243 quotes found
"I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle."
"[offers his hand to Sarah Connor] Come with me if you want to live."
"Stay here. I’ll be back."
"Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the Machines. The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human Resistance, John Connor, my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me, in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was sent to strike at John himself, when he was still a child. As before, the Resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first."
"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. It would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one that measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."
"[epilogue] The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."
"[alternate epilogue] August 29, 1997, came and went. Nothing much happened. Michael Jackson turned 40. There was no Judgment Day. People went to work as they always do. Laughed, complained, watched TV, made love. I wanted to run to through the street yelling to grab them all and say, "Every day from this day on is a gift. Use it well." Instead, I got drunk. That was 30 years ago. But the dark future which never came still exists for me. And it always will, like the traces of a dream. John fights the war differently than it was foretold. Here, on the battlefield of the Senate, his weapons were common sense and hope. The luxury of hope was given me by the Terminator. Because if a machine can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."
"[carved into a table] NO FATE"
"Note: bolded portion is ranked #76 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema"
"Ten years ago, the machines who rule the future sent an unstoppable Terminator to assassinate the yet unborn John Connor. They failed. In 1991, the machines will try again."
"The future is not set."
"It's nothing personal."
"He said he'd be back."
"This time there are two."
"Same Make. Same Model. New Mission."
"[from teaser] They know its face. They know its mission. But there's one thing they don't know: This time there are two."
"[from teaser] One programmed to destroy. The other programmed to protect."
"[from trailer] Once he was programmed to destroy the future. Now his mission is to protect it."
"[from trailer] His loyalty is to a child, and his enemy is the deadliest machine ever built."
"[from trailer] If you thought you had seen it all...look again."
"[from trailer] This time, he's back...for good."
"Arnold Schwarzenegger – The Terminator, T-800"
"Linda Hamilton – Sarah Connor"
"Edward Furlong – W:John Connor"
"Robert Patrick – T-1000"
"Earl Boen – Dr. Peter Silberman"
"Joe Morton – Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson"
"S. Epatha Merkerson – Tarissa Dyson"
"Castulo Guerra – Enrique Salceda"
"Danny Cooksey – Tim"
"Jenette Goldstein – Janelle Voight"
"Xander Berkeley – Todd Voight"
"On T2, I wondered if I could get the audience to an emotional place where they would cry for the Terminator. That was my goal: Could I take world's coldest motherfucker and turn you around in a two-hour time period to where you actually felt sorry for him? Forget about all the hoo-ha with the liquid metal guy: that was fun, but getting the audience to cry for the Terminator was the big cinematic challenge. That's the reason I made the movie."
"As I expected. "Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.""
"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! [snaps her fingers] The job's a game."
"Close your mouth please, Michael, we are not a codfish."
"Sacked?! Certainly not, I am never sacked."
"It's grand to be an Englishman in 1910 's on the throne; it's the age of men."
"It's 6:03 and the heirs to my dominion are scrubbed and tubbed, and adequately fed. And so I'll pat them on the head, and send them off to bed. Ah, lordly is the life I lead."
"A British bank is run with precision A British home requires nothing less Tradition, discipline and rules Must be the tools Without them: disorder, catastrophe, anarchy In short, you have a mess!"
"[shakes Winifred's hands] You know, Winifred, I think she will. [Laughs] I think she will!"
"Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts."
"A man has dreams of walking with giants To carve his niche in the edifice of time Before the mortar of his zeal Has a chance to congeal The cup is dashed from his lips The flame is snuffed a-borning He's brought to wrack and ruin in his prime."
"[sings] Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid."
"[sings] Our daughters' daughters will adore us and they'll sing in grateful chorus, "Well done, sister .""
"Oh, George, you didn't jump into the river. How sensible of you!"
"Oh, it's you! Hello! … Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, you say? Alright. … Come on with me.…"
"Here we are, 17 Cherry Tree Lane. Home of George Banks, Esq. [hears yelling inside] Hello, hello, hello. Admiral's right, heavy weather brewing at and no mistake."
"Winds from the east... Mist comin' in... Like something's a brewin', about to begin... Can't put me finger on what lies in store... But I feel what's to 'appen, all 'appened before...!"
"Not , I suppose. Still, a bit of a finger in the eye, ain't they?"
"What did I tell ya? There's the whole world at your feet. And who gets to see it? But the birds, the stars, and the chimney sweeps."
"[Surprised] What? No road?!"
"[Laughs while taking a tissue from his pocket] It's just good clean soot, Michael."
"Goodbye, Mary Poppins, don't stay away too long."
"Admiral Boom: [observes the long queue of want-to-be nannies] Ghastly looking crew, I must say!"
"Mr. Dawes, Sr.: While stand the banks of England, England stands — whoa, whoa...! [Mr. Dawes stumbles over his own cane] When fall the banks of England... ENGLAND FALLS! [Mr. Dawes falls backward and the rest of the Board of Directors have to catch him]"
"Uncle Albert: The other day, when it was so cold, a friend of mine went to buy some long underwear. The shopkeeper said to him, "How long you want it?" And my friend said, "Well, from about September to March.""
"Old Crone: Come with me, my dears. Granny'll hide you!"
"Oh, oh, oh! Andiamo a far volare un aquilone fino all'altezza più alta! andiamo a far volare un aquilone e facciamolo volare attraverso l'atmosfera su dove l'aria è limpida oh, andiamo a far volare un aquilone!"
"Juile Andrews - Mary Poppins"
"Dick van Dyke - Bert/Mr. Dawes, Sr"
"Karen Dotrice - Jane Banks"
"Matthew Gerber - Michael Banks"
"David Tomlinson - George Banks"
"Glynis Johns - Winifred Banks"
"Elsa Lanchester - Katie Nanna"
"Hermione Baddeley - Ellen"
"Reta Shaw - Mrs. Brill"
"Arthur Treacher - Constable Jones"
"Reginald Owen - Admiral Boom"
"Don Barclay - Mr. Binnacle"
"You better just start dealing with it, Hudson! Listen to me! Hudson, just deal with it, because we need you and I'm sick of your bullshit."
"You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."
"[to the Alien Queen who is about to kill Newt] Get away from her, you BITCH!"
"Close your eyes, baby!"
"All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? It's another glorious day in the Corps. A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm: Every meal's a banquet. Every paycheck's a fortune! Every formation's a parade! I love the Corps!"
"I'm ready, man. Check it out! I am the ultimate badass! State of the badass art! You do not want to fuck with me. Check it out! Hey, Ripley, don't worry. Me and my squad of ultimate badasses will protect you! Check it out. Independently targeting particle-beam phalanx. WHAP! Fry half a city with this puppy. We got tactical smart missiles, phase plasma pulse rifles, RPGs. We got sonic, electronic ball-breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks..."
