Aliens

Aliens is a strange sequel in many ways. For starters, the obvious, it is the only sequel I know of that is the name of the first film pluralized. It also has a different creative team, most notably a different director. It isn’t the same genre as its predecessor. Alien is science fiction horror and Aliens is more science fiction action. Aliens uses a time skip to put itself in a different future era, moves the location off of a starship and onto a planet, and replaces Alien’s blue collar laborer aesthetic for that of the (still fairly blue collar) military. However, despite the sequel being so different in so many ways, it succeeds at being both an excellent movie in its own right and a film and story that belongs in the same world as its predecessor.

Despite its more action oriented approach, there is still plenty of horror at the foundations of Aliens. Where the first movie excels at creating this atmospheric sense of horror, Aliens is all about dread. From the very beginning of the movie, starting with its “cold open,” this dread is pervasive. We meet some colonists on a barely inhabited planet who are on their way to investigate an alien artifact and everything about this sequence just makes you squirm, knowing what a massive, disastrous mistake what they are doing is likely to be.

This is amplified by the visual language of the film. One of the places this film does not deviate from the original is in its cinematography. Again, the use of limited light is key. Both films maintain the aesthetic of dim hallways lit by emergency lights after a power failure, but Aliens trades shadowy storage bays for naturally lightless caves. Both films also have a motif of starting things in spaces that are well lit but in a way that is sterile, flat, and functional, for example the crew mess in Alien or Ripley’s lodgings/recover ward in Aliens, to then create contrast later in the movie by utilizing more and more spaces that are shrouded in darkness. Not only does this shared visual language help the two films feel like part of the same series, but it also aids Aliens in maintaining its undercurrent of fear and terror.

This sets up one of the film’s many expert uses of dramatic irony. The visual language and overall tone, combined with whatever knowledge you may have brought from watching the first movie, lays in stark contrast to the attitude of all the characters, minus Ripley, for the first act or so of the movie. The shock troopers she is paired with begin the film with an extremely high level of confidence and we, the audience, know they are walking into hell and don’t know it yet, but can do nothing about it. Where the first movie excelled at being atmospheric, Aliens doesn’t need to use its dark visual language the same way. This movie doesn’t need to hide as much in its shadows because a healthy dose of dramatic irony and audience savvy makes you just as uncomfortable with people unknowingly walking headfirst into trouble in (metaphorically) broad daylight.

That being said, one of the things I really like about the movie is that generally speaking the characters aren’t idiots. While you may want to yell at the screen “Don’t go in there!” or “Get out of there!” that has more to do with that sense of dread than with any of those characters acting irrationally just as a means for propelling the plot forward. The colonists are just out exploring, part of their job. The military guys generally make informed decisions in the moment that either are incorrect only because they are missing intel or are reasonable gambles that don’t pay off.

The military guys do seem to have a cavalier attitude, but this completely fits with their characters. It is implied, but never said outright, that these aren’t troops of some governmental military but part of a security force of the Weyland Yutani Corporation, the company funding the colony. In other words, they are more like Private Military Contractors. So their cowboy attitude isn’t out of line with normal military discipline but rather directly in line with what you can often expect from PMCs. Add in the fact that many have never seen combat, and that all this braggadociousness is greenhorn talk, and every aspect of their characters, from their foolish fearlessness at the beginning to their moments of small panic or hopelessness later in the movie, completely make sense. With the PMCs being the most important characters, second to Ripley, the fact that they consistently act in a believable way, albeit brash and full of hubris, helps keep the story grounded and feeling realistic, despite the destroyed space colony and the eight foot tall murderous exoskeletal aliens.

Sometimes movies can take this too far, having characters constantly walking into buzzsaws they can’t see, and that sense of dread and inevitability of catastrophe becomes more exhausting than intense. Aliens dodges that bullet artfully. The dread here is not unrelenting and the film provides just enough breaks for the audience to catch their breath and not feel overwhelmed. These breaks also do double duty. They provide world building, early in the film, and character growth and development, later in the film. However, a brief respite is all they are. They never drag on or negatively impact the pace of the piece. It is never too long before some fresh new problem appears and our heroes must make their best guess at how to solve it, hoping that nothing goes completely pear-shaped in the process.

Interestingly, when people think about the Alien franchise, a lot of the most iconic things are from this movie rather than its predecessor. Ripley taking on the job of surrogate mother to Newt, the industrial loader mechs, its many famous quotes (“Game over man, game over!”), and more. Does this mean Aliens is better than Alien? I wouldn’t say so. Despite being in the same franchise, they are so different it is almost like comparing apples to oranges. The short answer is that they are both very good in their own ways. I recommend watching them as a pair.

Aliens can absolutely stand alone as its own movie, as a sort of science fiction Anabasis adaptation about an outnumbered and outgunned military unit trying their best to survive in unfriendly lands, and it is a gripping story watched this way. However, if you’ve seen Alien and have its additional context, it really pushes Aliens’ first two acts to new heights. Everything surrounding the aliens before we actually see one is made that much more foreboding by knowing, from the first movie, what they are capable of. Similarly, knowing how scary one alien can be makes the idea of facing more than one that much more terrifying.

This movie, as well as its older brother, has had such a massive influence on science fiction, and culture in general, that many of its ideas had been reused and repeated to the point of cliche. While creators are often coy about their direct influences, you can see the fingerprints of this movie (and franchise) on everything from Starship Troopers to Pitch Black to Starcraft to Warhammer 40K. Despite that, Aliens doesn’t feel cliche. It doesn’t feel dated. It still holds up as dread fueled, action packed, science fiction extravaganza well worth the watch.

Would Recommend: If you are interested in the genre-defying cultural phenomenon that established the most financially successful director of all time as a bone fide hit maker.

Would Not Recommend: If you just can’t handle action or thriller movies, even a little bit.