Aliens

What’s the Story?

Revived from a coma-like state 50 years after aliens massacred her crew, Ellen Ripley ( Sigourney Weaver) is forced to take on menial spaceport jobs. When communications with the new colony are lost, a slimy Company executive (Paul Reiser) convinces her to go back to the planet where the massive battle took place. Ripley sets out with a heavily armed squad of interplanetary Marines, all itching for action. At first, the colony seems deserted, except for a cowering girl named Newt (Carrie Henn). But a little more searching -- and nightfall -- bring out the aliens; hundreds of jaw-snapping, fanged, acid-bleeding horrors, unafraid of guns, who cut through the panicked Marines. It's Ripley who has to take charge of the mission (and uncover yet more Company treachery) if any of them are going to get away alive.

Is It Any Good?

This sequel to Alien is bigger, faster, and way more amped-up than the moody, gothic-style interplanetary chills of the original. If it errs, it does so when director James Cameron insists on squeezing every last cliffhanger out of a nightmare scenario about being stranded in a remote place with a bunch of vicious, clawed creatures out to get you. Cameron conjures up a strong Vietnam metaphor (or US military misadventure of your choice) in the proud, gung-ho warriors charging into battle with their fancy hardware, only to get shredded to pieces by hordes of a primitive enemy that keeps on coming. And the film is more than a little hard to take seriously when Ripley, forsaking even body armor, slaps together a gun-flamethrower combo and charges alone into the alien nest.

The director really seems to go over the line with the manipulation, putting the screaming little (orphan) girl in hideous peril every time the opportunity arises, and conniving to make sure that opportunity always does. Commentators love to point out, though, that both Ripley and the queen alien are essentially driven by mothering instincts -- Ripley to find a replacement for the child she lost while is suspended animation -- and they serve as mirror images of each other.