Aliens (1986)

VERDICT:
9/10 Queen Bitches

Proves that some sequels really do kick ass and it still stands as one of the best action movies of all time.

Aliens picks up right where Alien (singular) left off with lone survivor Ellen Ripley being woken up from a 57 year-long hypersleep by the same organization that sent her out on a suicide mission in the first place. She tells them about everything that happened in the first movie, they all think she’s crazy, but when they suddenly lose contact with one of their colonies that’s stationed on the same planet Ripley’s crew first discovered that damn alien, the bigwigs quickly eat their words and send our vindicated heroine back out to the said planet to take care of business.

Hadn’t seen this one in a good long while, but being that I’ve still got Avatar on the brain, I made it a point yesterday to go out and buy this sucker as soon as possible. A fine addition to the collection and it’s still as good as ever.

And it only cost me ten bucks. Booyah!

So I don’t know about everyone else, but I think this one’s even better than the original. Why? Oh I’ll tell you why. Six words:

“Get away from her, you BITCH!”

For those who know what I’m talking about, I rest my case. For those who don’t, allow me to explain. See, James Cameron has seen the future, and the future, dear readers, is totally badass. It is far more badass than any future Ridley Scott has ever seen and we are going to be screwed in a most epic of fashions as a result.

Instead of ramble on about why the sequel is so much better, I’m gonna let Jim Cameron take it away and run down his mental bullet points after watching Alien for the first time as he thought of all the ways he was going to make the sequel rock at least twice as hard.  Pretty sure this is verbatim.

– “So, Alien. Where do I even begin? Problem number one: fight a single alien for two hours? Screw that, Ridley! How about we throw an extra hundred in there, stat…and take away all the survivors’ ammo while they’re at it! These guys are gonna be effed!”

– “Problemo numero dos: Ellen Ripley run away from the alien horde? Screw that double time! Ripley’s getting the Sarah Connor treatment and she is gonna destroy! Sigourney Weaver eats metal pylons for breakfast (thank you for that one, Castor) and the world damn well better recognize.”

– “You know what’s awesome? Marines. You know what’s even more awesome? Space marines! Gotta make sure we give them some gratuitously large guns, too.”

– “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We are totally gonna tape a flamethrower to a machine gun/grenade launcher at some point. That has to happen.”

– “I had a nightmare about this last night…and I am totally putting it into this movie.”

– “Someone should yell, ‘I’m the king of the world!’ at some point. No? Alright, but I’m saving that one.”

Yeah, I think that about sums it up. All the same, there’s still a couple more things worth mentioning.

There’s some choice performances here by Michael Biehn as the only level-headed space marine of the bunch, Lance Henriksen as the token android (Lance should be in more stuff, very cool dude) and Paul Reiser of all people as the scumbag company rep. Also features one of Bill Paxton‘s more entertaining roles.

The set pieces, the creature designs, and every last painstaking detail that went into creating this horrorshow of a world are also nothing short of unreal. Not sure that it all adds up to be as scary as Alien was back in the day, but good God is it impressive. The alien queen? Utter insanity right there.

Unfortunately, the dialogue’s not all that great, at least when it comes to the marines, but there are some classic one-liners to be found amidst what is mostly a borderline corny script.

But, folks, if you’ve never seen Aliens, you are missing out on one hell of a ride. This thing is epic, this thing is awesome, and this thing is just damn fun. One of those movies that James Cameron was born to make and I was this close to giving it a 10. Who knows, maybe on the next viewing.

Game over, man. Game over.

FUN FACT: The fifteen minute countdown at the end of the movie where Ripley goes down to find Newt actually clocks in at exactly fifteen minutes. That is so freakin’ cool. That’s love, man.