"Yo! Stop your grinnin', and drop your linen! Found 'em!"
"We're on the express elevator to hell, going down!"
"They're coming outta the walls! They're coming outta the goddamn walls! Let's book!"
"What do you mean "they cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man?! They're animals!"
"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?"
"This time it's war."
"There are some places in the universe you don't go alone."
"[W]here "Alien" focused on the creature itself, "Aliens" centers on Ripley, whom a "deep-salvage" team finds floating in space after a 56-year "hypersleep." The anonymous Company, as represented by Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), is pretty steamed that Ripley destroyed the mother ship (with the alien in it). But when the radio silence of one of the Company's colonies points toward another alien outbreak, Burke enlists Ripley in a search mission. So she's thrown together with a company of Marines, including Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), a burly, tough-talking woman machine-gunner; quiet Hicks (Michael Biehn) and noisy Hudson (Bill Paxton); a gravel-voiced, enigmatic android named Bishop (Lance Henriksen); Sgt. Apone (Al Matthews), a cigar-chomping top kick; and Lt. Gorman (William Hope), the group's callow and effete commanding officer. As a screenwriter, Cameron has an uncanny ear for the way these trench rats talk, their banter and swaggering bravado. He has the same instincts as George Lucas did in "Star Wars" -- make the future seem real, and lived in -- but he pushes it further. The surroundings are different, the weapons are fancier, but as the soldiers razz Lt. Gorman or ready themselves for battle, it might as well be Vietnam. The humor is a way to get us to like these characters, so that when they're thrown into danger it's not just a cheap thrill. And it's a way to draw you into the early going, without squandering any of the cliffhangers -- it allows Cameron to pace his movie along a perfectly accelerating curve, to pack the excitement into the last 45 minutes (which is almost all climaxes) without losing the audience at the beginning."
"At its heart, "Aliens" involves a myth deep in everyone's psychology, a war between a good mother and a wicked stepmother (the "Alien Queen"), and it ends with a tableau of the family triumphant, although this might be the weirdest family anyone's ever seen -- a gun-toting mom, a wild child and an android who's been sawed in half. But in that single image is the whole of Cameron's strategy -- to take what's familiar and permanent in ordinary life, and twist it, and twist it again. "Aliens," in other words, might be about a young girl who hates her stepmother and loves her mom -- it just wouldn't be nearly as much fun. Aliens, opening today at area theaters, is rated R, and contains violence and profanity."
"[W]ritten and directed by James Cameron, the Canadian boy from Chippawa, Ont., Aliens is smartly conceived and executed, and it does contain its share of thrills and scares. But it is very much a sequel, and the element of surprise, the most invaluable of commodities in enterprises such as this, has been lost."
"In “Aliens,” Biehn plays Weaver’s comrade-in-arms, and while she seems to be the only human on this Marine mission with any smarts, he at least shares her humanity. It’s a quality in short supply this time. There’s no attempt to let us know or care for this new crew as we did for the old one, for Harry Dean Stanton or Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt or Veronica Cartwright. Losing them was a wrench. These awesomely muscled men and women are sewer-mouthed, burr-headed young grunts, there to wrestle the weaponry about and to be picked off."
"“If the sequel doesn’t equal Alien in cardiac-arrest value, it’s only because stainless-steel teeth, repulsiveness and slime have gone about as far as they could go (with John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing), then gone on to be a laughing matter in Ghostbusters.”"
"The supporting actors here are inventions like the PulseGun or the SmartGun, which red-bandannaed Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) stalks about with regally, like a flamenco dancer. (“Aliens” is going to be big on the survivalist circuit. It’s about this point that you remember Cameron also co-wrote “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”). The film may be as empty as it is fast and noisy, but Cameron still has a droll touch with his villains--watch who steps off “Aliens’ ” elevator in pursuit of Weaver--and with amazing mechanical inventions: Here it’s a forklift suit with monstrous lobster claws. (The film’s R rating is for its language and gruesome effects; it’s definitely not for impressionable children in spite of its 9-year-old heroine.)"
"Two of the actors, ex-comic Paul Reiser and Lance Henriksen (“The Right Stuff’s” Wally Schirra) as the ship’s exceptional android, are particularly fine, as is James Horner’s ruminative, intelligent music and Emma Porteous’ eye for costuming. But of all the film’s choices, the best was Weaver. She’s its white-hot core, given fine, irascible dialogue to come blazing out of that patrician mouth, and the chance to look, for a moment, like a space-dusted Sleeping Beauty in her hyper-sleep casket."
"Perhaps the best single word to describe James Cameron's Aliens is relentless. Tautly paced and expertly directed, this roller coaster ride of a motion picture offers a little bit of everything, all wrapped up in a tidy science fiction/action package. From the point when the opening half-hour of exposition ends and the real movie begins, Cameron barely gives viewers a chance to catch their breaths or ease their grips on their armrests as he plunges his characters from one dire situation to the next. This is one of those rare motion pictures that involves the audience so completely in the story that we're as worn out at the end as our on-screen counterparts."
"When it comes to the logical marriage of action, adventure, and science fiction, few films are as effective or accomplished as Aliens, and there's nothing on the market (either in theaters or on video store shelves) that will leave you as thoroughly exhausted."
"If you take the special edition of James Cameron’s astounding sequel to the classic Alien, it’s a film where you don’t see – save for a face-hugger right at the start – a single alien creature until almost an hour has been clocked up. One full hour. How incredible is that, particularly contextualized against modern-day flicks that never seem to introduce the cat to the bag, let alone let it out? But there’s more to it than that, because Cameron then spends that hour superbly well, managing to ratchet up the tension to quite unbearable levels in the build-up to the inevitable first encounter. In fact, there’s a convincing argument, and this writer would certainly subscribe to it, that the scariest thing in the whole of Aliens is a flashing dot on a screen, accompanied by a beeping noise."
"I was as much doing an homage to what Ridley [Scott] had created as I was making my own movie, but I did set out to do both in a balance. I didn’t think I could outdo Alien for pure shock. … So I had to come up with an end run around that would be equally entertaining for an audience but in a different way."
"I was sitting with the three producers, and we were in the office of the then-head of 20th Century Fox. And I said, ‘Guys, I got an idea for the title. And it goes like this.’ And I wrote, ‘Alien’ in large block letters. And I put an S on the end. I showed it to them. I said, ‘I want to call it Aliens, because we're not dealing with one. Now we're dealing with an army, and that's the big distinction. And it's very simple and very graphic.’ And I said, ‘But here's what it's going to translate to.’ And then I drew the two lines through it to make it a dollar sign. And that was my pitch. And apparently it worked! Because they went with the title. They never questioned it."
