Aliens
Film poster for Aliens
Directed by	James Cameron
Produced by	Gale Anne Hurd, Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill
Written by	James Cameron David Giler (story) Walter Hill (story)
Starring	Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Adrian Biddle
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	July 18, 1986
Running time	137 min./154 min. (Special Edition)
Language	English
Budget	$18,500,000
Preceded by	Alien
Followed by	Alien³
IMDb profile

Aliens is a 1986 science fiction movie directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser. It is a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien.

Overview

Directed by James Cameron from a story written by Cameron, David Giler, and Walter Hill, the film is more of a high-paced, action adventure film than the atmospheric sci-fi horror of the first film. It was tremendously successful, following Cameron's The Terminator in helping to establish him as a major action director. The film, like its predecessor, was shot in England, this time at Pinewood Studios, with a budget of about $18 million. The production was somewhat problematic, marred by several disputes between Cameron and the film crew, which eventually led to an all-out strike late in the production.

Plot

Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only human survivor of the Nostromo, is found and revived after fifty-seven years in hypersleep. As soon as she recovers, she attends a hearing (given that she had destroyed the ship and cargo, with no other crew members to corroborate her story), and tries convincing people of the Xenomorphs' existence, to no avail. After being stripped of her piloting license, she is dismayed to learn that a terraforming colony called Hadley's Hope has been established on planet LV-426 (where the Nostromo crew had its fatal first encounter with the alien). She begins having horrific nightmares dealing with her past.

Ripley's worst fears are confirmed when she learns that contact with the colony has recently been lost. Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a Weyland-Yutani Company executive, tries to convince her to go with him and a squad of United States Colonial Marines led by Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) to investigate. With nothing to lose, her friends and family long dead, she reluctantly agrees to accompany them, if only to confront her fears. The rescue mission is sent by the all-powerful Company (which also funded the colonial program).

Ripley tries to warn a skeptical squad of gung-ho Colonial Marines when they emerge from suspended animation aboard the vessel Sulaco (like The Nostromo, the name is a nod to Joseph Conrad). Before touching down on the planet in a dropship, Ripley gets acquainted with the Marines - among them, Hudson (Bill Paxton), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), and Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn). Later, she discovers that Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is an android. Although Burke apologizes for not telling her before that having a synthetic onboard is standard practice, she remains suspicious of Bishop, given her previous experience with the android Ash, who had tried to kill her. She is also concerned about the overly cocky attitude of the team. During the drop, she and the rest of the crew learn about the Lieutenant's inexperience - Gorman had only completed two real combat drops (counting the current one), lowering the squad's already scanty respect for him

Upon arrival at the atmospheric plant, Ripley and her companions soon discover that the aliens have overrun the colony - evidence first comes from unusual melted gratings within the complex, remnants of a battle, and finally live specimens of facehuggers in captivity. They eventually find a single survivor, a young girl nicknamed "Newt", although she can provide little useful information other than that the other colonists are dead.

Meanwhile, Hudson is able to locate the majority of the colonists, a few floors below the atmospheric generators. The group hurries to the area with Newt in tow, where they discover a huge, seemingly uninhabited nest. The colonists are found; one woman awakens, only to die as a chestburster emerges, forcing the team to incinerate her and the organism.

At this point, the marines pick up multiple signals on their motion trackers. Within minutes, the squad is attacked and quickly reduced to half its number, left leaderless and cut off. Ripley, Burke and a panicked Gorman try to direct the squad - when Gorman proves to be useless, Ripley takes charge, crashes the APC into the nest (damaging the generator) and rescues the three remaining soldiers.

Hudson is injured, Gorman is knocked unconscious, and Hicks assumes command. He agrees with Ripley's suggestion that nuking the facility is the best way to handle the situation. Before they can be picked up though, the dropship's crew is also slaughtered, and the dropship crashes, further damaging the generator. With no alternative, the survivors return to headquarters to set up a defensive position with tracking guns and barricades.

