Movie Review – Aliens (1986)

“This Time It’s War”

Back in 1979, the sci-fi / horror movie Alien gave audiences a new perspective on how a terrifying film should look.  Alien was dark, it was terrifying, it had an impressive spaceship, it had a great cast, and it was just an all-around outstanding sci-fi movie.  On top of that it had one creepy monster that was also a killing machine.

At the end of Alien we knew that Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) survived after she set the self-destruct mechanism on the Nostromo and then escaped in the ship’s escape pod.  She then blew the Alien out the airlock and roasted it in one of the ship’s engines.  Last we saw, Ripley was settled into the escape pod’s hypersleep chamber and cruising towards an unknown destination.

But what happened after that?  What if there were more Alien creatures out there?  What would happen if advanced soldiers were to face off against the Alien monsters?

Those questions and more were answered in the 1986 film Aliens, the first sequel to Alien.  In Aliens, we learn that planet LV-426 has now been settled by colonists, and apparently things have been going well.  That is, until one day when the colonists stop transmitting messages back to Earth.  A squad of marines are sent to investigate what happened to the colonists, and Ellen Ripley volunteers to go with them as a consultant.  When the team arrives on LV-426, they discover an Alien nest and that there are now over a hundred of the creatures.  It’s a battle of the heavily armed marines against a horde of vicious Alien monsters, a battle that will push Ripley and the marines to their limits of survival.

Directed by James Cameron and with music composed by James Horner, Aliens stars Sigourney Weaver in the role of Ellen Ripley.  Co-starring in the film are Michael Biehn as Corporal Dwayne Hicks, Paul Reiser as Carter Burke, Bill Paxton as Private William Hudson, Lance Henriksen as Bishop, and Carrie Henn as Rebecca “Newt” Jorden.

Aliens begins some time after the events in Alien.  Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)  is in a hypersleep chamber as the escape pod from the Nostromo continues to drift through space.  The pod is recovered by a salvage crew.  When it’s discovered that Ripley is still alive, she’s returned back to Earth.

On an orbiting space station, Ellen Ripley awakens from her sleep and meets Carter J. Burke (Paul Reiser), a representative of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a mega-corporation that controls many deep-space operations, including the operation of the Nostromo from the first film.  In that movie, Weyland-Yutani Corporation was simply referred to as “The Company.”  Burke reunites Ripley with Jones, the cat from the Nostromo.  Ripley is then informed that she was actually in hypersleep for 57 years.  Her escape pod drifted through the common space traffic routes, and it was simply luck that a salvage crew found her.

Suddenly Ripley has tremendous pains inside of her body.  As Burke and a nurse try to help her, Ripley looks down and sees an Alien about to pop out of her stomach.  Just as it’s about to happen, Ripley wakes from her nightmare.  The Alien inside of her was just a nightmare, but being out in space for 57 years was very much real.

Later that day Ripley meets with Burke to learn more about her daughter.  It turns out that Ripley’s daughter, Amanda Ripley, was 66 years old when she died and was cremated two years ago.  Amanda was still a young girl when Ripley last saw her before leaving on the Nostromo.

Up next is the hearing with Weyland-Yutani Corporation about the fate of the Nostromo‘s crew and the ship’s destruction.  The panel of executives has a hard time believing Ripley’s story about the Alien as there was no evidence of such a creature in the escape pod or within the ship’s log files.  The panel also doesn’t believe that Ripley’s crew landed on LV-426 on company orders as they cannot find such an order in the company’s history.  As a result, the board revokes Ripley’s space-flight license and she’s required to have psychiatric sessions.  When Ripley asks the board to return to LV-426 and investigate the planet, they inform her that colonists have been living there for the past 20 years, and none of them have encountered such a creature as the one Ripley described.

On LV-426, the terraforming colony has been converting the planet’s atmosphere into something breathable.  Now the people can safely walk around outside without needing a space suit or extra oxygen.  One day a family is out exploring when they come across the derelict spaceship from the first film.  The parents go inside of it to explore, but when they return the father has a facehugger attached to his face.

