Bug Hunt: Aliens

Boy you would think a hardcore James Cameron fan, I would have reviewed this movie by now. Hey gang! Welcome back to the blog. Y'know going through my writing reviews I noticed the total lack of this Action/SciFi film and it left me a bit surprised I never touched base on this movie. Picking up where the 1979 SciFi/Horror Ridley Scott film originated, this is the continuing story of Ellen Ripley and all the craziness she must endure. This is Aliens.

Rough pregnancy.

Directed by James Cameron fresh off of the success of The Terminator, the fate of Ripley, the lone survivor of the Nostromo with her encounter at LV-426 needs accounting. Also that deep freezing may be needed tending to. A deep salvage cargo run finds the escape pod from the Nostromo, finds vital signs on Ripley (Sigourney Weaver of Alien, Half Moon Street, Ghostbusters, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, Ghostbusters II, Dave, Be Kind Rewind, Avatar and The Defenders) and Jonesy so they have to bring her in safely. Imagine how dark a film it would be if they ejected her cryo pod or if we went disturbing sexploitation route. Hey it could have gone there. Not likely in a Cameron film but it could.

57 years have past since her cryo sleep, all her friends and family most likely have died, moved on or out of contact. For details on her daughter,...go play the game Alien: Isolation. Maybe find the cut scenes on YouTube. Someone has bound to have done that by now.

Fine bunch of bad asses!!!

Ripley gives her full accounting of what happened down to detonating the ship and representatives of the company, Weyland-Utani is not pleased. They remain skeptical to her accounts and give her a dressing down to the likes of Chuck Connors' Branded. Aging myself again. The colony that has been terraformed and mining there has seen no evidence of the creature Ripley described in all their surveys of the planet. I mean there is skeptical and there is plain rude. The lot of them needed a Terminator visit, car crash included.

Stripped of her pilot status she is stuck in the loading dock moving cargo. A few months later one of the company's mouthpieces Burke (Paul Reiser of Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II, Mad About You, Bye Bye Love, The Thing About My Folks, The Story of Us, Strange Relations, Funny People and Stranger Things 2) claims they will restore her flight status if she is a technical advisor on this mission to see the condition of the colony and its people.

Going in with a squad. Yeah one squad of Colonial Marines with the latest firepower and weaponry she should be just fine. With a heavy heart and hopes that they will exterminate the creatures, Ripley goes on the mission.

Momma looks grumpy

Lt. Gorman (William Hope of To Save the Children, The Saint, As Time Goes By, c-12: Final Resistance, Sword of Honour, xXx, Headhunter: Redemption, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Spiders 3D) and his combatants stand ready to investigate the colony after breakfast, weapons prep and mission debrief. Still love that Sgt. Apone (Al Matthews of Aliens, Superman III, Funny Money, The Comic Strip, The Apocalypse Watch and Aliens: Colonial Marines) was one of the first black men earning the rank of Sergant in the Vietnam war, so yelling at grunts was nothing new. With faces like Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton and Lance Henrikson, please appreciate I do not want to write out their entire lengthy filmography.

Still cracks me up that Schwartzenegger is the reason for Biehn and Paxton to look shredded like they did for the film. A few tips to beef up and stay stronger. Thanks Arnold!

No sooner has their drop ship landed and an armored personnel carrier is zooming about, the colony seems completely deserted with signs of re-inforced welding and small arms fire discharge. Yet no bodies.

The marines move in and are limited to using lighter weapons due to heading around the reactor. Yeah armor piercing rounds going through the reactor that is clearly thermonuclear could be...bad.

With minimal life signs the colonists are embedded in the walls, almost cocooned there. THERE WAS A FIRE FIGHT!!! Oh sorry. Wrong film.

Creatures start coming out of the walls attacking and dragging away marines and the rest have to leg it away. Ripley brings the APV in to their location and saves them.

With the need for a mass evac underway, the drop ship and its crew are maimed and blown up thanks to more of the creatures. Stuck on the planet, the marines barricade themselves, take watch and formulate a plan to escape. With the only resident not taken by the creatures, Newt (Carrie Henn of Aliens) explains they hunt at night so they need to stay indoors.

Now I am reviewing the special edition of Aliens, giving more looks at the colony prior to the infestation, the armament aside from pulse rifles and the M56 Smartguns with gyro mounts but it also shows Ripley's struggle in her new role as a dock worker and how life had slapped her in the face. And my personal favorite of big toys, the UA 571-C Automated Sentry Guns. 4 of these bad boys with display screen, scanners and 500 round drums.

Will the team survive until help arrives in 17 days? Can the creatures wipe them out?

So overall this version is superior to the theatrical release in the sense of wanting more story. It clocks out at 2 hours and 50 minutes instead of the theatrical 2 hours and 34 minutes. OoOo a whole 17 minutes more but it really makes the difference as far as story telling instead of just the straight up action sequences. I would recommend both versions. I just prefer the special edition.

HOW'S MY BREATH??!!!