Aliens

1986 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ripley's convinced to travel with some soldiers to the planet from the first movie to check on some colonists. They have to square off against a bunch of Xenomorphs.

This replaces the chilling atmospherics and almost raw poetic and almost elegant creepiness from the first movie with non-stop action. And as far as non-stop action Hollywood blockbustin' action goes, James Cameron nails it. This pretty much takes the ideas from the first movie and increases the quantity while sacrificing the quality. This is bigger, bloodier, and louder, but if the first movie is a knockout, this is like a violent and exciting uppercut that looks great on the television before replays show that it didn't connect with anything. And Ripley's underwear fits a little better. The minimalist music that worked so effectively in the first movie is replaced with dull, predictable stuff. The space scenes look terrible compared to the first, odd since this comes about seven years after its predecessor. The characters run around like living and breathing stereotypes. There's a black guy chewing on a cigar, a bunch of asshole marines, an ultra-tough Latina, Paul Reiser's villain. They're Hollywood clichés except for my favorite character in this--Lance Henriksen's android Bishop. Bill Paxton is awful as one of the space marines and was apparently told that he needed to screech all of his lines. As much as I hate cats, I wasn't happy with the kid Newt who replaced the cat from the first movie. With this collection of characters, it's not hard to see why I was rooting for the titular aliens pretty early in the proceedings. Sigourney Weaver's character turns into Bruce Willis--taping space guns and flamethrowers together and discovering her inner-badass. Actually, I guess she retains her hair in this movie, so maybe she doesn't quite turn into Bruce yet. I was surprised to learn that she was nominated as Best Actress for this. She's at her best as Ripley here, but is it a Best Actress worthy performance? Maybe she was nominated for the scene in the elevator where she screams, "Come on, God damn it!" I've decided that I'm going to do that every time I use an elevator from now on. Don't get me wrong. This is a mostly entertaining movie even when it feels a little too ludicrous. Cameron knows how to put together an action sequence, and the last half of this movie is relentless action--just action piled on top of action, an orgy of action! It's a great action movie, but that's a little disappointing since its predecessor approached something a little closer to great art.

Supposedly, there's a subtext here, and this is a Vietnam allegory. I don't know anything about that. I didn't learn about Vietnam in school.