Alien / Aliens

For the benefits of brevity, I've consolidated these two Alien films into one block, as I saw both of them back to back at the Luna Monday Double screening recently. I remember Alien more clearly, probably because I've seen it more often and more recently than its sequel. In fact, there were a few scenes in Aliens that I'm pretty sure I'd never seen before, this screening being the Director's Cut version.

So, if I'm comparing these two iconic films, I'm still of a mind to say that I much prefer the first one. It's a compact, grungy, flipping scary horror film. Some scenes - the creature stuff, in the main - don't really hold up to today's modern gaze, but back in 1979, I imagine folks were gobsmacked. The famous John Hurt scene is still shocking and the alien's life cycle was a cracking idea for some fun with the visuals, mostly due to H.R. Giger's design work.

Sigourney Weaver, as Ripley, holds the whole contraption together, Yaphet Kotto is great as Parker and Ian Holm brilliant as Ash - "I can't lie to you about your chances, but....you have my sympathies". The cinematography of the ship and planet LV-426 are sometimes too muddy, too murky to see as much as we'd like and the sound mix did seem a bit off at times, with the voices mumbly and the computer and ship sounds quite loud. These quibbles aside, Alien is still a fantastic sci-fi/horror, but on to the follow up.....

Aliens, made 7 years later, with James Cameron taking over directing duties from Ridley Scott, picks up at the final scene of Alien, though a fair amount of time has passed. 57 years, in fact. And one of the good things this sequel does is give the returning Weaver a great big swag of motivation running through the film. This version has a key scene the original theatrical one didn't - namely Ripley finding out that her daughter has grown up and died, aged 66, in her absence. The loss and helplessness of this situation makes Ripley's relationship with Newt (Carrie Henn) more fleshed out and understandable. It also adds relevance to the Mother-scrap at the climax, though I have to admit feeling a bit odd at Ripley's decision to incinerate the alien mummy's eggs. This seemed a bit nasty to me, but maybe it's a maternal thing;).

Visually, Aliens looks cleaner than its predecessor, and it's easier to make out movement but it's just as loud. Maybe my ears are getting old. The high points, aside from Weaver's performance (which is top notch again), would be the way the tension is built throughout, and the final showdown with Ripley in the loader suit (nice foreshadowing Mr. Cameron). But my historical gripe with this film is the portrayal of the army group. They're mostly cocksure dickheads, Bill Paxton being the most annoying of the lot. Between his 'game over man!' bullshit and Newt's glass-shattering screams, there's a bucket load of irritation in this film. There's also the obligatory 'just when you think it's all over....' bollocks, which is a facsimile dump from the first film.

Ultimately, Alien is a small, creepy horror film, whereas Aliens is guns and explosions porn; the bigger, the better. Visual grummer.

See also:

To round out the quadrilogy, have a look at David Fincher's Alien³ (1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien: Resurrection (1997).