Aliens (1986)

[Toby Frost]

I completely agree. Ripley wasn't perfect - in Alien, she's rather a stickler for the rules, and in Aliens she's worn out and run down - and that just makes her seem more credible. Perhaps it's because the fandom was smaller, and it was harder to discuss such things without the internet, but there was a real sense that characters like Ripley and Sarah Connor just existed: there was no debate as to what they represented or meant, or which interest group they challenged or anything like that: there they were what they were, and you just accepted that without comment, in the same way that you accepted that the Alien lived in space, or the Terminator was from the future.

Now - well, let's just say that things aren't what they used to be, and even a blockbuster like Mad Max: Fury Road feels like a subversive film. I like and miss that idea of the creator being able to say "Here is a thing I made: take it or leave it". Now they'd get death threats and a stupid petition.

 

[Dave]

Perhaps it's because the fandom was smaller, and it was harder to discuss such things without the internet, but there was a real sense that characters like Ripley and Sarah Connor just existed: there was no debate as to what they represented or meant, or which interest group they challenged or anything like that: there they were what they were, and you just accepted that without comment, in the same way that you accepted that the Alien lived in space, or the Terminator was from the future.

I picked up a book, published pre-internet, from a second hand book sale called something like the "Alien Quadrilogy" (this was maybe 15 years ago that I got hold of it and I don't think I still have it.) That book dissected all the films, the characters, the themes, the AI technology and the hidden 'Easter Eggs' (the picture of fried eggs inside the locker.) It did discuss Ripley as a character at very great length. So, people really did debate what the characters represented or meant, but I would agree that the audience for that was smaller (still enough to sell a book.)

I would also agree that there was no tendency back then, nor any need, to put characters into boxes - no one saying, for instance, that she is an icon of some radical feminist sub-group offshoot - it was much more of an artsy 'film studies course' type of discussion. I'm not sure that it is the internet that has changed this. It could be because social media has enabled the connecting together of people that have the same ideas, but I also think society has changed and given freedom to people to have ideas that are not mainstream, and made them okay to have.

I'm suspicious of much of what people read into literature anyway. There are libraries written about the subtext, interpretation and meaning of different works of literature. Take Shakespeare for example, can he really have meant so many different things when he wrote a simple line of a play? Only he would be able to tell us that for certain, but it doesn't stop English Literature scholar coming up with new theories. I don't see the theories about the character of Ripley as any different.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Another big plus point with Aliens - no CGI.

That means all the models, the costumes, and especially the power loader Ripley uses - are all fully convincing. In fact, IMO the loader sequences are among the best because the film effectively built its own future technology.

There's judicious use of the camera as well, so you never get to see the actual aliens long enough or in open light that might give them away as actors in suits.

 

[Toby Frost]

The powerloader must surely be one of the best-ever uses of Chekov's gun!

 

[Overread]

Whilst the story was a bit far fetched it was something we got with the 4th Alien film which was seeing the aliens moving around far more so and yet even though they used a lot more CGI (swimming aliens!) they used a lot of models too. The "child" alien really comes into its own for all those close up almost intimate moments and because it a puppet and costume its far more "real" than what we'd have had with CGI (esp CGI of that time). Indeed whilst their method of bringing Ripley into the 4th film was dire I really loved that film for the way they took the aliens in a different direction of interpretation - they brought some of Giger's sensual elements of the Alien into that film - a neat contrast to the stealth and brutality we'd seen before.

Personally I think its a shame they never followed the comics that came out around that time. There's a wealth of them which flesh out both general "horror in the dark of space" stories and also build into a long campaign history of war on Earth, warring Alien subfactions and alternative alien forms - there's a great one on a sea-world where the aliens infest shark creatures and there's shark based aliens leaping up at colonists etc..

 

[paeng]

Solid action movie, and great when coupled with the first movie, which is horror. Too bad about the rest, though.

 

[paeng]

Problems with the movie:

In the first movie, Mother re-routes the Nostromo to the signal. Only the ship Captain, Dallas, can do that, and the only one who can override him is the ship owner, Weyland-Yutani (WY). That means WY was in contact with Mother throughout, and would have received the coordinates to the signal. If it did, then it would not have needed to get them from Ripley's lifeboat flight recorder decades later.

Dallas tells Ripley that Ash replaced the science officer during their last stopover. That implies that the company knew something about the signal.