While there, Ripley tells Bishop to burn the facehuggers as soon as his analysis of them is done. Bishop responds that Burke wanted the organisms to be frozen and quarantined for shipment. Ripley then confronts Burke, telling him she knows that he had ordered the colonists to search for the derelict spacecraft which originally housed the alien eggs. Burke informs her that Weyland-Yutani is willing to pay a substantial sum for alien specimens.

An attack occurs, ending with the destruction of the tracking guns, although the barricade holds. By this time, Bishop has determined that the generator will blow up within four hours. He volunteers to manually patch into an uplink tower at the other side of the complex and bring down another dropship from the Sulaco by remote control.

During his absence, they are attacked again. Ripley goes to check on Newt, who is asleep in the labs, and also falls asleep - she wakes up to find herself and Newt locked in the room with two facehuggers. After their timely rescue, she informs the group that Burke had planned to have Newt and Ripley impregnated by the facehuggers, then sabotage the Marines' cryotubes on the Sulaco and dispose of them while en route back to Earth. Before they can do anything, the aliens cut the power and assault their refuge. Burke escapes (and is subsequently killed by an alien), while Newt guides the rest of the group away. At this point, Hudson is captured, and Vasquez and Gorman kill themselves with a grenade when they are cut off and surrounded. Newt is knocked underneath the complex's grating into the plumbing system. Before Hicks and Ripley can rescue her, she too is captured. Ripley and Hicks reach the dropship, though Hicks is badly injured after killing an alien at close range and being sprayed with its acidic blood.

After tending to Hicks, Ripley goes back to rescue Newt. She finds her and narrowly saves her from impregnation, but in their haste to escape, they stumble into a nest where the alien queen is laying eggs. Ripley uses her flamethrower to persuade the queen to call off her warriors, but after thinking it over, she uses it anyway to destroy the nest, enraging the queen into pursuing her. Ripley and Newt manage to board the dropship and escape before the reactor blows up, destroying the colony and the alien nest.

At first all seems well, with Ripley complimenting Bishop, but before he can respond, he is impaled by the queen's tail and torn in half, damaging, but not killing him - the creature had managed to hitch a ride on the dropship's landing gear. Ripley and Newt separate, with Newt hiding under the grating. Ripley frantically dons a powerloader, a mechanical exosuit used mainly for cargo lifting. She emerges as the queen chases Newt, shouting "Get away from her, you bitch!" She manages to knock the creature into a cargo hold, which she opens, expelling the alien into space. With Bishop and Hicks safe (if injured), the two enter the cryotubes to sleep while the Sulaco carries them back home.

The story adds much to the overall mythos of the series, including Cameron's introduction of an insect-like social structure and life cycle, is notable for its portrayal of women in action roles, and also re-introduces an android, this time in a sympathetic role. This character, Bishop, is also the only character except Ripley (and her cat, Jonesy) to appear in more than one film in the series.

Analysis

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Freudian and Jungian interpretation

An additional level of depth is added to Ripley's character by the films establishing Ripley's having a daughter who grew old and died while Ripley was lost in space (this scene was not included in the theatrical version but is seen in home versions) In effect, the Aliens killed her daughter.

When Ripley discovers a little girl named Newt who's been orphaned by the Aliens she becomes a surrogate daughter for Ripley, allowing Ripley to overcome her feelings of guilt and start to achieve closure.

But when Ripley faces the towering Queen she seems to realizes that this is the one who took her first born and Ripley burns the Queen's unhatched eggs in revenge. The Queen shrieks, possibly showing that the Queen is not an emotionless beast, as per it's showing some form of compassion for its "babies".

In the film's techno/primordial climax Ripley (having been made the Queens physical equal via a Power Loader) symbolically challenges the Queen for the right to give birth to a new generation going so far as to call the Queen a "bitch" which denotes her rival's sex.

Newt eventually returns Ripley's feelings calling her "Mommy" near the film's end.

Gun violence

Sigourney Weaver, who holds strong views on gun control, has stated that she was deeply uncomfortable with the amount of gun violence in the movie, and that Ripley would be required to strap on firearms herself. However, she admitted she ended up enjoying the role and in particular the firearms training. She also admitted that the gunplay held a seductive appeal. She talks about her opinions on gun violence on the Alien Quadrilogy DVD.

