Alien Franchise

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“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.”"

"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."

"[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."

"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]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."

"There are some places in the universe you don't go alone."

"This time it's war."

"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?"

"What do you mean "they cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man?! They're animals!"

"They're coming outta the walls! They're coming outta the goddamn walls! Let's book!"

"We're on the express elevator to hell, going down!"

"Yo! Stop your grinnin', and drop your linen! Found 'em!"

"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..."

"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!"

"Close your eyes, baby!"

"[to the Alien Queen who is about to kill Newt] Get away from her, you BITCH!"

"You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“[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.”"

"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.”"

"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."

"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.”"

"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)."

"“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.”"

"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."

"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."

"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.”"

"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."

"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.""

"An action-thriller that women will cheer for."

"`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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.""