"Though it's perhaps the most iconic single prop in the entire Alien franchise, the power loader Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) uses to fend off the xenomorph queen in Aliens (1986) was a real pain to make. A new featurette, premiering today on The Creators Project, reveals that, while Rome wasn't built in a day, the very first model for this "far future forklift," actually was. "The practical effects guys in England, they just thought I was nuts," Cameron says in the clip, referring to the time he essentially locked his team in a room with a bunch of pipes and foam core. But by the end of the day they had a recognizable prototype of the first robot exoskeleton to hit the silver screen. When they tested out their experiment, Cameron says, "All the effects guys were starting to think, 'Oh my god this actually sort of works just enough that he's going to make us do this.' And I did, I made them do it.""
"Sigourney Weaver set the bar high when she reprised her role of Ellen Ripley in 1986 sci-fi classic Aliens. As a female lead who was unsentimental but not unfeeling, she gave us a hero that has since been copied but never equaled."
"Thirty-five years on, Weaver’s performance remains the high watermark for strong female leads in action movies. It’s a character description that may sound redundant and regressive in this day and age, but in 1986 Weaver embodied it to a degree that left many other great performances by great actors that came afterwards suffering by comparison."
"Parents need to know that the relentless, ravenous clawed monsters in Aliens, the sequel to Alien, are likely to give small kids (and others) nightmares. It's even more violent than the original. Besides the rerun of the grisly moment when embryonic aliens burst out of people (in reality and in dream scenes), we also see quick cuts of victims seared with acid, getting set on fire, and blowing themselves up with a grenade. Gunfire, bombs, and flamethrowers are directed at the aliens. Most disturbing of all -- or, at least, the most nakedly manipulative -- is the perpetual threat of ghastly violence/death/contamination directed at a frightened, screaming little girl. There's also a plethora of swearing and lots of adoring fondling of guns and high-powered weapons."
"Families can talk about the military metaphor in Aliens; it's said James Cameron had Vietnam on his mind when he depicted a group of gung-ho Marines charging into tunnels only to get shredded to pieces by hordes of an enemy that keeps on coming. What could the characters have done differently?"
"`Aliens,` said Cameron, resplendent on a recent June afternoon in a black, open-neck shirt crawling with virulently purple orchids, is the movie I would have died to see when I was 14."
"An action-thriller that women will cheer for."
"A sequel to director Ridley Scott's "Alien" was inevitable, of course. This traditional horror movie set in outer space simply made too darn much money for the studio to simply let it stand alone. Surprisingly, when director James Cameron took over, he was determined to make a different movie rather than merely rehash the first. Thus, "Aliens" was adventurous, taking the story in new and exciting directions as an action-adventure yarn instead of another horror movie. Indeed, several critics feel "Aliens" is better than "Alien.""
"The ads for "Aliens" claim that this movie will frighten you as few movies have, and, for once, the ads don't lie. The movie is so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy? It has been a week since I saw it, so the emotions have faded a little, leaving with me an appreciation of the movie's technical qualities. But when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film's roller-coaster ride of violence. This is not the kind of movie where it means anything to say you "enjoyed" it."
"The director, James Cameron, has been assigned to make an intense and horrifying thriller, and he has delivered it. Weaver comes through with a very strong, sympathetic performance. The supporting players are sharply drawn. The visual effects are professional. I’m giving the movie a high rating for its skill and professionalism and because it does the job it says it will do. I am also advising you not to eat before you go to see it.”"
"It's here that my nerves started to fail. "Aliens" is absolutely, painfully and unremittingly intense for at least its last hour. Weaver goes into battle to save her colleagues, herself and the little girl, and the aliens drop from the ceiling, pop up out of the floor and crawl out of the ventilation shafts. (In one of the movie's less plausible moments, one alien even seems to know how to work the elevator buttons.) I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops. I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft."
"Skip ... if you’re not a fan of war movies. Even though “Aliens” belongs to a number of genres, it is basically just a scarier, louder, gorier version of a classic combat flick. Add in the profanity, the high body count and the endless waves of monsters coming out of the darkness, and you’ve got something that’s a far cry from the typical sci-fi or horror film."
"James Horner's score contains elements of Goldsmithian militaristic marches and borrowings from his Star Trek III score, as well as a touch of "The Gayne Ballet," as used in 2001, making it seem more of a rehash than an original from this talented composer. Stan Winston has done an excellent job of making H.R. Giger's original Alien design quicker moving and more mobile, adding a hitherto unseen form of the Alien for the climax. Aliens ends up as a wild and woolly roller-coaster ride of a movie which should attract anxious crowds of thrill fans as it cuts a swath through theaters from here to Alpha Centauri."
"“Aliens is about nothing at all beyond squeezing yet another buck from what seven years ago was an original, arresting — and profitable — science-fiction-horror [film]. Alien was so good because it said all that needed to be said on its subject. [S]equels are superfluous, dictated by pure greed as opposed to any driving artistic compulsion.”"
"Cruder than the original, Aliens is a distinctly greedy mega-production. For sure, there’s only so many times you can tell the same story and rewrite the same set pieces: Because the film’s human melodramas play second fiddle to the kick-ass action sequences, it’s obvious that 20th Century Fox wanted to bank on the success of the original film. Sometime after its release, Alien began to develop a following among feminists, confirmed when one of my film school professors would frequently reference the set design’s phallic and vaginal imagery. But it’s Ripley’s battle to be heard by the film’s alpha males and mother ship that truly resonates today. This mostly subtextual war of the sexes is on whorish display throughout Aliens: the mother alien is referred to as a “badass” by Bill Paxton’s insufferable Hudson; Ripley’s cigar-chomping sergeant doesn’t think she can do anything; and the tough, eager-to-please Latina lesbian who calls Ripley “Snow White” is teased for looking like a man. After floating in space for 57 years, Ripley is picked up by a salvage ship and is treated like a rape victim by a money-minded conglomerate. After her feminine insight gets the better of everyone, she helps spearhead a mission back to the alien planet after the ship loses contact with its colonists. Plot holes abound, but more tragic is the sorry lot of archetypical characters a fierce Ripley has to rub shoulders with; you can tell exactly in what order everyone will die depending on how nondescript, polite, hysterical, or evil the characterization. Aliens is a “guy movie” through and through, right down to the “get away from her, you bitch” female-on-female violence (Cameron, David Giler, and Walter Hill must have been watching Dynasty while writing their screenplay). The director’s cut of the film hauntingly amplifies Ripley’s disconnect from her dead daughter and her relationship to the young Newt (essentially a substitute for her creepy pet cat). Otherwise, the film’s human interactions are nowhere near as interesting as Cameron’s deft direction of action and use of non-alien space (the “Remote Sentry Weapons” killing spree may be Cameron’s finest moment)."
"The special-effects specialists are featured prominently in the credits that precede Aliens, and so they should be. Under the direction of James Cameron, they have put together a flaming, flashing, crashing, crackling blow-’em up show that keeps you popping from your seat despite your better instincts and the basically conventional scare tactics.”"
