Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
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Features
• Anamorphic
• Collector's Edition
• Color
• DVD-Video
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 18 July, 1986
DVD Release : 06 January, 2004 |
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Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) description
Aliens is one of the few cases of a sequel that far surpassed the original. Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, who awakens on Earth only to discover that she has been hibernating in space so long that everyone she knows is dead. Then she is talked into traveling (along with a squad of Marines) to a planet under assault by the same aliens that nearly killed her. Once she gets there, she finds a lost little girl who triggers her maternal instincts--and she discovers that the company has once again double-crossed her, in hopes of capturing one of the aliens to study as a military weapon. Directed and written by James Cameron, this is one of the most intensely exciting (not to mention intensely frightening) action films ever, with a large ensemble cast that includes Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, and Michael Biehn. Weaver defined the action woman in this film and walked away with an Oscar nomination for her trouble. --Marshall Fine |
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Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Alienated Observations
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There is a constant variable that one can always depend on when viewing a James Cameron movie. Much like death and taxes, it is pretty much required that one check their brain in at the door like a suitcase before boarding on one of his films. The continual pounding bombast will render you dumb anyway, in much the same way as being hit continually over the head with a blunt object would, and the caricaturing of the characters will to a moral certainty, not require any deep thinking to understand them as true life individuals, since they don't have any actual real substance or complexity to speak of. For many people, Aliens is one of the greatest film experiences of the entire 1980's, with its grand climatic design, powerful action sequences, and visually stunning special effects, it's easy to understand the appeal this film has on the masses. But for pain in the neck people like myself, who's brains don't simply shut of like a faucet, the experience is more problematic then it is profound. There is no great mystery to why this is the way it is, it's simply that some of us desire a bit of seduction with our media, and James Cameron only knows how to take by force. Since I can admit that I am the odd man out as far as Aliens mass appeal is concerned, I figured I would focus my review on building a grocery list of observation from the outside looking in. My oppinions may not be the most popular around, but hopefully they will make an interesting read.
The film starts as nearly 60 years pass, Ripley is found floating, the ship long blackened, her glass domed sleep capsule covered in a heavy wet silver dust. It is here that she is salvaged, and for a New York minute, there is actual mystery to the story.
At a docking station orbiting the Earth, she learns of her daughters death...Her daughter aged, she did not. After her recovery, she is humiliatingly court-martialed and subsequently stripped of her flight officers status because of blowing up her last star freighter. She learns of the colonists on the alien egg infested planet, becomes assertive and irate. In fact, her assertiveness would make a good drinking game, but only if you kept the drink to watered down beer and only drank it from a shot glass. I tried to keep track of how many times she acts self righteous and asserts her views on the other characters by force. With a good hour left to go in the film, I had already counted nearly 50 such incidents. Even though I did want to submit an actual number for this review, there is simply too many outburst to determine an actual factual count. Often her outbursts would happen in back to back sentences during the same on going conversation. I was uncertain about whether I should consider the whole conversation its self as one outburst, or single out each and every time she blew her top. Finally I decided to admit defeat and wave the white flag. Ripley is such a hot head, that a better drinking game might be to focus on the films snazzy one liners.
"They can bill me." Ripley
"Game over man!" Hudson
"Have IQ's just dropped sharply since I've been away?" Ripley
"Why don't you put her in charge?" Hudson
"She's dead okay, can I go now?" Newt
There is probably enough snazzy one liners to make an Irish dock worker pass out in your stair well, but that is still a better option then drinking yourself to death to Ripley's explosive behavior.
Once the court-martial is over she becomes a dock worker herself, but not for long, because she is informed that indeed, the colonists seemed to have vanished completely from the alien planet. Her flight officers job is dangled before her eyes like a carrot, but only if she goes back to the planet of the aliens as an advisor for a colonial marine force unit.
"I don't believe this!" she says incredulously.
That's funny, because neither did I. But I guess they wouldn't have a movie if the story fallowed actual logic. I'm sorry, but sending a traumatized person back to what caused the trauma in the first place, and on a space ship, after she blew up the last one she flew on, is one hell of a stretch. Also, it is one thing for her to go with them and orbit the planet, but she joins them on the combat drop to boot. And why is it that there is no one left on board the giant mother ship? Would they really send every person down on the drop ship and not even leave one single person to man the combat star freighter that is left double parked orbiting the planet? So much for strategy, I guess they don't mind placing all their eggs into one basket. There is an interesting comment from Sigourney Weaver on the disc two making of features, in which she states that James Cameron is a big believer in gun control. It is an odd statement when one takes into account that the combat mother ship which is designed by Cameron himself, looks like a giant pump action shot gun. Also, between Aliens, the Terminator films, and Total recall, he fired off enough rounds to win a major war.
Proud to be a Spunkmeyer.
When you are always right all the time and aggressively show it, the forces of good give you what you are lacking most. Not in real life mind you, but in skewed all explained to you for-shadowed pay off movie logic. In this case, Ripley was pining for her long lost daughter and presto! She gets an instant replacement daughter just like that. It's the Spunkmeyer's of the world that don't get any second chances. In fact, if you are in a James Cameron film, and your character name happens to be Spunkmeyer, then you are too much of a dork to even get to have an onscreen death scene.
Building better worlds...Same lousy mouse traps.
In the extended version of Aliens, Hudson, played by Bill Paxton, goes on a rant about all the nifty things his weapon can do.
"Check it out! Independently targeting particle beam tactical smart missles...Check it out! Phase plasma pulse riffles...Check it out! Sonic electronic ball breakers...etc."
