At first, in space, no one can hear you scream. This time, it's war.

Science fiction author William Gibson, the man who gave us Neuromancer, a novel that inspired The Matrix,
once had this to say about Alien: "Sneakers in outer space!"

I wonder what he thought about this very excellent sequel to that groundbreaking movie. In James Cameron's action-packed, stirring Aliens (1986, rated R), we not only have sneakers being worn by space explorers, but also combat boots, Kevlar armor, assault rifles, grenade launchers, dog tags, and two-ton cargoloading exo-skeletons.

I bet he thought, "Damn! Where can I get some of those?"

I did, too, when I first saw this monster hit (no pun intended), way back in the mid-Eighties. It's the kind of movie that could best be described as "Vietnam In Outer Space," as People magazine once said. In fact, Cameron is so proficient as a technical designer (he actually drew on paper all those military toys that the space marines get to play with, as well as the look and feel of the various sets and action sequences), he makes it all so convincing, frighteningly so.

You really don't need to see the original Alien at all in order to enjoy this sci-fi thrill ride. The story here is so self-sufficient that it could have come from out of nowhere.

In addition to the combat boots, the movie also has teeth. Lots of big teeth.

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, in an Oscar-nominated performance), is found drifting in hypersleep (a form of frozen hibernation) in her shuttlecraft by a deep-space salvage ship after 57 years. She's thawed out, brought back to Earth, and forced to be debriefed by the officious "Company" (her original bosses) on why she detonated her starship, the Nostromo, for "reasons unknown." Of course, no one will believe her story about touching down on Planet LV-426, unwittingly picking up a "hostile organism," and having to blow the ship up after it viciously wiped out her entire crew.

But a human colony on LV-426 has suddenly gone silent, and the Company wants a team of Colonial Marines to investigate, find out if everyone's okay, and kick some butt if necessary. They want Ripley to come aboard as a "special adviser," but she's at first reluctant to go, for obvious reasons.

But recurring nightmares of her terrible ordeal keep haunting her, and she decides to go, in an effort to exorcise her personal demons. This time, though, she leaves Jones the Cat behind.

The marines land, find out that all 158 colonists have disappeared, and later discover one lone survivor: a little girl, named "Newt" (Carrie Henn, and why she never became a star is one of Aliens's eternal mysteries),
who comes out her numbing terror to tell Ripley and the grunts of a hellish, extraterrestrial horror that overtook the colony. The marines find out where the colonists have been taken, lock and load, and go roaring out to kick butt and take names.

The rest of the movie is all jaw-dropping shootouts, marines dropping like flies, explosions, escapes, barricades in tight spaces, massacres, acid burns, alien abductions, thermonuclear blasts, and a final, personal, and savage confrontation with the biggest alien mother of them all.

Everything about this film is designed to shake you, twist you, flip you, and then put your head in a blender that's set to "puree." Cameron, who also wrote and directed The Terminator, Terminator 2, The Abyss, and 1997's Oscar-sweeper Titanic, has made one of the best sci-fi action movies of all time, and Aliens was the piece that set his name in stone among the "second generation" of young Hollywood directors who came after Lucas, Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg.

It would seem unfair to rate and compare this sequel to the original film by Ridley Scott, so I won't do that. The first film was so brilliant in its visual design and its ability to tear the screams from your throat (to the folks who first watched it, that is), and the fact that it was dominated by a superb cast (with Weaver at the forefront)
made it such a difficult act to follow.

But Cameron did, and in some ways he actually surpasses the first film's achievements. Having seen Alien, he set out to make a sequel that has its own distinct look and sound. Gone are the bulky, art-deco spacesuits from the first film; instead we have authentic-looking marine battle dress, visceral weaponry, spacious, spectacular sets, and realistic technological gadgets (I especially love those motion trackers, which act as visual radar units). Instead of running around in a cramped spaceship, the actors get to play around in a huge colony dominated by two massive atmospheric processors ("terraforming" machines, which gradually turn the planet's toxic atmosphere into breathable air, so the marines can run around in just their shirtsleeves). Peter Lamont, the production designer, had a lot of fun creating the world that Cameron envisioned, and Ron Cobb (he also worked on the first film) and Syd Mead gave terrific support as "conceptual designers." Blue is obviously Cameron's favorite color, as the photography (by Adrian Biddle) is always shot in tints of gray-blue, perhaps suggesting the mundane existence of space exploration, but it's sometimes irritating. I can't believe for one moment that things will turn out blue for humanity in the future, but in the case of this movie, things quickly get darker than blue.

