Aliens (1986)

Directed by: James Cameron | 137 minutes | action, adventure, science fiction, thriller | Actors: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein, Al Matthews, Mark Rolston, Ricco Ross, Colette Hiller, Daniel Kash, Cynthia Dale Scott, Tip Tipping

Just because James Cameron has made only a handful of films and yet is regarded as one of the greatest action and spectacle directors ever, his films deserve a closer look. So is ‘Aliens’. This is, of course, primarily the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 ‘Alien’. But unmistakably we recognize in this busy action film the hand of the man who also brought us ‘The Terminator’ and later ‘Titanic’.

Just like its predecessor, the film starts off slow, but once Cameron has warmed up, ‘Aliens’ becomes a succession of pressured explosions and action scenes. The difference between ‘Aliens’ and other dime a dozen action movies, however, is that it remains thrilling from start to finish, and we can probably attribute this to Cameron anyway. Just like in the first ‘Alien’ film, the tension is often claustrophobic in nature, but where part 1 takes place in a large abandoned spaceship, ‘Aliens’ is set in the catacombs or rather ruins of a colony that is under attack en masse. by the aliens.

The title suggests that we are treated to a large mountain of monsters in this film, but nothing could be further from the truth: the Aliens themselves are very rarely in the picture and the tension comes from the threat of the nearby Aliens and the remaining crew members who know that they stand little chance against these fearsome beasts. The camera is constantly close to the actors’ skin and as a result, the tension continues to cut.

For those who are disappointed by the lack of screen time of the Aliens, a new Alien movie will be released at the end of 2004: ‘Aliens versus Predator’. It is to be feared that this will be an old-fashioned “shoot ’em up” in which the two popular space monsters will fight each other.
According to the makers, this film will be separate from the series, so it will not be a fifth part.

Maybe that’s a good thing, because then it would be a bad milking day. Now there remains a nice four-part, in which strikingly enough with each film the director has been given a free hand to tell an Alien film in his own way: Ridley Scott laid the foundation in the first, David Fincher did it in ‘Alien 3’ dark, Jean Pierre Jeunet turned out to be the odd one out, but James Cameron understood the matter he was dealing with best:
An Alien grabs you by the throat, and then doesn’t let go and leaves its traces in you permanently. Of all Alien movies, ‘Aliens’ achieves this effect perhaps the best.