My Review of James Cameron's 'Aliens'

This is a review of James Cameron's 1986 science fiction masterpiece 'Aliens' starring Sigourney Weaver.

This time, it's War! This is the slogan for Aliens, Cameron's follow up to Ridley Scott's brilliant Alien. To sum up Cameron's version, an astronaut named Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is discovered on a derelict space ship after being asleep for 40 years in frozen hibernation. She is revived and asked to be a part of a reconnaissance expedition consisting of Marines to a planet overrun with alien creatures. And I'll stop right here for anyone who has yet to see the film. What I will say is this: imagine a bunch of jingoistic Marines packing the latest in high-tech weaponry turned loose and given carte blanche to kill. Throw into this mix a couple of mean b*tches trying to protect their babies, flamethrowers, nuclear bombs, and industrial-grade exoskeleton suits and you can imagine the rest. Absolute bad-ass! Can you imagine how this film would have been if it were done with today's technologies in cgi?

But the fact that these technologies weren't available is what makes the film so good, damn good. Computers can't replicate the organic feeling and weight of real textures. The aliens in this film look better than the cgi aliens in the later films because of the organic-hand-made craftmanship that went into creating them, something I have yet to see duplicated in a 3d environment. Live action and cg together is never seamless to the eye, which can't be fooled. Cgi looks good because it's hyper-real and placed beside live elements, cgi comes off as cartoonish and weightless.

Aliens is Cameron unleashed,to date, his 2nd best (and most original) action film behind the original Terminator. I prefer the special edition to the theatrical version. Normally when you see what was left out of the original it's justified; in this case, it wasn't. The added scenes add even greater depth to Ripley's character and her maternal relationship with the orphan girl, Newt. This version also plays up the gung-ho mentality of the marines a lot more than the theatrical version. Looking at this film now, one gets the sense that Cameron was looser, having more fun doing it than he did directing Avatar, which had such a ridiculous budget attached with it. Like Jackson was just before he made Thriller, looser and not under a lot of pressure, having fun. Now, every film Cameron does will have to be bigger than his last film.

Anyways, Aliens is one of those films that will never look cheesy no matter how old it gets. Still one of my favorite action films.