rating:
(out of
4 stars)United Kingdom, United States; 1986
Directed by James Cameron; produced by Gale Anne Hurd; screenplay James Cameron
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
'Aliens' is not necessarily better than 'Alien', it is definitely bigger and
more frightening. Maybe the first one has a better story and is brilliant in
the way it slowly builds to the action, this one looks close to perfect and
delivers one frightening moment after another. These things cover its flaws
perfectly, making 'Aliens' one of the best scary films out there.
'Alien' ends with one survivor, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). 'Aliens' begins
57 years later when Ripley's ship is picked up and she wakes up from her
long sleep. In her sleeping years a man named Burke (Paul Reiser) and his
company have build a colony on the alien planet; no one believes Ripley that
an alien life form is living there. Now contact is lost and a rescue team
has to go to the planet. Although no one takes Ripley's story that
seriously, she is asked to come with the team as an adviser. Although not
directly, she agrees. For the story, the most important members of the team
are Hicks (Michael Biehn), Hudson (Bill Paxton), Vasquez (Jenette
Goldstein), Bishop (Lance Henriksen) and Lt. Gorman (William Hope) who is
giving the orders. The first thing they find on the planet is a young girl
named Newt (Carrie Henn) who seems to be the only survivor. The second thing
they find is aliens, a lot of them...
The tagline for the film reads "This time it's war" and that is probably the
best way to describe it, I guess. Especially the last hour really is a war
set in space, with one frightening moment after another. Director James
Cameron knows what he is doing and shows us, like he did with both
'Terminator'-films and 'The Abyss', that he understands sci-fi and visual
effects. He knows how to use them but not let the film be about them. With
Weaver he has a strong human heroine, giving her most of the screen time and
she makes sure she does the best with it. 'Aliens' is as effective as a film
like this can be on the horror level and on the science fiction level. It
does not get much better than this.