The first Friday of every month marks the screening of the Midnight Movie at the Bagdad Theater here in Portland, and as I'm sure you can guess last Friday's movie was Aliens (1986). However, as it turns out, the 35mm print they planned to screen for us had been broken by the last movie house that had it. As a result our fearless leaders/hosts/sponsors Cort and Fatboy had to put in a phone call to 20th Century Fox and secure permission to show a digital copy of the film. Which they did. So instead of watching an old, scratched, faded, 25 year old theatrical cut, we were treated to a crisp, remastered Blu-ray Directors Cut. And let me tell you, that is the way that movie is meant to be seen.
I have long since been a fan of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) ever since my father introduced it to me when I was 16 years old. It's a film with atmosphere like no other, building quiet tension while it slowly draws you in. The setting simply and effectively removes the possibility of escape from the titular monster and it's design, with acid for blood, requires more intelligence to deal with than a run of the mill horror villain. It took the fantastic idea of space travel and made it seem more relatable, by giving us a crew of plain spoken men and women doing the job for the same reason anyone does a job, to pay the bills. Combining that with H. R. Giger's art designs and the wonderfully thrilling sequences Ridley Scott is able to deliver and there's no wondering why it became such a classic.
But when dad sat me down to show me Aliens, he did so prefacing it with something along the lines of, "now this is the 80's action movie sequel they did to it." It wasn't that he didn't like the film, nor was it that I didn't like once we had finished it, but to be fair the description isn't exactly wrong. I had gone in with this preconceived notion of it, and walked away satisfied, but not amazed. And whenever I would rewatch it with friends or catch it on TV, it was always good for a watch, but I never held it in the same esteem as I held the original. But sitting in a crowded, hushed (mostly) theater with a top quality version of Aliens playing on the big screen forced me to really watch the movie like I hadn't before.
I'm sure we all know the set up, Ripley is recovered from stasis 57 years after the events of Alien and tells her employers at Weyland-Yutani about the creature that killed her crew. The company, of course, doesn't believe her and takes away her spaceship-being-on privileges. But when a colony on planet LV-426 mysteriously stops transmitting, Ripley is called into action to investigate with the aid of the U.S. Colonial Marines and, slimy lawyer, Carter Burke.
The movie doesn't really get started until our group of brave men and women wake up from hibernation on board the Sulaco as the head toward the colony. Ripley is introduced to Hudson, Hicks, Vasquez and the rest of the Colonial Marines along with Gorman, their CO, and Bishop, their android XO. What immediately struck me as noteworthy was that while each possible red shirt is given a distinct personality, we're never forced to listen to Hudson talk about how he has a baby on the way back home, or how Hicks can't wait to get back to Earth and watch the sunrise while enjoying a nice cold beer. We're never forced to become attached to any one of these people with contrived dialogue in this scene or any other. All throughout the film each character is defined by his or her actions and the other characters treat them accordingly. It's a nice change of pace from the lazy writing we get in modern films.
Something else I hadn't noticed before was the brilliant use of sound in the film. The soundtrack is used economically in such a way that tension isn't manipulated or ruined with musical stings, but that's not all. A good deal of the information the characters get in the film isn't conveyed in dialogue but through the blips and whirs of the motion trackers the marines carry. It's introduced early on in the film and in no time the audience is able to pick up which noises mean the coast is clear and which ones mean move your ass, so that by the time Ripley has to track down Newt in the processing station, every turn down every corridor is understood.
Speaking of Newt, some could complain that throwing a little girl in danger was a cheap trick to gain the audiences apprehension, and I'd find that hard to argue against. But the instinctual relationship that develops between Ripley (as a mother without a daughter) and Newt (a daughter without a mother) I find to be the interesting emotional core of the film. Instead of suffering through a Ripley/Hicks romance subplot we're treated to something with depth.
Once I began to realize that I actually cared about these characters beyond the fact that they were characters in an action movie, I realized the action sequences just got better. This is truly where James Cameron shines as a director, beyond the fact that he's a man with vision, he's a man that can direct some truly intense action sequences. My personal favorite being the scene with Newt and Ripley trapped in the medical lab with the facehuggers. Things just go from bad to worse as each character tries to defend themselves from infection until help arrives, and they do so intelligently until Michael Biehn bursts through the window to save the day in a very Big Damn Heroes moment.
I couldn't complete this post without mentioning the iconic final showdown between Ripley in the cargo-loader and the alien queen. Some may see this as blasphemy but it's not exactly my favorite scene in the film. The classic, "Get away from her you bitch!" is a crowning moment of awesome to be sure, but the fight that ensues is somewhat slower and a little more "lumbering" than the rest of the film, so it becomes rather noticeable. But I take the good with the bad and love it for what it is.
I know I'm late coming to the party, and saying that Aliens is a great film is nothing new. But I found something new in something I thought I knew fairly well, and felt compelled to share. If you don't know the film very well or think of Avatar as James Cameron's best work, give Aliens another watch and really pay attention to the details, because they hold up well. It's the kind of movie that Hollywood tries to remake again and again but ends up failing each time because they don't understand the subtleties of it. And if you don't get that, then just like me, you just don't get what makes it great.
