Aliens
Welcome to Movie Night with Brandon, which is basically my excuse to discuss and review any film I feel like. Whether it's a brand new film or an older one, it's whatever I feel like doing. With all that out of the way, let's talk about some movies.
So this is a fairly strange coincidence I found myself in last night. After I got home from work I told my mom I was in the mood to watch Aliens. We watched it and then I looked up the film on IMDb to see when the film came out. Turns out the film came out exactly 30 years later to the day today. So I figured it's been a while since I last wrote a retro review and what better time to talk about one of the best sequels of all time.
In case you're one of the poor souls who hasn't seen this movie, it is a sequel to the amazing Ridley Scott film Alien. While watching this film again last night, I was in awe of how well it still holds up. This film came out 30 years ago and it's paced, shot, and executed with much more skill than most action films out today. I cannot stress this enough, this films sets, costuming, and creature design were all incredible. Granted a lot of that is due to H.R. Giger's masterful work on the first film, but it does a lot of great things on it's own as a sequel.
If you have never seen Alien before it is a science-fiction horror film with great characters and amazing atmosphere. It is very slow paced and builds tension at a more steady rate. So James Cameron directing a sequel to that film and it being and action film could've turned out horribly. Aliens could've been a schlocky revisiting of this world with amazing story potential. The thing that elevates this film however is actors who really invest into their characters, and a writer/director who respects the material and genuinely knows what he is doing. James Cameron shows how well he can build tension here, and not in the same style as Alien did. Putting his characters in situations that increasingly put them at more and more of a disadvantage. Using music only when necessary and leaving silence at the right moments. The practical effects and incredible action sequences are so well-helmed that it still blows my mind that this film was released 30 years ago.
As I previously mentioned the cast all do some of their best if not their best work in Aliens. Bill Paxton is perfect as the whiny Marine Hudson, delivering the humor of the movie but never feeling like a cartoon. Michael Biehn and Carrie Henn also do very good work in the film as Hicks and Newt. But the film completely belongs to Sigourney Weaver who during this film became in my opinion one of the most bad ass characters in film history. She is an amazing female lead who goes from random commercial flight officer to the fiercest character in a film of soldiers.
While I do love the film, there are flaws. The films story follows a bit too closely to the original, especially in the third act. It would be fine if it did different things t the end, but it was way too similar. Also, while I admire the films slower pacing in the beginning, it does take a while for the real story to start. There are also a couple of things that bothered me that were missing from the story in the theatrical version, but they're cleared up in the director's cut. So if you have the opportunity to watch the director's cut, watch that one.
Overall, this is not only one of my favorite action movies of all time, it's one of my favorite films of all time. While I personally do prefer the first Alien when comparing the two, I give this film a massive amount of respect for what it accomplished. The film holds up very well and if you have never seen it before I highly recommend you watch this one.
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