"Although the aliens still have that nasty way of bursting through people's skin, mostly we meet them full-grown, with scales and coils and, my, what big teeth. Now they look like dragons, now like sea monsters or pterodactyls or a combination plate of lizard, bat, eel and spider. The young aliens resemble agitated lobsters. I thought I saw an elephant trunk on the Big Mamma alien, who is too big to be blown away even by Miss Weaver's big gun, but it could have been something else. Anyhow, it wasn't anything you'd want clutching at your foot while you were trying to hang on to your spaceship and not be gulped into the void. No monster movie with pretensions can do without a scene that stirs a twinge of compassion for the monsters. It might be just my wishful imagination, but I thought I detected an expression of anguish on Big Mamma, a prodigious breeder, as dozens of her extra-large eggs were getting badly cracked. But she could merely have been opening her glacierlike jaws to devour that little girl."
"Talk about relentless. There probably has never been a cliffhanger as outrageous or as ingeniously sustained as Aliens, writer-director James Cameron’s absolutely smashing sequel to Alien, Ridley Scott’s 1979 science-fiction/horror classic…. Aliens proves that a bigger budget and more elaborate visual effects haven’t spoiled Cameron, and that he can still generate that involvement. In many ways, this is one sequel that improves on the original.”"
"“[O]ne of the things that makes Aliens work is the performance of Sigourney Weaver, reprising her role from the first film. She is strong and serious and very human. And she puts to shame the spate of one-dimensional macho heroes we’ve had lately who all look like plastic imitations of each other.”"
"Aliens is often regarded as a blueprint for how to execute an effective sequel. And rightly so. It didn’t try to replicate the first film. Instead, it took its essence and Scrapheap Challenged a rip-roaring war movie out of it. Ripley, the lone survivor of the mining ship, Nostromo – the sepulchral setting for the first film’s slasher-horror minimalism – joins a ragtag band of marines to take the fight back to the aliens. And what a bunch they are: Michael Biehn’s stoic Hicks, Bill Paxton’s wild-eyed gobshite Hudson, Jenette Goldstein’s badass gunslinger Vasquez. Frost, Spunkmeyer, Gorman, Apone, Drake – it’s amazing how many memorable grunts Cameron managed to forge with so little expository dialogue. That they used enormous “smart guns” mounted to their hips and sped around in a Batmobile-esque armored personnel carrier only served to sprinkle more geek catnip on my impressionable 12-year-old brain."
"Rewatching it over the years I’ve only come to appreciate Aliens more. It remains a masterclass in building tension: we don’t actually see an alien until the hour mark, and when we finally do it’s in a bewildering frenzy of bodycam panic. The scene with Ripley and Newt (the girl Ripley finds living feral on a base long since overrun by aliens) trapped in a laboratory with a scuttling face-hugger is still a bum-clenching ordeal. Paul Reiser’s smarmy, flop-sweat-slick company man, Burke, has become ever more punchable with every passing year. And Ripley overcoming her prejudices to accept the android Bishop as a friend is more touching now than it ever was. Yes, Bishop had to be literally ripped in half in order for her to do this, but the point stands. It could be argued that Cameron hasn’t made a truly great film since Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). That was the other adult-centric movie I remember featuring heavily in my childhood. Both Cameron films, both sequels to grimier, more disturbing originals that my mum would rather I didn’t watch, both held together by remarkable performances by their leading women. I’ve come to think that my mum was engaged in a not-so-subtle campaign to imbue me with an appreciation of strong female role models."
"Brandishing sophisticated weaponry and rescuing hostages in a style that leads Pauline Kael to label her “no more than a smart Rambo” (79), Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley champions a type of a feminist role in Alien (1979) (dir. Ridley Scott) and its film child Aliens (1986) (dir. James Cameron). Lawrence O’Toole croons that “Weaver brings wit, warmth, compassion, sweat and strength to her heroic role. Feminism has barely had it so good”, while David Ansen calls her “human macho” a “strong, unsentimental heroine” (64), and Rebecca Bell-Metereau celebrates Ripley as a “prototype for a new female lead…because she is not stunning, stunned, or simpering” (210) Single-handedly defeating alien creatures who threaten to destroy the human race, Ripley is intelligent, resourceful, independent, able to take command, and, in the greatest divergence from Hollywood’s typical depiction of “feminists,” not linked romantically to a man. “The closest thing that [Aliens] comes to romance” is Corporal Hicks showing Ripley how to operate an M41A pulse rifle (Kael 79). Ripley thus seems to epitomize, both for the films and their many viewers, the type of a new woman, one who not only holds her own in a man’s world, but is the only person to survive successfully in it."
"FROM the halls of Montezuma to the spores of outer space, they will fight our country's battles anytime, anyplace . . . The Marines, sweating and swearing and valiant as lions, engage "Aliens" in this hell-bent-for-leathernecks sequel to the 1979 thriller by Ridley Scott. "Alien" was a classic of gothic horror, but "Aliens" is a blockbuster of epic combat, a high-powered, spine-tingling, interplanetary "Pork Chop Hill." Here, a few good men -- and in the year 2036, a few good women -- battle the blood-thirsty beings of the planet Archeron."
"Raunchy one-liners relieve the fear of the unknown that menaces this mean, terrific team. Only the sequel isn't as shocking because we know a little about the monster now. "Aliens" can't top the original caesarean scene -- the monster tearing through the abdomen of its human host. But this time there are more parasites. If "Alien" was a cancer metaphor, "Aliens" is more like AIDS. There may be no defense, though there are plenty of skirmishes. Then there's the red-blooded feminism. Basically it's "Rambo" for her, with Weaver's demeanor steelier than Stallone's. But she is a woman. And that means she's got to balance a career and mothering when she takes a spunky nine-year-old space orphan under her wing."
"As in the original, Cameron's space looks lived in. The computer banks are dusty and the troop-ers wear fatigues instead of silver-zippered suits. The monsters, in their many forms, are recreated with gooey veracity, plus there's a new queen bee ovipositing spores in the aliens' nasty nursery. Boy, do those things make a lot of slime. It gets slippery for Ripley in a girls-only show-down with the alieness, despite the backing of formidable comrades: Michael ("Terminator") Biehn as a dashing corporal and Lance Henriksen as a valiant synthetic ("I prefer the term artificial person myself"). The vigorous and well-chosen cast also includes comedian Paul Reiser in his first serious role, as a corporate villain; and Al Matthews as the bull-necked sarge who moves 'em out to the rat-tat-tat-tat of the drums. Except for the droid, they're characters you'd find in any foxhole from "Sergeant York" to "The Green Berets." The enemy is as merciless as the Nazis, as elusive as the North Vietnamese. All of it is set against the pristine starscape of deep space."