Later, Ripley tells the rest that WY came up with the special order to obtain the alien at all cost for its bio-weapons division. These imply that the company knew about the alien early on, as it makes no sense to spend a lot of money to set up such a division based merely on a hunch. Besides, the prequels reveal the same.

In the second movie, Ripley asks the board to check the coordinates to prove her innocence. They decline, which makes no sense, as the accused has every right to prove her case. One licensed work later explains that the coordinates were deleted from the logs by WY. In addition, Cameron says that the beacon was damaged by volcanic activity.

The military ship leaves with only one squad. That might be explained by the following timeline: the colony found the alien craft and was in frequent communications with WY. Four were facehugged, with two aliens escaping before one of them damages the colony transmitter. That means the military and WY thought that they would be dealing with only two aliens, which is why they sent only one squad. They didn't figure that one would turn into a queen and start laying eggs.

The military ship has no captain and crew, which makes no sense. In addition, the colony and squad have no backup transmitters, and the squad leaves the ship in orbit and unmanned. It doesn't even use tech like drones to search the colony, like the one used by salvagers at the start of the movie.

Was the derelict ship damaged by the nuclear blast? Some say it was shielded by a mountain range; if so, then there was no need for WY to capture the alien and embryo in the prison in the third movie, as the alien craft had lots of eggs.

In the third movie, Bishop tells Ripley that WY knows everything about what happened to the Sulaco because the computer was feeding it all data. If computers are so sophisticated that they could literally operate ships while crews were in cryo-sleep, and if the same computers appeared in the Nostromo, Sulaco, and even operated things like colonies, then they would have easily been able to send all sorts of data to WY easily.

Side note: some wonder why the Sulaco personnel had to be in cryo-sleep for a journey that took only three weeks. One manual points out that ships used drives to move them at faster-than-light but also accelerated time. That's why the passengers had to go into cryo-sleep even for short trips, or else they would age quickly.

Lastly, additional licensed media complicates matters because they lead to more discrepancies and plot holes, like multiple events taking place between the first and second movie, which means that WY would have know more than enough about the aliens before the events in the second film took place.

 

[Judderman]

Aliens is such a classic. Some of the points above make sense but i don’t see them as anything that will come to anyone’s mind when watching it, unless having really been looking into the minutiae after previous viewings/reading.
Additional licensed work written later can hardly be used to criticize the film either. WY is a mysterious organization for viewers in the early movies.

 

[Dan Jones]

@paengyour post reminds me of Dan Dreiberg's bird studies paper from Watchmen.

“Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so closely, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in such minute detail, that it becomes invisible? Is it possible that while fastidiously calibrating the span of
its wings or the length of its tarsus, we somehow lose sight of its poetry? That in our pedestrian descriptions of its marbled or vermiculated plumage we forfeit a glimpse of living canvases, cascades of carefully toned browns and golds that would shame Kandinsky, misty explosion of color to rival Monet? I believe we do.
I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensiblities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose
gravity drew us to our studies in the first place."

 

[Swank]

In the first movie, Mother re-routes the Nostromo to the signal. Only the ship Captain, Dallas, can do that, and the only one who can override him is the ship owner, Weyland-Yutani (WY). That means WY was in contact with Mother throughout, and would have received the coordinates to the signal. If it did, then it would not have needed to get them from Ripley's lifeboat flight recorder decades later.

This assumes that there was superluminal communication, which does not seem to be the case in Alien. There may or may not have been 50 years later.

Dallas tells Ripley that Ash replaced the science officer during their last stopover. That implies that the company knew something about the signal.

This isn't a problem as much as a source of tension. We never know the extent of WY/Ash's complicity, which makes what the crew is going through that much more monstrous than a pure external alien threat. The reason for Ash's substitution remain ambiguous - but the fact that he is new also explains why the crew hasn't picked up on his inhumanity.

The military ship has no captain and crew, which makes no sense. In addition, the colony and squad have no backup transmitters, and the squad leaves the ship in orbit and unmanned. It doesn't even use tech like drones to search the colony, like the one used by salvagers at the start of the movie.

50 years after the Nostromo, why is an automated ship so hard to believe? It wasn't like the Nostromo needed people to navigate. The crew appears to be there for maintenance and unusual circumstances, not to steer.

However, the whole concept of "space marines" is stupid, and Cameron seems to love such hoary, unsophisticated concepts. The marines are wearing WWII era helmets, even.


