In 1979, Alien was released with the iconic tagline “In space no one can hear you scream.” Seven years later, the tagline for its sequel Aliens simply said “This time it’s war.”
Boy did they mean it.
By Eoghan Doherty
Moving away from the horror atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s masterclass in suspense cinema, a young pimply-faced director called James Cameron, who was fresh off the back of his own little film called The Terminator, was brought on board to direct the scarily exciting sequel, Aliens.
His approach? To make the sequel much more of an action-adventure mission with action, aliens, more action, some more aliens and a bit more action thrown in for good measure. Oh, and some more aliens.
Cameron saw this film as a combat sequel that would concentrate “more on terror, less on horror.” Not that Aliens isn’t shit-scary in its own special way.
Inspired by the Vietnam War, Cameron used the idea of a terrifying situation in which a technologically superior force was trapped in a hostile foreign environment. I prefer Sigourney Weaver’s take on it though when, during an interview in 1997, she said that Aliens “made the first Alien look like a cucumber sandwich.”
Forget Vietnam, sandwiches I can relate to.
It’s scary to think that we could have been living in an Aliens-free world, especially considering the fact that describing the shoot as a “troubled production” would be just a little bit of an understatement. The film wasn’t completed until the week of release and Cameron is notoriously difficult to work for as a director.
The Aliens-helmer has repeatedly said that the crew regarded him as a lesser director than Ridley Scott and his attempts to convince them otherwise fell on deaf ears for a long time.
Culture clashes between the American Cameron and the British crew he was using didn’t help matters either, in particular it was the tea breaks that the crew continuously insisted on taking that he hated.
Probably a good idea that he steers clear of Ireland altogether if he’s against tea breaks. Speaking of which…
Right, back now. Tea drunk.
Returning to her iconic role as Ellen Ripley was Sigourney Weaver or, as Cameron described her, Rambolina. A massive influence and trend-setter for female characters, Weaver achieved a landmark Oscar nomination for an actress to be considered for a science fiction/horror film, a genre which had previously been given little recognition by the Academy. Here’s a taster of why she was nominated, although it probably had more to do with everyone being terrified of her and not wanting to annoy her in any way whatsoever.
Ripley versus the Alien queen:
Weaver wasn’t the only stand-out member of the cast and, as well as Michael Biehn (Hicks), Lance Henriksen (Bishop) and Paul Reiser (Burke) all putting in memorable performances, a personal favourite of JOE’s is Jenette Goldstein as Private Jenette Vasquez, one of the cockiest, manliest, non-men marines in cinema history:
What a lady.
The influence of Aliens can be seen across both the sci-fi and action genres but we’re going to focus on a few of the funnier parodies that have popped up since the film was made.
Bishop’s scene with the knife trick stands out and is something we’ve all probably inadvisably tried with our sporks at a house party at one stage or another. Here’s a double clip of how Bishop masters it in Aliens and how Ted, in Seth McFarlane’s feature film debut of the same name, not so much:
The film is immensely quotable with even south Park getting in on the act… mewstly:
But to finish we’ll leave you with a clip from the film itself and the immortal words of Private William Hudson (Bill Paxton), delivering a line we’ve all surely said when we discover there’s no toilet roll left in the jacks:
Aliens, not just one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time but one of the best action films ever made too.
Fancy blasting in to space to take on some Aliens yourself? Head over to lynxapollo.com and sign up the Lynx Space Academy, to see if you’ve got what it takes to go where no Irishman has gone before and launch into space.
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