Aliens

Aliens is one of those movies that comes around once in a lifetime and is always fresh to watch.  I’m not talking about special effects but the whole package has never been beaten.  Let me tell you the story.

It is a sequel to Alien and in the film it starts where the spaceship that Ripley was floating through space in the last film has been finally recovered many years later.  On returning to speak to her superiors is informed of her suspension from being a pilot. 

They later find out that a base has become silent and that they want her to go with an elite squad of soldiers.  If there is something there, she can advise them what to do.  Ripley agrees only if they go to planet to kill whatever’s there and not to study. 

She gets introduced to the posse; Hick, Hudson, Vasquez and a load of other people.  The film has this real macho American attitude that really seems to grasp the image the world has about American soldiers.

They land on the planet and start to search the base.  After some time they stumble across a little girl who calls herself Newt.  After that, the soldiers make their way down to the next level.  Whilst Ripley, Newt and the sergeant stay back in the personal vehicle.  They get down to a point in the corridor when a women attached to the organic walls tell the soldiers the kill her, when an alien punchers through her chest and get flamed to death.  What the soldiers don’t notice are the aliens watching and they start to move.  The next minute all hells breaking loose and after watch a few of the soldiers die, Ripley decides to drive the vehicle into rescue the survivors. 

They decide to call for the drop carrier to come and pick the up.  As the drop carrier leaves, the co pilot notices a sticky substance and tries to alert the pilot but she never hears it.  When the door to the pilot opens, it’s not the co pilot but an alien.  The ship loses control and crashes into the ground nearly killing Hudson.  He starts going into a rant; “Well that's great, that's just f**kin' great man. Now what the f**k are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man... That's it man, game over man, game over! What the f**k are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?”  For more quotes here’s a link. 

So after a while Newt mentions that it’s getting dark and they mostly come out in the dark, mostly.  They make their way back into the base; With Gorman unconscious as a result of falling equipment in the APC, Hicks (the ranking soldier) assumes command. Over Burke's protests, he agrees with Ripley that levelling the colony from space with a thermonuclear weapon is the best way to handle the situation, as there is no one left to save and it is the only way to be certain that the aliens will be destroyed. Before they can be evacuated by the drop ship, the 2-person crew of the drop ship (which was on the ground on standby) is killed during flight by a stowaway xenomorph, with the result that the vessel crashes into the generator complex. With no alternative, the survivors return to the operations headquarters and set up a defensive position using automated machine guns recovered from the remains of the APC and barricading all the entry points/doors by welding them closed.

A major xenomorph attack begins; their advance is barely halted by the automated tracking guns and so the barricades remain unbreached for the time being, but the aliens are still out there probing for an entry-point, when Bishop points out that the atmospheric generator is damaged (as a result of gunfire from the earlier battle and/or the drop ship crashing into it) and that it, along with the rest of the complex, will be destroyed in four hours by a nuclear blast. To escape, the survivors must bring down the other drop ship from the Sulaco. Bishop volunteers to crawl down a pipe to the transceiver station at the other end of the colony complex in order to activate the ship and remotely fly it down to the surface. He leaves them and goes down a tube to get to the remote satellite. 

Ripley and Newt spend the night in the medical bay, which unbeknown to them has had the doors locked and the camera is switch of the Burke.  (Thank god for the internet, over wise I would never remember any of these peoples names.)  The aliens that Burke must of left in the room try to attack Ripley and Newt and the marines only become aware of what’s going on when the alarms goes off.  Ripley tells Hicks of Burkes plan to get the through customs by using Newts body and her own.  The rest of them would have storage accidents on the way home.  Just as they decide to waste Burke the power goes off.  A few minutes latter Hicks starts to see movement on his motion detector but no one can see anything until Ripley looks up at the false ceiling and Hicks takes a look and then starts shooting.  Burke locks himself in the next room, whilst the marines do their best to fight off the aliens. Eventually some of them get away and the next door is locked.  Burke thinking himself smart doesn’t realise the danger he’s in until the alien kills him. 

They go through a series of air ducts where Vasquez and a revived Gorman kill themselves with a grenade after being cut off and surrounded. The resulting explosion causes Newt to slip off of a large ventilation fan, slide down a long air duct and into a reservoir, where an alien captures her.

Ripley and Hicks go to find Newt but Hicks gets injured and left with the android dude. She tell the android dude that they are no leaving.  She makes her way back down to where she thinks Newt might be and on reaching her bug, finds that the alien or Newt causes the watch to drop off.  Ripley finally tracks Newt down and blows up all these eggs and escapes.  She make her way back to the surface where the ship is missing and becomes despondent, until it appears at the last moment and the get the hell out of there.

Whilst back on the main ship.  She speaks to Bishop and tells him what a great job he did until the alien that they thought had been destroyed, rips Bishop apart and the tries to kill Newt. Ripley gets a robot type suit and attacks the alien.  Eventually Ripley gets the alien into a landing bay and opens the doors to let the thing out.  After it takes a hint and dies, Ripley shut the bay doors and then puts the two survivors into the deep space fridges.

The trouble with giving a review of a film is that it’s difficult to convey the music that this film uses to give a sense of tension or the dialogue that the marines use all the time.  What I would say is this is one of my favourite films.