Aliens (film)

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Aliens
Film poster for Aliens
Directed byJames Cameron
Written byJames Cameron
David Giler (story)
Walter Hill (story)
Produced byGale Anne Hurd,
Gordon Carroll,
David Giler,
Walter Hill
StarringSigourney Weaver,
Michael Biehn,
Lance Henriksen,
Carrie Henn,
Bill Paxton,
Paul Reiser
CinematographyAdrian Biddle
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
July 18, 1986
Running time
137 min./154 min. (Special Edition)
LanguageEnglish
Budget$18,500,000

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.

Overview

Directed by James Cameron from a story written by Cameron, 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.

Plot

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At the opening of the film, Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only human survivor of the Nostromo, is rescued from space and revived after fifty-seven years in hypersleep. As she recovers, she is gradually informed of the changes that have occurred during her absence, and is dismayed to learn that a terraforming colony called Hadley's Hope has been founded on Planet LV-426 (where the Nostromo crew had its fatal first encounter with the alien). Ripley immediately fears the worst when she learns that contact with the colony has recently been lost. With her friends and family long dead, Ripley (now promoted to Lieutenant) reluctantly agrees to accompany a rescue mission sent by the all-powerful Company, acting as advisor to a squad of gung-ho Colonial Marines sent to rescue the colonists. They travel aboard the vessel Sulaco (like The Nostromo, the name is a nod to Joseph Conrad).

Arriving at LV-426, Ripley and her companions soon discover that the aliens have overrun the colony and that all the settlers are apparently dead. The rescue team soon find themselves trapped in the settlement, where they are hunted by swarming armies of Aliens under the direction of their queen. Ripley eventually finds a single survivor, a young girl nicknamed "Newt", who has miraculously survived the massacre. Their mission is further complicated by Ripley's discovery that Burke (Paul Reiser), the Company representative along on the trip, is plotting to bring one of the aliens back to Earth at any cost. When Newt is captured by the aliens, Ripley must risk her own life to try and rescue the child and escape from the planet before the colony is "sterilized" by a nuclear explosion.

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.

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Analysis

Gun violence

Sigourney Weaver, who holds strong views on gun control, has stated that she was deeply uncomfortable with the amount of gun violence in the movie, and that Ripley would be required to strap on heavy artillery herself. However, she admitted she ended up enjoying the role and in particular the firearms training. She also admitted that the gunplay held a seductive appeal. You can see her talking about her opinions on gun violence on the "Alien Quadalogy" DVD.

View of Futuristic Weapons Re-imagined

Prior to Aliens, the common assumption was that futuristic guns and weapons would be variations on energy beam firing devices such as lasers, plasma or particle emitters; most notably the blaster weapons of Star Wars or the multisetting stun/kill/vaporize beam of the often imitated Star Trek phaser. Aliens introduced the trend for futuristic weapons to be depicted as simply more advanced versions of today's weapons. They still fire bullets or projectiles instead of clean death ray beams which still haven't proven practical in the real world. The primary weapon of the Colonial Marines in the movie is an assault rifle/grenade launcher combination weapon similar in many respects to the contemporary assault rifles fielded by the US and Germany. Even the more "high-tech" SmartGun used by two characters in the movie are little more than partially self-guiding versions of conventional squad-support machine guns. (A description of the actual construction of these weapons can be found below in Trivia.) However, a concession was made to technophiles during one sequence of the film, omitted in the theatrical release but later reintroduced in the Director's Cut sold on VHS and DVD. In this short scene, one of the marines lists several decidedly non-conventional weapons including a particle beam weapon, "phased-plasma pulse" weapons, as well as apparently advanced sonic weapons.

The Colonial Marines' battleship, the Sulaco, apparently features a primarily nuclear armament, which might be a reference to the hysteria surrounding the American Star Wars space defence program - the idea that huge orbiting craft will be able to rain thermonuclear missiles in the near future is one which has kept many doomsday theorists and critics of the US Military talking for years.

"Western" parallel

The film conforms to the majority of the common traits of the Western, as laid out in Will Wright's Sixguns and Society (University of California Press 1977).

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!"

