In 1979, Ridley Scott directed a film about a bunch of ''space truckers'' that are slowly wiped out by an alien. The film was, of course, Alien, and was a hit.
It’s very tough to follow the success of the original with new elements keeping the basic idea same. But director Jim Cameron manages to achieve this feat.
Quite simply, ALIENS is one of the best sequels ever made. In what is a rare, amazing feat, it not only provides a worthy continuation of the original story, it builds upon the themes and situations of the first film, offering something both familiar yet new, and successfully morphs from horror to a sci-fi action of the tallest order.
Ellen Ripley (Sigorney Weaver) awakens from slumber at the opening of the film, after finding herself in hibernation for 57 years. Burke (Paul Reiser) is a government employee who quickly tries to convince Ripley to return to the planet where she found the alien, as a colony has been set up on the same planet, and - of course - contact has been lost. Of course, she goes back (there wouldn't be a movie if she didn't), and it is to Director and Writer Cameron's credit that he makes it seem almost necessary. A perfect example of character dictating action, not the other way around.
Anyway, once the team descends upon the lost colony, the crew finds that there's little that remains of the settlement; the creatures have long since wiped out everyone but a small child. The film first half moves at a deliberate pace but after about the halfway point, it just takes off like a rocket and doesn't stop.
The last hour of ''Aliens'' continues to stand as one of the most intense thrill-rides in years. Faced with slim chance of escape, the soldiers must stand their ground and fight a war against the creatures, which not only come from every possible direction, but display intelligence.
Weaver’s performance is outstanding. In ALIENS she must be warm and nurturing for Newt, strong and resourceful with the Marines, tough as nails with the aliens and frightened and psychologically ravaged when alone. She got a nomination for best actress. An unusual occurrence in this type of film. Ably supported by Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton (he’s a gem in this movie) among others.
Now for the technical part:
Photography: As is usual with Cameron, he had problems with the film's original director of photography, Dick Bush (who was replaced by Adrian Biddle). While Biddle worked to achieve the visual style that Cameron had for the picture, Bush wanted to follow his own vision for the film's lighting. Colors are mostly shades and intensities of blue are vivid and saturated. Other than blue, the screen is dominated by shades of gray and black and sometimes greenish, once inside the colony, the camera catches it beautifully, notice the water drippings overhead. The look when the team lands on the planet is superb. With all the rain falling around and the darkness of the vicinity, you really feel you are there. Adrian Biddle's cinematography is dark, grainy and foreboding, with little in the way of color. While not traditionally beautiful, the picture's look is wonderfully successful in trying to capture the gritty, eerie atmosphere.
Production Design: The best thing about Aliens was its Production design by Peter Lamont. Fantastic sets, especially of the colony, the look of the sets does give it an eerie feeling all around. The sets do give you a feeling of an environment of a different and difficult planet.
Visual effects : Well there wouldn’t be a James Cameron movie without the effects. The film's visual effects, while practical (many of which were done by Stan Winston studios), are still very, very impressive for the time period. And the Queen Alien, well, I think she is still unrivaled in terms of the visual and mechanical effects. Stan Winston's work here is just unparalleled, and all the more impressive given the fact that it is entirely ''live'' and on set, with the exception of a couple of miniature shots. . Cameron is always certain to first focus his creative energies on writing a good script that takes time to develop characters, after this he focuses on other elements – like visual effects. He has a knack for engineering the mechanisms that enable his effects to look thoroughly convincing. ALIENS effects won an Academy Award.
Sound: Although the film's 1986 birth was long before the era of digital sound, the film's audio uses silence magnificently. James Horner does provide score (more on that below), but there's plenty of scenes where the only score is water dripping in the background and the shuffling of nervous footsteps.
Music: (Probably this section will be the longest in this review) History repeats itself, on the first Alien film, composer Jerry Goldsmith found his score routinely re-edited throughout the film as Ridley Scott made musical changes here and there, even going to far as to include portions from Goldsmith's score to Freud, and replacing the end titles music entirely. Cameron pretty much did the same thing to James Horner’s score with the sequel film. When Horner came to London to score for the film, he found himself in trouble: the composer thought he was going to have six weeks to score the picture, but arrived to find that Cameron had still not finished the film, the time was rapidly passing by, and that the picture's release could not be moved up to accommodate the music production, leaving Horner to try to write and record the music (including writing a main piece overnight) in an inhuman amount of time. But full credit to him, James Horner wrote the score for Aliens in three and a half weeks, approximately 80 minutes of music was recorded with 85 musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra who were in session with the maestro for six days. Listening to the result is mindblowing. How is it possible to create such artistry under a time pressure like that? and even then, Cameron never really seemed happy with the final result, hacking the score to bits in the film. Amid all the controversy, however, Horner produced an exciting score that garnered him his first Oscar nomination. But the relation with Cameron was sour and both doubted whether they would work again, and thank God, they did after a period of 11 years right in time for TITANIC!
Aliens is one of the scores I know intimately note by note, measure by measure, effect after effect, in complete detail. I've seen the film on numerous occasions, I've listened to the original score album hundreds of times.
Due to the nature of the film, Horner's score dances on the edge between horror and action, but the results blend well together. The standard shrieking orchestra movements are here, but Horner's weaving of the main theme, along with some very wild action cues, make a fantastic combination. As far as quieter pieces go, just listen to the track when the teams moves inside the atmosphere station on the spacecraft, it’s has subtle percussion, synths and sliding dissonant strings, along with a lot of creepy wind effects that add greatly to the atmosphere and make it scary. The score is very adept at making you leap from your chair too, as Horner accentuates the film's jumps and shock cuts with loud, shrieking string chords which pierce the air - and your heart!
Horner's score begins with ''Main Title'', a cue utilizing atmosphere and percussion. The opening half of the film is very much low end suspense with plenty of echoing synth, percussion and trumpet effects while action sequences have a lot of powerful echoing horn fanfares, incessant, and thunderous metal percussion. All this has gone down in history as some of the most vibrant, relentless and complex action music ever written.
