ALIENS (1986) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

aliens (1986) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   136 minutes

Released         |   18 July 1986 

cast

Sigourney Weaver ... Ripley
Carrie Henn ... Newt
Michael Biehn ... Corporal Hicks
Paul Reiser ... Burke
Lance Henriksen ... Bishop
Bill Paxton ... Private Hudson
William Hope ... Lieutenant Gorman
Jenette Goldstein ... Private Vasquez
Al Matthews ... Sergeant Apone
​Mark Rolston ... Private Drake

director

James Cameron

writer

​James Cameron ... (story by) and
David Giler ... (story by) &
Walter Hill ... (story by)
 
Dan O'Bannon ... (based on characters created by) and
Ronald Shusett ... (based on characters created by)
 
James Cameron ... (screenplay by)

cinematographer

​Adrian Biddle ... director of photography

music

James Horner

film editor

​Ray Lovejoy

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​​​​​​131,060,248

Australia                 $​​​​​​3,118,350

North America       $​​​​​​​​ 85,160,248

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movie minutiae

Sigourney Weaver had initially been very hesitant to reprise her role as Ripley. She had rejected numerous offers from Fox Studios to do any sequels, fearing that her character would be poorly written, and a sub-par sequel could hurt the legacy of ALIEN (1979). However, she was so impressed by the high quality of James Cameron's script - specifically, the strong focus on Ripley, the mother-daughter bond between her character and Newt, and the incredible precision with which Cameron wrote her character, that she finally agreed to do the film. She was of course disappointed when Cameron had to shorten the movie, and cut the scene where Burke brings Ripley the news of just missing the death of her character's daughter (which Weaver felt would have completed the circle of the mother-daughter bond with Newt), but this scene was later restored in the special edition.

The "special edition" includes seventeen minutes of extra scenes: Ripley discussing her daughter with Burke; Ripley is demoted by the board; Newt's parents discovering the abandoned alien ship on LV-426; a tour through the Sulaco prior to the marines waking up; Hudson bragging about his weaponry; Ripley hesitates before she enters the colony complex on the planet; robot sentry guns repelling two Alien raids; the marines theorizing about an Alien leader as the source of the eggs; and Hicks and Ripley exchanging first names. Also included is a scene on LV-426 where a child rides a Bigwheel similar to one ridden in THE TERMINATOR (1984), also directed by James Cameron.

James Cameron was not impressed by the way that Ray Lovejoy was editing the film (Lovejoy was used to the slow pace in which he had edited 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)), and was seriously considering firing him and having the film re-edited from scratch by Mark Goldblatt, Cameron's editor on THE TERMINATOR (1984), and Peter Boita, who had already been brought on-board to edit the more dialogue-driven scenes. Upon hearing that his job was in danger, Lovejoy grabbed all the footage from the film's final battle, locked himself in an editing suite over the weekend, and presented the fully edited version of the battle to Cameron the following week. The effort paid off, because Cameron was sufficiently impressed to let Lovejoy stay on-board and supervise what was intended to be the final edit. Lovejoy later received an Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing.

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related movies

ALIEN 3 (1992)

ALIENS (1986) MOVIE IMAGES

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ALIENS (1986) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After floating in space for 57 years, Lt. Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) shuttle is found by a deep space salvage team. Upon arriving at LV-426, the marines find only one survivor, a nine year old girl named Newt (Carrie Henn). But even these battle-hardened marines with all the latest weaponry are no match for the hundreds of aliens that have invaded the colony.

ALIENS (1986) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 18 July 2016

​​Pop Movee Rating

Ridley Scott's 1979 film ALIEN was a story about working-class people trapped in a spaceship with a creature whose sole purpose was to kill. Like the British Gothic horror films of the 1950s and 1960s, the spaceship Nostromo was the 'haunted house', with thousands of places from which the Xenomorph could launch its deadly attacks. ALIEN is revered as a modern masterpiece, a supreme blens of science fiction and horror, from a Director whose attention-to-detail and uncompromosing drive for authenticity has been well documented. It was hard to imagine that any film maker would be able to match the British director in creating a fully-contained, unique environment that would be an appropriate setting for a follow-up story ...

