Review: Aliens

Aliens
Cert: 15 / 154 mins / Dir. James Cameron / Trailer

Ah 4/26 again, and a very healthy turnout in suburban Oxfordshire for what is, after all, a mercenary annual marketing exercise as opposed to any kind of anniversary screening. Healthy to the point where your correspondent looked around the growing crowd comprising couples of all ages, groups of men and groups of women and thought '...right, have I walked into the wrong screen?'. The downside of an eager audience of this size is of course an uptick in the general rustling, fidgeting and coughing throughout the deeply atmospheric first act of a film which defined Tension™ for a generation. But a communal experience is the heart of cinema (so they tell me), and you take the breaks where you can find them.

And so to planet LV-426, again, where bad luck charm Ellen Ripley is coerced to go on another works outing*¹ despite narrowly escaping being permanently barred from the Engineer's Arms only 57 years earlier...

PLEASANT

I am, it should be reiterated, merely a civilian lover of the Alien franchise. Definitely a fan, but it's not ingrained in the same way as Star Wars. This means that there are certain things that always seem to slip my mind between viewings, which therefore always return as a pleasant surprise. Y'know, to cheer me up amidst all the shrieking claustrophobic death...

For example, I seem to forget the literally ground-breaking futuristic tech colony on LV-426 is filed to the brim with CRT monitors, and that some of the costumes here are a bit 'V' in places, and that the worst proponent of this is Paul Reiser's Burke, and what an absolutely transparent pantomime villain he is; chewing his way through the scenery as an $18.5m film sneers against the corporate profiteering which had, by that point, come to define the decade which spawned it.

But it's nice to be reminded of the shared cast between the Alien, Predator and Terminator movies, like an intermarriage of 1980s royal cinematic dynasties, and of the influence Alien(s) had on the production design of Red Dwarf.

And I didn't want to be the one to say it, but the kid is annoying.

EVEREST

Snark aside, it's an absolute masterpiece, of course.

For something which - on paper - is only supposed to be an action/sci-fi sequel (and very much like Cameron's other game-raising sequel, Terminator 2), Aliens is so much more than the sum of its parts. The miniatures and matte paintings and puppets look like miniatures and matte paintings and puppets, but that doesn't matter because they (still) look gorgeous.

The picture has cleaned up well but the grain is still very much there, giving the whole film a very tangible texture that's hard to capture in the 21st century. And then the stylistic and structural parallels between this and T2 are intriguing. Utterly glaring in places, but still intriguing for all that*². Most of all, Sigourney Weaver's commitment to the intensity of her character (even if it is just an extension/development of the original 1979 role) is jaw-dropping, and the fact that she made this two years after Ghostbusters is kind of amazing*³.

PEGGY

In horror movie parlance, Aliens is another masterclass of not showing off your monsters too early; and even when you do go all-in, keep it ambiguously detailed. And there aren't as many actual xenomorphs in this as you think you remember, a triumph of budget and deft production design leading to lasting appeal. Although to be blunt - directorial vision or otherwise - 154 minutes is too damned long for a film where the vast majority of it takes place in the dark.

Adrian Biddle's cinematography is superb throughout, but Ray Lovejoy's editing means that the action scenes for two thirds of the movie are a meaningless montage of grimacing and muzzle-flare. And as the human characters are rapidly picked-off, there are by definition fewer of them to explain exactly what's going on (other than "we need to get from here to there, but everything between is covered in acidic goo and death, good luck"

Not to put down the further films in this series (or non-series, depending on your views regarding continuity), but it's been impossible to recapture the absolute breath-holding dread of the first two Alien installments. I'm not complaining about this, it just makes them look better. Either way, you know fine well the powers that be are not going to stop trying any time soon...

*¹ SPOILERS: Remind me again why everyone at Weyland Yutani repeatedly says that Ripley won't have to go 'in with the troops' on LV-426, only to then have her immediately go right in with the troops? I know they're lying to her, obviously, but so does she. So why is Ripley seemingly just going along with this? ^{[ BACK ]}

*² SPOILERS: How does the Sulaco have an airlock that can be operated from inside the airlock at a single panel, and which allows the doors at either end to be open at the same time? With that approach to Occupational Health, it's no wonder Weyland Yutani's got the safety record it has... ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ By which I mean Sigourney Weaver is kind of amazing. Obviously. ^{[ BACK ]}

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