I go back
and forth on whether or not I prefer Alien
or Aliens. One major factor of the quadrilogy is that
each movie is heavily shaped by its particular creative team and each one is
very much its own monster. To get really
obnoxious about it, I might say that Alien
is a better “film,” while Aliens is a
better “movie.” Alien is a stunningly-directed and -designed creature feature and Aliens is a slickly-made, mammoth sci-fi
blockbuster. Each is a really great
picture in its own right, and in the end, I’d say it largely comes down to what
you look for in a horrifying alien movie (premise spoilers.)
After the
events of the first film, Ripley’s ship (and malfunctioning sleep pod) is
recovered, decades too late. As she
struggles to debrief from her devastating last mission and grapple with the
fact that she spent more than half a century in cryostasis, her worst fears are
realized: LV-426, the moon where her
crew first encountered the alien, is now the site of a human colony, and the
Company has just lost contact with the settlement. While Ripley wants nothing more than to put
the whole nightmare behind her, she cannot stand by while an interplanetary
marine unit goes to the colony to investigate.
She’s the only person who’s seen an alien up close and lived to tell
about it, and she knows her knowledge is indispensable, if only they’ll listen
to her.
Ripley
has clearly taken a level in badass between films – she packs a serious punch
in this movie – and there are times when she feels a little Trademark Action
Hero, but I still recognize her as a new version of the tough, intelligent,
terrified woman she was in Alien. At this point, I can mostly see her newfound
Big Damn Hero-ness as a reflection of what she’s just been through. Ripley has been destroyed. Even after
surviving a horrifically-traumatizing disaster, she comes home to find that
home moved on from her long ago. She has
nothing left, she can’t sleep without dreaming that a monster is going to claw
its way out of her chest, and now she’s lost her one stabilizing force – she
can no longer tell herself, “At least it’s finally over.” If I’d lived through all that and I somehow wasn’t permanently curled up in the
fetal position, I’d work to make myself as formidable as possible, too. Ripley isn’t a born badass, but she’s a
survivor, and when the nightmare scenario calls for it, she makes herself into
the person she needs to be to make that happen.
This
movie is a lot commercial than Alien. Under the guidance of James Cameron, it’s big
and impressive with emotional beats that, while obvious, still hit the
mark. Personally, I think it ups the
ante too much from the first film – after all the devastation caused by a
single alien on a claustrophobic space freighter in Alien, we don’t really need the tons
and tons of aliens here. The movie
doesn’t have Alien’s amazingly-cool
visuals (I mean, it has the aliens, obviously,) but its story is more clearly-drawn
with blockbuster setpieces and well-worn but effective benchmark moments. The space marines/potential alien fodder
have broadly-drawn but distinct personalities, making it easier for me to keep
track of them in a meaningful way.
Vasquez and her heavy firepower is an obvious crowdpleaser (and I
appreciate that we don’t have a “queen bee” situation wherein Ripley is the
only tough woman in the film,) and I also really like Bishop, the on-board
android/synthetic lifeform.
Warnings
Tons of alien
violence and some swearing.
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