Back to the 80s 2: Aliens (Dir James Cameron, 2h15m, 1986)

So the old story goes: James Cameron, with only Piranha II: The Spawning, and the script for Rambo: First Blood Part II under his belt, strolls into 20th Century Fox one day in 1984, whilst the star of his upcoming film delays production by appearing in a sword and sorcery and announces he wants to make a sequel to Alien, a film bogged down in legal disputes, Hollywood accounting, and the very real (and in hindsight, staggering) belief that nobody wanted a sequel to see where Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and the chest-bursting nightmarish xenomorphs would go next. Fox, confronted by a man who had a shlocky killer fish movie and the script to a decent action movie, decline. So James Cameron finishes his film, The Terminator, proceeds to turn Arnold Schwarzenegger into a palpable cyborg menace, and makes back ten times his budget.

Fox give him the job, and James Cameron walks up to a whiteboard, writes the film's title, and then, puckishly, adds a dollar sign. And Aliens is born, a film that will not only become the go-to example of how to make the perfect sequel, as Ripley and a squad of Colonial Marines return to the planet LV-426 to search for disappeared colonists and find something altogether more dangerous and frightening, but also a frankly masterful action movie, in Cameron, Weaver, and co improve on every single aspect of the original in a white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of a film.

Aliens begins much where Alien left off, though, as Ripley is discovered by scavengers, the film quickly reveals fifty-seven years have passed, the company that Ripley and her colleagues have worked for denying the incident, and the death of the crew at the hands of the Xenomorph, and Ripley is left to slowly pick up her life, and battle recurring, and viscerally realistic dreams of a chest-burster threatening to emerge from her. However, somewhat inevitably, Weyland Yutani lose contact with the colony, and send their man, Burke (Paul Reiser), and one of the Colonial Marines, Gorman (William Hope), to convince her to join the mission as an expert on the creatures, which, reluctantly, she agrees to do, thus accompanying the rough and ready and jockish Colonial Marines, to the planet.

In brisk brushstrokes, Cameron fleshes out his squad, from the inexperienced and largely desk-bound Gorman, who is quickly belittled by the men (and women) he commands, to the cocksure Hudson (Bill Paxton), to the badinaging Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) and the tough Hicks (Michael Biehn, already a stalwart of Cameron's Terminator, and later to star in his next film, The Abyss (1989)). Furthermore, in the figure of Bishop (Lance Henriksen), so Ripley's fears of synthetics like

Needless to say, even with Ripley's briefing of how dangerous the xenomorphs can be, the Marines dismiss this as little more than a bughunt, and prepare to go down to the planet, as Cameron masterfully begins to build tension.

Arriving on LV-426, our heroes find it to be deserted, but for two facehuggers in glass jars, and the sudden, and brilliantly tense appearance of Newt (Carrie Henn), the seemingly last-and traumatised-survivor of the colony, who, whilst the marines chase and attempt to catch, Ripley quickly takes under her wing. However, this peace is to be shortlived, as the surviving inhabitants are located via scan and the Marines head down into the bowels of the nearby power station to investigate. Once again, the tension begins to rack up, much of the scene shown-as with the discovery of the spacecraft in the original Alien-through handheld cameras, as the squad descend, cutting back to reveal the Gigerised walls of the lower levels, as the Marines arrive at the source of the heat-signature to find, to their-and no doubt the audience's-horror, that there isn't one alien. There are hundreds.

What follows is a brutal, breakneck and often panicked-only given more weight by the Steadicam footage-battle against the creatures, as the squad are quickly winnowed down or captured by the xenomorphs, who, through Stan Winston's special effects work which culminates in the film's greatest spectacle in its finale, have become even more fearsome, more unpleasant, often looming into shot, or dropping down from above, or seemingly materialising from the walls, but, due to their sheer numbers, more disposable, this sequence in particular seeing them be blown apart by bullets and grenades, or set on fire by a number of flamethrowers. Cameron, in one sequence, has not only made the titular alien more dangerous and more numerable, but also inherently more disposable, and thus completing Aliens' transformation from horror to action.

We, undeniably, see the same transformation in Ripley herself-as those around her descend into panic, so she steadily takes control of the situation, taking control of the APC that the Marines have brought onto the planet, and crashing it through the wall of the compound, to rescue what remains of the marines. However, no sooner have they been rescued from the alien nest, now planning to get off the planet and destroy the facility and the xenomorphs, than the shuttle they plan to escape on is brought down by the sudden, and gloriously brutal, destruction of the shuttle by a Xenomorph appearing in the cockpit. The shuttle proceeds to crash into the cooling systems for the base, and our team, now panicking, retreat into the base, setting the scene for the finale of the film, where, with the clock ticking, our heroes must outsmart not just the xenomorphs, and one of the most spectacular practical special effects in cinematic history, but the enemy within, to escape the planet before the entire site is destroyed.

Aliens is. undeniably, a film that improves on almost every aspect of the original-Ripley slowly transforms over the runtime of the film from a woman utterly destroyed by her experiences, and haunted by the xenomorph's threat, to an action heroine that tears through her foes, rescues her friends, and practically storms into the very belly of the beast to face off against the colossal and nightmarish Xenomorph queen. Nothing is more emblematic of Aliens' shift from horror to action than this transformation of Ellen Ripley. Around her, though, everything, from the special effects, taken over by Stan Winston, to the tough squad that are slowly, and brutally winnowed down, to the maximalism of the sets, that loom around our heroes, to even the performances, stuffed with classic performances, and just as classic quotes, feel like a leap forward in quality, in thrills, in a perfect continuation of the previous film.

Aliens remains the highpoint of the series-Alien3 and Resurrection, let alone Scott's ponderous sequels, live in its shadow, and in places, the original does too-it would launch Weaver into the middle of the all-boys club of action movie stars, a prototype of the everyman hero that John Tiernan and Bruce Willis would later master. It's also, alongside Cameron's other great sequel, Terminator 2, one of the greatest sequels ever made, upping the ante, the scale, and the stakes in this masterfully made action adventure romp.

Rating: Must See

Next week, we bid farewell to the 1980s once more with Jim Henson's otherworldly tale of creatures, fate, and the corrupting influence of power in The Dark Crystal

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