• She also spoke about the guns in several articles in Starlog magazine in the 80's, mentioning that she was a bit more at ease with the guns because they were depicted being used against monsters and not other human beings.

List of Conceptual Weapons

As noted below, the weapons in Aliens seemed to be mostly based around updated versions of modern armaments. Indeed, the two main weapons in the film were built around the basic frames of existing weapons:

• M-41A pulse rifle with underslung 40mm grenade launcher - the basic armament of the Colonial Marines, this was, as mentioned in the Trivia section, actually a remodelled Thompson machine gun with a Franchi SPAS12 pump-action shotgun welded beneath the barrel to act as a grenade launcher. In the film, the M-41A was portrayed as a compact, angular assault rifle with an impressive rate of fire, using 10mm caseless explosive-point ammunition. It is seen in action in the Colonial Marines' various confrontations with the aliens, not to mention Ripley's epic battle through the Atmosphere processor towards the end, and has significant stopping power - enough to blow an alien in two with a single burst.
• M-56A2 Smartgun - based on a modified MG-42 light machine gun, this was the Colonial Marine's tactical heavy support unit, and was portrayed as an auto-targeting computerized chain gun steadied by a suit-mounted battle mounting (actually a Steadicam harness - see Trivia). It was used to devastating effect against the aliens by the two smartgunners, Vasquez and Drake, during the chaotic battle under the heat exchangers midway through the film.
• M-240A1 Incinerator - a futuristic-looking flamethrower unit, this powerful weapon was used to incinerate countless aliens during the Marines' battles and Ripley's epic Atmosphere Processor attack. Built using M16 and M203 parts, it fired a napalm compound with excellent adhesive properties but ran out of ammunition very quickly when used in extended bursts.
• UA 571-C Sentry Gun - essentially a Smartgun with a motion sensor, set up on a tripod base. This robotic sentry gun used high-powered 10mm explosive rounds and supported extremely high rates of fire. When the Marines were sheltering in the Operations Centre, they set up four of these guns to guard the entrances. The guns destroyed dozens of aliens, but quickly ran out of ammo.

View of Futuristic Weapons Re-imagined

Aliens was part of a wave of films that defied the common assumption that futuristic guns and weapons would be variations on energy beam firing devices such as lasers, plasma or particle emitters; most notably the blaster weapons of Star Wars or the multisetting stun/kill/vaporize beam of the often imitated Star Trek phaser. In Aliens weapons are depicted as simply more advanced versions of today's weapons. They still fire bullets or projectiles instead of clean death ray beams. The primary weapon of the Colonial Marines in the movie is an assault rifle/grenade launcher combination weapon similar in many respects to the contemporary assault rifles fielded by many modern armies. Even the more "high-tech" SmartGun used by two characters in the movie are little more than partially self-guiding versions of conventional squad-support machine guns. (A description of the actual construction of these weapons can be found below in Trivia.) However, a concession was made to technophiles during one sequence of the film, omitted in the theatrical release but later reintroduced in the Director's Cut sold on VHS and DVD. In this short scene, one of the marines lists several decidedly non-conventional weapons including a particle beam weapon, "phased-plasma pulse" weapons, as well as apparently advanced sonic weapons.

The Colonial Marines' battleship, the Sulaco, apparently features a primarily nuclear armament.

"Western" parallel

The film conforms to the majority of the common traits of the Western, as laid out in Will Wright's Sixguns and Society (University of California Press 1977).

Accolades

Aliens was nominated for seven Academy Awards and ended up winning two (Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects). Sigourney Weaver received her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress) for this film. Although Weaver did not actually win, it was considered a landmark for a nomination for Best Actress to even be made for a science fiction / horror film, a genre usually given little recognition by the Academy in those years. She is considered most memorable for her famous line in the movie during the climatic Ripley/Queen fight- "Get away from her you bitch!"