"Director James Cameron makes all the right moves. [H]e brings to Aliens a solid gift for action, pacing and excitement…. Though Aliens is unable to eschew some obvious sci-fi conventions and those of other genres as well, it brings a fresh and lively spirit to this tired cinematic clime. Scene to scene, encounter to encounter, its tension builds unrelentingly. So, fasten your seat belts. It’s a blast."
"You’re entering a tight corridor filled with menacing shadows. Is that breathing you hear? Well, don’t run. Clanging metal walkways and staircases always give your position away. You might be playing a first- or third-person shooter - or watching the film “Aliens.” Every science fiction/horror game of the last 20 years - from the granddaddy of them all, Id’s “Doom,” to recent titles such as Electronic Arts’ “Dead Space” series - owes a debt to the first two films in the “Alien” franchise, Ridley Scott’s moody 1979 original and James Cameron’s action-packed 1986 sequel, “Aliens.”"
"Cameron was confident enough to not only dream up a sequel that continued Ripley’s story but also shift it into a different genre. Where Alien was pure horror, Aliens was first and foremost an action thriller; the movie’s tagline, “This time it’s war” was a clear indication that Cameron’s movie was anything but a straight retread."
"In the wake of Aliens, the pop culture impact of the colonial marines – and the look of film in general – was immediate. It’s worth noting that Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Starship Troopers, with its military units wearing light armour rather than powerful exoskeletons, was actually closer to Aliens than Heinlein’s book. Aliens impact on videogame design, meanwhile, can be seen everywhere – from the retro alien blasting future soldiers in Contra (1987) to the frat-boy space marines in Gears Of War and a thousand identikit sci-fi shooters. In the absence of more colonial marines adventures on the big screen, videogame designers filled the void."
"It starts with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) emerging like Sleeping Beauty from more than half a century of interplanetary slumber, which she doubtless needed after her prior ordeal. The planet where it all happened, she learns, has since been colonized by humans, who have broken off contact with Earth—but note the timeline: they did so only after she awoke. Is that a mere plot contrivance, or could it be that the monsters have been waiting for Ripley, to summon her to the fray? She certainly seems more determined and queenly this time around, with a foe to match, plus an android, played by Lance Henriksen, and the result is a formidable acceleration of all the fears that lurked in the first film: the frigidity of Scott’s detached and spooky manner is replaced by the relentlessness of a racing heart. Action thrillers assail but rarely test us; this is the tautest, most provoking, and altogether most draining example ever made."
"It’s a fun film that also demanded you to take it seriously. I think some people missed all that and just wanted to indulge in the ‘bug hunt’ war porn of it all. But beneath its rollercoaster surface, Aliens is a pretty sophisticated genre classic.”"
"Aliens could have used a lot more of what made the first ill-fated voyage such a harrowing experience: creeping horror that is so cold-blooded and unspeakable you scream but nothing comes out.”"
"There ought to be a warning attached to the video release of "Aliens," the sequel to the 1979 sci-fi thriller "Alien." It should read: "Warning. Not To Be Viewed Alone, Nor After 11 p.m. Otherwise, Tranquil Sleep Cannot Be Guaranteed." Because that's how I watched this remarkable thriller -- late at night and alone. I found it, quite simply, terrifying -- one of the scariest movies since "The Exorcist." And one of the best of this type. Translated to video, "Aliens" is not quite as terrifying as it was in theaters, but the suspense, drama and horror are there nonetheless. Sigourney Weaver, that willowy, captivating young star, returns as the sole survivor of the earlier space mission. She's been asleep for 57 years when she's returned to Earth. Why the technology hasn't changed too much in half a century is about the only unanswered question in this otherwise near-perfect thriller."
"The rest of "Aliens" is basically a series of search-and-destroy missions in the bowels of an abandoned structure on a far-off planet. But the way the creatures are stalked, and the slow, me-thodical steps the marines take before suddenly confronting them, make for superb drama. Some-times, even though you know the nature of the enemy, not knowing when or where it will strike is more terrifying. And so it is with this wonderfully filmed thriller. Whereas the original "Alien" was a bit too laid back for my tastes, with its characters spending too much time sipping coffee and waiting to be devoured, skewered and decimated, "Aliens" has no such flaws. It is a continual series of furious encounters with the aliens, who are multiplying rapidly."
"Watching a movie like "Aliens" on home video cannot match the terror from a big screen, at least for me. The security of one's own living room is reassuring, and so is that omnipotent off button on the VCR. But if you make the commitment to watch "Aliens" -- and I think you should -- you will see something quite remarkable. Not only is terror sustained for more than two hours, but also the last 20 minutes -- Weaver's final confrontation with the queen bee of the aliens -- has to to be one of the scariest horror sequences ever filmed."
"[L]ittle touches make Aliens much more fun than the run of the science-fiction genre. And its creatures are much more ingeniously mean than the gremlins of two summers ago."
"The original Alien was a haunted-house movie, brilliantly transposed to outer space. Claustrophobia was its primary tool of terror, and it featured a gross out unparalleled in movie history. Aliens writer James Cameron had the good sense to try to make a different kind of movie. Aliens resembles less its predecessor than The Terminator."
"Director James Cameron’s continuation of Ridley Scott’s Alien is long on brawn and short on brains. Too many Marines, too much noise, and too many acres of heavy hardware clutter up the scenery."
"[Aliens is] a sequel that exceeds its predecessor in the reach of its appeal while giving Weaver new emotional dimensions to explore."
"Count me out of the fan club for this one. To me, Aliens is one extremely violent, protracted attack on the senses, as surviving space explorer Sigourney Weaver again confronts the spiny, slithering creatures who killed her buddies in the original film, Alien. Some people have praised the technical excellence of Aliens. Well, the Eiffel Tower is technically impressive, but I wouldn`t want to watch it fall apart on people for two hours. R."
"Long after the thrills and chills wear off, I would argue that Aliens will be remembered not for its military saltiness, but for the role that Weaver takes to full-bodied heroics."
"Fifty-seven years on, Ripley is discovered - Sleeping Beauty in space. Plagued by nightmares and surrounded by sceptics, she's forced to return to the resting place of the original alien's mother ship with a bunch of seen-it-all-before Marines. Confidently directed by James Cameron (heretofore known only for 'The Terminator' and 'Piranha II'), this sequel dares to build slowly, allowing Weaver to develop a multi-dimensional character even as it ups the ante by fetishising the Marines' hi-tech hardware and spawning legions of aliens (the suspense involves guessing which group will be cannon fodder). There is always an interesting tension in Cameron's work between masculine and feminine qualities. When it finally hits the fan here, we're in for the mother of all battles."
"In a summer of disappointing sequels, it’s a pleasure to announce that Aliens is every bit as good as the original. That said, it’s also quite different, which is probably why it succeeds where other sequels have failed."