It was an audacious move for James Cameron, directing only his third feature length film, to take on the sequel to the much-loved Ridley Scott film. The title for the film says it all - ALIENS.

The audience knew what they were going to get...

It was simply a matter of how they were going to get it.

While the story credit for ALIENS is shared with David Giler and Walter Hill, the screenplay credit is Cameron's alone and, it is in this screenplay, that Cameron took the opportunity to craft a film that shared many elements of the original but also added new dimensions to the story of Ellen Ripley and her ongoing fight against the aliens.

Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is found floating in the escape shuttle, in which she fled at the end of Alien, fifty-seven years after the events of the first film. Everything and everyone she knew is gone or dead. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, for which she worked, wants to charge her with the destruction of the Nostromo. Ripley learns that LV-426, the planet where the Nostromo found the alien eggs, has settlers working on air processing so that the planet can be made hospitable for full-scale colonisation. Frustrated that no one is prepared to listen to her, she retreats into herself. It is not long though before Carter Burke, played by Paul Reiser, a representative from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation contacts her to advise that all contact with LV-426 has been lost.

In terms of film stories, it must be hard to work out what should be written, what should be filmed and what should be in the final cut of the movie. The scene between Ripley and Carter Burke where he tells her that contact has been lost with the colony is one such scene. By this point in the film, combined with the assumption that the viewer has seen ALIEN, Cameron is asking the audience to draw some logical conclusions about what has happened.

In ALIEN, it is stated that the Company (being Weyland-Yutani) saw the crew of the Nostromo expendable in the quest to bring a Xenomorph back to Earth for experimentation. Therefore, the audience knows that the Company are run by cold, calculating people. Corporate greedheads with no regard for humanity!

In the second film, Ripley is found alive and validates the existence of the Xenomorph. The point at which Burke tells Ripley that contact has been lost with the colony is the point at which the audience realise that the Company, with Ripley's validation of the alien's existence, has sent inhabitants of the LV-426 colony to investigate. Without doubt, encountering the same facehuggers as the crew of the Nostromo, members of the LV-426 colony become hosts, allowing the alien life-cycle to kick into gear. Once enough aliens have matured, the colonists are defenceless. Subsequently, contact is lost with LV-426. Burke is despatched to enlist Ripley to help with a rescue mission.

The involvement of Ripley in the rescue mission is also an opportunity for the Company to place the only living witness to the creatures in a position to be killed. The implication of her presence is obvious. She's the only person outside of the Weyland-Yutani who knows about the alien, therefore she is a liability to the company’s plans. Burke tells her that the persecution she has been subjected to by the Company will go away if she helps as an adviser on the LV-426 rescue mission.

Given the Company's record over the two films, that is a doubtful promise.

Burke's actions later in the film fully support the assumption at this point that one way or another Ripley is being sent to her death. In a sign that he respects the viewer's intellect, Cameron, at this point, gives his audience a lot of credit in the hope that they understand this development in the story.

Ripley travels to LV-426 aboard the Sulocco, a Marine transport ship. She is accompanied by a platoon whom, at first, don't seem too concerned about the prospect of encountering alien creatures. Ripley tries to impress upon them the need to take their mission more seriously but is dismissed as being wound a little too tightly for her own good.

In the short sequence travelling aboard the ship to the colony, James Cameron skilfully matches the working-class feel of the first film's crew into his platoon of Marines, providing enough time for each character so the audience understands who they are and cares about what will happen to them later in the film. In the same sequence, he also manages to set the tone for the remainder of the film, emphasising the presence of the military and treating the set-pieces to follow as if it is a war film.

Analysis of ALIENS since the film’s release has compared the subject matter of the story to that of the Vietnam War. At the time of this film's release, the Vietnam War was still a recent memory for a generation of Americans and Cameron does make an overt effort to draw parallels. The Marines sent to LV-426 lack focus and severely underestimate their opponent. They find their adversary hard to see and difficult to kill. A series of battles with the aliens result in horrendous defeats because their mode of attack does not suit the environment...

There are enough scenes to suggest that this is not a coincidence.

