Review by Kelly Parks

ALIENS 20th Century Fox Ratings: USA: R

It probably doesn't happen often, but if for whatever reason the phrase 'seventeen days' comes up in conversation, do you react by saying:

"Seventeen days?! We're not gonna last seventeen hours!"

Some of you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of you nod. We understand each other.

ALIENS, the second movie in what has come to be known as the Alien Legacy series, was directed by the masterful James Cameron (THE TERMINATOR, TERMINATOR 2, THE ABYSS, TRUE LIES) and written by Mr. Cameron, David Giler (THE PARALLAX VIEW, ALIEN, ALIENS [story]) and Walter Hill (THE WARRIORS, ALIENS [story]).

At the end of the first film Ripley (Sigourney Weaver: ALIEN, GHOSTBUSTERS, GHOSTBUSTERS 2, ALIEN 3, COPYCAT, ALIEN: Resurrection) and Jones the cat are the only survivors from the cargo ship Nostromo. This movie opens with Ripley and Jones in hypersleep (suspended animation) on board a lifeboat spacecraft. A much larger ship approaches and docks and someone cuts through the lifeboat airlock. Spacesuited figures come aboard and seem disappointed to discover Ripley is alive, because that means the loss of their salvage rights.

Ripley wakes up in a hospital apparently in orbit around Earth. She's told, by Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a representative from Weyland-Yutani (The Company), that she's been in hypersleep for 57 years.

Ripley the survivor, admirable for her strength that got her through the events of the first film, is a basket case. The story feels that much more real and Ripley more like a real human being because of her vulnerability. She made it home but the nightmare she went through is still with her. Severe post traumatic stress syndrome.

And that's not her only problem. The cargo ship Ripley blew up in a failed attempt to kill the Alien warrior was property of Weyland-Yutani (worth $42 million in adjusted dollars, we are told). An inquest is held and nobody believes Ripley's story about the creature. She's assumed to be at fault and her career as the 22nd century equivalent of an officer in the merchant marines is over.

I say 22nd century just as a guess, because the events in the first movie seem at least a century in the future. Add 57 years of hypersleep and you're talking late 22nd / early 23rd century. You'd think Ripley's career would be over anyway because her skills would certainly have been made obsolete by advances in technology. Not that she couldn't be retrained.

When Ripley asks why the Company doesn't just check out her story by sending someone to the planet where her crew found the derelict Alien ship, she's horrified to hear that during her long sleep the planet has been terraformed (made earthlike) and colonized. She's told 60 or 70 families have lived there for years.

Ripley starts her life from scratch, working as a cargo loader in a docking bay. Not great work but better than being chased around by Alien monsters. Then Carter Burke shows up again, accompanied by Lt. Gorman (William Hope: HELLRAISER II) of the colonial marines. The colony on LV-426 (didn't anyone ever get around to giving this planet a decent name?) has gone silent. The marines are being sent in to find out what's going on and Burke (a nominal civilian but Gorman defers to him, giving a clue as to the Company's clout) wants Ripley to come with as a consultant. He offers her reinstatement as a flight officer.

She refuses outright at first but eventually says yes. Why? Actually, it makes a certain kind of psychological sense. Traumatized Vietnam veterans often found themselves volunteering for another tour of duty in the place that had so damaged them. It becomes an obsession. It's all you can think about anyway - you relive it in your dreams every night anyway - so going back finally becomes a comfort in a terrible way.

An apparently fully automated troop ship, the Sulaco, brings Ripley, Burke and Gorman's platoon of colonial marines to orbit around LV-426. Immediately some soldiers stand out, including Hudson (Bill Paxton: THE TERMINATOR, NEAR DARK, PREDATOR 2, A SIMPLE PLAN, THE LAST SUPPER, FRAILTY), Hicks (Michael Biehn: THE TERMINATOR, THE ABYSS, MEGIDDO: The Omega Code 2) and Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein: NEAR DARK, TERMINATOR 2). Also on board, much to Ripley's dislike, is an android (who prefers being called an 'artificial person') named Bishop (Lance Henrickson: OMEN II, PIRANHA II, TERMINATOR, NEAR DARK, ALIEN 3). Ripley's previous experience with androids (the character 'Ash' in the first movie) has made her a bit skittish around synthetics.

In an awesome sequence a dropship brings them to the surface and the troops cautiously approached the apparently abandoned settlement. The power is still on and there's no outward signs of damage, but the people are gone. All but one: a half-crazed little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) who clearly has been living here alone for some time.

So where is everybody? I can't tell you that, so to make up for it I'll give you a

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
I've heard other (lesser) science geeks point to the dropships "drop" from the Sulaco as a mistake. They were in orbit - and thus in free fall - and simply releasing clamps on the drop ship should not have caused it to fall so precipitously from its mother ship. I have no problem with this scene because clearly (given the way people are moving around on the ship) these people have generated gravity technology. Given that, it's easy to imagine that the drop ship is accelerated by a pulse from the gravity generator, giving the appearance of a dramatic "fall" from the Sulaco.

