Aliens (1986): Favourite Films Series

Aliens (1986): Favourite Films Series

Movie sequels are tough to do well, but one filmmaker has helmed two of the greatest sequels of all-time. James Cameron gave us 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day—one of the best action movies ever, as well as one of the best sequels—but before that, he followed up 1979’s Alien with 1986’s Aliens: the only other sequel he’s ever made (until all those Avatar sequels come out). Alien was a tough act to follow because it was damn-near perfect, but Cameron knew that in order to live up to the original, he had to take his movie in a different direction, which is exactly what he did, to stunning results.

As I said in my previous Favourites Films entry where I covered the first Alien (check that one out before continuing with this one if you haven’t yet), I rented all the other Alien movies from the video store after seeing the first Alien vs. Predator movie at a very young age. Unlike Alien, Aliens enthralled me the first time I saw it (and still enthralls me to this day). This wasn’t some slow-paced single-monster movie confined to a space ship, it was punctuated with shocks throughout the beginning, and then when the marines reached the xenomorph hive, the action went all-out, along with the horror, and never let up from there.  

One of the first things to really impress me about Aliens was the quality of the special effects. Much like Alien, this world felt real and lived-in. All the weapons the marines carried were unique and unlike any firearms I’d ever seen, and that’s because they were all custom-made specifically for this movie. Some of the effects that I don’t think hold up today are certain visual effects shots, like the dropship entering the planet’s atmosphere and Ripley and Newt in front of the crumbling processing station, but these fleeting moments don’t ruin the experience of the movie at all. The most crucial effects, though, the ones that had to work as well a second time as they did the first time, were the creature effects. The title Aliens perfectly implied there would be multiple creatures, but how many? James Cameron wanted dozens of xenomorphs this time. His concept was an ambitious undertaking, especially given the budget they were working within.

Cameron brought his friend Stan Winston in to do the creature effects, and boy did Winston nail it. As an adult, I appreciate both H.R. Giger’s original Alien design and Stan Winston’s re-design, but when I was younger, I thought the creatures in Aliens were far superior. The xenomorphs perform more dynamic movements this time, and while yes, they are shown more than in the original, they still aren’t shown a whole lot, it’s just that, in the original, so little of the single xenomorph is seen, it feels like a lot more by comparison. But every shot of the creatures creates maximum fright. 

The shots that always stand out to me are when an Alien comes out of the wall for the first time and attacks one of the marines from behind, when an Alien stops the door on the APC from being closed and gets shot in the head by Hicks, and when one rises out of the water in the sewers behind Newt. You never see that many Aliens on-screen at once, but the way Cameron borrows from Ridley Scott’s the-less-you-see-the-scarier-it-is method used on the first film, you get the impression that there really are dozens of them, especially with subtle techniques like the motion tracker representing multiple moving targets, and when the characters can hear them pounding on the pressure door. You don’t see them, your imagination fills it in, and then when you do see them in other scenes, it doesn’t disappoint. 

But in addition to giving the Aliens a slightly different look and greater numbers, James Cameron brought a new element to the story: the Queen Alien, which explains where all the eggs and smaller xenomorphs (or drones) come from. Actually, the whole concept of the xenomorph hive structure was from the original movie, but ended up as a deleted scene, which was restored for the director’s cut in 2003. As a kid, I thought the Queen Alien was cool in AVP, but not all that scary. When Ripley first discovers her in Aliens, that reveal freaked me out, but what really got me was the reveal that the Queen stowed aboard the dropship. Seeing her impale Bishop and rip him in half shocked me so much, I paused the tape (this was in the days of VHS), hit rewind, and watched it again. 

Aliens is a perfect example of why practical effects usually trump cgi. Even after seeing all the crazy stuff the Queen did in AVP, it wasn’t half as impressive as what she could do in Aliens, simply because I believed what I was seeing. The Queen looked so fearsome and so real, she scared the hell out of me, especially when she starts searching for poor Newt under the floor grates and ripping them up to try and grab her. I still dispute that this moment is as scary as anything from the original Alien. 

