Aliens

Review

Aliens is the 1986 sequel to the one of, if not the most, iconic creature features and most definitely the most iconic sci-fi horror film, Alien. I absolutely loved Alien, I thought it was fantastic so I had high hopes for Aliens but it didn’t entirely pan out for me.

Aliens happens about 50 years after the original when a colony that was erected on the planet with the xenomorph goes dark. Military is sent out to figure out what’s going on and Ripley is invited as an expert advisor. The military unit starts out joking about the whole situation but once they start getting picked off, Ripley gets dragged in to try and survive while saving as many people as possible. The movie ends with Ripley, Newt, and one of the military guys escaping as they blow up the planet.

The biggest highlight of this film is obviously Ripley. She’s a girlboss and by the end of this movie she had solidified herself as my favorite final girl over Sidney Prescott which is genuinely wild to me but Ripley was just that good.

I again I really like the setting throughout the film. There’s something about industrial and somewhat grimy sci-fi aesthetics that just means the absolute world to me. It definitely has something to do with Mass Effect since environments like Omega and Noveria are so interesting and industrial and it just is so beautiful. Any-who all this to say visually this movie really worked for me.

I think the xenomorphs looked super cool in this one, the way that they moved was super intimidating and they felt so much more alive than the original did since we didn’t get to see the original move a lot to protect the illusion of the monster. I really loved the design of the xenomorph queen, I think she looked absolutely fabulous and so ridiculously scary, HER CLAWS???????

This movie kept up the good work when it came to it’s sound and lighting design and overall suspense. I’m writing this review almost a over a week after the fact so I don’t remember anything in specific but the fact that I pointed it out means that it was good enough to notice and it held up well in comparison to the original.

As for my gripes, it’s basically just that I hated all the characters except Ripley and Newt. All of the military people were so absolutely insufferable and I didn’t feel a thing when they died other than mild amusement. I saw two Bill Paxton movies and I just find him completely insufferable to the nth degree and this movie is just absolutely killed by his presence.

I also wasn’t a big fan of the composition changes they made to the score but honestly that’s just small nitpicky beans.

All of this to say, everything that this movie did good, the original did just as good and everything this movie didn’t do well, the original did amazingly. For wider audiences, I can see why Aliens is more popular, it’s more action-y than the original and I think it has a more palatable ending but I wish it was more similar to the original, maybe I would have liked it more then.