Some time later, Ellen Ripley is working as a cargo worker in one of Weyland-Yutani’s numerous warehouses.  She’s not thrilled with the work but it’s a living.  One day she’s visited by Carter Burke and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the Colonial Marines.  Burke informs Ripley that the company has lost contact with the colonists on LV-426.  The Company would like to send the marines to investigate the colony.  If Ripley goes along as a consultant, then they’ll restore her space-flight license.  She refuses the offer as her last experience on that planet was traumatizing enough.  However, when Ripley last has yet another nightmare about the Alien, she gives Burke a call in the middle of the night.  He confirms that the marines are there to kill any Aliens, and to not catch or study them.  Ripley then agrees to go to LV-426.

The U.S.S. Sulaco carries the marines and other passengers across the universe to LV-426.  When they arrive at the planet the hypersleep chambers open and the crew members go about their duties.  The people include Ellen Ripley, Carter Burke, Lieutenant Gorman, Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), Private Hudson (Bill Paxton), and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen).  Ripley is displeased to be serving with another android after the actions of their android Ash on the Nostromo.

After receiving a briefing for their mission on LV-426, the marines ready their gear and prepare themselves for the flight to the planet’s surface.  While the marines are busy, Ripley demonstrates her skill in using a power loader “walking” forklift to help move some cargo.  The marines then suit up and climb on board their armored personnel carrier (APC) and then load it onto the dropship.  The dropship falls out of the Sulaco (a very cool sequence, BTW) and then flies down to the surface of the planet.

On planet LV-426, the colonists’ habitat is nicknamed Hadley’s Hope.  The marines circle around the complex and see that everything looks intact, including the massive atmospheric processing unit, an incredibly complex machine that Burke proudly claims is manufactured by Weyland-Yutani.  The dropship lands next to the compound and Bishop drives the APC to one of the doors.  The marines disembark and then enter the complex.

Just like on the outside, the inside of the complex is deserted as well.  The marines find signs of some fighting, but there aren’t any bodies anywhere.  It’s as if all of the people simply disappeared.  Ripley gets a bad feeling when the marines find holes in the ceiling and floor, holes that look like there were created with acid.  After the marines secure the building, Gorman, Ripley, Burke and Bishop then enter the complex and continue looking for clues.  They make discover the medical lab where several facehuggers are being kept alive in glass containers.  Some of the notes left behind by the medical staff indicate that the colonists were impregnated by the facehuggers.

While the team is in the medical lab, one of the marines notices activity on his motion detector.  They pinpoint the location and discover a little girl running around.  Ripley corners the girl and they take her back to medical for treatment.  At first the girl refuses to speak, but Ripley’s kindness inspires her to start talking.  The girl is Rebecca Jorden (Carrie Henn), but she goes by the nickname Newt.  She and her parents were the people that were out exploring on LV-426 and discovered the derelict alien spaceship.  The girl reveals that her brother and parents are all dead.

Private Hudson is scanning the complex’s map on a computer when he locates the Personal Data Transmitters (PDTs) for the missing colonists.  The map indicates that pretty much everybody is gathered together underneath the fusion-powered atmospheric processing station.  Once again they board the APC and the marines ride into the atmospheric processing station.  Borman, Ripley, Burke, Bishop and Newt remain behind in the command center inside of the APC while the rest of the marines descend into the station.  They watch on the marines’ personal cameras as they work their way through a tunnel system and into the heart of the station.

When the marines near the location of the colonists, Ripley notices that they’re actually underneath the fusion reactor.  She tells Borman about the danger, so he orders the marines to unload their weapons and to only use flamethrowers.  Stray bullets could accidentally trigger a nuclear explosion if the fusion reactor is damaged.  Vasquez and Drake hand over the batteries from their smartguns, but then they secretly re-attach spare batteries to keep their powerful weapons operational.

