To hammer this home, the first half hour of this movie is the most brutal shit a character has ever had to endure mentally. After floating in space in stasis for close to 60 years instead of the eight weeks she was expecting, Ripley wakes up to find her daughter got old and died. She is then forced to explain why she destroyed company property and gets fired and her space license revoked. They treat her like a criminal and even talk jail time. Then, when she suggests they check out the planet, a suit tells here that there are people there now! 60–70 families. “No complaints from them.” She immediately knows they are all going to die. Some real heavy shit to wake up to. Just put me back into stasis, Jesus fuck.
Wrote a paper in college about this movie for a religion in film course I took. We all had to present on a couple of the predetermined movies. No one wanted this one because it took real work to make something of it. Intellectually confident as I was by senior year, I took this on by choice. Back as a stupid freshman, I dated a girl that was more or less identical to Ripley in this flick after the haircut. We did not have a good breakup and I harbored let's say dislike (she broke up with me because she thought I was a shitty writer, which has like always been MY thing, don't ya know, so I hated her) and I kind of held it against Ripley. So my take was siding with the Xenomorphs, which fucking killed. “They didn't ask to be born killing machines, they aren't the evil ones, they are just following their instincts in fighting this hostile group encroaching on their territory.” Lot of stuff like that with a bunch of digs on Bill Paxton. When I graduated, the professor from that class, one of only two classes I got A+s in, wrote me a letter saying he hopes I continue being a voice for “the other,” which was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten, and I think about often. I feel this way with damn near every creature feature I watch these days. Down with the status quo, I say! Rip that guy's head off, Cocaine Bear!
Admittedly, the Ripley-Newt relationship is surprisingly touching though, which makes it hard to all out root for their deaths, though I managed. She's sweet for a feral child, she won the “Citizenship Award” for her second grade class. I, too, won the citizenship award in second grade. I was opinionated and still loathed everyone, but I was much quieter about all that back then. It wasn't until high school that I realized I was also hilarious and developed my barbed wit and general gift of gab. So, yeah, on a related note, I've been in my fair share of tussles since ye olde citizen boy award of 1989 with that combination. The most terrifying part of the movie is when Newt is in the like sewage system or whatever with chest level water and the inevitable happens. Spoiler. Also, back to the movie, I thought Newt was the same feral child in Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior until adulthood.
It was probably crazy to see a bunch of aliens back when this came out. But I saw this before the original and was sort of surprised and let down the first time I saw the Ridley Scott movie as a kid with it just being the one. Something nuts, Cameron only had six Xenomorph costumes. It looks like there are hundreds. I shit you negative on this. Plus, we get the first queen, which is just amazing.
Cast is nuts. Stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, of course. As an athlete, I love critiquing running form in film. And not a good runner, Sigourney Weaver. Form is beyond terrible. Worse than Harrison Ford's old man run in The Temple of Doom. Still looks great in underpants and a tank top though. Also get Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn from The Terminator and Tombstone, Paul Reiser from Mad About You, Lance Henriksen from Pumpkinhead who is probably most remembered from this flick and his character Frank Black from The X-Files its dope spinoff Millennium, and Carrie Henn as Newt.
A little on Michael Biehn. I pretty much love every movie this guy is in. Bought a lot of stock in him after The Abyss, but it never really happened for him.
The film, I'm sure everyone knows, has a happy ending. Yay! But then after another crazy long stasis we get bold Ripley in Alien 3 and see that the kid and Biehn died and there were facehuggers all over the ship. Boo.
The one-two punches that both Ridley Scott and James Cameron had after their first movies in this franchise are unmatched. Scott made Alien and then Blade Runner (a top 10 all time), then Cameron makes The Terminator followed by Aliens. He also wrote the screenplay for Rambo: First Blood Part II during this same period. Fucking sick.
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