"Monday, July 18, marks the 30th anniversary of the debut of Aliens, so EW asked Weaver, director James Cameron, and producer Gale Anne Hurd to reminisce about that final knock-down drag-out. Cameron: I did the initial drawings. I presented them to Stan Winston, and then the next thing was, all right, now how are we going to do this damn thing? Because you got to remember, there was no CGI back then. So, you know, we’re talking about big puppets, miniature puppets, and maybe some guys inside it, and I said, well, I think you can put guys inside this thing. I think you can put two people inside it. He thought I was nuts. So we did a test where we built a frame that could hold two people. Hurd: You’ve got to remember the state of computers back then also, this was not a time of microcircuitry that’s as advanced as it is today. There were robots in manufacturing lines, and we used some robotics in the film, but it was first generation. If it could be choreographed with people, it’s much easier to tell someone what you want to do and how to change something in a nuanced way. And it’s less likely to break!"
"Weaver: Looking back, I’m always astonished that they trusted me to flame the dummies and shoot blanks into the stunt guys and bazookas into some of the other targets. You know, we just went for it. And luckily I didn’t kill anyone."
"CORNISH: OK, remind us the difference between 1979's "Alien" and what came seven years later in "Aliens" with an s. Like, fundamentally, what's the difference in plot?"
"What returns from Alien: creepy egg chamber, spidery face-clinging larval parasite, chest-bursting imago, search missions in dark and wet places, a race against a nuclear self-destruct device, android malfunctioning and going literally to pieces, corporate conspiracy to obtain an alien at the cost of innumerable human lives, the airlock as weapon of choice, and the nasty suggestion that it isn’t all over (embodied there in a cat, here in a little girl, both apparently red herrings). What’s new in Aliens: Cameron replaces the timeless lethargy of Ridley Scott’s space and the sweaty, stultifying boredom of life on an intergalactic freighter with frenetic pace. Aliens grab you immediately and never lets go; it seems much shorter than its 2:17 running time (and even the 2:34 restored/enhanced edition released in 1999 streaks by with white-knuckle kinetics)."
"No futuristic plastic fantastic technology. Metal takes over, and dominates the look and sound of the film. Sigourney Weaver’s wonderful, resourceful Ripley doesn’t just continue the tough-woman role but transforms and refines it until she out-Rambos Rambo, succeeding where the military cannot. And of course there are the Marines—the “mechanized infantry” of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, which Cameron boldly adopted a decade before Paul Verhoeven’s film and dropped into Aliens about forty minutes in. We have references to a “bug hunt,” getting the shakes before a drop, female pilots, cameras mounted on the Marines so leaders behind the lines can see what the troopers on the point are seeing. Cameron clearly loved Heinlein’s novel and found a way to film it by dovetailing it neatly into his sequel to someone else’s film of someone else’s vision."
"What’s not to like? There are a few things, including four of my seven least favorite movie clichés: sitting bolt upright from a dream, yelling “no” at something that’s already happened, outrunning an explosion, and having a computer voice remind us that time is running out. Newt, the little girl who is the sole survivor of an ill-fated farming colony on LV-426, is witty, wise, and brave beyond her years, but when the chips are down she has nothing to contribute beyond screaming repeatedly. The marines talk in a 1970s idiom (“check it out,” “badass,” “get it on”) even though the movie is set in a future by which, surely, those vacuous expressions—which sounded false even in 1986—will be unheard of. Their weapons are so impractically huge as to be more comical than impressive. Indeed, most of the film’s machinery seems designed with its human interface only half thought-out, creating the impression of future man as a kind of industrial junkyard hybrid. And of course this underscores the mirroring effect of the android: a machine that is almost human interacting easily with humans who are almost mechanical."
"But the film’s many fine touches more than balance out the occasional clichés and annoyances. We cut from an alien larval parasite’s spidery legs gripping the head of a space farmer to a close shot of Ripley’s spidery fingers manipulating a cigarette. Cameron enjoys giving us Kubrick references: reverse tracking, especially long corridors; a kid riding a three-wheeler; human talks in alien environments; sidewise tracking cameras discover characters and events around corners; scenes are introduced and enhanced by drums; we’re won over by an android as logical and as humanly fallible and wistful as HAL. There’s even a tough-talking, verbally abusive sergeant whose attitudes and phraseology recall Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (but wait, that can’t be a Kubrick reference since Full Metal Jacket didn’t come out until after Aliens…) Aliens also shares Kubrick’s atmosphere of a desensitized future; but here, feelings aren’t deadened, but heightened. It’s more Clockwork Orange than 2001 everyone is edgy, resentful, suspicious, abusive; their only humor is insult-humor. These are the ‘80s, the era of The Road Warrior and dozens of other junkyard futurism films in which human behavior has been stripped to the essentials and human emotions reduced to raw-edged anger or screaming terror."
"Despite the relentlessly bleak and pessimistic view of future humankind, Aliens sings an ultimately joyful song, and I will always love it for the bold self-assurance with which Cameron does Heinlein and out-does Scott."
"Before he started developing Aliens, Cameron had a different kind of extraterrestrial-themed project in mind, tentatively titled E.T. That name, of course, changed once he learned of Steven Spielberg’s film — Cameron retitled it Mother after its maternal themes. The script languished until he started developing the Alien sequel. “I cribbed some chunks from [Mother]. But it seemed to fit very well,” Cameron told us. “In the same way we needed to evolve and ratchet up Sigourney’s character, we needed to take the nemesis — the idea of the alien — and take it to another level. It was kind of staring us in the face: There was this ship filled with all these eggs. … Who laid the eggs? Continued Cameron: “Now, a scene that was removed from Ridley’s film showed there was a closure of the life cycle where the humans were cocooned and became eggs. We just threw that out. In my mind, I didn’t go against canon because that scene hadn’t made it into the release cut. So, I thought, ‘You got a mother someplace.’ Now you’ve got two mothers. Obviously, I never went anywhere with [Mother] — I just stuck it all into Alien 2.”"
"”Sigourney set the bar. I was in awe of her before I ever met her. I had her picture up on the wall while I was writing the script,” said Cameron, who directed her to an Academy Award nomination for the performance. “No actress had gotten nominated for Best Actress for a genre picture until then, not for science fiction or horror.” “I was just starting Gorillas in the Mist, which was an intimidating project because I had to play a real person and I had never done that,” Weaver recalled. “So it [the Oscar nomination] was a real shot in the arm. I didn’t realize it was groundbreaking until Jim told me. He still thinks I should have won.”"
"“For better or for worse,” said Hurd, who currently produces The Walking Dead. “All of a sudden, sequels, which were not common then, became considered a little more viable.” “A lot more viable,” Cameron interjected. “At the time we made Aliens, the rule was that a sequel would cost twice as much and make half as much. So, it never looked like a particularly good business model.” Hurd said Aliens established a rulebook for making a quality sequel: “As opposed to formulaic filmmaking, go to an auteur and have the auteur write the script and reinvent the story while staying true to canon.” “It’s about answering a question they didn’t know to ask, but when they see it, it seems obvious,” said Cameron."