Just around the corner the marines locate the colonists.  The people are cocooned and it looks like most of them are dead.  Suddenly one of them wakes and begs the marines to kill her.  We see why when an Alien violently bursts its way out of her chest, killing the colonist.  When the marines realize the danger of their situation, suddenly a bunch of Aliens awaken and surround the humans.  The Aliens attack and Vasquez and Drake open fire.  It’s a battleground as the marines try to fight off the Aliens.  Several marines are killed and captured, including Sergeant Apone, and the rest of them try to flee.  Gorman panics and doesn’t know what to do, so Ripley takes the controls of the APC and drives into the station to rescue the marines.  She does so and the surviving marines climb into the APC.  It’s then a race out of the atmospheric processing station and fleeing from the pursuing Aliens.

The APC crashes out of the station and gets clear of the compound, though it’s heavily damaged in the process.  The machine is no longer driveable by the time Hicks helps Ripley slow down and stop.  During the escape sequence Gorman is knocked unconscious by falling debris, and now Corporal Hicks in command of the mission.  He sides with Ripley and decides that it’s best to leave LV-426 and nuke the entire site from orbit, annihilating the complex and the Aliens.

“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

The dropship is called to fly over and pick up the crew.  Corporal Ferro (Colette Hiller) had landed on the planet and was waiting for the order for retrieval.  She gets the dropship airborne and flies over to the remaining marines.  While the dropship was parked, an Alien had sneaked on board the spacecraft.  The Alien kills Spunkmeyer and Ferro, and the dropship crashes just as it’s about to land.  The marines have to run and quickly seek shelter to avoid the flaming wreckage.

Everybody gathers what supplies they can and they return to the medical lab, making that their new headquarters.  Hicks reveals that it’s going to be 17 days before a rescue team from the Colonial Marines arrives.  Nobody was left on board the Sulaco to fly down another dropship, so for now the marines are on their own.  They analyze a map of the complex and determine which doors to seal closed and which locations are best for the unmanned sentry guns.  The marines barricade themselves and test the defenses.  While they do that, Ripley takes Newt to one of the barracks inside of the med lab and has her get some sleep.

After everything is set, Ripley and the marines try to figure out what they are really up against.  They determine that there has to be some sort of queen alien out there laying all of the eggs to infect the colonists.  When Ripley orders Bishop to kill the remaining facehuggers when he’s finished researching them, he informs her that Burke ordered him to keep the facehuggers alive for transport back to Earth.  Ripley then confronts Burke and realizes that he, and the Company, know a lot more about the Alien species on LV-426 than what was originally reported.  Burke implies that he has a plan for sneaking the facehuggers past the quarantine zone.

Ripley has also found out that it was Burke who signed an order authorizing the colonists to go to the derelict spaceship and explore it.  He authorized it after reading Ripley’s report of the incident before her hearing with Weyland-Yutani.  Ripley accuses him of sending those people to their deaths as well as the rest of the colonists on LV-426.

Suddenly alarms sound as the sentry guns fire hundreds of bullets into the approaching Aliens.  After the first pair of guns exhaust their ammunition the Aliens break their way through the doors.  The Aliens later approach the second set of sentry guns, but they’re turned back just before the guns also run out of ammunition.  The marines determine that the Aliens are figuring out another way into the compound.

Meanwhile, Bishop has discovered that the fusion reactor was damaged when the marines were fighting the Aliens.  He estimates that it’s only going to be a few hours until the fusion reactor detonates in a force equal to a 40 megaton nuclear explosion.  That takes care of the decision of how to destroy the Alien nest.  The only problem is that the marines need their spare dropship from the Sulaco so they can escape before the whole complex is destroyed.

Bishop volunteers to go outside of the barricaded area to reach the colony’s transmitter so that he can remote pilot the spare dropship from the Sulaco.  It’s going to be a close call whether or not he can reach the transmitter, ready the dropship, and have it arrive in time before the fusion reactor explodes.  On top of that he needs to watch out for the Aliens, though it’s not clear whether or not the Aliens would care about him as he’s an android and not a living creature.

After Bishop leaves on his mission and Vasquez and Hicks are sent to weld shut the rest of the doors, Ripley spends some time with Hicks.  She has him show her how to use the pulse rifle and flame thrower.  As he instructs her on how to use the weapons, the two of them start to bond.