The fight between the Queen and Ripley in the power loader suit is as amazing today as it was back in 1986. I’m still not even sure how they achieved some of the shots, but most of it was done with a mix of miniatures and the full-sized animatronic puppet Queen. When you compare this ending to the ending of Alien, it’s easy to see how Aliens is a much more action-driven film. The endings are very similar, but in Alien, it’s a slow-moving nail-biter of a scene, and in Aliens, it’s a full-fledged fight scene, even though she’s trying to accomplish the same thing in both scenes.  

James Cameron created a fusion of action and horror, retaining the eerie feel from Alien, but injecting a new dimension to the story, as exemplified in two scenes in particular, when the marines are attacked in the hive, and when Ripley and Newt are locked in the room with the two facehuggers. Both of these scenes are scary and exciting. It’s horrific to see the many xenomorphs overtake the marines, much like it was horrific to see the one xenomorph sneak up on the Nostromo crew members and kill them, the only difference here is, this time we see a lot more of the creatures, and the characters are fighting back, adding that action element.

But action and creatures aside, what makes the horror part of it work so well, and the movie work as a whole, really, are the characters. I can’t imagine a version of Aliens that didn’t include Ripley (an idea that was thrown around when development on the sequel first began). Sigourney Weaver is even better than she was in Alien, with more depth to her character and more intensity. The marines, too, are great characters. They all look and act like real soldiers, but are also compelling and funny, so when they start getting killed off, you actually care.  

What’s interesting is how all the subsequent films (Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, both AVP films) seemed to try to emulate Aliens in varying degrees, instead of going back to the simple horror roots of the first Alien, but I can understand why. Aliens was such a perfect escalation of the initial concept, that to do anything different or smaller scale (like what they did with Alien 3 with going back to one xenomorph) would seem like a misfire. To do a pure action movie wouldn’t work, either. No other Alien sequel has been able to match the quality and/or success of Aliens, and not to sound like a pessimist, but it may never happen. Aliens is just that good.  

Alien (1979): Favourite Films Series

Alien (1979): Favourite Films Series

When I was ten years old, a movie came out late in the summer that only one kid in my class had seen, but he told everyone about it. The movie was called Alien vs. Predator, a title that stuck in my mind. What kind of alien? Why was it fighting a predator? What sort of predator? My imagination ran wild, and when I saw the DVD cover at the video store, I was both creeped out and intrigued. 

I watched it about a year later with a couple friends who were vaguely familiar with both the Alien and Predator franchises, but I was going into it fresh. The only knowledge I had was what they told me. The movie blew my mind, and I quickly rented every other film in both franchises from the video store. I started with Alien, which I had been asking my mom to rent for me years before AVP came out, but she always told me it was too scary. Finally, she’d relented. 

When I watched it for the first time, I found it slow and dull, especially in comparison to Alien vs. Predator. I reacted the same way actress Carrie Henn did when she had to watch it before playing the role of Newt in the sequel, Aliens. This was supposed to be scary? Far from it.   

For my birthday the next year, I received Alien vs. Predator and Alien on DVD. I was excited about one of them, not so much the other, but out of curiosity, I re-watched Alien. Still, I found it dull in comparison to AVP. There wasn’t enough action. It was mostly just people talking and walking around a space ship. 

I watched all of the Alien films again a couple years later in order of release date with a couple friends, one of whom had never seen any of them. He thought the first movie was boring and slow, but I found that, while yes, it was slow, there was something suspenseful about waiting to see the creature, and then to never really see it at all? It was a little disappointing, and yet, for some reason, it was also a little scarier. Where was it the whole time you weren’t seeing it? You knew it was on ship, somewhere, but where? You never were sure, exactly. It made me watch the movie more carefully, to see if I had missed a glimpse of it when watching it before. 

We progressed to Aliens, which I liked a lot more, but Alien didn’t leave my mind. It lurked in the background. The giant derelict ship. The facehugger exploding out of the egg. The chestburster erupting from Kane’s chest. The alien leaping at Dallas in the air duct, which looked like it was trying to give him a hug (both a scary and funny moment). The ship self-destructing in an over-the-top, unending explosion. Ripley slowly getting into the space suit. All this haunting imagery, which I had barely noticed the first couple times, now stuck. 

