cameron’s follow-up to The Terminator is anything but a sophomore slump. It’s a slam-bang, take-no-prisoners sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci fi/ horror opus Alien. This is perhaps the finest crafted release to be seen this summer cinematic season and is just as good, if not better, than its predecessor. Sigourney Weaver reprises the role of Ripley in Aliens. The sole survivor of the vessel Nostromo who had a close encounter of the third kind with a malevolent extraterrestrial proved perilous for her shipmates.
The escape craft containing Ripley and a feline friend is recovered by a space outpost. Ripley, revived from a deep sleep. finds that it has well been more than six weeks (a figure she mentioned at the close of the first film) but several years. Fifty-seven of them to be exact. If that isn’t a shocker, her employers don’t believe her account of a run in with the title character of the last film. She’s bearing the financial burden of having destroyed the Nostromo to boot and the legal guns aren’t exactly open to a settlement. Proof that even in space, there are lawyers that will make you scream.
To Ripley’s horror, the planet where she and her shipmates encountered the alien, has been colonized. Though there have been human inhabitants for years with no reports of problems. An early morning visit by a CEO (Paul Reiser) to Ripley’s quarters reveals that communication with the colony have been terminated. Though the interruption is believed to be of a technical nature, her presence there might prompt the corporate bigwigs to drop their suit against her.
Primarily eschewing the horror—though there are a number of moments bound to evoke scares from the unwary but even seasoned cinemagoers will be caught off guard—for action and lots of it. Cameron gives us not mere star trekkers but a detail of Marines (a throwback to sixties science fiction flicks) armed-to-the-teeth with serious firepower that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone would relish having in their arsenals. One of them (Jenette Goldstein) looks like she could give Stallone and Schwarzenegger some serious competion single-handedly with her sizable firearm.
Among the troops are some Cameron veterans (Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, and Lance Henriksen were in The Terminator) who have re-upped for Cameron’s latest tour of duty. Biehn is the stalwart Corporal Hicks, Paxton—far less alpha than the jerk of an older brother to Ilan Mitchell-Smith in last year’s Weird Science—the chickenhearted Private Hudson, and Henriksen as Bishop, an android (though he/it prefers the term “artifical person”). Given Ripley’s experience with one her former crewmates, finding herself on a mission with a synthetic being isn’t exactly a comforting thought.
Taking a cue from the last Rambo film (which Cameron co-wrote), Aliens offers incredible action not seen since Stallone’s last tour as the cinematic supersoldier. Clearly Roger Corman protege Cameron firmly establishes himself as one of modern cinema’s great filmmakers. Cameron colleague Stan Winston’s—whose efforts this summer also include the aliens from this summer’s remake of Invaders from Mars, which are the only real marvel in that film along with the forementioned The Terminator—creations are truly a sight to behold.James Horner’s pulsating score adrenalizes the action.
Robert Baum is Currently a Bryn Mawr, PA-based film afficanado and pop culture junkie.
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