Alien (1979) vs. Aliens
(1986):
which one is better?
Alien and Aliens are two
of the greatest films ever to feature extraterrestrial creatures (as well as
two of my favourite films of all-time). Though Aliens is a direct sequel, it was helmed by someone completely
uninvolved with the original (James Cameron, who wrote and directed), and as a
result, ended up being quite different from the first film. In fact, Aliens is more of sci-fi-action-thriller,
as opposed to Alien, which is both
sci-fi and horror. But, despite being fairly different from the original, Aliens is also considered one of the
best sequel films of all-time.
Fans of the series
and general movie-goers agree, Alien
is a classic film, and Aliens is the
only other entry in the franchise to come close to being as good or better than
it. But is it better? Which film is the best?
I’ve gone back and
forth on this question many times over the years, but now it’s time to fully
analyze both movies and determine which one is superior, the sequel or the
original. Step aside, Predator, it’s
time for Alien vs. Aliens!
Plot:
For a long time, I always thought of Aliens as having a totally different sort of story than Alien, but really, if you break down some
of the big plot points, the stories for both movies are quite similar.

The crew try to hunt it down and kill it, but they’re no
match for the superior creature. It comes down to just Flight Officer Ripley,
who self-destructs the ship in an effort to terminate the xenomorph and gets
away on the shuttle (along with Jones, the cat that lives onboard), but the
creature stows away on the shuttle with her. She manages to get rid of it using
the airlock and a spear gun (for what reason is a spear gun on board? Don’t
question it), then goes into hyper sleep. That’s basically the entire movie
boiled down to 203 words.

What makes Aliens
seem so different from Alien is not
so much the story content but more to do with the differences in scale and
character dynamics. Aliens is Alien but on steroids. More aliens! More
people! More action! And that last one is the other major difference, the
action element.
This is why it makes it hard to compare the two movies. Alien isn’t an action movie, so it can’t
be faulted for having less-impressive action compared to the sequel. In
contrast, can’t Aliens therefore not be faulted for being less scary than Alien? This is where it gets tricky, because no, Aliens is not as scary as Alien overall,
despite having the same horrific creature in greater numbers.
Let me break down a key scene to show how Aliens is absolutely on par or better
than Alien (in terms of being scary
and exciting), purely on a scene-to-scene basis. A scene that stands out to me
as being exceptionally terrifying is when Newt and Ripley are trapped in the
room with two facehuggers, and Ripley has to figure out a way to get help
before the facehuggers implant them with chestbursters. We, as audience
members, perfectly understand the stakes here, the sense of urgency and fright.
Then, to add to the tension, the room is full of shadows and random clutter, so
the facehuggers have lots of places to hide. And then, to top it all off,
Ripley sets off the sprinklers, so there’s falling water and a red emergency
light, which makes the scene look about as scary as possible.

The idea of being trapped on a ship with no weapons and
knowing just one horrific creature is
trapped there with you is really scary. I get where James Cameron’s mindset was
with the sequel. Okay, one was scary,
imagine if there were even more, and
the humans did have guns this time,
but it still didn’t help! It’s a
great concept, and it worked extremely well. But it didn’t make for a scarier
or even equally scary concept to the first movie. It was exciting, yes, and
still scary, of course, but speaking of the overall plot, no, it wasn’t as
ground-breaking or terrifying.
It’s a tough call, especially because I absolutely love the
plots of both movies, but there’s just something so satisfyingly simple about
the plot of Alien, that I have to
slightly favour it. James Cameron had a tough task in trying to live up to the
sheer genius of the first movie, and he did a great job. But bigger isn’t
always better, in terms of story.
One point to Alien.
Characters:
This is where I think Aliens
has a leg up on Alien. Both movies
have great characters, but let’s break down the casts a bit, starting with Alien.
One of the greatest strengths of Alien is depicting a working-class group of individuals who are
meant to be just like everyday people. These aren’t super-intelligent
highly-trained astronauts on a daring space mission, they’re just truck drivers
in space, a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot when talking about the characters
in Alien, but it’s true. They just
work for the company and want to get paid, that’s all.
When everyone first wakes up at the start of the movie and
sits around for breakfast, the feeling that these people are co-workers
instantly comes across, largely thanks to Ridley Scott allowing the actors to
improvise their dialogue. They talk over one another and joke and comment on
each other and it all feels real.
Brett and Parker talking about the bonus situation, Dallas explaining why they
woke up early, and Ripley and Kane asking questions about their new
side-mission sets up the movie really skilfully, and from there, we see these
folks in their working environment, before things take a turn for the worst and
witness them switch from work-mode to survival-mode.

After Ripley’s reintroduction, we meet the marines along for
the journey with her, and get strong impressions of them right away. In Alien there were only seven people, and
one of them turned out to be a robot. In Aliens,
there’s a robot (but that’s no secret this time), plus Ripley, plus sleazy
company worker Burke, plus Lieutenant Gorman, plus the whole squad of marines,
and then they find Newt…my point being there are way more characters this time,
which means making them interesting and worth caring about it a much greater
task. And yet, James Cameron did it.

