Feature
30 Years of Aliens
Killer Queen
♦ Tripwire’s Contributing Writer Alasdair Stuart commemorates the 30th birthday of James Cameron’s Aliens and looks at its continued impact…
Aliens is 30 this year and it’s ageing very well. James Cameron’s real ticket to the big time, the movie’s path to existence is as storied and torturous as Ripley’s history with her blank-faced, multi-mouthed nemeses. Cameron was initially offered the job based on his script for The Terminator. The two movies ended up being wrapped around one another in pre-production and Cameron would later admit he viewed some elements of The Terminator as a ‘dry run’ for Aliens.
Even when Aliens finally entered production it was beset with problems. Cameron went into bat for Weaver in a last minute contract dispute with the studio and clashed repeatedly with the UK crew over their wildly different work ethic. It’s an amazing story, and arguably the only one where a tea trolley became the catalyst for a mutiny. Rebecca Keegan’s The Futurist (LINK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Futurist-Life-Films-James-Cameron/dp/0307460320), on Cameron’s career, has the full details. Likewise, I’d recommend checking out the episode of Dana Buckler’s excellent How Is This Movie? On Aliens (LINK: http://hitmpodcast.podomatic.com/entry/2016-03-21T19_32_01-07_00) and David Chen’s primer on the production woes at Slashfilm (http://www.slashfilm.com/how-james-cameron-put-down-a-mutiny-on-the-set-of-aliens/).
The arduous production process just makes the final product all the more impressive. Three decades in, Aliens has become part of the DNA of western science fiction cinema. Cameron, David Giler and Walter Hill wrote a movie that wrapped elements of the then nascent cyberpunk genre around Vietnam war metaphors and Starship Troopers to create something that’s become the default. Countless dozens of movies that followed it have done corporate malice in deep space, old battered spacecraft and blue collar crews with their backs against the wall. Weyland Yutani, or their ghosts, are everywhere now.
The reason for that is clear from the first frame of Aliens, as the Nostromo’s lifeboat slides into view. This is a world that feels real, that balances on the razor line between the idealised future of ’70s and ‘80s SF, and the mundane reality of what we get and what we got. Interstellar travel is a reality but one driven by commerce, we’ve moved out into space but brought all our worst qualities with us as well as our best. The final frontier has a substantial dollar value and boldly going towards that is everything.
That worldbuilding goes much deeper than the movie’s design. It’s scattered with countless grace notes in the performance and direction that tell you so much more. William Hope’s arrogant, educated Gorman doesn’t go into the field with his grunts but leads them incompetently from a digital nest of signals. Gorman’s marines are a ridiculously engaging group of blue-collar misfits who feel like you’ve known them for years. Hicks sleeps his way through combat drops, Hudson whines and preens and Vasquez’s relentless determination and professionalism defines her far more than her intimidating physical presence. You feel like you’ve watched movies starring these characters before and that gives the film’s near-total body count even more emotional weight. Like its descendant, Event Horizon, Aliens plays like the surprisingly dark finale to a trilogy we never got to see the rest of. And, like Event Horizon, it gains much of its strength from that.
The rest comes from just how good every element of the movie is. The design work is some of Syd Mead’s finest (The fact the Sulaco resembles a massively scaled up pulse rifle is an especially nice touch) while the cast is uniformly great. Biehn should have been a massive star after his turns here and in The Terminator while Paul Reiser’s Carter J Burke is the archetypal plausible corporate scumbag. Jeanette Goldstein’s steely Vasquez is another should-have-been star-making turn but it’s Weaver, Lance Henriksen and Carrie Henn who you remember. Henn, who only ever acted here, is superb as Newt. Determined, traumatised and despite her horrible experiences still a child she’s never a victim and always a survivor and the film is at its best when it’s elegantly sketching in her position as Ripley’s surrogate daughter. Likewise, Henriksen’s wonderful, sweet turn as Bishop lifts every scene he’s in. Softly spoken, reticent and not-quite-human he builds on Ian Holm’s turn as Ash in the original movie to great and subversive effect.
But it’s Weaver who stays with you. Who has to stay with you. She’s an actress who is physically incapable of turning in bad work but this remains a career highlight for her. Angry, horrified and absolutely unable to back down Ripley is often cited as one of the greatest female characters in modern science fiction or cinema. That’s not true. She’s one of the greatest characters, full stop. While later movies would take her arc in dark, interesting and not always successful directions, she’s at the top of her game here. This is Ripley not so much facing her demons down as beating the shit out of them with a power loader, forcing everything that’s hurt her into one moment and doing her best to end it and move on. Weaver shows us it all, from her cautious friendship with Hicks and instant imprinting on Newt to moments of blank-eyed, numbed terror. The standout though is a moment just before the mission to the atmosphere processor goes south. The marines find a surviving colonist seconds before the alien in her chest bursts free. The camera cuts, again and again, back to Ripley. She’s pale, soaked with sweat, breathing heavily, tears streaming down her face as she clutches her chest. She’s feeling the pain of the woman on screen, she’s powerless to stop it but she is not looking away. That’s the entire character in one silent, wrenching moment.
Cameron’s direction brings all of this front and centre and never loses sight of it. This is a fascinating movie to watch in a post-Avatar world as it now presents as the first of three peaks in Cameron’s career to date. While Avatar remains his most technically audacious movie and The Abyss the movie that saw him begin to transition from physical to CGI work, Aliens occupies a different position. Every shot, every effect, has weight and reality to it that Avatar never quite matches. This world feels lived in because it is. This world feels real because it is. There’s a pleasing, chunky functionality to it that you can see elements of in Avatar but that never quite comes to the fore. Whether this Cameron is the best incarnation of his directorial style remains to be seen but it’s certainly one of the most accessible. Here’s hoping the long run up to Avatars 2 thru 4 gives him a chance to combine this welcome physicality with the ephemeral beauty of Pandora.
There’s also some wit and cheek to his direction too that only becomes apparent with a couple of decades distance. The first half of the movie features almost no aliens at all. The frantic evacuation from the atmosphere processor is sold not on special effects but on actors and the panicked reactions of the marines with very occasional shots of what’s killing them. Even the excellent robo sentry sequence is ultimately just mostly muzzle flashes, gunfire and Hicks panicking as he reads off ammo counters. For all the occasional criticism of the movie for dumbing down the alien, the first half is tonally very similar to Alien. The Xenomorphs are a constant presence without ever being on screen. Then, when the legions of them descend in the second half it feels all the more effective.
Aliens is that rarest of cinematic beasts, a movie that, decades after release, has actually got better. The performances, the direction, the design and the script all combine to create a piece of entertainment that’s eerily close to its central monster; perfectly designed, endlessly adaptable and relentless. If, somehow, you’ve never seen it then do so. If it’s been a while, then watch it again. It’s still that good.
ALASDAIR STUART
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