When talking to movie fans, you come to realize that a lot of us love to talk in absolutes. Hyperbole like “best movie ever” and “worst piece of trash I’ve ever seen” can easily turn a friendly discussion into a fierce argument. Usually the biggest discussions regard franchises and whether sequels/prequels can stand up to the original. Of course the biggest arguments usually break out as to which of the Star Wars entries is the best, with the Empire Strikes Back crowd usually winning out (or at least yelling the loudest).
The Godfather and its sequel are usually brought up eventually with the debate still raging. Who can really tell which Pacino performance is better, and does De Niro come anywhere close to Brando’s signature role? Personally, the debate with these two is still up in the air, with the first being a near perfect film, but the second taking a lot more chances with its time-fractured storyline. No one usually argues for the third film.
Usually the third entry in this sequel debate, producing the most varied opinions, comes from the Alien franchise. When Alien hit cinemas in 1979, it was a worldwide smash, taking the Star Wars formula and turning it on its ear. Those expecting another Flash Gordon-style space romp got a “haunted house in space” and one of the most frightening movies ever made. The movie is as rich as any made in that period and has stood the test of time due to the talent and willpower of a terrific cast and crew. Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver turned the movie into a launching pad for their young careers, which are still going strong decades later.
With Alien turning out to be such a huge success, 20th Century Fox went looking for sequel ideas. This turned out to be a lengthy and arduous process, as ideas seemed to all be retreads, with little vision. Then finally, Fox executives ran across the first part of a script by an unknown director named James Cameron. Completely untested, Cameron’s script was so good that Fox did the unthinkable; they waited for the director as he finished his first major production, an ambitious Sci-Fi picture called The Terminator. To say that Fox was hungry to get Cameron back on the project after the release on his film would be a tremendous understatement. When all was said and done, Cameron had made perhaps the best film of his career, Fox had a viable franchise and movie fans had a debate that still rages today.
Aliens Starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Michael Biehn. Directed by James Cameron.
After climbing the huge hurdle of actually getting a script and a director the film, one road block still remained; the film’s star, Sigourney Weaver. According to imdb.com though Weaver loved the Cameron script, she still played hardball with the studio on her price to reprise her role as Ellen Ripley. Enter James Cameron, who with the success of The Terminator decided to exercise some of his newfound clout. The director apparently started to circulate the rumor that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be taking the lead in the new film and that Ripley would be written out. As the rumor got to Weave’s agent, the actress finally sat down and got a deal worked out with Fox.
What a fortunate decision this turned out to be for Weaver. In Aliens, Ripley went from the starting point, to the definitive moment in the actress’ career. Thanks to the work of the actress and Writer-Director Cameron Ripley was transformed to great character to perhaps the greatest Science Fiction heroine of all time. Cameron is probably known for strong female characters more than any other director and Ripley is definitely the equal in the this film to the film make’s other great women characters such as Sarah Conner from the Terminator films and Lindsey Brigman The Abyss.
The first thing Cameron manages to do is to make Ripley a real outsider. No longer is she just another crewmember, but a woman out of her own time. Picking up sixty years after the end the original film, Ripley’s escape pod is found by salvagers and she is taken to Earth. Hyper-sleep has kept Ripley young, but all the people she has ever loved have died off. Even the young daughter Ripley left behind when she set out on the Nostromo has recently passed away in her sixties.
Ripley is even given a cold reception upon her return, as Hyperdime, the company that sent the crew of the Nostromo down the planet, now accuses the only survivor of the event of negligence and perhaps the murder her crewmates. It is when Ripley reaches this lowest of points that she agrees to return LV-426, and to the aliens that ruined her life. When colonists on the planet have sent out a distress call, Marines are called into rescue them, with Ripley in tow as an advisor.
By making her totally alone on Earth, Cameron has created a situation where the alien and LV-426 are the characte’s only link to the past. In a way, this Cameron’s has created a Revenge film, where Ripley’s desire to settle the score is the only thing she has left to do. Brilliantly, Cameron gives Ripley more to live for, taking this character from great to greatness.
When the Marines and Ripley finally reach LV-426 all hell breaks loose. If Ridley Scott had managed to make a “haunted house in space”, Cameron takes the house and puts it completely under siege. Visual Effects wizards Robert Skotak, Stan Winston, John Richardson, and Suzanne M. Benson were all given academy awards on this picture for creating aliens that were more terrifying as any we had ever seen before. Cameron has stated in the past he took some inspiration from the Viet Nam war, where these technologically advanced soldiers are simply destroyed by the sheer will and tenacity of the native inhabitants.