What it comes down to, for me, is Aliens has a greater number of memorable characters (Hudson, Hicks,
Newt, Bishop, Ripley, Gorman, Vasquez, Burke) compared to Alien. Though both movies have great characters, it’s the wider
range offered in Aliens that appeals
more to me.
One point to Aliens.
Setting:
Even though Alien
seems much smaller in scale than Aliens (which it is), both movies
actually take place in about the same number of locations. Alien is mainly set on the planetoid/derelict ship and the
Nostromo, and Aliens takes place
mainly within the colony, but also has Ripley and the marines on the ship Sulaco,
as well as the planet’s surface, and the colony is a little more varied than
the Nostromo.
Though Aliens has
more variety in locations, I don’t find the settings as memorable, overall. The
one that really sticks out is the Alien hive, with its absolutely massive scale
and intricate details. Everything is wet and shadowy and where one wall ends
and a xenomorph begins is impossible to tell. But, the colony and processing
station all kind of blends together into an industrial backdrop, which might have
been an attempt to replicate the same feeling the setting of Alien evokes, but it didn’t quite work
as well as it did in the first film.
The two main settings in
Alien are extremely distinct. Beginning with the derelict, it’s perhaps the
most alien environment in any movie, and I mean alien in the sense that it
truly looks otherworldly. H.R. Giger’s designs are stunning, and that vast room
with all the eggs, like a gigantic metallic tunnel, is terrifying. As for the
Nostromo, the design is so detailed, I feel like I notice a new point of
interest every time I watch the movie. Yes, it often looks all the same
throughout like the main setting in Aliens,
but that works better to evoke the feeling of being completely trapped and
claustrophobic, more so than in Aliens.
Both movies have great settings, but Alien
has the more memorable, distinct, and effective look.
One point to Alien.
Creatures and
Effects:
This is another tough category, because once again it’s not
really a fair comparison. In Alien,
there are many eggs, but only one opens up, then there’s one facehugger, one
chestburster, and one adult xenomorph. In Aliens
(if going by the special edition) there are several facehuggers, two chestbursters
(one real, one in Ripley’s dream), dozens of xenomorph drones, and the queen.
For quantity, Aliens obviously wins,
but which movie has the more convincing creatures, and what about the other
visual effects?

Now for the creature comparisons. The eggs in Aliens look better than the eggs from Alien. In Alien, the one egg’s “petals” open extremely robotically, which I’m
guessing was sort of the point, but it looks very stiff, and in Aliens, the eggs open more naturally,
plus there are many of them and they all are to the same standard of quality.



There are fewer goofy shots in Aliens, though still a few. In general, the xenos in Aliens perform more confidently, and,
like the facehuggers, are capable of greater movement. Unlike the facehugger
comparison, though, the xenomorph in Alien
should have been able to perform its
role better, but Ridley Scott chose to cut around it for a reason: it looked
like a guy in a suit. James Cameron showed his creatures more because they were
simply more convincing.

Point to Aliens.
Tone/Genre:

One point to each.
Music:
Because Aliens has
a different tone and pace than Alien,
the music of course sounds quite different. The score for Alien by Jerry Goldsmith is haunting and slow, especially in its
opening chords as the title slowly fades in over shots of space. It doesn’t
have as many big moments as James Horner’s score for Aliens, but the Aliens soundtrack
underscores the action parts with its big moments, using sounds like the
marching drums as they are getting ready to leave the Sulaco and land on
LV-426, or the loud percussion when the creatures attack them in the hive. In contrast,
Horner’s score has less-effective haunting/slow pieces of music compared to
Goldsmith’s.

Point to Alien.
Legacy:
I don’t award points in this section, but I almost wonder if
I should deduct a point from both movies, simply for spawning an inconsistent,
often confusing, and usually sub-par franchise. Ridley Scott wanted to end Alien with the creature killing Ripley,
then imitating her voice into the ship’s recorder, which would’ve either ended
the franchise right then and there, or set up a drastically different
storyline. But, without Alien as we
know it, we wouldn’t have had Aliens,
which did a pretty neat job of exterminating the xenomorphs at the end and
sending our characters off on a happy trip through space, leaving it open for
more potential adventures, but not so wide-open that people would be groping
for part three.

No points awarded.
Conclusion:

When you break down both movies, the answer to why Alien comes out on top is clear, and it
might sound like a cop-out-answer, but it’s just a fact: Alien came first. Alien
launched the entire franchise—the iconic female heroine Ripley, the entire
mythology of the xenomorph creature, the expansive futuristic world—and Aliens, while it did build on that
mythology in creative and fantastic ways (the colonial marines, the terraforming,
the Alien Queen), it didn’t produce as
much original and iconic content as Alien.

Alien wins.
Thanks for reading,
and be sure to stay tuned for my upcoming Alien:
Covenant review!
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