Aliens

Jenette Goldstein and Mark Rolston as Privates Vazquez and Drake in Fox’s 1986 Aliens.

Believe me, I’d prefer not to. I may be synthetic, but I’m not stupid.

****

I started watching this movie in Toledo, OH in the Summer of 2010. In August of that year I started my movielog, publishing my first review—Crimson Rivers 2–Angels of the Apocalypse. It has a rating, a quotation, and five sentences. That feels like so long ago. My internet connection sucked in Toledo, so I gave up about an hour into Aliens. Almost six years later I am flying back from Maui on American Airlines and our plane has individual screens and a sizeable movie library. After watching The Big Short I still have about 90 minutes left in my flight. Those of you who know me from my pre-movielog days probably heard me mention “the crap barrier.” The only reference in a review to this metric that I have made so far was in 2012 in my review of the horrid Ghost Dad. Thus I could either watch a movie that was probably crappy, or, clearly, finish Aliens since I had 70 minutes left according to my memory. I decided to watch Aliens (had 75 minutes left, it turned out) and finally got to find out if most of the humans survived their encounter with the Aliens—they did not.

The characters are straight forward, as one might expect from a James Cameron screenplay, but the dialogue works pretty well. That is the highest praise I can give for dialogue in Cameron’s work. Recently I chose Rambo¹ for a Shot post, which reminded me that Rambo was actually written by Cameron and Stallone. I choose to imagine Cameron coming up with a cool line while writing Rambo, not wasting it, keeping it to himself, and then using it here. The similarities between Rambo and Aliens are manifold, but one had Weaver and was cool, while the other was like watching fireworks on the 4th of July, but with worse dialogue. In Aliens the mood and the environments are great at creating tension and making you feel like you are on another world. More than just being on another world, it makes you feel like you are on a dangerous foreign planet with almost no hope of survival beyond the coolheadedness of Weaver’s Ripley.

Ripley, Newt (Carrie Henn) & Bishop totally safe with no Alien Queens lurking nearby.

Much has been written about Ripley and Cameron, and the role of the female hero in cinema. So why add to it when my experience with women in cinema focused on Soviet films.² Anyways, I want to add that the robots in these movies are always great, including Lance Henriksen’s Bishop. Despite my preference for Ridley Scott as a filmmaker, I think that this is better than Alien. This is James Cameron’s best film until he made Avatar, and yes that includes Titanic, for which he won Best Director and Best Picture. Aliens has two Oscars of its own for its special effects, and I support the nominations it received for Best Actress (Weaver) and Best Score (James Horner).

¹ The original film in the Rambo series was First Blood which meant that when making a sequel, the producers opted to go for The Godfather Part II, except with First Blood instead of The Godfather. With the success of Rockys I–III, and Rocky IV coming out the same year, a five letter R name starring Stallone might help boost the box office on Part II. Part I made $47m domestically, and $78m internationally. The Rambo: First Blood Part II. Part II got a $44m budget, which was an increase of $30m! This made $150m domestically and internationally, more than doubling the gross on the better First Blood. Next up, Rambo III, which means no The Godfather portion at all. The budget went up another $20m, but brought in $10m less domestically than it cost to make (grossing $54m). Foreign intake dropped to $125m, making it still a huge success, despite being somehow even worse than Rambo/Part II, or whatever you want to call it.↩
² If you are looking for a recommendation, Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears (Москва слезам не верит) is great, but easier to find might be the Criterion Collection’s Wings (Крылья).↩