Aliens (film)

This article is about the film; for the video games of the same name see Aliens (Square computer game) and Aliens (arcade game).

Aliens
The original 1986 theatrical poster
Directed by	James Cameron
Written by	Story: James Cameron David Giler Walter Hill Screenplay: James Cameron
Produced by	Gale Anne Hurd Gordon Carroll David Giler Walter Hill
Starring	Sigourney Weaver Michael Biehn Lance Henriksen Carrie Henn Paul Reiser Bill Paxton
Cinematography	Adrian Biddle
Edited by	Ray Lovejoy
Music by	James Horner
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	July 18, 1986
Running time	Theatrical Cut: 137 min. Special Edition: 154 min.
Country	United States United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$18,500,000

Aliens is a 1986 science fiction/action/horror film starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser. A sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien, Aliens is set 57 years after the events of the first film and is regarded by many as a benchmark for the action and science fiction genres. In Aliens, Weaver's character Ellen Ripley returns to the planet where she first encountered the hostile Alien "xenomorph," this time accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines.

Directed by James Cameron from a story written by Cameron, David Giler and Walter Hill, Aliens is a high-paced action-adventure film which is in stark contrast to the suspenseful Sci-Fi horror of the original Alien. Following The Terminator, the film helped to establish Cameron as a major action director. Sigourney Weaver received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her leading role in Aliens. Like its predecessor, the film was shot in England, this time at Pinewood Studios, with a budget of approximately $18 million. The film went on to earn over $131 million internationally during its 1986 theatrical release, making it the highest-grossing entry in the Alien film series. Given the combat-oriented nature of the film, Aliens was promoted with the tagline, "This Time It's War."

Plot

Ellen Ripley, the only survivor of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation space freighter Nostromo, is rescued and revived after drifting for 57 years in hypersleep. Interviewed before a panel of company executives, Ripley's testimony regarding the Alien is met with extreme skepticism, as no physical evidence of the creature survived the destruction of the Nostromo. Ripley learns that LV-426, the 'planetoid' where the Nostromo crew first encountered Alien eggs is now home to a terraforming colony, and loses her space-flight license as a result of her "questionable judgement" in destroying the Nostromo. Between shifts at her new job loading cargo, Ripley is visited by Weyland-Yutani employee Carter Burke, who informs her that contact has been lost with the colony on LV-426; the company is dispatching Burke and a unit of US Colonial Marines to investigate, and offers Ripley a place as a specialist. Psychologically traumatized by her experience, Ripley initially refuses to join them, but accepts when she realises that the mission will allow her to face her demons, as well as possibly restoring her flight status. Arriving in orbit of LV-426 aboard the warship Sulaco, she is introduced to the Colonial Marines, including the novice Lieutenant Gorman, the veteran Sergeant Apone and the android Bishop. Ripley gives an emotional account of her original encounter with the Alien to the unit, but her warnings are dismissed by the cocky Marines.

File:LV-426.PNG

The windswept surface of LV-426.

The heavily-armed expedition descends to the planetoid's surface via dropship. They find the colony seemingly abandoned; the only living things are two of the Alien-implanting "facehuggers" on display in the colony's medical lab, and a severely traumatized young girl, nicknamed Newt, who has survived by hiding in the colony's sprawling ventilation system. The Marines eventually locate the other colonists, by tracking surgically-implanted transceivers, clustered together in the colony's nuclear-powered atmosphere-processing station. Travelling to the station, the Marines find a large Alien nest, filled with the cocooned corpses of the colonists. When the Marines destroy a newborn chestburster-Alien, a swarm of mature Alien drones awaken and ambush the unprepared unit. Most of the unit is killed or captured; Ripley crashes their APC into the nest, rescuing Corporal Hicks, Private Vasquez, and Private Hudson (Lt. Gorman is inadvertently knocked unconscious during the escape). Hicks assumes command of the mission and orders the dropship to recover the survivors, with the intent of returning to the Sulaco and destroying the colony from orbit, but a stowaway Alien kills the dropship pilots in flight, causing the vessel to crash into the processing station. The surviving humans barricade themselves inside the main colony complex.

