In 1979, no one could hear you scream. 7 years later, still no one could hear you scream. However, if you're a member of the Colonial Marines, it's likely that numerous people COULD hear your machine guns fire and your explosives going *BOOM!*. Whereas Alien took a suspenseful and horrifying approach to science fiction, thanx to the vision of Ridley Scott and the creations of H.R. Giger, Aliens instead goes the way of balls out action and carnage! Yep, with action monster James Cameron at the helm, Aliens injected a LOT of testosterone into the Alien equation, resulting in a critically acclaimed shoot-‘em-up of intergalactic proportions. Not a big surprise coming from the guy responsible for The Terminator... and Titanic... ewwwwwwww. Actually, if Cameron had stuck the Alien Queen into the finale of Titanic and had it rip open DiCraprio and suck out his guts like a flesh pod full of spaghetti, then it would've deserved an Oscar! Instead he just freezes to death and Mr. "I Don't Need Horror or Sci-Fi Elements To Make The Biggest Selling Movie Of All Time" makes an ass load of cash and the rest is history... Cameron, you Godz damned sell-out.
Though it's only been 7 years in our time since the original Alien was released, I find that movie time is similar to dog time. 365 days in real time is equal to about 7 years in dog time. Here, 7 years in our time is equal to 57 years movie time, roughly a 1-to-8.14 years (.14 = roughly 26 days and a handful of hours). Anyway, this ain't no fuckin' algebra class, this is a movie review! The opening of our film witnesses the recovery of Lt. Ellen Ripley (reprised by Sigourney Weaver)'s cryogenically frozen body, left floating in her escape pod for the last 57 years. Who else should discover her than her employers at "the company", the same corporate marauders that risked the lives of Ripley and her fellow crew members back during that whole Alien incident... from which she was the sole survivor. However, it's nearly 6 decades later, so maybe "the company" has become a kinder, gentler bio-warfare corporation, right? Well, if they employ Paul Reiser, chances are they're still a bunch of inhuman assholes! Damn, 57 years in solitary deep freeze and Ripley has to wake up to Mr. Mad About You... what a horrible and psychologically scarring experience that must be. Reiser (of The Tower) plays Carter J. Burke: a representative of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation ("the company") who has salvaged Ripley only to eventually ask her for her help in yet another Xenomorph rampage, only this time it's Aliens, so there's going to be more... MANY more.
Without a doubt, the trouble starts early. No sooner is the bug slayer back and ready for some r & r, then trouble rears it's fugly phallic image once more. Remember the planet that Ripley and pals picked up their hitchhiker from last time? Well, that very same planet has been colonized by over 150 miners and their family members employed by, you guessed it, Weyland-Yutani. Well, a group of miners is ordered to explore the region of the planet that happens to be the home to the Alien craft, still nesting a million and two Alien eggs with face huggers just waiting to spread their leathery appendages and suck face with some unfortunate living hosts. Or, in this case, the miners. We witness one getting a parasitic pet before we get back to Ripley, who W-T is trying to recruit in the fight against these monsters. With her past experience she could be a valuable help... this could also be the perfect opportunity to get her killed and cover up any and all association between the W-T Corp. and their Alien mishaps. Despite being denounced and mocked by the company, the Ripster agrees to join in the hunt, but only with the support of a competent death squad and under the agreement that this is purely an extermination assignment, not a collection job. In Rip's case, the only good bug is a dead bug! Better stock up on Raid, Lieutenant...
As Ripley and crew head for the planet to investigate (communication was broken off with the inhabitants before hand), she meets another member of the team: Bishop (Lance Henriksen!). Bishop seems like an ordinary deadpan kinda guy, until he does his classic knife trick and Ripley realizes he's a cyborg... like that dickhead Ash who tried to choke her to death with porno magazines in her last outing! However, Bishop assures Ripley that over the course of the last half century, cyborgs have been perfected against homicidal malfunctions like Ash experienced... "malfunction" my ass, everyone knows he was ordered to kill the crew after acquiring an Alien specimen...