The real hallmark of the film, though, is the alien imagery. In lieu of H.R. Giger's awesome, sexually-surreal graphic design (Giger was stuck doing Poltergeist 2 at the time, which was a shame), we have a completely-revamped version of the outer space hell that Ripley encountered long ago. As designed by Cameron (yes, he did design all of it), the aliens are more slick-looking and streamlined, and the "nest" they inhabit is slimy, organic, and spooky as hell. The alien Queen (designed by Cameron and brought to life by mechanical effects man Stan Winston, who really deserves most of the credit for making this movie) is one of the most terrifying and horrific-looking creations since Linda Blair's pea soup-puking demon-girl in The Exorcist. And those beautiful teeth...! (Winston was a dental student before turning to movie effects work.)

Cameron keeps the suspense pumping and the action roaring throughout the film. As a director, he's very nearly perfect, but as a screenwriter, he needed to let someone else help him out (he co-wrote the story with David Giler and Walter Hill, both of whom exec-produced on Alien and this one), as his plotting is icky. The structure of Aliens is virtually identical to the first film, as we have the heroes (and heroines) landing on the planet, checking everything out, battling the monsters, and scrambling to get out before Something Big Blows Up, only to again battle Something Big That Has Followed Them. Again, as in the first film, Ripley has to duke it out with the alien horror that she has come to be so familiar with. Again, she has to engage in the final battle at the end with an alien that has followed her on board the escape ship. Most people wouldn't have a problem with this, and I really don't at all; to me, it's a minor irritation in regard to the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is astounding.

Then you have Ripley's supporting cast. We get a bunch of colorful, lovable personalities such as Hicks (Michael Biehn, who also starred in Cameron's The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzeneggar), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein, who looks authentically Hispanic), Sergeant Apone (the great Al Matthews, who is a decorated veteran of Vietnam and a successful singer), Bishop (Lance Henricksen, who had a hit in TV's Millennium), Burke (played with slimy perfection by Paul Reiser, who looks so young here compared to his Mad About You days), and Hudson (Bill Paxton, who is a fixture of Cameron's movies). Of all of them, Paxton is the weakest link in this strong chain, as he consistently overplays his wisecracking-then-cowardly role as Hudson. Time and again I was hoping he would just shut the heck up, and his end is almost as heartbreaking as it is satisfying.

The music by James Horner (he scored two Star Trek movies as well as composing his Oscar-winning music for Titanic) is at turns thundering and sweet, as he composes terrific action sequences and a variation of Katchaturian's Ganymede Suite, which was also featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey. His music is a formidable compliment to Jerry Goldsmith's haunting, majestic score for the first film, and it completes the picture with a flourish.

The Special Edition of Aliens comes with about 17 minutes of additional footage, some of which gives the characters more depth (we find that Ripley left a daughter behind on her first voyage, who grew old and died while her mother was in hypersleep), as well as providing some very stirring insight into the character of Newt (her parents find the derelict alien spacecraft seen in the first movie, and her father comes back with a nasty surprise attached to his face). There's also a particularly tense scene where the aliens attack the compound, and the only things standing in their way are a few strategically-placed robotic machine guns with a limited amount of ammunition.

For all its minor flaws, this is a great movie. I wish the DVD Special Edition had a director's commentary by Cameron, but the disc does contain an interview with him that exposes his thoughts on making the film. In the end, though, anyone can enjoy this movie, from male chauvinists salivating over Weaver's butt-kicking performance to readers of Redbook cheering for the film's moral center, as it features Ripley turning from an intense female warrior to a woman who rediscovers her motherly instincts and takes an innocent child under her wing. And, of course, it's a fist-pumping actioner for any guy feeling an ounce of testosterone in his glands.

But most of all, it's a movie that lets you know that sneakers are not the only things that could be worn in space. Combat boots and body armor may also be worn in the great void of night, because you never know if you'll run into nasty things with big teeth out there.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older