Game over man.
The real problem with movies, when you really cut to the quick of it, is that, once viewed, you can never watch a movie the same way again. Oh sure, you can enjoy the hell out of it, you can, in some rare occasions like a movie more with each viewing (Evil Dead 2 and Citizen Kane both pop into my head as examples), but you can never, ever get that same feeling you had the first time you sat down and experienced a film.
For some movies, I would not trade in my years of enjoyment for the opportunity to experience it anew: take the original Alien, I love that film far more today than on my first viewing; but for something like 1986’s Aliens, I would give damn near anything to see it for the first time again.
Actually, I take that back, I don’t want to experience Aliens again for the first time, I want to experience the Director’s Cut of Aliens for the first time.
Now there is something that I really haven’t hit on too often on this site: the idea of a director’s cut, funny, given how commonplace they have become in recent years. See, back in the day, a director would make a movie, and a studio would test it out with folks in flyover states and who could prove, medically, that they had no ability for abstract thought at all; and when those simple people inevitably hated the artistically fueled sad ending, or thought that the doggie shouldn’t die in the earth shattering explosion, the movie would be recut, refilmed, or canned completely, lest the lowest common denominator not spend their Chee-to stained cash monies on the project. This focus on marketing had the unintended side effect of neutering and changing the overall theme of a lot of movies that, if left unmolested, could have been much better. When home video started to become more mainstream, someone had the bright idea to recut some movies (cough-Bladerunner-cough) into a form more akin to what the Director had originally planned, and thus was born the “Director’s Cut.”
Now, in today’s world, slapping the “Director’s Cut” label on a movie simply means that there are one or two scenes have been spliced back in that were either cut for time, or may, may have an additional “fuck” thrown in there that would have caused the MPAA to give it an R rating as opposed to the more lucrative PG-13; but sometimes, just sometimes you get a whole new movie going experience from these recuts. And Lord does Aliens fall into that category completely.
It took a while for a sequel to come to Alien, despite the fact that it was such a wildly successful film, and when the studio decided not to give the project to Ridley Scott, by all accounts they could have made a tremendous mistake. But, several years after logic would have dictated a new movie be released, James Cameron, with visions of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” running through his head, practically begged 20th Century Fox for the chance to write and direct. After his success with The Terminator this wasn’t even a question, he got the gig right away. And so, he went ahead and filled the whole film with his normal Cameron-isms, detailed and functional future technology, fog machines, and strong, tough as nails women. Dude loves him some independent women.
In either the normal incarnation or the Director’s Cut of Aliens is, of course, about Ripley, lone survivor of Alien going back to the planetoid where all the terrible goings-on began in the first film with a group of Space Marines to wipe out the Xenomorph menace. She finds a child who has managed to survive the creatures, and in the end they fight off the Queen alien, and blast her into space. It is an action packed thrill ride from start to finish that serves as a brilliant retelling of the Vietnam War; with a technologically advanced army finding themselves sent to an area, under questionable circumstances, where they are out of their element and quickly find themselves wiped out by the locals. It isn’t a hidden metaphor, nor is it buried away like the rape imagery in Alien, rather it wears its meaning on its sleeve, and if that was all we had gotten out of Aliens, it would still be a damn fine movie; having taken the franchise in new and inventive directions. However, the director’s cut adds an intriguing twist to plot.
You seem in both versions of the film, Ripley awakes from her ordeal in the first film 57 years later; in the theatrical cut that is just explained and hand waved away with no further comment, despite the fact that Ripley would be finding herself in a world where everyone she knows is dead and buried. In Cameron’s original cut, Ripley finds herself in a world in which she has outlived her daughter, her daughter who she left when she was 6 years old. Just this one addition, this one humanizing moment, serves to not only give motivation to her actions in the previous film, but now sheds new light on her actions in Aliens.
Suddenly Ripley wasn’t just a woman who simply survived in the first film, no, she is now a mother, fighting tooth and nail, to get back to her daughter. Is it any wonder that she fought so damn hard? And in Aliens, we no longer have a woman going to war to get revenge on the creatures that wiped out her crew, rather this is a mother looking for redemption for the guilt she felt for leaving her daughter, for losing her daughter. When she finds Newt, it makes perfect sense that she would latch onto the child and fight to protect her at all costs; that she would replace her own daughter with a surrogate. This is a chance, an opportunity to get back everything Ripley lost, to put right what had been knocked askew, and to get her life back, And in the waning moments of the film, as Ripley stands toe to toe with the Alien Queen atop a pile of freshly laid eggs, it is not one warrior facing another, it is one mother fighting for her child against another mother fighting for her brood. And when the colony explodes, suddenly the Queen is in the same position as Ripley at the beginning of the film, fighting the force that ripped her family from her.
Aliens stands as one of the few sequels that works as well (or better, depending on who you ask) as the original film. Sure, it changes the whole set up around, but it does so in just the right way, by removing 90% of the original film and keeping the 10% that makes the story work. Now, it isn’t a perfect film; there are a few issues that bother me no matter how many times I watch the film. Not the least of which is the fact that the Alien has been made into thoughtless drones. In the first film it is apparent that, while the humans thought they were hunting the creature, the whole time the creature was hunting them; it is clearly brilliant. Now, in Aliens, the queen is smart, after all, she can operate an elevator, but the drones are nothing but meat puppets, boring, brainless, meat puppets. But, to the film’s credit, it does make sense, as the creatures work as a force of nature, which just flood over the marines, wiping them out with no effort whatsoever. It doesn’t matter how many the Marines gun down, there are always more and more and more pouring out of the jungle…er…walls. Again, Vietnam.
No matter the issues, Aliens is my favorite film in the series to sit and watch; not necessarily my favorite film, but rather the one I will put in when I need two hours to kill. It is wild, it is action packed, and it is, unlike most action films, it is smart as hell. Sure, it’s not as smart as Alien, but still, it is a great flick.
Rating: A
Director:
Writers:
James Cameron (story), David Giler (story)
B Movies B Reviewed 