Anyway, the mob of over hormonal, bloodthirsty, ass kickers arrive on the planet to find it desolate. Seems there's no one around and the place is a bigger mess that the aftermath of a Robert Downey Jr. bender. Amongst the debris they discover Newt, a young girl who's been living in the air ducts and apparently the only survivor of the carnage the rest of us missed out on. Ripley immediately takes her under her maternal wing... that Cameron, always giving something to the women to watch. Further exploration of the colony uncovers where everybody's disappeared to: they're deep under one of the complexes in an Alien nest! The ones not completely croaked are half-croaked and glued to the walls, likely incubating Aliens as we speak! Kids, welcome to bug central...
Watching from the comfort of a secured transport tank, Ripley witnesses the morbid spectacle through the Marines' helmet cams. She figures it best to get the troops out before the imminent "bad thing" happens, but she's too late, as the leathernecks find themselves surrounded! The fight of their lives ensues, a fight many don't survive thanx to bug attacks or friendly fire... the words "elite unit" get thrown around way too much in the future. Only 3 or 4 of the group survives, courtesy of Ripley who'd seen enough and decided to ram the tank right into the nest and salvage as many grunts as possible. Deciding now is the best time to abort the mission and take matters into her own hands, Ripley and crew show what they learned at Bat Out Of Hell Driving School and make for the surface. They call in their drop ship to come pick their asses up and figure it best to leave the bugs well enough alone. Everyone's already dead, so why not just let the Aliens own the planet? On the other hand, W-T could just nuke the shit out of the place and kill them all. Either way, as long as it doesn't involve Ripley putting her flat ass on the line, she don't care. One little problem though. It seems an Alien made it aboard the team's jump ship and has killed the pilot, leaving the craft to crash land on the planet's surface, resulting in heavy damage and no way out... Ripley's like a damn bad luck charm! Everywhere she goes, people die and Hell breaks loose! So, if anyone ever offers you a "lucky" Ripley's foot, kindly decline... and steal the guy's wallet... and call the cops and tell them the guy's a pedophile... and kill his family... if he has one... yeah, that should do it.
Now, our group of survivors has to salvage what they can from the wreckage and lock themselves away until a rescue ship arrives... in approximately 17 days. So, now it's Ripley, Newt, Burke, Bishop and a small collection of Space Marines against a planet of Aliens with limited armaments to defend themselves and almost nowhere to hide. To add to the group's "good luck", it turns out that the colony's reactor core is on the road to explosion town and when it does, it will take out a VERY large chunk of the planet, including our heroes. Oh well, at least they don't need to worry about holding off the Aliens for a couple of weeks. In the midst of their hiding, it's also revealed that, no fucking surprise to anyone who knows Paul Reiser, Burke was the one who gave the order for the colonists to examine the ship, KNOWING what was instead, and intending to take a face hugger back to Earth and becoming vastly wealthy off of it. But, to keep Ripley's mouth shut from blowing the whistle on his evil deeds, Burke locks her and Newt in a tomb, excuse me, a "room" with a couple of face huggers. hoping to impregnate them and either kill them both, or take them back to Earth to give birth to some hideous space demons. Whatever he had planned, it's ruined, as Rip and Newt are rescued by their Marine pals... I told you Paul Reiser was evil. He still is too. So why does everyone try to prevent me from destroying him?! You wanna become a slave under his unholy regime? Fine, you can all go fuck yourselves. As for me, I think I'll take my chances with the Alien planet.
But, the gang doesn't have time to deal with evil sitcom actors, because the bugs have made it past their defenses and are in their hideout! Not to worry though, because while the Marines try to fend off the monsters, Burke gets the cinematic death that all villains like him receive and he becomes Alien chow. With only so much firepower though, a few more good guys bite the dust as well, until Bishop makes it to a communications device and makes a connection with the team's orbiting mother ship. He manages to call the craft down to the planet's surface. As for Newt, she winds up Alien abducted! When the ship lands, Ripley quickly restocks herself with some heavy artillery and goes out to save her adopted daughter alone. She finds her glued to a wall and about to be fitted for her very own face hugger, but saves her of course. In addition, Ripley also discovers just what's been laying all these damn Alien eggs all over the place: an Alien Queen! This big bad momma's not too happy with Ripley's meddling with her spawn, especially the destruction of her precious eggs or the blasting of her royal ass!... err, egg sac!