Ripley learns that Burke has ordered Bishop to preserve Alien specimens for return to the Company labs. She confronts Burke and declares that after investigation she has discovered it was he who sent the unprepared colonists to the original Alien-infested spaceship; she threatens to expose him. Bishop shows them that the damaged nuclear processing station has become unstable and will soon detonate with the force of a thermonuclear weapon. Having no other way to contact the second dropship still onboard the Sulaco, he volunteers to crawl down a service pipe to the colony transmitter array and bring the vessel down by remote control. A recovered Gorman rejoins the team, while Ripley and Newt get some rest in the Medical Laboratory. Ripley awakens to find herself weaponless and locked in the room with the two live facehuggers, mysteriously released from their tanks. She sets off a fire alarm which alerts Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez, who arrive and destroy the creatures. Ripley accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers with the intention of using her and Newt as hosts to smuggle the implanted Aliens past quarantine. She also surmises that this scheme would require disposing of the remaining Marines. Burke's impromptu sentencing is interrupted when the power to headquarters is cut off, possibly by the Aliens, who pour in through a gap in the ceiling and attack en masse. Hudson is swarmed and pulled down through the floor, while Burke's attempt to abandon the others is quickly cut short by an Alien. Newt leads the few remaining members into the air ducts. Gorman and an injured Vasquez, after being cut off and surrounded, detonate a grenade, killing themselves and several Aliens. The force of the blast pushes Newt down a shaft, where she is captured alive by an Alien.

File:Anguish.jpg

The alien queen in the atmosphere processor hive.

Hicks is badly injured by the acidic blood of one of the Aliens while reaching Bishop and the second dropship. Ripley, unwilling to leave Newt, gears up to rescue the girl. She finds and frees a cocooned Newt in the bowels of the Alien hive, but while attempting to escape, they stumble into the nest's main breeding chamber, where they are confronted by the monstrous Alien queen. Ripley incinerates the chamber with her weapons--draining the last of her ammo and enraging the queen, who escapes the destruction by tearing free from her huge ovipositor. Closely pursued by the queen, Ripley and Newt rendezvous with the dropship and escape moments before the entire colony is consumed by the nuclear blast from the processing station. Back on the Sulaco, Ripley's and Bishop's relieved conversation is abruptly interrupted when the queen, stowed away on the dropship landing gear, impales the android from behind with her barbed tail and then tears him in half. Ripley distracts the queen long enough for Newt to jump into a hole in the ship's deck plating. Just as the queen is about to pull the girl from her hiding place, Ripley reappears manning one of the ship's exosuit "power-loaders". She battles the queen and succeeds in dropping the creature into a large airlock and expelling her into space. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop enter hypersleep for the return back to Earth.

Cast

Military Personnel

Name	Occupation	Gender	Played By
Bishop (341-B)	U.S.S. Sulaco’s XO	Android (Male)	Lance Henriksen
First Lieutenant William Gorman	Marine (Commanding Officer)	Male	William Hope
Gunnery Sergeant Al Apone	Marine (Senior Non-Commissioned Officer/First Squad Leader)	Male	Al Matthews
Corporal Dwayne Hicks	Marine (Junior Non-Commissioned Officer/Second Squad Leader)	Male	Michael Biehn
Corporal Collette Ferro	Marine (Dropship Pilot)	Female	Colette Hiller
Corporal Cynthia Dietrich	Marine (Corpsman)	Female	Cynthia Dale Scott
Private First Class William Hudson	Marine (Technician)	Male	Bill Paxton
Private First Class Jenette Vasquez	Marine (Smart Gunner)	Female	Jenette Goldstein
Private Mark Drake	Marine (Smart Gunner)	Male	Mark Rolston
Private Daniel Spunkmeyer	Marine (Dropship Crew Chief)	Male	Daniel Kash
Private Ricco Frost	Marine	Male	Ricco Ross
Private Tim Crowe	Marine	Male	Tip Tipping
Private Trevor Wierzbowski	Marine	Male	Trevor Steedman

Civilians

Name	Occupation	Gender	Played By
Ellen L. Ripley	Former Warrant Officer, Xenomorph Advisor	Female	Sigourney Weaver
Rebecca “Newt” Jorden	Colonist (Child)	Female	Carrie Henn
Carter J. Burke	Weyland-Yutani Corporate Lawyer	Male	Paul Reiser
Paul Van Leuwen	Chairman of the Interstellar Commerce Commission	Male	Paul Maxwell
Ann Jorden	Colonist (Salvager)	Female	Holly De Jong
Russ Jorden	Colonist (Salvager)	Male	Jay Benedict
Tim Jorden	Colonist (Child)	Male	Christopher Henn
Al Simpson	Colonist (Operations Manager)	Male	Mac McDonald
William Lydecker	Colonist (Assistant Operations Manager)	Male	Bill Armstrong
Mary	Colonist	Female	Barbara Coles

Other cast

Name	Occupation	Gender	Played By
ECA Rep	Extrasolar Colonization Administration Representative	Female	Valerie Colgan
Insurance Investigator		Male	Alan Polonsky
Medical Technician	Gateway medical staff	Female	Alibe Parsons
Doctor	Gateway medical staff	Male	Blain Fairman
Amanda Ripley	Civilian	Female	Elizabeth Inglis

Inspirations

Director James Cameron drew inspiration for the Aliens storyline from the Vietnam War, with regards to situations where a technologically superior force was mired in a hostile foreign environment. The name of the Colonial Marines' ship, "Sulaco", is the name of the town in Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, which was the name of the ship in Alien.

