Aliens

In the final 20 minutes or so of Aliens, series protagonist Ripley (an Oscar-nominated Sigourney Weaver) prepares to enter the creatures' hive to rescue Newt (Carrie Henn), a little girl captured by the nasty creatures.  Ripley loads up with a massive pulse rifle, a flamethrower, and grenades. 

As the elevator descends to what could be her death, we see how strung out and exhausted Ripley is, covered in sweat and grime. With her weapons ready, she closes her eyes, mentally preparing herself for the horrors she's about to confront.

That little moment demonstrates why Aliens is a worthy follow-up to the original Alien. It expands both the characters and the narrative instead of repeating the same plot and because writer-director James Cameron gives Ripley something sci fi and horror characters don't always receive: choice. 

Many science fiction horror tales drop their protagonists in a pressure cooker and watch them react, and the best ones, like Alien, show us what those characters are made of. In Aliens, we get that, but some of the best moments occur not when the monsters unexpectedly attack but when Ripley chooses to confront them. Instead of seeing her as a fool, we the viewer understand, sympathize, and root for her for doing so.

As the movie opens, Ripley is a woman out of time, having been cryogenically frozen and drifting through space for 57 years after her first terrifying encounter with the alien. Everyone she knows is dead (including her grown daughter, we learn in the director's cut); her company strips her of her rank and job, holding her responsible for the destruction of her ship and not believing her story about the creature; and her sleep is plagued by nightmares. Everything about Ripley's life: her family, her friends, her job, and her peace of mind have been destroyed by her encounter.

When the company loses contact with the colony on the alien planet that Ripley warned was teeming with alien eggs, she's asked to accompany a team of Marines to investigate, with the offer her officer's rank will be reinstated. She refuses outright at first; why the hell would she ever willingly go back? But after another nightmare, she decides to go, realizing the chance to reclaim her life, confront her trauma, and obliterate the alien threat.

Naturally, the place is overrun and infested with aliens. The marines are quickly overwhelmed, picked off one at a time until only a handful remain, and Ripley takes charge, dealing with the scheming of slimy corporate goon Burke (Paul Reiser) and bonding with Newt, the sole survivor of the colony.

Ripley understands better than anyone what this little girl has gone through. She recognizes the trauma, and while she shields Newt as best she can (at one point, telling her to leave rather than see video footage of cocooned colonists), she doesn't condescend or dismiss her. She takes responsibility for - talking soothingly, cleaning her up etc. - but she also respects Newt, gives her a voice, and includes her.

When Newt is taken by the aliens, there's no question about it: Ripley immediately goes to save her. Consider how hesitant and afraid Ripley to even accompany the mission and how much cajoling and soul-searching it took for to finally agree. By the end, she's not going to let anything stand in her way to save Newt.

Ripley and Newt aren't the only characters we come to identify with. The marines are elevated as being more than just cannon fodder along for the ride. Cameron continues the series' trend of showing blue collar workers of the future. These are grizzled grunts, each with their own personalities and quirks, and they share a palpable camaraderie. They bust each other's balls, reference past missions, and have seen a lot together. 

Who can forget the blustering Pvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton), the tough Pvt. Vasquez (Jeanette Goldstein), the quiet, competent Hicks (Michael Behn), and the authoritative, no-bull Sgt. Apone (Al Matthews)? The director's cut takes well over an hour to get to the first big alien attack, and by then, we've seen the marines and have become invested in them. Even the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), whom Ripley regards with distrust and suspicion, emerges as a memorable, likable figure.

The scenes of alien attacks are exciting, visceral, and tense. Like the original creature, the creatures leap from the shadows to snatch their victims, but now they attack en masse. The first attack is an excellent example of buildup and editing as we cut back and forth between Ripley and others watching helplessly on video monitors as the creatures snatch the marines one by one inside their nest. 

The big battle occurs near the end, bathed in eerie red light, as the remaining marines make a last stand as the aliens pop out of the ceiling. I cannot stress the importance of the motion detector and how Cameron uses it to build suspense, its pulsing beep alerting the marines to incoming attacks they can't see.

Cameron further explores the alien life cycle, not content with just giving us more creatures to blast. The hive lifestyle is both fascinating and creepy, and the Queen Alien is a wonderfully realized creation, both awe inspiring and fearsome (Stan Winston proves yet again to be the master of creature effects). 

There's talk in the movie about how humans terraform planets to make them livable; turnabout is fair play because we see the aliens transform human structures into these weird, dark dwellings, coating the mechanical trappings with a strange, biological residue.

Cameron also plays on the expectations from the first film in a number of significant ways. In the first movie, the facehugger laid on a face with a tentacle wrapped around John Hurt's neck; here, two facehuggers stage an attack on Ripley and Newt, scurrying like spiders across the floor and leaping from the ceiling. 

As in Alien, one of the characters in an android, but unlike Alien, we know almost as soon as we meet Bishop that he is an "artificial person." Immediately, Ripley is suspicious of him, wondering if he'll do anything to jeopardize their lives for the good of the company. 

Meanwhile, the defining moments of the original, the chestburster scene, was such a shock. Any sequel would need to include its own version but find its own spin now that the surprise is gone. Cameron understands this. His chestburster sequence is not surprising and intense in its own. Instead of trying to catch the audience off guard with it, he presents it as the confirmation of a nightmare come true. 

Ripley, who has a chestburster nightmare early on in the movie, can only watch in horror as all her warnings, all her explanations, went unheeded. She watches video feed of a monster forcing its way of out of a doomed colonist. Ripley, in tears, forces herself to watch, only looking away she gets a good look at the ugly alien baby. She's reliving the worst trauma of her life, and that small touch is why the sequence works as more than a rehash. Ripley realizes the horrifying truth: the aliens are back, and things are about to get worse.