Rip grabs Newt and they make for the exit stage left, but the Queen apparently has an extensive knowledge of elevator use and follows hot on their heels! Not hot enough though, as Rip and her crew hop aboard the ship and fly off to safety, leaving the planet to meltdown and the Aliens to fry in the afterglow.
Then again, that Queen's faster than she looks and the crew's safe haven turns out to be not-so-safe when she busts in for round 2! After she rips Bishop into two equal pieces of cum squirting machinery, it's time for the main event: a rematch with the bitch who blew up her butt! It's a battle for the ages as Ripley hops into one of the ship's loader suits (futuristic robotic baggage handler) and goes robotic claw-to-gooey talon with the Bug Queen from Outer Space! It's the Mayhem on the Mother ship, the Disaster in the Docking Bay, the Pain on the Unknown Planet, Ali Vs. Foreman for the Next Millennium, the fuckin Pay-Per-View holocaust of all time!
The whole melee ends with Queenie getting her saggy exo-skeleton ass sucked out an air-lock into deep space, just like her relative from the first ALIEN... so, they just spiced up the original ending as opposed to making a new one? That's a bit of a let down... I mean, couldn't Ripley have crushed the monster's cranium with the loader's unbreakable vice grip? Maybe she could've impaled the beast on the loader claws and ripped her in half, like the bitch did to Bishop? Either way, I would've preferred a heavy dose of gore to end on as opposed to Ripley's old "launch 'em into space" shit. It was cool the first time, but come on James Cameron, you could've adorned us with a far more thrilling and action-packed finale!
Many people look at ALIENS as being better than the original. Ridley Scott's original vision was a huge hit and a bonified classic, but numerous people preferred Cameron's approach of "more action = more entertainment", the same formula that won over fans of The Terminator. I'll admit, the extensive action was nice, the FX were great (thanx a lot Stan Winston!) and the monstrous Alien Queen is a sight to behold, (even compared to modern creations that have 15 years more experience behind them), but I was impressed by the gorgeous attention to set design and the use of suspense and horror that Alien gave us. H.R. Giger's designs were astounding and breath taking to behold and Ridley Scott's direction was great. Obviously, when Cameron came on board for this sequel, he didn't want to compete with Scott on who could make a better nightmare, so he dropped the horror and instead added action. In essence, you can't exactly compare Alien with Aliens. Yeah, they're both sci-fi and American classics in their own rights, but it's like comparing M-16's to severed heads: they're not the same thing. However, Alien 3 tried to duplicate the art of Alien and, well, that's a tragedy for a whole different review...
The Moral of the Story: Once you've made artsy space horror movie history, your best option for the sequel is the exact opposite: explosions and dead bodies everywhere!
DVD X-tras: A part of the Alien Legacy collection, this DVD contains trailers for all four Alien installments (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Ressurection). There's also enough extras to pack a hippo's ass with, including production designs; still photos; production notes; film and merchandise ads; some interesting behind-the-scenes stuff (such as the mechanical aspects behind the Alien Queen, face huggers, and other creepy crawlies); and an interview with director James Cameron, which includes his view on working with sequels and how to make them appealing to fans, as well as the factoid that there were only 6 Alien costumes used to make the entire film. A good DVD made like a good DVD should be!
Sequel To: Alien
Sequels: Alien 3 ; Alien Resurrection
H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating: 
- Much friendlier to a party atmosphere than it's predecessor, this flick's got all the guns, guts and other words that begin with 'g' that your party needs! In the fateful words of 45 Grave, "Do you wanna party? It's party time!".
If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: Starship Troopers or
War of the Worlds
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