Cameron's screenplay deliberately establishes those in command as either being incompetent or duplicitous. Lt. Gorman, played by William Hope, and Paul Reiser's Burke become the epitome of command incompetency and it is left to Ripley to pull together a counter-strategy to try and make sure as many of them as possible make it off the planet alive.

There is also an element of carry-over from the first film in the way that authority figures are represented in ALIENS. In the original Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) represent the doubtful working class, but, in the second film, it is Ripley who shines the light of distrust upon those leading the mission.

The Second Act of the film is most similar to the original, as the Marines and Ripley are lured into the aliens nest and are then forced to retreat to the colonist's base to battle the advancing menace. It is toward the end of the Second Act that the film departs from the original, as Ripley, at first, grieves for the loss of Newt, played by Carrie Henn, after she is snatched by an alien and decides to go back to the nest to rescue her.

The decision to rescue Newt is Ripley's chance at maternal redemption...

Her fifty-seven years drifting in space has resulted in her missing own daughter's entire life. All of Newt's family have been killed by the aliens and Ripley takes the opportunity to become her surrogate mother and protector. When she fails to stop the young girl from being abducted, Ripley takes it very personally and her drive to rescue Newt kicks the film into its high-gear Third Act.

The Third Act is broken into two streams...

The main story is about Ripley's search for Newt, while the secondary story is about the andorid Bishop, played by Lance Henriksen, getting the second drop-ship from the Sulocco and piloting to the coordinates where he is to meet Ripley and Newt.

The Third Act also introduces the audience to one of the film's stars very late in proceedings - the Queen Alien. Stan Winston's creature is an impressive extension of the original H.R. Giger creature design and was one of the reasons Winston, Robert Skotak, John Richardson and Suzanne Benson won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for the film. The Queen Alien is also responsible for Ripley's most memorable line of dialogue, the famous "Get away from her, you bitch!"

The introduction of the Queen had fans of the Alien "mythology" in a little bit of a quandary, as the creature's life cycle was an important part of the first movie, but was never fully explained. It was left to interpretation of H.R. Giger's illustrations to fill in the blanks, however, nothing in his work suggested the presence of a Queen. In true Hollywood fashion, continuity was regarded as a malleable element as the Queen is introduced to raise the stakes, providing a greater threat to Ripley than anything previously.

One of the few problems that ALIENS has, in terms of story, is the ending’s similarity to the first film. Having escaped the planet, the survivors of the mission think they're safe, but then the Queen suddenly bursts into the scene cutting the android Bishop in two. The subsequent battle between Ripley and the Queen is more innovative, as Weaver is far more impassioned and aggressive in combating the alien this time around than what she was at the end of the original movie. The biggest difference between this and ALIEN is, instead of being scared, she's now just mad and she has something to fight for in the character of Newt.

The film finishes in the same manner as it started: quietly. Ripley is, once again, in hyper-sleep aboard a spaceship. This time though, she has battled the aliens and instead of losing everything, she has gained something very valuable - a second chance at being not just a protector, but a mother. It's a great way to bookend the movie.

ALIENS made $85 million at the US Box Office and nearly $46 million in international markets. In today's terms, this would be considered a moderate performance, but in 1986 it was a massive hit.

The film's production budget was a mere $19 million, with much of the filming taking place in pre-existing locations such as the Acton Lane Power Station in south-west London.

The original theatrical cut of the film ran for 137 minutes, but when released for the home entertainment market, a Special Edition was released which ran for 154 minutes. The additional 17 minutes of footage included a scene where Ripley learns that her daughter has died, Newt's family find the alien's spaceship on LV-426, advancing aliens being shot by automatic guns that the Marines have set-up and a transmission by Burke to the colonists advising them to investigate the alien's ship.

In either its theatrical version or home entertainment version, ALIENS is a masteroiece action film and achieves the rare feat of expanding upon its predecessor's success, as well as being an entertaining stand-alone feature film with its own identity.

ALIENS (1986) USEFUL LINKS

Aliens (film) - Wikipedia
Aliens (1986) - IMDb
Aliens (1986) - Rotten Tomatoes

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