"In its first five days, “Aliens” took in a healthy $13.4 million at 1,437 theaters. Seven years after Ridley Scott’s space- noir classic “Alien” first arrived, “Aliens” looks like the runaway hit of the summer and may even surpass “Top Gun” when all the counting is done. But “Aliens” almost didn’t make it to the screen. In an era when it seems as if half the current releases are sequels feeding off yesterday’s fare, “Aliens” almost crashed and burned. At one point, 20th Century Fox, the studio releasing the film, nearly sold the rights to the sequel to the producers of “Rambo.”"
"Today, the lines for “Aliens” snake around the block even for weekday mid-afternoon screenings. The line to take credit for making “Aliens” is only slightly shorter. If movie-making is a collaborative art, the story behind the making of “Aliens” offers classic evidence that the number of contributors increases exponentially with the success of a film."
"Fall, 1983: The 42-page treatment, written in three days, was submitted to Fox where, because of lack of support for the idea, the project went into its own form of hyper-sleep. Said Cameron: “An executive told me he didn’t like the treatment because it was wall-to-wall horror and it needed more character development.” At one point a deal was almost closed to sell the rights to the sequel to producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vanja (“Rambo”) but the lawyers couldn’t close the deal. Prospects for a sequel looked dim. July, 1984: Independent producer Larry Gordon was hired to replace former studio production head Joe Wizan. Finding few projects in the production pipeline, he looked for possible sequels and came across the “Aliens” file. “I couldn’t believe it hadn’t already been done,” Gordon said. “In this business there are those decisions you agonize and lose sleep over, but this was so obvious. It was a no-brainer.”"
"When Fox insisted that it would make “Aliens” with or without Weaver, Cameron and Hurd quit again, this time taking off for a honeymoon in Hawaii. Said Hurd: “We assumed it was a dead issue, and when we left for Hawaii we thought the movie was off.” But when they returned, the movie was on--with Weaver as the star. According to those close to the negotiations, she was paid close to $1 million in compensation plus a percentage of the profits, the highest salary she has earned to date in her career."
"September, 1985: “Aliens” finally started shooting on a London sound stage. After all the debate and questions about the budget, Hurd and Cameron brought in their movie on schedule and on budget. The studio loved the dailies and the buzz began to leak out: “Aliens” just might be the sleeper hit of the summer. But there was one more bitter struggle preceding the film’s opening. Fox wanted a movie of two hours or less but Cameron’s print came in at a lengthy 2 hours, 17 minutes. Nowadays, studios rarely release movies longer than 2 hours, 5 minutes, because the length cuts the number of daily screenings from five to four, substantially reducing the box-office take. For Fox to have the extra showing, Cameron would have had to cut 12 minutes. Late April, 1986: As Cameron and Hurd were working on their final “mix” (joining sound and picture together), Rudin flew to London to see their cut. Said Cameron: “We were standing on this London sidewalk and Rudin asked us if there was anything that could be cut. But we felt that if we had to take out 12 more minutes, the movie wouldn’t make sense.” Rudin acquiesced."
"Aliens is the perfect sequel. The Empire Strikes Back, while certainly a better film than Star Wars, was more a polished segment in a longer story than a stand-alone adventure. But Aliens is the model for every potential sequel-maker: it connects irrefutably with the events of the original (even to the point of starting exactly where the drama left off, albeit 57 years later) and expands on all the ideas and themes while simultaneously differentiating itself. The same, yet entirely different. Perfect. It also stands as testament to the unwavering vision and icy nerve of James Cameron (here directing only his third movie). Utilizing the bombed-out skeleton of Battersea Power Station to create the vast industrio-grim colony/hive setting for events, he was faced with a veteran British crew who had worked on Alien and worshipped the ground Ridley Scott walked on. What could this Canadian punk kid know? Well, for starters that in this case more is, indeed, more. Not just a single, ruthless, unbeatable killing machine but an army of them. On home turf."
"What also counts here is execution. Cameron accepted Scott's (and, of course, H. R. Giger's) design ethic — gloop, scaly bits, loadsa teeth and long, dark, dingy, dripping corridors — but reinterpreted them as a battleground rather than a haunted house. The point he grasped straight away is that you can't win against this foe or the stigma, the sheer terror that this endomorph engenders would be lost. You can only escape. He replaced Scott's "behind-you" tension with a muscular fury, unrelenting, sweaty-palmed, pant-filling movie intensity. Nothing before or since has locked the viewer in with such an all-consuming sense of peril (audiences and critics actually complained of physical discomfort even illness upon exiting the auditorium)."
"Thematically Aliens also expounds the set-up further. Central is a continuation of Scott and Dan O'Bannon's (the original screenwriter) bogeyman hypothesis — what if a lifeform was so attuned to survival it became the perfect killing machine and as such garnered a degree of Darwinisitic respect, even form its prey? Ash in Alien, lunatic android though he was, praised the monster for its "purity", even Ripley, confronted by the duplicity of company man Burke (Paul Reiser), has to admit that "You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percent-age!" Then it really gets going: Alien as giant phallus (and now there's a whole army of them) versus feminist heroine. The feminist subtext is hardly "sub" at all, Ripley is one of the strongest female characters in movie history. Closer to Cameron's heart, and a theme that recurs throughout his work, is the preservation of the nuclear family. With Newt rescued and Ripley taking on the role of surrogate mother we only need add Hick's gentlemanly (but by no means dominant) father to complete our model of perfect family unit (the other survivor, the android Bishop, well, he's either a kindly uncle or the pet dog or something). This whole notion is finally boiled down to a remarkable battle of maternal instincts — Ripley defending her child Newt; the queen Alien defending (or, at least, avenging) her children — summed up memorably in Ripley's battle call: "Get away from her, you bitch!" The biology of the species has been developed to the point where empathy if not sympathy is acceptable. And if you want to keep this up there is the 'Nam in space metaphor: unseen "gooks" mounting stealth attacks and the retreating Yanks totally undone by a tactic and mindset they cannot comprehend (a metaphor for US foreign policy?). Yet none of such academic noodling is ever at the expense of the thrills. Cameron understood fundamentally the basis here was a gut reaction. Aliens construction of action scenes, its build-up of tension and its final execution of combat is a marvel to behold (the film literally provokes a physical reaction). These are characters we care about, headed up by a resourceful heroine who is pitted against a formidable enemy in a thoroughly believable environment. Pure movie."
