Aliens (1986, R)

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.