Better late than never.
Welcome back to my reviews of the Alien franchise. I'm going to be reviewing every film in the series on every upcoming Wednesday and Friday until May 19th, which marks the release of Alien: Covenant. Today we're looking at 1986's action classic with the most kick ass sequel title in the galaxy, Aliens. Aliens was directed by James Cameron, who is of course responsible for Titanic, the best and first Terminator movies, Avatar and it's apparent five future follow-ups? 57 years after the end of the last movie, Lt. Ellen Ripley is found floating through space by a deep salvage team in hypersleep. When she's brought back to Earth, she tells the suits of the Weyland-Yutani corporation about the alien planet LV-426 and the Xenomorph she defeated. No one believes her and they have since colonized LV-426, but when they loose contact with the colony, Weyland-Yutani is forced to send Ripley to the planet with a group of Colonial Marines and put a stop to these creatures once and for all. Only this time, there's more. Lots more. Hence the title. Since they were just mentioned, let's start by discussing the marines. As much as I love Dallas, Kane, Bret and everyone else from the original, I think I like the marines even more. Vazquez is probably my favorite of all. She's this buff, bodybuilding, badass Mexican woman who deals more shit than she takes. She has a great chemistry with all the guys, in fact everyone has a good chemistry in this movie. Everyone plays off each other very well. Hicks and Hudson are also great. The sergeant in my opinion is criminally underrated. He's the definitive shouty military man. My favorite apart from Ripley and Vazquez is definitely Bishop. He might be my favorite android in a movie, because Lance Henriksen makes him work so well. Bishop is also the creator of the knife game, so all those kids who cut themselves back in 2012, sorry. You have this movie to blame, partially. This is not a horror movie. Some of the original's suspense is still there, but it is primarily an action flick, and its a damn good one. Both styles fit the respective film and I don't know if one is more fitting than the other. This started the trend with these movies of having more or less a different genre underlying each one. Alien is horror. Aliens is action. Alien3 is drama. Alien: Resurrection is comedy (whether unintentional or not). The AVPs are monster mashups and Prometheus is back to extreme science fiction. The action is Aliens is really phenomenal. There's countless classic encohnters. Be it in the lab with facehuggers, in the hallway with drones or the classic finale with the Alien Queen in the Loading Bay. All terrific fights that look just as spectacular as they did 31 years ago, which has almost always been a staple of Cameron's movies. They look damn good no longer how old they are. With the additions of the drones and especially the beautiful Alien Queen which is as scary as it is wonderfully designed, Aliens did a lot for the mythology of Xenomorphs. Lore in which I often find myself deeply immersed in. It produced a terrific comic book series and a pretty alright PC game, and I don't mean Colonial Marines. I haven't talked about Newt. She's a survivor of a Xenomorph attack who provides a mother-daughter connection for Ripley. If you watch the special edition, you know Ripley had a daughter, Amanda Ripley (who you actually play as in Alien: Isolation!), which adds an extra layer to there relationship. Here's a final question before I provide a grade. Do I think Aliens is better than Alien? Not quite. Although Aliens does provide some improvements, I think the original has more atmosphere (puns! jokes! gags!) and, regarding the time period it came out in, more impressive. Nevertheless, Aliens is a terrific followup to an equally enthralling voyage. GRADE: A That's all for now guys. My review of Alien 3 will be out hopefully on Wednesday, same Bat-time, same Bat-place. You can contact me with your thoughts and suggestions on Instagram at @mrGabeThomas, Twitter at @GabeDamien or email me at gabetheguy12@gmail.com. That's all now for guys. As always, take care and stay scared.