"Sigourney Weaver - Ellen Ripley"
"Carrie Henn - Rebecca 'Newt' Jorden"
"Michael Biehn - Corporal Dwayne Hicks"
"Lance Henriksen - Bishop"
"Paul Reiser - Burke"
"Bill Paxton - Private Hudson"
"William Hope - Lieutenant Gorman"
"Jenette Goldstein - Private Vasquez"
"Al Matthews - Sergeant Apone"
"Mark Rolston - Private Drake"
"Ricco Ross - Private Frost"
"Colette Hiller - Private Ferro"
"Daniel Kash - Private Spunkmeyer"
"Cynthia Dale Scott - Corporal Dietrich"
"Tip Tipping - Private Crowe"
"Trevor Steedman - Private Wierzbowski"
"It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet. Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy...."
"Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together."
"Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
"[after the Death Star has destroyed Alderaan] I felt a great disturbance in the Force... as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
"Who's the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?"
"Use the Force, Luke."
"It's your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster, but an elegant weapon for a more... civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times... before the Empire."
"A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force."
"[Seeing the Death Star] That's no moon. It's a space station."
"I have a very bad feeling about this."
"We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."
"We’re doomed!"
"You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor! Take her away!"
"And now, Your Highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden Rebel base."
"This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi. It will soon see the end of the Rebellion."
"The Force is strong with this one."
"[to Luke, in disguise] Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
"[to Han Solo] You needn't worry about your reward. If money is all that you love, then that's what you'll receive. [to Luke Skywalker] Your friend is quite a mercenary. I wonder if he really cares about anything... or anybody."
"Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I'm in it for the money."
"[to Chewbacca, after the group is trapped in a garbage disposal center] That garbage chute was a really wonderful idea! What an incredible smell you’ve discovered!"
"May the Force be with you."
"A long time ago in a galaxy far far away..."
"Well, I liked Star Wars. I thought Battlestar Galactica was such a close imitation of Star Wars, emphasizing the less attractive portions, that I was a little impatient with it."
"They don't exactly give you a course in acting in a science fiction movie. At one point I'm supposed to react to seeing my planet blow up. You know, there go my parents, my record collection, everything. What do I see? A hand waving to tell me where to look."
"Hidden Fortress was an influence on Star Wars right from the beginning. I was searching around for a story. I had some scenes—the cantina scene and the space battle scene—but I couldn’t think of a basic plot. Originally, the film was a good concept in search of a story. And then I thought of Hidden Fortress, which I’d seen again in 1972 or ’73, and so the first plots were very much like it."
"I had the Star Wars project in mind even before I started my last picture, American Graffiti, and as soon as I finished I began writing Star Wars in January 1973... In fact, I wrote four entirely different screenplays for Star Wars, searching for just the right ingredients, characters and storyline. It's always been what you might call a good idea in search of a story."
"My main reason for making it was to give young people an honest, wholesome fantasy life, the kind my generation had. We had westerns, pirate movies, all kinds of great things. Now they have The Six Million Dollar Man and Kojak. Where are the romance, the adventure, and the fun that used to be in practically every movie made?"
"Before Star Wars, the films that were box-office hits were The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Bonnie and Clyde and The French Connection - gritty, amoral art movies. Then suddenly the onus switched over to spectacle and everything changed... I don't know if that is a good thing."
"Hollywood industrialized mythology, and then weaponized it. It is widely believed that the Soviet Union folded because they couldn’t compete with America’s missile shield program, nicknamed Star Wars. I’d argue that the Soviets folded because they couldn’t compete with the movie Star Wars."
"Before Star Wars I hadn’t experienced audience participation in a film since I was a kid. I used to sit there with a bag of popcorn and sing with the rest of the kids. And everybody used to shout “Look out behind you!? And all that. Then I saw Star Wars and it was amazing! I was knocked out. I thought, “God, this guy Lucas really knows what he’s doing!” Star Wars change my whole attitude about certain types of cinema that I‘m interested in."
"The most important line in “Star Wars,” to me, is the moment Luke looks at the Millennium Falcon, the most beautiful ship I’ve ever seen, and says, “What a piece of junk!”"
"Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker"
"Harrison Ford as Han Solo"
"Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa"
"Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi"
"Anthony Daniels as C-3PO"
"Kenny Baker as R2-D2"
"Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca"
"Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin"
"David Prowse as Darth Vader"
"James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader"
"[as the Nazis are opening the Ark] Marion, don't look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don't look at it, no matter what happens!"
"Don't look, Marion! Keep your eyes shut!"
"God damn it, Indy, where doesn't it hurt?"
"You can't do this to me! I'm an American!"
"We never seem to get a break, do we?"
"[to Colonel Dietrich] Let me ask you this: Would you feel more comfortable opening the Ark in Berlin for your Führer? Finding out, only then, if the sacred pieces of the Covenant are inside? Knowing only then whether you have accomplished your mission, and obtained the one, true Ark?"
"The Return of the Great Adventure!"
"If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones!"
"Harrison Ford - Indiana Jones"
"Karen Allen - Marion Ravenwood"
"Paul Freeman - René Belloq"
"John Rhys-Davies - Sallah"
"Denholm Elliott - Marcus Brody"
"Ronald Lacey - Major Arnold Toht"
"Wolf Kahler - Colonel Dietrich"
"Anthony Higgins - Gobler"
"George Harris - Katanga"
"Lucas: A bounty hunter of antiquities."
"Spielberg: I like that. The doctor with the bullwhip."
"Lucas: He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven."
"Lucas: It has to be unique. It's a character. Very Americana. Square. He was born in Indiana."
"[The time machine takes George first to 1917 (during the First World War), then to 1940 (the Second)] Then I realized the truth of the matter – this was a new war..."
"[In the year 802,701, George speaks to Weena about the past] Man's past – is mainly a grim struggle for survival. But there have been moments, when a few voices have spoken up..."
"[George becomes furious when he discovers the Elois' passive nature] What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you could let it crumble to dust. A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams, for what? So you can swim, and dance, and play... You, all of you, I'm going back to my own time; I won't even bother to tell of the useless struggle and their hopeless future, but at least I can die among men!"
"George... I speak to you as a friend – more as a brother... if that machine can do what you say it can, destroy it. Destroy it, George, before it destroys you!"
"[George's friends have just seen the small-scale replica of the time machine vanish before their eyes] DR. Philip Hillyer: I'll be damned! But where did it go? George: Nowhere in the usual sense - it's still here!"
"[In 1900, David Filby discovers that George has left in the time machine again] David Filby: He must have taken something with him... Mrs. Watchett (George's housekeeper): Nothing... except three books. David Filby: Which three books? Mrs. Watchett: I don't know... is it important? David Filby: Oh, I suppose not. Only, which three books would you have taken?"
"[Last lines] Mrs. Watchett: Mister Filby, do you suppose he'll ever return? David Filby: One cannot choose, but wonder. You see, he's all the time in the world."