Another actor whose career benefited from Aliens was Bill Paxton; he plays the reluctant grunt, Hudson, who later defiantly battles to the death when swarmed by the aliens. Paxton also benefited from being given many of the film's most memorable one-liners, such as "Game over man, Game over!" and "Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"

Impact

The depiction of the female characters, especially Ripley and the ultra-macho Private Vasquez, as fearless warriors made a considerable impression in the North American perception of women in action films, particularly in futuristic science fiction. Corporal Dietrich (the medic), and Pilot Ferro as well both demonstrated a professional competence in their military roles, a diversion from previous films where the heroine lacked such strengths and apparent senses of duty. Since Aliens, it grew to be expected in futuristic stories that the female characters be as ready to bear arms and do battle on an equal basis with the male characters.

The film also contains a suggestion that in the future gender identity would be a non-issue. This is shown both on the data screen of dead crewmembers from the first screen, and in brief off-screen dialogue between two marines in the mess hall.

The film heavily influenced many later science fiction works to depict a more realistic world that looks "lived" in: while in Star Trek the sets and equipment usually look pristine, in Aliens they look "banged up" and like they've been given makeshift repairs over time. The film is often used by writers and video-game designers for designing a realistic-looking near future military. The Colonial Marine Corps has been used as a template in the 1998 movie Starship Troopers, the 1995-1996 TV series Space: Above and Beyond, the popular RTS computer game Star Craft and the Halo video game series.

Versions

The theatrical running time of Aliens was 137 minutes. Later, James Cameron cut together a 154 minute Special Edition (a true Director's Cut, since Cameron was forced to release the theatrical cut to fit a contractually mandated two-hour-and-fifteen-minute running length against his better judgment) that contained the daughter subplot, as well as scenes of the colony before the alien infestation, and extra battle scenes involving the marines' robot sentries.

The original theatrical cut introduces an element of uncertainty into the proceedings—the backstory about Newt's parents is not shown, and the audience is (at least for first-time viewers), unaware of what has transpired there beforehand. The scenes with Ripley's daughter and the robotic gun sentries provide subplots in themselves. However, some fans of the movie prefer the original theatrical release, and consider the extra scenes in the Special Edition to be superfluous, despite the wishes of director Cameron.

This Special Edition was first released on laserdisc and VHS in 1992 and in The Alien Legacy in 2001. Both versions of the film were released together for the first time in the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set.

Arcade game

In 1990, Konami released an arcade game, Aliens, based on the movie. The game is an isometric-perspective 3-axis run and gun side-scroller (similar to Midway's NARC), where you play as either Ripley (Player 1) or Hicks (Player 2). Because it introduces additional monsters such as winged xenomorphs, giant spiders infested with chest-bursters, and undead soldiers, the game is not very true to the series. Still, the plot elements of the film will be apparent to fans of the series who play the game.

