I really can't think of another movie that is both a fantastic Sequel and a reboot at the same time.
I know that sounds weird to some people but when you think about it. Every single one of these Alien films after the original alien is in some ways a weird reboot or just simply a retelling.
Especially this one.
We have the same setup or a bunch of people who encounter the aliens, they don't know what they're doing with them, they end up in a catastrophe with the aliens get away and there's a Shifty company behind the background and knows more about the aliens and wants to bring them back for some form of weaponization.
Only in this film it's all done slapdash and quickly. If the original alien was a slow simmer than this is an immediate boil.
Which is strange to me as this movie is longer than the original. 2 hours and 30 minutes and it's not like the movie should be trimmed down or anyting.
They use their time Incredibly well.
Rather that be quick set ups for action scenes or dramatic set pieces set with piercing bits attention that end in yet more action.
For this movie has it scares just like the original only a more for the jump-scare gimmick. And I'm usually not a fan of that but it does work out really well here. Mainly because this is not a horror film directions to cook so the occasional bit of Horror mingle quite well with the adrenaline of pure unadulterated Mayhem.
And I forgot just how ridiculous this movie gets. At first we started out with just the Marines running around and occasionally shooting the aliens but then we get a scene of Ripley just standing in a room facing off the queen and a bunch of other aliens then burning their eggs before running away in a panic. All while on the clock to get away from an atomic reactor that's about to blow the entire space Colony Sky High. It's absolutely ridiculous and it works really well. and it feels just like the original alien with the self-destruct sequence. Only not technically is good.
That's the one sad thing I can say about aliens. No matter how much this movie tries, no matter how good the action gets or just how fun all the characters are. It still comes in second place to the original.
In a lot of ways this is really the first alien movie as far as most people are concerned. This is the one that gives us the xenomorph Queen, it tells us who the company is, give us a more clear-cut view of what they're doing and the Very nature about these aliens work.
And it's just a generally more accessible movie to a mainstream audience.
Not to say that people didn't like Alien. Of course they did. But alien realised more on build-up and a sense of dread around an eerie atmosphere.
Where is Aliens has simalour aspects but would rather just give a guy a big gun and say go hog-wild.
Even Ripley gets in on the fun and starts becoming something of an action hero.
Which is something of a misconception with the original movie.
All these people had this weird idea that Ripley was a big-time hard ass when in reality she was just a lucky person who was able to manipulate around the alien and get off the ship.
It's only really in the last 5 minutes of the movie that she has any sort of heroic deed.
Otherwise she's just part of the crew like everybody else. A little bit more forceful and willing to fight than the others but not by much.
So watching this movie again got me thinking about all the different little mini Stories the Alien franchise likes to do. Really they just do the same story again and again, Because, well it works.
Having a bunch of people just trying to survive several or even just one alien can make for a really entertaining story. Especially if you put them in the right setting and give your characters a little Flair.
But now they've done this like six or seven times over it has become incredibly apparent that they really don't know what else to do with the alien franchise.
And I figured there's one story left you could tell. It would be incredibly difficult to go off and it would probably be alienating to a lot of people but I think it has some Merit.
To make a survival story about the little girl Newt who was able to survive on this colony planet for several weeks on her own as she watches everyone she loves and knows dies around her from an invasion of monster creatures.
I think there's a lot of good potential you could have with this.
You have to have a child actor that was actually worth a damn and a director and set designer worth their salt in creativity.
But if the planets aligned and you got it all in the right spot it is possible you could make the single best alien story out there.
What's more fascinating and horrifying than a small child losing their sense of security and reality around them as a literal demons rip their would apart only to be saved by a group of Marines who fall victim to the same fate you just witnessed.
And of course the whole thing becomes even more dour when you realise that she dies in the next movie.
In fact Alien 3 kind of puts a really dark spin on this whole movie.
Knowing that no matter what Ripley does here, it's all kind of pointless in the end. That might be a metaphor for the entire alien franchise come to think of it.
Okay so I have one real nitpick with this movie and one silly one.
The silly nitpick is: Why didn't anybody find the spaceship for the remnants of the aliens after the original contact by the Nostimo.
The movie implies that a bunch of search teams and investigators searched planet several times but nobody ever found signs of anything. I think it'd be pretty hard to miss a giant ship like that from the original movie.
Especially considering it wasn't even that far from where they set up their colonisation station in the second flick.
I guess you can make the excuse that the company covered a lot of that stuff up and was just lying about not knowing what was there.
Legitimate nitpick: Why was there no-body on the orbiting spacecraft when the military went to investigate the colony? You think you'd keep somebody on the main ship just to radio in or radio out in case something went wrong.
Instead of shipping every person you have down to the surface. It's not even like it would have affected plot of the overall story that much. You still have it where the main ship can't get proper contact with the ground troops or they simply State they have to call in reinforcements cuz there's nothing they can do given that there'd only be one or two people on the ship.
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