When Ripley goes to check on Newt, she notices that the girl is sleeping underneath her bed to stay hidden from the monsters.  She joins the girl under there and also gets some sleep.  When she wakes a few moments later, Ripley notices that her pulse rifle is missing.  She then feels a strange presence just before a pair of facehuggers try to attack her and Newt.  The door is locked and somebody disabled the security camera monitoring the room.  Ripley triggers the fire alarm in hopes of getting the marines’ attention.  As she and Newt wait for rescue, they’re attacked again by the facehuggers.  Ripley fights them off until the marines break into the room and kill the two facehuggers.

After the incident in the barracks, Ripley confronts Burke about it in front of the marines.  She accuses him of intentionally putting the facehuggers inside of the room so that they would impregnate her and Newt.  She believes that the rest of Burke’s plan would be to leave Ripley and Newt frozen in hypersleep and to transport them into the medical labs at Weyland-Yutani where the Alien embryos would then be surgically removed, killing Ripley and Newt in the process.  The marines wouldn’t be able to stop him as Burke would simply sabotage their hypersleep chambers and then eject their bodies out of the ship as it was flying back to Earth.  That way there wouldn’t be any witnesses, and Burke would receive a substantial financial bonus for transporting the living Alien creatures back to Weyland-Yutani.

Just as the marines are about to execute Burke for his treasonous intentions, the Aliens manage to cut the power to the medical lab.  It’s game time.  The marines ready themselves as the Aliens break past an outer barricade.  When Hudson’s motion sensor indicates that the Aliens are inside of the room, everybody realizes that they missed something in their defence.  That’s when Hicks peeks into the ceiling and sees the monsters crawling towards them.  Suddenly it’s a shooting war as the Aliens drop from the ceiling and attack the marines.

When the Aliens attack, Burke sneaks away and hides in another room.  He thinks that he’s safe until he realizes that one of the Aliens is there with him.  The Alien easily attacks and kills Burke.

Meanwhile, the marines continue with their defense as Newt leads the way to a smaller passage out of the room.  When she leads them away, an Alien opens a hole beneath Hudson and tries to pull him away.  Knowing that he’s doomed, Hicks executes his friend as a mercy killing.  Newt leads the team through the air ducts and towards the landing pad where Bishop and the second dropship should be waiting.  Vasquez kills an Alien while in the air duct, but the Alien’s acidic blood sprays and badly injures her.  Gorman goes back to help Vasquez while Hicks, Ripley and Newt continue through the air duct.  When Gorman runs out of ammunition and sees that the Aliens are about to get him and Vasquez, he activates a grenade and instantly kills himself, Vasquez and a few Aliens as well.

The shockwave from Gorman’s grenade causes Newt to slip and ultimately fall down a vent.  She’s wearing a tracking beacon, and it’s not long for Ripley and Hicks to locate her again.  When Hicks cuts through a metal grate and tries to get to Newt, the little girl is snatched and taken away by one of the Aliens.  Ripley and Hicks are forced to flee from other Aliens and head to the dropship.  When they’re about to ascend in an elevator, an Alien attacks and Hicks shoots it.  The spray of the Alien’s acidic blood badly injures Hicks, and Ripley has to help him onto the dropship.

Ripley knows that Newt is still alive, and she’s not going to leave the girl behind.  She arms herself with a pulse rifle, a flame thrower, and some extra grenades and ammunition.  Ripley then climbs back into the elevator and takes it to the bottom of the atmosphere process station, back into the Aliens’ nest.  She uses the tracking beacon and later finds Newt.  The girl is cocooned, but the facehuggers haven’t gotten to her yet.  Ripley kills some Aliens and facehuggers, and she saves Newt.

When Ripley runs around a corner she and Newt come face to face with the Alien Queen as she’s laying more eggs with facehuggers.  She’s also aware of the other Aliens around the Queen as well.  Ripley back herself and Newt towards the exit before she uses the flamethrower to destroy the newly laid eggs.  She goes into a shooting frenzy with her pulse rifle before launching a few grenades at the Queen.  Ripley and Newt then race back to the elevator before the Queen detaches herself from the rest of her body and can catch them.