Impact

The depiction of the female characters, especially Ripley and the ultra-macho Private Vasquez, as fearless warriors made a considerable impression in the North American perception of women in action films, particularly in futuristic science fiction. Corporal Dietrich (the medic), and Pilot Ferro as well both 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.

The film also contains a suggestion that in the future gender identity would be a non-issue. This is shown both on the data screen of dead crewmembers from the first screen, and in brief off-screen diologue between two marines in the mess hall.

The film heavily influenced many later science fiction works to depict a more realistic world that looks "lived" in: while in Star Trek the sets and equipment usually look pristine, in Aliens they look "banged up" and like they've been given makeshift repairs over time. The film is often used by writers and video-game designers for designing a realistic-looking near future military. The Colonial Marine Corps has been used as a template in the 1998 movie Starship Troopers, the 1995-1996 TV series Space: Above and Beyond, the popular RTS computer game Star Craft and the Halo video game series. Even the US Military has looked to the M-41A Pulse Rifle as a source of the H&K XM-29 OICW weapon system.

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) that contained the daughter subplot as well as scenes of the colony before the alien infestation and extra battle scenes involving the marines' robot sentries.

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. However, some fans of the movie prefer the original theatrical release and consider the extra scenes in the Special Edition to be superfluous.

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.

Trivia

  • In a scene not included in the theatrical version but seen in extended versions on TV, Video and DVD, we see a photo of Ripley's elderly daughter which is actually that of Weaver's mother.
  • 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.
  • 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 "Gayane Ballet Suite" for the main and end titles. 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.
  • "Sulaco" is the name of the town in Joseph Conrad's "Nostromo," which was the name of the ship in Alien. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, is an admirer of Conrad's.
  • 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 Remington 870 shotgun that was mounted in a Franchi SPAS-12 barrel shroud, 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.
  • The film contains numerous (and often somewhat obscure) nods to Robert A. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers." The references to "bug hunts," "drops," and having female pilots all echo Heinlein's work. (In a discussion about the then-upcoming film version of "Starship Troopers," Harlan Ellison wondered aloud why anyone would make the film, since in his opinion it had already been made, and was called "Aliens.")
  • The Film has had huge influence on the Bungie Studios' Halo video game, as the dropships look remarkably similar. The marines have the same 'Gung-ho' attitude to killing aliens, and even the sergeant says the famous line, Gogogo! The corps ain't payin' us by the hour! "The Sarge" --Sergeant Johnson-- is even a hard-talking veteran black man, like Apone.
  • In the Family Guy episode 'Da Bomb,' Stewie Griffin mimics Hudson's lines from the movie: "Game over, man! Game over!"
  • The optional director and cast audio commentary on the film included in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set has the director and cast talking about their disappointment with the "Aliens 3" film, and Weaver mentioning how she only agreed to do "Aliens 4" because she wanted to prevent the making of the "Aliens vs. Predator" film.

Prequel

Alien Quadrilogy

Cast

Actor Role
Sigourney Weaver Lieutenant Ellen Ripley
Carrie Henn Rebecca 'Newt' Jorden
Michael Biehn Corporal Dwayne Hicks
Lance Henriksen L. Bishop
Paul Reiser Carter J. Burke
Bill Paxton Private W. Hudson
William Hope Lieutenant S. Gorman
Jenette Goldstein Private J. Vasquez
Al Matthews Sergeant A. Apone
Mark Rolston Private M. Drake
Colette Hiller Corporal C. Ferro
Daniel Kash Private D. Spunkmeyer
Cynthia Scott Corporal C. Dietrich
Ricco Ross Private R. Frost
Tip Tipping Private T. Crowe
Trevor Steedman Private T. Wierzbowski
Paul Maxwell Van Leuwen
Barbara Coles Cocooned Woman (aka Mary)
Alibe Parsons Med Tech

Crew

Who Position
James Cameron Director and Screenwriter
Gale Anne Hurd Producer
David Giler Executive Producer
Walter Hill Executive Producer
Gordon Carroll Exectutive Producer
Adrian Biddle Cinematographer (replaced Dick Bush)
Ray Lovejoy Editor
Stan Winston Creature SFX
James Horner Composer
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