Trivia

• When Jenette Goldstein heard about casting for the film Aliens, she mistakenly thought that the film was about illegal aliens and came to the audition wearing lots of make-up and long hair. This incident was later used as an inside joke in the film's shooting script.
• The 19-foot queen alien model is currently on display at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, as of 2005. It is on loan from its owner and an advisory board member of the museum, James Cameron.
• The Alien nest set wasn't dismantled after filming. It was unused until several years later when it was used as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman in 1989. When the crew of Batman first entered the set, they found most of the Alien nest still intact.
• Apparently, names of some Marine characters were drawn from A Bridge too Far, Cornelius Ryan's account of the Operation Market Garden in WWII. Gorman, Wierzbowski, Hicks et al feature as prominent actors in the book.
• Composer James Horner stated in an interview that he felt that James Cameron had not given him enough time to write a musical score for the film. Because of this he said he was forced to cannibalize previous scores he had done as well as adapt a rendition of "Gayane Ballet Suite" for the main and end titles. Horner stated that the tensions with Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. Cameron, however, was so impressed with Horner's score from Braveheart that he later asked him to compose the score for Titanic.
• "Sulaco" is the name of the town in Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, which was the name of the ship in Alien. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, is an admirer of Conrad's.
• The weapons used by the marines are all based on real, fully functional weapons. The pulserifle is made from a Thompson SMG with an attached Remington 870 shotgun that was mounted in a Franchi SPAS-12 barrel shroud, while the smartguns carried by Vasquez and Drake are based around the MG-42 machinegun, and are maneuvered with the help of a steadicam harness.
• The film contains numerous (and often somewhat obscure) nods to Robert A. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers." The references to "bug hunts," "drops," and having female pilots all echo Heinlein's work. (In a discussion about the then-upcoming film version of "Starship Troopers," Harlan Ellison wondered aloud why anyone would make the film, since in his opinion it had already been made, and was called "Aliens.")
• The film has had huge influence on the Bungie Studios' Halo video game, as well as a few references in games like Blizzard's StarCraft and Westwood's Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun as the dropships look remarkably similar. In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, GDI's Orca Fighters were loosely modelled on the dropship, and GDI's Amphibious APC is also loosely modelled on the APC in this particular movie. The marines have the same 'Gung-ho' attitude to killing aliens, and even the sergeant says the famous line, Go go go! The corps ain't payin' us by the hour! "The Sarge" --Sergeant Johnson-- is even a hard-talking veteran black man, like Apone.
• In the Family Guy episode 'Da Boom,' Stewie Griffin mimics Hudson's lines from the movie: "Game over, man! Game over!"
• The optional director and cast audio commentary on the film included in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set has the director and cast talking about their disappointment with the "Alien 3" film, and Weaver mentioning how she only agreed to do "Aliens 4" because she wanted to prevent the making of the "Aliens vs. Predator" film.
• Paul Reiser (Burke) mentioned a humorous story in his book Couplehood, about how early in his marriage when he was a struggling comedian and actor, he and his wife one day made a playful list of celebrities they were "allowed" to cheat with. One person on his list was Sigourney Weaver. This made for much playful teasing of his wife when he was cast in Aliens.
• In the cut scene where Burke shows Ripley a picture of her aged daughter, Amanda (Amy) McClaren, it is actually a photo of Sigourney Weaver's real life mother, Elizabeth Inglis.
• Carrie Henn (Newt) never appeared in another role in film or television. She is currently a school teacher.
• Carrie Henn's brother Christopher appeared in Aliens as Newt's brother, Timmy. The scene was cut from the original release, but is available on the Special Edition DVD or the European Edition VHS.
• In Halo/Halo 2, The Humans use a Pelican that is based on the UD-4L Cheyenne Dropship .
• The two hospital levels of the PC game Ghost Master feature mortals with modified names of the Aliens cast and their characters (first name of the actor and last name of their character) with patient descriptions that match their fates in the film.

Six Degrees of (Aliens) Separation aka The Aliens Effect...?

• Director James Cameron has been known to use Aliens actors in other films. Michael Biehn (Hicks), Lance Henrickson (Bishop) and Bill Paxton (Hudson) all appeared in the first Terminator film. Jenette Goldstein (Vasquez) appeared in Terminator 2 and Titanic. Biehn was also in the Abyss. Bill Paxton has also appeared in True Lies and Titanic.
• Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are also the only actors to have been killed by all 3 bad boys, the Terminator (Terminator 1), an Alien (Aliens) and a Predator (Predator 2 for Paxton, Aliens vs. Predator for Henriksen).
• Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron's ex wife, though at the time they were married) directed Near Dark, a vampire movie staring Aliens alumni Henricksen, Goldstein and Paxton. She also directed the music video for the New Order song, "Touched by the Hand of God", which starred Bill Paxton.
• Paxton and Biehn appeared together in Tombstone as well as Navy Seals. (Navy Seals also had Rick Rossovich, a Terminator alumni.)
• Lance Henricksen also starred in Pumpkinhead, the first directing effort by Aliens special effects wizard Stan Winston

Prequel

• 2004: Alien Vs. Predator, considered a stand-alone by director Paul W.S. Anderson

Alien Quadrilogy

1. 1979: Alien, directed by Ridley Scott
2. 1986: Aliens, directed by James Cameron
3. 1992: Alien³, directed by David Fincher
4. 1997: Alien: Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cast

Crew

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Aliens

• Aliens at the Internet Movie Database
• Aliens first draft script
• Aliens arcade game review