Superior sequel...

Rating: 9/10 (6 September 2003)

There was a time when scary movies were actually scary, and you weren't just jumping at a music sting. There was a time when special effects were believable because they were real, tangibly there. There was a time when scripts still had shreds of originality in them. The late 70's and early 80's were that time, and quite fortunately, out of this era came James Cameron's top-notch works.
Aliens has a timelessness to it, and it's a composite of so many different elements. This was a generation of filmmakers who didn't have the luxury of a computer in the next room that could spit out 3D renderings of anything they could think up. People had to imagine, sculptors had to physically build, and engineers had to make machines that actually worked. This is the first reason Aliens is far superior to any modern films of the genre. The weapons aren't just props with digital gunfire added in - they're working machines spitting bright white flares of blank powder. The power loaders are fully operational hardware that had to be built. And the aliens themselves were real - costumes, puppets, they were real. Believability doesn't just reach between the viewer and the characters on-screen; it has to fall between the on-screen characters as well. When a stunt man in an alien costume leaps at the lead actor, that actor knows how to react, how to grasp or flail and can actually ACT the reaction. We lose this with all the modern movies so over-saturated with special effects that we wonder why the film wasn't done all CG to begin with.
Ellen Ripley - Sigourney Weaver - was one of the first female action heroes the people of my generation would recognize. In a genre dominated by Schwarzenegger and Stallone, we suddenly had this strong brazen woman, and frankly a damn good actor, taking the lead. And Aliens characterizes her leadership in a very effective way. The marines think they're invincible. Once they've learned they hard way that they're dealing with a dangerous force, only then does Ripley's opinion really become respected.
The music. One of my core theories is that a science fiction movie's effectiveness is driven half by the music. In Aliens we have James Horner creating this intricate and unparalleled spectrum of sound. And while he admits to scavenging his own score from a Star Trek score, he still does amazing things with it, specifically in a minimalist way. James Horner knew that music can sway the emotion of a scene, and he knew exactly how to use it to evoke the terror aspect of the aliens. A long delicate ambiance is suddenly torn by a sting from the string section, a dissonance of notes that is has such simple perfection it could only forever be recognizable as his 'Woah!' sound.
And special effects. The Aliens were real, be they costumes or puppets or just a head on a hydraulic for the second jaw to spring out. Visually, the Giger-inspired creatures are truly unique and forever etched in pop culture's mind as one of the most effectively scary monsters. In the 80's, James Cameron knew exactly how to use his special effects to maximum effectiveness, and it shows in all his films from that decade. Were he try to make the same film today, the effect simply would not be the same. We've become so desensitized to special effects that while the older cinema-geeks like myself would relish the idea of costumes and props for monsters, the younger generation would immediately point and laugh at how 'fake looking' the monsters are. Incidentally, CG isn't immune to this either, and the assorted sequels and crossover films have only served to punctuate that.
In summary: Aliens is one of the best science fiction films of all time, I am comfortable with saying. If you have not seen it - the full director's cut - you owe it to yourself to go and do so.