Aliens was written as a stand-alone film, not as a sequel. The fact that it doesn't mesh perfectly with the original should hardly be a surprise. Not only from a technology and continuity standpoint, but the first film was built around this very self contained concept of alien reproduction, and the queen thing is really a downgrade. As a series, it makes only slightly more sense than the last trilogy of SW films, for similar reasons: Too many chefs.

 

[paeng]

@paengyour post reminds me of Dan Dreiberg's bird studies paper from Watchmen.

“Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so closely, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in such minute detail, that it becomes invisible? Is it possible that while fastidiously calibrating the span of
its wings or the length of its tarsus, we somehow lose sight of its poetry? That in our pedestrian descriptions of its marbled or vermiculated plumage we forfeit a glimpse of living canvases, cascades of carefully toned browns and golds that would shame Kandinsky, misty explosion of color to rival Monet? I believe we do.
I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensiblities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose
gravity drew us to our studies in the first place."

I think it's the other way round: the bird was not studied at all. That explains the problems with the first three movies, or at least the first two, with other licensed media that's considered canon complicating matters, like Ellen and Amanda Ripley going through further adventures similar to what happened in the first movie, but no one knowing about what happened due to corporate/military amnesia/incompetence followed by the opposite.

Casual viewers won't notice these but sci-fi fans do.

 

[paeng]

This assumes that there was superluminal communication, which does not seem to be the case in Alien. There may or may not have been 50 years later.


This isn't a problem as much as a source of tension. We never know the extent of WY/Ash's complicity, which makes what the crew is going through that much more monstrous than a pure external alien threat. The reason for Ash's substitution remain ambiguous - but the fact that he is new also explains why the crew hasn't picked up on his inhumanity.


50 years after the Nostromo, why is an automated ship so hard to believe? It wasn't like the Nostromo needed people to navigate. The crew appears to be there for maintenance and unusual circumstances, not to steer.

However, the whole concept of "space marines" is stupid, and Cameron seems to love such hoary, unsophisticated concepts. The marines are wearing WWII era helmets, even.


Aliens was written as a stand-alone film, not as a sequel. The fact that it doesn't mesh perfectly with the original should hardly be a surprise. Not only from a technology and continuity standpoint, but the first film was built around this very self contained concept of alien reproduction, and the queen thing is really a downgrade. As a series, it makes only slightly more sense than the last trilogy of SW films, for similar reasons: Too many chefs.

I don't know what type of technology would be needed for that, but given the high levels of tech present even for the ships shown in the prequels, they were likely present.

You're right about the reference to Ash's character, but the context of the discovery of the replacement was that Ash let in the explorers against protocol, which makes no sense because he's the science officer and would have known otherwise. It was only later, when Ripley found out about the special order, that she realized that they were not only looking at Ash's inhumanity (or more like non-humanity) but that the corporation was involved. It's possible then that the reason for the replacement also involved that. I think that's the only reason why writers would add what at first looks like something trivial.

Automation is used only because the crew's asleep, and even then there has to be a crew available in case automation malfunctions, and for obvious reasons. In addition, part of the crew becomes the authority and representative of the owners of the vessel, and that's the Captain. This is also critical because if decisions like using ship-borne nuclear weapons on a colony has to be used, only the Captain can do that.

I think they're known in the movie as "Colonial Marines". I think their role is to attack hostile forces on other planets and secure colonies from the same.

About Cameron, he has an interesting audio commentary to the second movie, and what he says is notable: the movie is meant to criticize U.S. imperialism, if not imperialism and colonialism in general, and for references he used the East India Company and colonial India, the Vietnam War and the military industrial complex, and the Bhopal disaster, which took place when he was drafting the screenplay and involves Western multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor in poor countries and skirting environmental protection. Later, it also turns out that he's interested more in storytelling and is quite a liberal, which explains why even in this so-called "action" movie the main action takes place more than an hour into the feature, and why much of the content consists of exposition and character development, with a lot of drama and even some humor. It's like the first movie, where protagonists are portrayed in a realistic fashion and mirror their audiences: blue- and low-level white-collar workers and grunts who just want to finish the job and get some R&R, if not retire early.

Finally, there's an interesting legend about approval of the second movie and was confirmed by Cameron: he took the blank last page of his script book and showed it to the studio execs, wrote "ALIEN" in large letters, then added a $ at the end. The execs greenlighted the project.

The implication is that it's a sequel, and obviously one because it stars Ripley from the first movie follows through from LV-426, but that Cameron could no longer use the horror subgenre based on suspense (i.e., the creature growing rapidly and operating in the shadows, until it fully reveals itself in the end) because audiences already saw the alien, so he had to offer something new. Since audiences already knew about the creature and one was featured a group of humans struggling to survive against it, he decided to use multiple aliens, which naturally led to an action genre.