Cameron’s skills as an editor definitely come to the forefront in these action scenes, as the director pulls out every trick in the book to try and make you believe that there are thousands of aliens coming down on our heroes. Using only six alien costumes, Cameron reshoots them over and over again, but doing so which such skill that the process is seamless. Another terrific sequence has Cameron playing with our minds eye, as the Marines set up sentry guns to see just how many creatures are out there. Amazing how the director can get our blood pressure up by just having us watch numbers, as the guns’ rounds deplete.
Cameron then adds just a tad of paranoia to the movie, by adding two important “company men” to the cast. Lance Hendrickson plays Bishop, the team’s android. In relationship to Ripley, this adds just a little bit more tension to this piece, by having you not know just what he’s thinking. Hendrickson is terrific here, as he’s able to give Bishop a bit of naivety that makes him stand out. Also his body language simply gives him an unnatural quality that makes you think he’s a robot. Then there’s Burke (Paul Reiser) who manages to exude a slimy lawyer type persona that just makes you absolutely hate him. Even his moments of being genuine seem to creep you out more than anything.
It’s almost sick how Cameron simply keeps piling on the mayhem, with the aliens attacking, the group’s ship being destroyed so they can’t get off the ground, and then we find out that the facility where they’ve landed could explode at any time. And yet every moment of the film is so economically situated, nothing in the film seems embellished at all. The movie has virtually no fat, with tension ratcheted up so tight, it seems as if it’s going to burst.
Then again if we didn’t care about anyone past Ripley, none of this would matter. Special attention was made so that the Marines were not just cardboard characters throughout this mayhem. Cameron fills his cast with memorable characters. Seemingly everyone either loves or loves to hate Bill Paxton’s Pvt. Hudson. Paxton may never live this character down in his career as Cameron gives him one macho line after another, even while the characte’s cowardice is evident to every one. Really the character is quite unforgettable, as his “game over” speech is one of the great cinematic meltdowns. The character is even given a bit of redemption, making him that much more memorable.
Jenette Goldstein’s Pvt. Vasquez is also awesome as probably the team’s biggest badass. Funny, that in this film filled with testosterone, two women would actually be the film’s most macho characters. Oddly enough, the film has a moment where Hudson confronts Vasquez, saying that “she thought the call was for illegal aliens, so she signed up.” This is a reference to the casting call, where Goldstein actually believed the film was about illegal aliens.
Most of the actors playing Marines spent two weeks preparing for these roles by being trained by the Special Air Service, Britain’s elite anti-terrorist force, and were also required to read Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers, which is about Space Marines fighting huge bug-like creatures. The training must have worked, as the actors all seem to move as one unit. Each has the swagger of an actual soldier and they have a repartee with each other as if they have known each other forever. It is vastly important that you at least feel something towards these characters, making their fight with the aliens an emotional one, and not just an exercise.
Funny thing is the one Marine you end up remembering more than any other is Michael Biehn’s Hicks, who didn’t go through the Marine’s training because he was a last minute replacement. Actor James Remar was initially intended to play the role, but dropped out after a couple days of shooting. The actor is even still in a couple of shots, as he’s shot from the back, and it’s nearly impossible to tell him from Biehn in the scenes. Biehn capitalizes on the promise he showed in The Terminator with a commanding, yet human performance. Too bad the acto’s career never really took him to big places after this role, because the makings of a real star are there on scene.
The final piece to this puzzle though, is Ripley herself. Cameron gives the character so much more depth than in the original piece that this is really where the character comes into her own. By adding the character of “Newt” (Carrie Henn), a little girl who ends up being the last survivor from the colony, Ripley shows her maternal instincts and adds much more gravity to this role. It was also enough that it garnered Weaver a Best Actress Oscar Nomination, which is nearly unheard of in this genre.
This extra maternal push adds vehemently to two virtuoso Cameron sequences; a scene in which Ripley and Newt are trapped in a lab with face huggers and the film’s apocalyptic last twenty minutes. In both, Cameron pulls out all the stop, throwing out every cinematic trick that the director has in his playbook to make each sequence one of the most exciting in the entire genre. Few scenes can attest to being as memorable or exciting as seeing Ripley Vs. the alien queen, a masterful gigantic puppet constructed by the film’s effects team.
In the end, Aliens is such a tour de force for the director that it places as my favorite of his career. Even in the face of his cast and crew being unsure of his abilities due to his inexperience (Cameron had to fire his assistant director and cinematographer at different points in the film because they kept second guessing him), the director pulls off a masterpiece of Horror, Action, and Science Fiction film making. The debate may go on as to which Alien film is the best, but there’s no denying that Aliens is a truly remarkable film.
Picture Credits: outnow.ch, beyondhollywood.com, impawards.com
