Aliens Never Poop

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2012)

Anyone else notice that? They can rip your head of, hatch out inside you, devour humanity alive, spray the ground with our blood, destroy our planet, serenade us on mountain-tops and even get drunk and phone-home - but they never take a dump. Not ever. America's diffidence to toiletary frankness is a comedy in itself. Hollywood's directors should watch more 'Carry On-' movies.
Here we have director King Cameron once more. And if 'Avatar' leaves you with deja-vu moments, that's because it resembles just about every other sci-fi movie there's ever been. And Cameron should know. His 'Aliens' was such a blatant rip-off of the 1950's bug-fest 'Them' as to justify the accusation of plagiarism. Originality is definitely not his strong suit.
There's trouble on another planet. Some ruthless corporation is mining its assets and the locals are getting a raw deal. An agent is sent to infiltrate them in disguise. If you've seen 'Total Recall'; you already know the plot.
Cue the special effects. There's big, CGI flying creatures that smack of 'Dumbo', but lack his grace. There's a psychotic military-type intent on blowing the other-worldly ones to hell, just like (Cameron's) 'Abyss'. There are propeller-driven hovering/flying machines straight from (Cameron's) 'Terminator 2'. There's big walking robots with men inside straight from ('Cameron's) 'Aliens'. Crikey - even Ripley - er..I mean Sigourney Weaver pops up! There's mass battles in the woodland like the Empire versus the Ewoks. And there's more than a hint of 'The Emerald Forest' in which corporate greed has precedent over environmental degradation.
But where's STORY? In other words: something happening to somebody I care about. Sadly; it's nowhere. Even the humans are as two-dimensional as the CGI creatures. This might have been filmed in 3-D, but the plot was as 2-D as ever.
A lot of thought went into special-effects. And 'if you like that, your're gonna love this' (that's from 'Aliens'). But no thought whatsoever went into zoological or botanical rationale. And Darwin didn't get a look-in. Where was the the bio-diversity? I think I spotted 6 different species in the whole forest.
The trouble with cinema is that in order to maximise bums on seats, movies need to appeal to kids as well as adults. The result is that they are often excessively violent for children, but too crass for adults. They're over-simplistic in their evaluation of life.
I didn't watch this in much-vaunted 3-D, so maybe I missed something (like a headache). But what I saw was a very elaborate montage of just about every other sci-fi movie there's ever been and then some. And the earlier ones were better because they were original, even if their effects were not so grandiose. And they weren't always dumbed-down to satisfy juvenile appetites.
If Cameron really wanted to be earth-shattering, all he had to do was break the ultimate Hollywood taboo and show us an alien taking a dump. I'd have applauded that even in black & white!