Many years and many repeated viewings later, my feelings on the Alien series have changed significantly.  The two Alien vs. Predator movies were entertaining on the surface, but nothing more than generic creature feature fare. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection? Mediocre sequels. Aliens I always loved, but Alien, the one that had at first disappointed me, only became more and more interesting. As I learned about the history of the film and watched more and more horror movies, I realized Alien was one of the smartest, most-original horror movies ever made. 

The parts of Alien that frustrated me as a kid no longer do, but they were almost all regarding the pacing and special effects. Admittedly, a number of the effects don’t hold up anymore, such as the aforementioned ship explosion and moment when the alien attacks Dallas, or when Ash is revealed to be an android. But it doesn’t take away from the entertainment value of the movie, and most of the effects that really matter—the creature, the Nostromo’s interior, even the shots of the Nostromo moving through space—look as good today as they did back in 1979. Special effects don’t always make or break a movie, however. What “makes” Alien (and keeps it from breaking) is the perfect trifecta of writing, directing, and acting. 

There’s a reason the Alien franchise is still continuing to this day, and that reason is the title creature. The basic concept for it is a creative masterwork. It evokes fear in ways few other cinematic extraterrestrials can. The idea of something having so many varied stages to its life cycle is weird and unsettling in itself, but the way the alien gets aboard the ship is the truly scary part. In the fifties and sixties, alien invasion movies usually had aliens invading earth with big ships and laser beams, but here, the alien invades us. It’s so personal and invasive and violent, you can’t help but be terrified. 

The creature’s adult form, while certainly scary thanks to H.R. Giger’s nightmarish design, works as well as it does because of how little we see it. It’s not quite like in Jaws, where the less we see, the scarier it remains, because when we see the shark in Jaws, we see that yes, it is indeed a shark, and that’s about the extent of it. But when we see the alien, we aren’t even sure what we’re seeing. A close-up of an eyeless face and silver teeth dripping with slime. A long tail with a point at the end. What are the things on its back? Are those pipes? Wait, how many fingers does it have? Is it human-like, or bug-like, or kind of mechanical? Or all three? By not getting a clear, steady shot of the creature from head-to-toe, it dually provokes more fear and more curiosity. I have no doubt that Ridley Scott’s decision to shoot the creature the way he did is what led to it becoming so iconic and returning for so many sequels. 

As great as the creature’s concept and execution were, it would’ve been totally ineffective had the human characters not been compelling. There isn’t much information divulged about them, but it’s largely thanks to the charismatic actors and their chemistry together that they really come to life and seem believable. These are average Joes at work. They just happen to work on a space ship. We’re given enough time with them to understand their dynamic and feel like we know them before things go south, making everything that happens after that more interesting and more impactful.     

I can’t convince someone that Alien isn’t boring if that’s what they think of it. But if you really tune in to the story and feel of the movie, I don’t see how it couldn’t be scary, or at least entertaining. It’s a slow-burn, for sure, but every time I re-watch it, it feels faster paced, for some reason. Maybe it’s because of the elaborate set designs, or the little improvised lines of dialogue that are sometimes so quiet you have to make an effort to hear them. The first time seeing it, it’s all about the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen. The second time, it’s knowing what’s coming and waiting for it. Every subsequent time, for me, is about seeing how the story progresses, noticing the tiny details, and revelling in the incredibly well-crafted scenes that have been burned into my mind, and the minds of so many other Alien fans.   

I could divulge every little facet of what makes Alien one of my favourite films, but what it comes down to, is it’s really a simple movie. Seven people on a space ship. One alien. They have to survive. That’s about it. The realism, the build-up of tension, and the intensity all make it work to maximum effect. It may not be quite as scary today as it was upon release, and that might have something to do with the mystery being peeled away with every subsequent sequel and prequel and spin-off. No matter how many more times the xenomorph bursts onto cinema screens, the original film will still stand as one of the greatest horror movies ever.