And it worked.

 

[RDArmstrong]

Story aside, the directing of the second movie is pretty underrated. I know most fans love the isolated feel of the first film, but for what the second film is trying to accomplish, it absolutely nails it.

 

[BAYLOR]

Story aside, the directing of the second movie is pretty underrated. I know most fans love the isolated feel of the first film, but for what the second film is trying to accomplish, it absolutely nails it.

I remember seeing the previews for this film before it cam out. My ffisrt thought was " Oh Yes , that looks amazing !" And it was all of that and more . Ive see it numerous times, It never gets old.

 

[Swank]

I don't know what type of technology would be needed for that, but given the high levels of tech present even for the ships shown in the prequels, they were likely present.

You're arguing both sides. Either it is a fully thought through future world constructed by the filmmakers, or it isn't. When you insist that stuff doesn't make sense, you're saying that the filmmakers are so good that they screwed up their own vision, or that their vision is so bad that the resulting plot reveals them.

How about being a willing audience member that isn't some sort of expert in the future, and allow the filmmaker to have FTL without FTL coms?

 

[KGeo777]

I saw it twice when it came out but I prefer the first movie. I feel ALIENS is just a remake for the most part. The actions scenes are exciting but it bothered me that the alien became a kind of insect drone. When the sequel came out, there was a discussion about it (in a magazine--the internet of its time) and someone mentioned the original idea of the alien turning the victims into an egg which I think is so much more disturbing than the queen idea (even if the scene as filmed disrupts the pacing--I still like the idea). As a spfx creation, it's memorable but I think the queen made the alien drone weaker. And I hate those marines. They were so goofy and over the top. The style of the movie is so different from the first.
It sure was a big deal at the time though-especially waiting for the aliens to appear.

 

[paeng]

You're arguing both sides. Either it is a fully thought through future world constructed by the filmmakers, or it isn't. When you insist that stuff doesn't make sense, you're saying that the filmmakers are so good that they screwed up their own vision, or that their vision is so bad that the resulting plot reveals them.

How about being a willing audience member that isn't some sort of expert in the future, and allow the filmmaker to have FTL without FTL coms?

It can't be fully thought out because different filmmakers are involved. That means a filmmaker can create something that works with the previous material or can't. That's needed because Ripley and W-Y appear in the three movies, and in prequels the same W-Y.

Also, my arguments are based on common sense, not that the writers screwed up their vision of the work. Here's an example I think I repeated earlier:

In the second movie, Ripley faces a board of inquiry that does not want to heed her request to check the coordinates of the landing site of the Nostromo to see if a derelict ship exists there. One of the board members, van Leuwen, explains that they don't have to because they set up a colony there two decades ago and it didn't see any derelict ship. What are the problems with this?

First of all, a board of inquiry doesn't pass judgment on an accused. Rather, it determines if there an accusation can proceed to a trial. In this case, Ripley is accused of destroying a company ship and its cargo for no valid reason, and there's no valid reason because her story about the alien craft, the facehugger, and the alien are all made up.

Second, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. That doesn't apply in absurd comedies or surreal films but not in realistic sci-fi. In this case, the only thing that Ripley has left to prove her case are the coordinates in the flight recorder log. If she had a lawyer, which should be the case in such proceedings, then that would be sufficient evidence for investigation. Besides, there's a colony with survey teams on the same rock, so it shouldn't be difficult to prove that (which is, ironically, what Burke ended up doing).

Third, van Leuwen's argument is wrong, and even a highschooler who took classes in reasoning could see through that: the colonists could have seen nothing because they didn't happen to visit those particular coordinates.

And this is just one of several discrepancies found in the film. It has nothing to do with taking both sides, or a vision, or predicting the future but what happens realistically.

Finally, how to resolve this issue? I think according to the Weyland-Yutani Report, which is one licensed work, the company retrieved the flight recorder from the lifeboat (because it's their lifeboat) while investigators (likely, from the ICC) were scanning the boat "centimeter by centimeter" to find any organisms, and then deleted the coordinates.

And that's why the board couldn't honor Ripley's request.

 

[Swank]

It can't be fully thought out because different filmmakers are involved. That means a filmmaker can create something that works with the previous material or can't. That's needed because Ripley and W-Y appear in the three movies, and in prequels the same W-Y.