Some critics have compared the Alien Queen to Grendel's mother in Beowulf.

Production

History and pre-production

In 1983, while completing The Terminator, director James Cameron discussed the possibility of working on a sequel to the original 1979 Alien with Twentieth Century Fox producer David Giler. A big fan of the original film, Cameron was highly interested in crafting a sequel, and entered a self-imposed seclusion to brainstorm the concept for "Alien II." After four days, Cameron had produced an initial story treatment for the film which eventually became Aliens. Following the success of The Terminator, Cameron and partner Gale Anne Hurd were given approval to direct and produce the sequel to Alien, scheduled for a 1986 release.

Sigourney Weaver, the star of the original film, was hired for the sequel with a salary of $1 million, thirty times her fee for the first film. Weaver nicknamed her character "Rambolina," and stated that she approached the role as akin to Henry V or women warriors in Chinese classical literature.

Production disputes

The producing team behind Aliens, James Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd.

The production of Aliens was affected by a number of personnel and cast disruptions. Shooting was said to be problematic due to cultural clashes between Cameron and the British crew, with the crew having what actor Bill Paxton called in his audio commentary a "really indentured" way of working. Cameron, who is known to be a very hard driving director, and at the time was bound to a low budget with a release date set that he couldn't delay, found it difficult to adjust to working practices such as the regular "Tea breaks" that brought production to a temporary halt. The crew were admirers of the previous director Ridley Scott, and many believed Cameron to be too young and inexperienced to be directing such a film as Aliens, despite Cameron's attempts to show them his previous hit, The Terminator (which they reputedly refused to watch).

At one point, the crew members mocked Cameron's then wife, producer Gale Anne Hurd, by asking her who the producer of the film was, and then laughing at her and insisting she was only getting the producer credit because she was Cameron's wife. Ultimately, a walkout occurred when Cameron clashed with an uncooperative cameraman who refused to light a scene the way Cameron wanted. Specifically, the camera man believed in creative input on set lighting, and had lit the alien nest set brightly, while Cameron insisted on his original vision of a dark, foreboding alien nest. After the cameraman was fired, Hurd managed to coax the crew members into coming back to work.

Actor James Remar was originally cast as Corporal Dwayne Hicks, but was replaced by Michael Biehn after a falling out with Cameron. Remar can still be seen in a shot where the marines are entering around a corridor, but since he is in full armor and seen only from behind, it is impossible to tell that it is Remar and not Biehn.

Set design and construction

Some of the scenes inside the alien nest were shot inside the disused power station in Acton, West London. The Alien nest set wasn't dismantled after filming. It was unused until three years later when it was used as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman in 1989. When the crew of Batman first entered the set, they found most of the Alien nest still intact.

As the marines explore the complex, they look up and see what appears to be a series of vents. These were the backs of old television sets pushed into service by the special effects team.

Weapons and props

File:PulseRifle.jpg

Hicks instructing Ripley in wielding a pulse rifle in Aliens.

The weapons used by the marines are all based on real, fully functional weapons. The M41A pulse rifle is made from a Thompson SMG with an attached fore end from a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun, a Remington 12 Gauge Model 870P receiver with barrel while the M56 Smart Guns carried by Vasquez and Drake are based around the MG-42 machinegun, and are maneuvered with the help of a steadicam harness.

Music

Music composer James Horner said he felt Cameron had not given him enough time to compose a musical score. Horner arrived in England and was expecting the film to be locked so he could write the score in six weeks, which he thought was a sufficient amount of time. However, Horner discovered that filming and editing was still taking place and he was unable to see the film to create a score. He visited the set and editing rooms for three weeks and found that editor Ray Lovejoy was barely keeping up with editing, due to time restrictions. Horner believed Cameron was so pre-occupied with sound effects, in which Cameron spent two days with the person who created the sound for the automatic weapon, that he was given an outdated recording studio. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the London Symphony Orchestra, the establishment was 30 years old and was barely able to patch in synthesizers, and use electronic equipment required by Horner for this type of film.

