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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| HOW'S MY BREATH??!!! |