Too bad this movie also has an

!!!UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT!!!
There are plenty of black folk and a white woman who plays a Hispanic. They are all of course, slaughtered in the time honored Horror movie cliché of Kill All The Black People/non-whites. This is not to say that the movie doesn't have its share of white characters getting killed too. It does. The UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT is to let you know that, no matter how many victims or how many people from different races in the movie, the whites and ONLY the whites were cast as the survivors.

For a complete list, go to UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT.

This is THE sci-fi/Thriller movie that other films aspire to be. Of course Ripley faces her worst fears and then some, and we learn a great deal more about the Alien life-cycle. There is heroism and betrayal, courage and cowardice. It's just one of those movies that no matter how often you see it, you never get tired of it. That, by definition, makes it worth 5 shriek girls. ALIENS definitely earns the big 5.

This review copyright 2003 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.

ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION 20th Century Fox Ratings: USA: R

As so often happens with movies, hundreds of hours may be shot for every one hour you see onscreen. Often this extra footage is nothing more than various camera angles of action and dialog. The director and editor sit together with the first rough draft and figure out what shots best suit the flow and emotion of the movie.

Director James Cameron has already established himself as a master of movie pacing. After all, he took a movie about the most famous ship disaster in the world and made it exciting. How you can keep people on the edge of their seats over a movie that they already know the end to is amazing, but Cameron can do it like very few others. His secret is: All Action is Character Driven. Despite what may be going on with the trucks, the helicopters, the ships, or the spaceships, he makes us see it all from the perspective of the witness.

In TERMINATOR 2, we are in the helicopter with the pilot and see the liquid metal Terminator smash the glass and flow into the opening, his chrome reflecting the shocked pilot's face.

In Titanic, we are with the people on the aft of the ship as it upends and we see the folks below us falling into the water and bouncing off of the railings. When you watch other disaster movies, for example The Posiedon Adventure, you see the disaster happening from a place of safety. We view the scene as a bystander, as a witness. James Cameron makes us feel the danger.

ALIENS was so damn popular in 1986 and ever since that it wouldn't normally be something we would review here at Feo Amante's Horror Movies, but this movie is a Special Edition with 17 additional minutes of footage. As with the first ALIEN, Walter Hill (WARRIORS) shares the writing credit. Hill is a great partner to have on any action film as he really knows how to inject adrenalin into a script. Why he has never tried his hand at novel writing I have no idea.

So how does ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION hold up?

To refresh your memory, Warrant Officer and First mate of the Nostromo, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver: GHOSTBUSTERS, ALIEN 3, COPYCAT, ALIEN INSURRECTION), is the sole survivor of the Alien attack that killed her entire crew in the first film, ALIEN. Adrift in a lifeboat, she is found by a salvage ship, still in suspended animation, after 57 years: everyone she ever knew is gone.

Hardcore ALIEN fans have long been aware of Ripley's unfilmed history. We know that Ripley's daughter was written out of the final script for ALIEN. ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION brings her daughter back, if only as a deceased 67 year old woman. (It makes you wonder why people are still dying of old age, at 67, in the far future. No other explanation is given for the daughter's death.) The scene is brief but powerful, and serves to remind us of the loss Ripley feels. She is truly alone in the Universe without a friend.

"Only my brother calls me Rebecca."
Their discovery of Giger's alien craft is nothing new and not worth the time it takes from the film. One can see why it was originally left behind. Of the 17 minutes, only about 10 of it "enrich" the movie (" . . . enrich the emotional impact of the film", as the blurb says on the box.).

The company, which is punishing Ripley for having destroyed valuable cargo (see ALIEN and the review of the originial theatrical ALIENS) on the pretext of trying to destroy a "Monster" loose on the ship, has now lost contact with colonists on LV-426. They ask for Ripley's help - just in case there are monsters after all. They make promises, offer incentives, a bonus plan, return to former status, etc., and protect her with a mess of aggressive, ready for ass-whupping, Colonial Space Marines. Ripley agrees, they return, they land on the planet, and Merry Mishaps occur.

Too bad this movie has an

!!!UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT!!!
There are plenty of black folk and a white woman who plays a Hispanic. They are all of course, slaughtered in the time honored Horror movie cliché of Kill All The Black People/non-whites. This is not to say that the movie doesn't have its share of white characters getting killed too. It does. The UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT is to let you know that, no matter how many victims or how many people from different races in the movie, the whites and ONLY the whites were cast as the survivors.

For a complete list, go to UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHÉ ALERT.

James Cameron personally supervised this Special Edition, and while it doesn't say "Director's Cut" on the box, the addition of the 17 minutes is certainly a lot better than the Director's Cut of movies like BLADE RUNNER and DAWN OF THE DEAD. If this is Cameron's leftovers, Wow!

If this were the original ALIENS, I would give it 5 Shriekgirls, no problem. But since I'm mainly looking at this movie's additional 17 minutes and how it relates to the rest of the film, I'm knocking off one Shriekgirl for the Newt Family Scene. A totally unnecessary bit of exposition that chokes the pacing of the film. This still doesn't ruin the movie, and ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION is still worth seeing. Even with 7 so-so minutes, ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION still outshines ALIEN 3 and 4.

20th Century Fox could do us all a big favor by releasing a DVD with the original ALIENS as well as the Special Edition, instead of sticking us with the SE version only.

This review copyright 2000 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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