Six weeks from theatrical release, no dubbing had been completed and the score still had not been written as Horner was still unable to view the completed film. The final cue of the film, where Ripley takes on the alien queen was written overnight. Cameron had completely reworked the scene leaving Horner to have to re-write the music for the scene. He has stated that in his line of work, writing a melody takes "two seconds", however, tying it together takes a long time as he must acknowledge multitudes of events, which relies on exact timing. As Hurd did not have much music production experience, she and Cameron denied Horner's request to push the film back four weeks so he could finish the musical score. He felt that if he was given more time he could get it 100% right, rather than his opinion of what was 80% right. The score was recorded in roughly four days.

Horner stated that tensions between himself and Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. Horner believed the film schedules that Cameron wanted to make were too short for him. The two parted ways until 1997 when Cameron, so impressed with Horner's score for Braveheart, asked him to compose the score for the film Titanic. Horner received his first Original Score Academy Award for this film.

Reception

File:Aliens Sigourney Weaver cover.jpg

Aliens on the cover of TIME's July 28, 1986 issue.

Aliens was released in the US and Canada on 18 July, 1986, and the 26 September in the same year in the UK. It was released in Australia on 6th November. It had a running time of 137 minutes. Eagerly anticipated by fans following the success of the original Alien, it took $10,052,042 in its opening weekend in the US, and going on to take a box office total of $85,160,248 domestic and $131,060,248 worldwide.

Critical and audience reaction to the film was superb. Roger Ebert called it "painfully and unremittingly intense" and a "hair-raising carnival ride that never stops," but also praised Aliens as a "superb example of filmmaking craft". TIME Magazine featured the film on the cover of its July 28, 1986 issue, in which reviewer Richard Schickel declared the film "a sequel that exceeds its predecessor in the reach of its appeal while giving [Sigourney] Weaver new emotional dimensions to explore." TIME also detailed the development process of the film and the approach taken by its director and lead star. Rotten Tomatoes' survey of major reviewers received it as a 100%.

Other praise of Aliens included reviews calling it "one of the few cases of a sequel that far surpassed the original" (Amazon.com editorial review) and "The most intense and satisfying piece of science fiction ever made" from local news (Blake Davis of KFOR Channel 4 News). In a 1997 interview, Sigourney Weaver herself stated that Aliens "made the first Alien look like a cucumber sandwich."

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named Aliens as the #2 best action movie of all time, behind only Die Hard. In Rotten Tomatoes' analysis of top 100 science fiction films, Aliens ranks #10 among the best-reviewed science fiction films of all time.

In 2004, Aliens was named #35 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the facehugger attack towards Ripley; the original Alien was named #2 for the chestbuster scene.

Awards and accolades

Aliens was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won two (Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects). Sigourney Weaver received her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress) for this film. Although Weaver did not actually win, it was considered a landmark for a nomination for Best Actress to even be made for a science fiction / horror film, a genre usually given little recognition by the Academy.

Special Edition

A Special Edition was released in 1992 on laserdisc and VHS that restored 17 minutes of previously deleted footage. the most notable addition was a segment early in the film showing the colony on LV-426 just as the colonists first encounter the derelict alien spacecraft which is infested with the alien eggs. Other notable scenes included the "sentry gun scene" in the operations building, Ripley's discovery of her daughter's fate while she was away, and a few other dialogue scenes between Ripley and the Marines. One of these exchanges provides Ripley's full name (Ellen Ripley). This version was then released on The Alien Legacy in 1999 on DVD. Both versions of the film were released together for the first time in the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set and then later on the Special Collector's Edition DVD.

Spin-offs

The success of Aliens spawned a comic book series of the same name, Aliens, along with a series of Aliens novels that continues to this day.

Two games based on the movie were released by Electric Dreams in the 1980s for the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum, and the Commodore 64 8-bit home computer systems. In 1990, Konami released an arcade game, Aliens, based on the movie.

The 1993 PC video game Doom was initially conceived as a licensed video game based on Aliens, one of id Software's favorite science fiction-action films. Though negotiations with 20th Century Fox were begun, the plan was ultimately canceled in order for id Software to retain more creative freedom.

The novelization of Aliens was written by Alan Dean Foster.

Further reading

• The Complete Aliens Companion (by Paul Sammon, Harper Prism, 1998, ISBN 0-06-105385-6)
• Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films (by David A. McIntee, Telos, 272 pages, 2005, ISBN 1-903889-94-4)

External links

• Aliens at IMDb

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