Also, my arguments are based on common sense, not that the writers screwed up their vision of the work. Here's an example I think I repeated earlier:

In the second movie, Ripley faces a board of inquiry that does not want to heed her request to check the coordinates of the landing site of the Nostromo to see if a derelict ship exists there. One of the board members, van Leuwen, explains that they don't have to because they set up a colony there two decades ago and it didn't see any derelict ship. What are the problems with this?

First of all, a board of inquiry doesn't pass judgment on an accused. Rather, it determines if there an accusation can proceed to a trial. In this case, Ripley is accused of destroying a company ship and its cargo for no valid reason, and there's no valid reason because her story about the alien craft, the facehugger, and the alien are all made up.

Second, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. That doesn't apply in absurd comedies or surreal films but not in realistic sci-fi. In this case, the only thing that Ripley has left to prove her case are the coordinates in the flight recorder log. If she had a lawyer, which should be the case in such proceedings, then that would be sufficient evidence for investigation. Besides, there's a colony with survey teams on the same rock, so it shouldn't be difficult to prove that (which is, ironically, what Burke ended up doing).

Third, van Leuwen's argument is wrong, and even a highschooler who took classes in reasoning could see through that: the colonists could have seen nothing because they didn't happen to visit those particular coordinates.

And this is just one of several discrepancies found in the film. It has nothing to do with taking both sides, or a vision, or predicting the future but what happens realistically.

Finally, how to resolve this issue? I think according to the Weyland-Yutani Report, which is one licensed work, the company retrieved the flight recorder from the lifeboat (because it's their lifeboat) while investigators (likely, from the ICC) were scanning the boat "centimeter by centimeter" to find any organisms, and then deleted the coordinates.

And that's why the board couldn't honor Ripley's request.

You sound like a real expert in 22nd century law. Congratulations on your scholarship.

BTW, what country is this happening in?

 

[paeng]

I saw it twice when it came out but I prefer the first movie. I feel ALIENS is just a remake for the most part. The actions scenes are exciting but it bothered me that the alien became a kind of insect drone. When the sequel came out, there was a discussion about it (in a magazine--the internet of its time) and someone mentioned the original idea of the alien turning the victims into an egg which I think is so much more disturbing than the queen idea (even if the scene as filmed disrupts the pacing--I still like the idea). As a spfx creation, it's memorable but I think the queen made the alien drone weaker. And I hate those marines. They were so goofy and over the top. The style of the movie is so different from the first.
It sure was a big deal at the time though-especially waiting for the aliens to appear.

What Cameron wanted to avoid was a remake, which is why it isn't. Here's why:

The first movie is about an alien preying on a hapless ship crew, and the latter together with the audience do not see the alien except in the shadows until it's fully revealed in the end. That's where the horror comes from: suspense.

Given that, Cameron could no longer do the same, i.e., another alien terrorizing a group of people, because the horror element based on suspense was no longer there: audiences already knew about the creature from the first movie.

That's why he had to shift to another subgenre, and it worked when he moved from one alien to having many aliens. Because what happens when you have many aliens? You have action.

But how do you expect to have several aliens? The only way to do that following the first movie is for many colonists to stupidly enter the derelict ship and all of them getting facehugged. Besides, how were the eggs created? I think given those Cameron came up with the idea of seeing the aliens as part of a hive, with a queen laying eggs.

In which case, this is what probably happened:

Jorden gets facehugged, and Anne calls for help. As they bring the Jordens back to the colony, the manager sends in a second team, and three get facehugged.

Of the four, they try to extract two facehuggers alive, but they kill their hosts. Meanwhile, the other two hosts are killed as two aliens are born, and those escape. One metamorphoses into a queen which sets up a hive and lays eggs while the other operates as a warrior-drone, kidnapping colonists to turn them into hosts. At some point, the second alien damages the transmitter, but because the colonists are not aware of the hive, think that only two aliens are involved.

And that's why W-Y sends in only one squad of Marines, as that would be more than enough to take down two aliens given their "state-of-the-art firepower".

Of course, after that they were rudely surprised.

Finally, why did the Marines act in a "goofy" manner? According to reviewers, their portrayal was actually realistic, but they were made to sound arrogant because Cameron explains in his audio commentary that he wanted to criticize the U.S. as an imperialist power and the military industrial complex.

 

[paeng]

You sound like a real expert in 22nd century law. Congratulations on your scholarship.

BTW, what country is this happening in?

If you look at the movie, it follows 20th-century sentiments throughout.