#36 - Aliens

Aliens (1986)
Trash-o-rama
Written and Directed by: James Cameron.

Plot: Set around sixty years after the events of Alien, during which time Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been floating around in a stasis pod. When she gets picked up and revived by the People of Earth, she learns that a colony has been established on LV-426 (the planet where the original Alien was picked up) and, surprise surprise, they have lost contact with the people there. So, being the only person to have ever come across the Alien and lived to tell about it, she is sent off with a bunch of marines to kick the crap out of some monsters.

Review: Boy do they ever kick the crap out of those monsters. This is one of those movies that is almost wall to wall violence, you know, people getting ripped apart and sprayed with acid, aliens getting blown all to hell, good times, generally a very fun movie to watch.

But ya know, the thing about this movie that actually makes it special and the part that the countless hordes of imitators really failed to get, is the surprisingly likeable characters. I say ‘surprisingly’ because most of them (Hudson, Vasquez, Newt, Ripley, Burke) are annoying as hell and yet still likeable (except for Burke - the guy was a real creep and then he turned out to be a real bastard). Their annoyingness is generally kind of endearing for some reason.

Same goes for the original movie (which I will discuss when the time comes). In fact, I think I wrote almost the exact same thing for that movie, only, I don’t remember because I wrote it in my notebook whereas the rest of these reviews are written in a word document (which is, you may want to know, why I didn’t use any accents on the letters which are supposed to have accents. I haven’t yet figured out how to do that on a laptop. I looked it up, but everything I found was for something that didn’t apply (i.e., they said to use the Number Pad. My computer does not have a Number Pad. And so on (NOTE: I figured it out. You press CTRL+SHIFT. But I'm not going to go back and reaccent all of those words. That is far too much work))).

And yeah, then there’s the extremely gratuitous violence, which is always super fun. But sad at the same time… not the violence towards the aliens - fuck them (I dread the day that humans make contact with extraterrestrial beings because I’m majorly racist. Jawas, Daleks, Orkans, all bastards… but most of all I hate the fucking Vulcans. Killer robots, on the other hand, I am usually pretty down with) - but, you know, the people getting trashed. It makes me feel bad.

Also, there is a certain level of suspense. I mean, there are some pretty creepy scenes. Mostly they are given up for things blasting other things, but every now and then something kind of spooky happens. I gotta love it.

Overall, this is a most satisfactory sequel to Alien. Although any time I meet someone who suggests that this movie outdoes the original, I am forced to punch them in the head. I can’t help it, I just have to. Because they are so wrong. And that’s not just me being a snob. Alien is fundamentally superior to this movie - the characters are better, the dialogue better written; there is more suspense and the alien is kept out of sight for most of the movie, making its appearances more shocking; Ian Holm is way creepier than Paul Reiser; there was a cute cat rather than an obnoxious little kid (okay, I do actually kind of like Carrie Henn, and on the scale of fucking obnoxious kids in sci-fi/action/horror movies, she is one of the least offensive, but still). And the original had John Hurt. I like John Hurt.

But yeah, this movie is still the best sequel to the first movie and probably one of the better horror sequels of all time.

Favourite Part: Bishop. He’s just so awesome. I mean, I could write a book on how much I love Bishop. First of all, he’s Lance Henriksen which pretty much sells him right there. But he’s also really nice! He’s so polite and helpful even when Ripley is being mean to him. And the fact that throughout the whole movie you’re expecting him to become evil and kill everybody and then he doesn’t. If they ever make androids, this is what they should be like. Plus, he is one of the few characters who actually survives (sort of). Best robot ever.

Other versions: None.

Sequels: Follows Alien. Followed by Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection.

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