Add an "S" to a classic and you'll get another classic...

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2018)

Ridley Scott had set the bar so high with his groundbreaking "Alien" No one thought a sequel would be a good idea. Those were the times...
Why a sequel anyway? The first Alien was history, Ellen Ripley was the lone (human) survivor and getting back in that doomed rock wasn't the smartest move. Much more the film was a modern horror classic and any attempt to recreate the claustrophobia of the Nostromo would have induced more déja-vu than jump scares. Paraphrasing the original tag-line, a sequel would've been "'Jaws 2' in a spacecraft."
But Canadian director James Cameron wasn't a newcomer in the mid-80's. "Terminator" had thrilled the audiences with a simple concept: an indestructible machine set to kill a girl next door (literally), a nightmarish ride with no other option than fighting and the sweet Linda Hamilton turning into a match to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Basically, Cameron told a story with a familiar David vs. Goliath structure and character's arc, his 'Alien' was the Terminator and his 'Ripley' was Sarah Connor.
And I think I can recreate the whole brainstorming that shaped the sequel. I guess the first question echoed the purpose of the sequel: what is scarier than an alien? Two aliens or how about a colony, or how about a human colony invaded by the aliens who need human for incubation purposes. Then all you have to do is find a way to justify how the colonization of the « alien » planet took place without taking Ripley's warning into consideration. Then all you have to do is let her drift for as many years as it takes, even if it means losing her family, her daughter... and she might find a 'daughter' figure in her mission. Of course, they'll need Ripley who's the only human being to have encountered the Alien, but since she's the only one to know how dangerous they are, how about spicing it up with a corporate prick who'd love to bring an Alien to Earth... do we need a treacherous android again ?
See, the most complex stories can originate from a simple question which happens to be the right one. At the end, we have the plot that became a staple of the action genre, a group of hardened soldiers of various experiences and levels of bravery assigned to a supposedly routine mission (a 'bug hunt') with only two people who know the real stakes, Ripley obviously, and Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) as the slimy executive who managed to make himself more detestable than any Alien. It's a smart demarcation from the original where the secondary villain wasn't human (by the way, I wonder if it's a coincidence that 'Burke' is the sound of disgust in French).
The casting also includes Michael Biehn the unsung hero of "Terminator", the late Bill Paxton as the easily-freaking-out one, William Hope as the inexperienced Lieutenant, Lance Herrikssen as Bishop the android and scene-stealing Jennette Goldstein as Vasquez, the real female badass. There's also Boggs from "Shawshank", a cigar-chomping sergeant who goes too soon, a few forgettable faces and Carrie Henn as little Newt. Her military salute to a panic-stricken Paxton is one of these moments that make the film more than a formula picture. If it's full of establishing moments and typical wisecracks in the beginning, once the the chips are done, three-dimensional personalities are unveiled. And there's a reason why I insisted on Vasquez' being the badass one.
Again, Sigourney Weaver plays Ellen Ripley in the humblest and most pragmatic way, she's involved because she hates the Aliens, she knows what they're up to, and nuking them is the only option. She's not a military officer, no gun expert, yet because of the Marines' inexperience, two-faced Burke and her promise to never abandon Newt, she becomes the only one capable to defeat the Aliens, not because of fighting skills, but because she has a protective instinct, an intuition for the right moves... and sometimes, a lighter. Ripley is like a more experimented version of Sarah Connor, triumphing over her fears until the unforgettable Power loader moment and the climactic line.
The only match for Ripley was a "witch" indeed and that was decades before strong women became a marketed trope. Here, the film culminates with the fight between two Mama Bears, when the Aliens are all defeated and there's still the Queen. So we had aliens in tunnels, we had the glowing dots, we had a face-hugger trapped in a room (and I could relate to it since I'm scared when I suspect a cockroach in a bathroom), we had flamethrowers and grenades and acid flushing all over faces, a race against the clock, but the ending fight is just the Chantilly on the cherry on the cake.
To be honest, I initially thought the last hour was so intense it was like an overdose of adrenalin, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Ebert sharing the same view. I saw it again, and I was amazed that this was made with no CGI, that the story was riveting and the characters appealing. I said "Alien" was a masterpiece of suspense while the sequel was a great action movie, in fact, "Aliens" might be the ultimate action movie and a masterpiece of suspense as well, earning seven Academy Awards, including a surprising nomination for Sigourney Weaver. Unlike the first two "Terminator" movies, the film didn't join "Alien" in the Thrills list, but Ripley was also named eighth heroine in AFI's Top 50, not bad for a sequel... but even 'sequel' is too feeble a word to describe how powerful "Aliens" is.
To think that all Cameron had to do was adding an "S" to get a classic makes it even more legendary.All it took was adding an "S"...