Aliens

Yesterday I took a look at a film that tried to re-establish the fun of a franchise that was created back in 1987.  Predators is one half of a franchise duo that came together in 2004 with AVP: Alien vs. Predator, a film that took what little hope was left from two stagnant brands and buried it under nothing less than unfortunate cinematic nonsense.  I figure that it is only fair to take a peek at the other half of the equation and look at Aliens, James Cameron’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Sequels, franchises, and fans are all fickle things that are very hard to predict.  Most of the time, the rule seems to be that a follow up film should try and capture the feel of the original and recreate the experience for the audience.  Audiences enjoy familiarity, even if they claim they don’t.  The Hangover trilogy is a great case in point.  Audiences gobbled up the sequel even though they criticised it for being an exact carbon copy of the original and made many a complaint over that fact.  When the third movie came out and left behind all similarities to the first two movies (except for the characters) audiences did not buy in and complained that it was a different movie and did not feel like one of The Hangover films.

Well, when James Cameron stepped up to the plate to sequel the insanely well received Alien (both by the public and critics alike) he not only steered clear of attempting to recreate the atmosphere of the original, but essentially took the franchise into an entirely different genre.  While they are both science fiction, Alien is best described as a horror while Aliens was created to be an action movie.  Switching the genres of a franchise may seem like an awful idea, but the result was a movie that stood on its own while still adding to the cannon of the first film.

I can tell you specifically how I first saw this movie.  I was sixteen and it was on television one night on a French station, so I stayed up late and watched the entire film in a foreign language.  My long time desire to see the movie is what made me check it out, but it was the environment created by Cameron that lured me into this world.  It mattered not that I could not tell what the people were saying, the visuals and the situations were riveting and all I wanted was more.

Watching the film again last night, I still got much of that same sense of being immersed into the realm created for this movie.  It is not just the sets that accomplish that task, but the pace of the movie as well.  Watching the director’s extended cut the action does not start for over an hour into the movie, but it is not a slow paced first hour.  A lot happens, as we get an idea of where Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) life is at after having survived the events of the previous chapter.  We are introduced to the faces behind the ominous ‘company’ that we find out about in Alien, and we meet the Colonial Marines who Ripley will escort back to the dark planet from the first movie.

Where some sequels fail is in the realistic set-up that would allow the events to happen a second time.  With Aliens, everything is very well explained and understood so we gain a good sense that these choices would actually happen the way they do.  We see what causes Ripley to go against all of her better judgement and return to the place of her trauma.  It is this part, in particular, that is best explained in the extended edition.  The theatrical cut does not allow us to get to know that Ripley, while lost in space, missed out on the life of her only daughter.  She has nothing left on earth, and it sets up the base line for decisions that she will take down the road.

Which leads to my only one qualm with the movie, and that is the child character, Newt.  Her functionality to the script is clear, as she is parentless and provides Ripley a chance to become a protector and provider once again.  Her role is very important in the theme of maternal protectionism in this movie (from both the side of the humans and the aliens), but she really was not cast or written very well.  Her lines are disruptive to the flow of the movie at times, and the delivery of those lines can jar you from the otherwise perfect world that James Cameron creates.

James Cameron brings over some talent from the Terminator in Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Michael Biehn (who gets his hand bit by a girl in both movies) as well as some terms that he established in the Terminator universe, such as ‘phased plasma rifles’ (yes, I am that much of a geek that I notice such things), and Hyperdyne Systems (a play on Cyberdyne Systems, the company that created Skynet in Terminator).

My own personal geekdom aside, Aliens is a visual treat, and not one that is non-stop, fist-pumping action.  The action happens in segments throughout, with a lot of time in between to understand the situation and to get a better understanding of the characters and what is at stake.  Too often we see movies that have long, uninterrupted sequences of nonsensical action (Man of Steel) instead of using it sparingly and as an element to heighten the emotional investment in the story.  Sometimes less is more, allowing the sequences to be properly built up with real consequences at hand is better than having them for the sake of it.

In Aliens, we get a well told story in a vivid environment that went a long way to establishing the foothold that this franchise stills has.  Even after multiple failures, it is the strength of Alien and Aliens that allow fans to still hold on.  For the most part, it is a movie that visually holds up today and should still entertain newcomers.  It is a great reminder that action movies do not need to always be senseless, that females can be strong leads, and that new directions for a franchise can be a wonderful thing.

Rating – 3.5 out of 4 stars