Fifty seven years after Ellen Ripley survived her disastrous ordeal her escape vessel is recovered after drifting across the galaxy as she slept in cryogenic stasis. Back on earth nobody believed her story about the Aliens on the planet LV-426. After the Company orders the colony on LV-426 to investigate however all communication with the colony is lost. The Company enlists Ripley to aid a team of tough rugged space marines on a rescue mission to the now partially terraformed planet to find out if there are aliens or survivors. As the mission unfolds Ripley will be forced to come to grips with her worst nightmare but even as she does she finds that the worst is yet to come.
Review
Seven years after barely surviving events on board the Nostromo in Ridley Scotts classic scifi horror ALIEN Sigourney Weaver reprised her role as Warrant Officer Ripley for one of the most compelling and criticallyacclaimed sequels of all time. Canadian director James Cameron had already struck gold with the Arnold Schwarzenegger starring vehicle THE TERMINATOR (1984) after his somewhat inauspicious feature film directorial debut with the longforgotten Dutchbacked PIRANHA II THE SPAWNING 3 years earlier. ALIENS would further cement Camerons growing reputation as a firstrate director of hightech fastpaced adrenalinepumping action thrillers from which there would normally be no letup once they got going.
When Ripley is rescued from drifting aimlessly through deep space she is horrified to learn that not only has she been asleep for 57 years but the planet on which she had encountered the original alien all that time ago has since been colonized. At first noone will heed her warnings or completely believe the story she gives at an official enquiry as to what happened to her and her fellow Nostromo crew members. But then contact is lost with LV426 and despite initially throwing Ripley "to the wolves" (as she herself puts in) The Company through representative Carter J. Burke (Paul Reiser) suddenly finds itself in a position of having to ask Ripley for help finally persuading her to return to the planet that still consumes her every nightmare as an advisor to a motley group of very tough colonial marines expecting this to be just another runofthemill "bughunt". But how wrong that assumption turns out to be!
I would argue that ALIENS far surpasses its celebrated predecessor in almost every aspect. Obviously the sheer spectacle of what is basically a Vietnam war movie in space is particularly aweinspiring the impressive sets the many excitinglystaged combat sequences the aliens themselves (interestingly enough although through fast cutting and appropriate camera placement it seems as though there are hundreds of aliens being blasted to kingdom come or else picking off the gungho marines one by one in reality no more than 6 aliens are ever seen in any one shot). But the human drama element of this sequel is also greatly heightened primarily by the introduction of "Newt" (wonderful little Carrie Henn in her only film role) who turns out to be the sole survivor of recent events on LV426 becoming a kindof surrogate daughter to Ripley which leads to several touching moments and gives the story a surprisingly effective emotional core in the midst of all the otherwise preeminent carnage.
Amongst the talented supporting players are Cameron regulars Michael Biehn (THE TERMINATOR THE ABYSS) and Bill Paxton (bit part in THE TERMINATOR TRUE LIES TITANIC) and Camerons punchy dialogue includes such suitably macho wisecracks as Hudson (Paxton) "Hey Vasquez have you ever been mistaken for a man" Vasquez (a pumpedup Jenette Goldstein) "No have you" Nominated for 7 Oscars including Weaver as Best Actress (again this confirms the general class on display as it is fairly rare for the Academy to recognize the acting qualities inherent in this type of predominantly actiondriven movie) the film went on to win for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Effects Editing. Further almost inevitable sequels followed in 1992 and 1997 but I prefer to think of the terrifying perils of Ellen Ripley as ending on this high note.