The Alien Queen almost reaches them, but Ripley and Newt are able to get inside of an elevator and ride it back to the landing pad.  What they don’t know is that a second elevator arrives on the bottom level, and the Alien Queen follows them to the top of the structure.

Ripley and Newt arrive at the landing pad, but Bishop and the dropship are missing.  There are explosions all around them and they now know that the second elevator is on its way up to the top.  Just before the Queen Alien arrives, Bishop lands and Ripley and Newt scramble into the dropship.  It’s a moment before Bishop is able to steady the dropship before flying back to the Sulaco.  As they fly away from the atmospheric processing station, the fusion reactor finally explodes in a tremendous thermonuclear explosion.

All seems well when the dropship lands on the Sulaco and the passengers disembark.  Suddenly Bishop is stabbed through the chest by the Queen Alien’s tail.  It turns out that she grabbed the bottom of the dropship and stowed away right before it flew away from the atmospheric processing station.  Bishop is ripped in half, Newt runs and hides in a small passageway, and Ripley runs into an adjacent storage area.  She climbs into a power loader and uses that to attack the Queen.

The brief fight ends when Ripley grabs the Alien Queen with the power loader’s grabbers and then throws the Alien into a nearby airlock.  The Queen snatches the loader and pulls Ripley with it into the airlock.  Ripley scrambles out of the power loader and climbs up a ladder to the top of the airlock, but the Queen snatches her foot before she can escape.  Ripley then reaches some controls and opens the outer airlock doors.  The vacuum of outer space pulls the Alien Queen out of the Sulaco.  Ripley climbs the rest of the way up the ladder and closes the airlock doors before she or anybody else is sucked out into space.

Aliens ends with Ripley helping Hicks, Bishop and Newt into their hypersleep containers.  She then gets into her own container as the Sulaco flies back to Earth.

So is Aliens a good movie?

Absolutely!

Aliens is an outstanding action film and a terrific sequel to the first Alien movie.  While the first film had a story that focused on suspense and terror, this movie focused more on action and horror.  This film also added a ton of new material to the general storyline, and it also showed how it takes more than advanced weapons and warriors to defeat the Alien creatures.

It’s difficult to find faults and problems with Aliens.  The story is great, the action scenes are awesome, and this movie has some of the best characters you’ll ever find in a sci-fi film.  This is just one amazing journey from start to finish.  Of course, to get the most out of Aliens, it would really help if you liked sci-fi / horror films, and that you’ve seen the first movie as well.  It’s more of a challenge to understand this movie if you haven’t seen the first one yet.

Perhaps my only issues with Aliens seems more like a wish list.  I would have loved to have seen more of the Sulaco and the dropship, and the firepower from both ships.  We know that the dropship is a heavily armored vehicle, but we don’t get to see any of the weapons in action.  The same is true for the Sulaco.  We know that the ship has nukes and other weapons (hence the plan to nuke LV-426 from orbit), but none of those weapons are used in this movie.

That’s really about it.  There are a few small moments here and there that are a bit corny or cheesy, but it’s nothing major and it’s material that is easily forgiven.  The rest of the movie clearly makes up for it.

Aliens (1986) – movie trailer

If you love movies with plenty of sci-fi action as well as elements of horror, then Aliens is absolutely a must-see film!  You cannot go wrong with this movie.  Just make sure that the kiddies are either in bed or in another room before you watch this movie, or they’ll probably have nightmares for months.

Ripley – “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?”

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Gorman – “Apone! Look… we can’t have any firing in there. I, uh… I want you to collect magazines from everybody.”
Hudson – “Is he fuckin’ crazy?”
Frost – “What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?”

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Hudson – “That’s it, man. Game over, man! Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?”
Burke – “Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don’t we try that?”

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Newt – “We’d better get back, ’cause it’ll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night… mostly.”

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Ripley – “You know, Burke, I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.”

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Ripley – “They cut the power.”
Hudson – “What do you mean, ‘*They* cut the power’? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!”

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Bishop – “Not bad for a human.”