Yeah right Bill, but when it comes down to it, there is nothing advanced about the weapons that they are using from the ordinances that we currently have now. Here we have a Sci-Fi premise that is so futuristic that space travel is a common practice like riding on a Grey Hound bus. The human race has colonized possibly hundreds of planets, and we have been mining alien worlds for mineral and ore for centuries. Hyper sleep has been in use for God knows how long, and machines have been built that can process an entire planets atmosphere and make it breathable for humans in mere decades. Yet, in all this advancement, we have the same lousy mouse traps and clunky flack vests and helmets.
Did you hear the one about Columbus asking The Arawak Indians for directions?
Also of interest, is the fact that Hudson makes an illegal alien joke to a very stereotypical hispanic caricature named Vasquez ( Jenette Goldstein ), which in the context of this futuristic setting, means that Hudson is cracking 500 year old jokes. As you can see from my above sentence about Columbus, such a joke would be logically long outdated, and is thus out of context in Aliens.
Hicks and Ripley sitting in a tree.
Where James Cameron is masterful at depicting combat and action, he is surprisingly inept at knowing how to flatter the female form with his camera work. Sigourney Weaver is an actress that stands nearly 6'1", with legs all the way up to her shoulders, and yet, somehow, someway, he manages to make her look dumpy in her only panty clad moment in the entire picture. Hey, I have to hand it to old james, because I doubt that I could pull that feat off even if I tried. With the lack of actual sex appeal throughout this feature, Cameron, not surprisingly resorts to weapons and armor as his ownly means of sexual expression.
"Where do you want it?" Ripley says seductively to Hicks ( Michael Beihn ) and Apone ( Al Matthews ), while in full body fork lift, and carrying a huge crate.
But it is with Hicks that Ripley has her real flirtations, and in this obvious way, we now have our family unit of mommy, daddy, and child in tact, albeit, all with different Christian names. What is so comical about this flirtation sequence, is that it revolves around Hicks weapon. I am sure that some of you know the weapon prayer that was used in Full Metal Jacket " This is my weapon, there are many like it but this one is mine...", well, when I did my stint in the service, we use to have that prayer hanging up in the armory in its entirety. I use to get a kick out of reading it to myself and replacing the word Weapon with Penis. It's a childish game I know, but so is the courtship between Ripley and Hicks.
Ripley, while holding Hicks weapon. "Show it all to me."
Ripley "What'll I do?"
Hicks, while leaning into the weapon. "It'll kick some."
Hicks "Get another one in quick, slap it in hard, You're ready to rock and roll."
Ripley "What's that?"
Hicks "I don't think you want to mess with that."
Ripley "You started this, show me everything...I can handle myself."
Hicks "Yeah, I've noticed."
Caricature development.
Unlike real life, the characters in Aliens are completely readable. There is zero ambiguity to their motivations, likes or dislikes. Everything they are, feel, or think, is warn without mystery right on their sleeves, and as such, we know who is mad at who and why. In an attepmt to hide the fact that the invented people are two dimensional, Cameron gives some of them tiny moments of redemption, and in one case, has one of them act pitiful. It is Hudson who acts like a baby, but this is not to show actual traits of human complexity, but is strictly for comic relief. The sole purpose for Hudson's character to even exist in the film in the first place, is to give the audience members somebody to laugh at. Hudson later redeems himself by fighting heroicly to the death while outnumbered by hordes of aliens. LT. Gorman, played by William Hope, is hated by Vasquez for choking in the line of action, but of course redeems himself in her eyes so that they could both die together as side character martyrs. Likewise Bishop ( Lance Heriksen ), redeems himself by proving to Ripley that some androids can be trusted. Of course it's never a good thing to be one of those characters that prove themselves in any film structured around obvious for-shadowing plot devices, especially when James Cameron is the writer and director of it. Vasquez and Gorman blow up, Hudson gets swarmed by aliens, and Bishop gets ripped in half by the queen alien. And if you are a smarmy little weaseling rat like Carter Burke ( Paul Reiser ), then you have to look like one, act like one, think like one, and talk like one. If only real life were so obvious. Ultimately it is the handling of the characters that bothers me most about Cameron's films. It is the lack of actual genuineness of the caricatures, and their predestined evident behavior that I find fallacious beyond redemption.
For even if we examine a common behavior sydrome like passive aggressiveness, it would carry with it a long list of bevaviors that would not show in a direct readable way. Things like fear of dependency, fear of intimacy, obstructionism, fear of competition, feeling victomized, sulking, making excuses and lying, harboring ill feelings for those they depend on, procrastination are just some of the complexities that exist with passive aggressive behavior. I know that Aliens is just a croud pleaser, but it could of been a much deeper and more satisfying one had any real human behavior been utilized, and not just plot device and comic relief behavior.
The Alien franchise is typical of retreads. With all the Lovecraft like mystery in the original, it is no wonder that I rate it a near perfect five on my scale. There are a few gripes, most notably the fact that the alien could grow so big so fast without a food source, but at least it remains mysterious, and most of the characters have motivations that are hidden. It is also a film that manages to stay suspenseful, not only for what it decides to show, but just as importantly for what it doesn't show. In this way, the original let the audience members fill in the blanks with their own imagination. It is ironic that when I consider each installment of the alien films after original, that I find myself docking a point off of each one from its predecessor. Aliens, I rate as a 4, Alien 3, a 3 ( and I don't own it ). Lastly, part four in the franchise I rate as a 2, an have only bothered to watch that installment one time. I can give Aliens its due for almost pulling off the upset and outdoing the original, but at last, its very attept at agrandizent sealed its fate as the weaker movie. The overall lack of subtlety, mystery, and believable humanity, ultimately hindered what is one of the better designed Sci-Fi thrillers from being a five star movie in my book.
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Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) dvd movie.