Ciné Rambles 5th Anniversary Special - The Lost Aliens Review

Five years ago, I watched Fritz Lang's German classic, M, and was left with a desire to yell my thoughts about the ending at someone or something. After getting it all off of my chest and onto a Word document, rather than, say, write an IMDb review like a normal person, it occurred to me there were actually quite a few films that I could potentially scream my opinion on into the void. So I threw together a Blogger page and decided I was going to start writing on the Internet, as an infant would scrawl their own shit on the wall, maybe under the pretence that this would improve my writing ability.

Well, here we are. Five years later, and I'm still scrawling, and yet have still never covered half the films I originally intended to. And I still haven't rewatched M either, which has been on the frankly daunting list for, well, five years now. I would say my writing ability has improved though, so at least that's a tick.

So how does one commemorate the five year anniversary of a blog? The obvious answer is review my favourite films of all time. But that seems almost too easy an answer, plus I'm honestly not sure what to write about half of them. There are only so many ways you can write "it's good", ya know. Not to mention I'm not even sure where I'd draw the line on favourite films. I certainly couldn't pick one. Would I pick five? Ten? That's the tradition. There's about seventy-odd films I would consider favourites in some capacity, am I going to talk about all of them?

No, I thought. Let's save that for the tenth anniversary (that way I might not even have to do it!)

Instead, let's go back to that whole 'writing' thing. If my writing has improved in the space of five years, let's see what it's done in seven.

A long time ago, I had the idea to start doing movie reviews on my now-dead YouTube channel, starting with one of my favourite films of the time, Alien. You can still watch it to this day. It's utter shit but it's a humble beginning. And while I started work on a review for Aliens, I kinda got bored and figured that me just talking at the viewer all clinically while putting on a slideshow of screencaps from the film wasn't setting the world on fire. And so I canned the project, despite having promised to have it out within the month. But I did at least finish the script.

Digging through some old hard drives recently, I found the original script for the review, last edited 28th April 2012. Yikes. And even then, my reviews were still over the 1000 word mark. Some things never change. So I thought, what better way to commemorate the fifth year of the blog than with a shitty seven-year-old review?

So, I guess I am going to be talking about a favourite film of mine after all. Ladies and gents, please enjoy in all its unedited splendour, my long-awaited review of Aliens! God help you all...

"The original Alien was a great success when it first came out, grossing around $3,527, 88 in the US (for all you Americans out there) and won an Oscar and many other awards. It is still to this day one of the most famous and successful Sci-Fi Horror films of all time. So a sequel was almost inevitable. And sure enough, seven years later, director James Cameron made Aliens in 1986. Originally, Sigourney Weaver was reluctant to star in any sequels, but when she read James Cameron’s script, she agreed to do it. And so, Sigourney Weaver returned to her trademark role of Ellen Ripley. So, on to the plot. But first, spoiler warning. In order for me to explain the plot, I’m going to have to spoil the end of the first movie, Alien. So if you still haven’t seen that yet, click the annotation somewhere on the screen to skip ahead.

At the end of the first movie, Ripley, having successfully flushed the alien into outer space, sets up for hyper sleep and goes into suspended animation. 57 years later, she is picked up by a salvage team who bring her back to ‘the company’ aka Weyland Utani. She is then held responsible for the destruction of the Nostromo. Although she did blow it up, obviously, she explains about the alien and how she had to do it. The company don’t believe her, saying that her description of the alien doesn’t match any life forms they’ve ever encountered and that if there was a crashed ship on LV-426, it would have been discovered by the colony who has settled there. Therefore, Ripley’s pilot license is revoked, making her unable to fly anywhere. The company then lose contact with the colony on LV-426. Suspecting Ripley might be telling the truth, they try to persuade her to go with a bunch of colonial marines as an advisor, even offering her pilot license back. Ripley eventually agrees, wanting to face her fear of the aliens and knowing that the company want to destroy the aliens, not take them back and study them. When the marines and Ripley get to LV-426, they discover the whole complex is over-run with aliens, now known as ‘xenomorphs’. The only human left besides some impregnated people who are stuck to the wall and die very quickly anyway, is a 10 year old girl called Rebecca, or ‘Newt’ as she prefers to be called. Ripley takes her under her care and the rest of the film consists of the marines, Ripley and Newt trying to work out how to kill the xenomorphs, and escape with their lives intact.

Out of all the sequels in the world, Aliens is in that small handful that are actually better than their predecessor, in my opinion at least. There does seem to be a bit of a war over which is better, Alien or Aliens. Personally, I think Aliens is better for its action and fast-pace, but there isn’t a whole lot in it. Either way, both films work perfectly together and complement each other well. The first one is a perfect horror film and the second is a perfect blend of horror and action. It just proves that a sequel that has an almost completely different style to the first one can still be a masterpiece. And that’s the best word to describe Aliens, a masterpiece. There was never a dull moment, not even in the special edition that’s 2 and a half hours long, there’s always something going on to keep you entertained. Even at the start, there’s action as Ripley hallucinates having an alien burst out of her stomach and the film never lets up to take a break for a single moment. And then, by the end, the peaceful music starts playing, you sit back off of the edge of your seat and relax content with what you have just seen. In terms of horror, this film does an equally good job as the first one. There are a couple of jump moments, but otherwise, Aliens goes for something completely different. One of the big contributors are the motion detectors on the side of the guns. Similar to the ones used in the first movie, they track anything that moves, and their rapid beeping, slowly increasing in speed is probably the scariest part of the movie, in one scene near the end, the marines detect a huge amount of aliens moving towards them, they seal themselves in the room and stand back from the door, the motion detector still beeping they then look slowly up at the ceiling and Hicks decides to go check above the ceiling. The pace slows right down to a halt and the tension builds as he slowly pushes up the panel and takes a look. Also, closer to the beginning, the marines have a head mounted camera that links back to the control room thing in the APC. And here, Ripley and Lieutenant Gorman watch what they’re doing through these cameras. These also provide a lot of tension, as you see them being attacked from their perspective and gives a real sense of danger as you just see the bank of TV’s slowly black out. The fore-mentioned action scenes are also incredible. The initial raid on the alien’s den where the aliens first attacked is incredible because it leaves a strong impact on the viewer, to see all these tough soldiers who are the best of the best slowly picked off by the aliens is really quite intriguing to watch. And the previously mentioned scene where they are locked in the room with the aliens coming through the ceiling is brilliant as well. The aliens had cut the power, meaning that the whole room is illuminated by a red backup light and just seeing all the guns blazing and the screeching of aliens and the constant shouts of the marines is so exhilarating to watch.

In short, Aliens is an excellent film and if you love films like The Terminator or Avatar, also by James Cameron, or 80’s action, sci-fi, horror or just good films in general, this is the film for you. It is an incredible film and would go really well with a back-to-back viewing with Alien. The horror and action elements blend perfectly and the fast pace promises not to let up for a second. I know I say this a lot, but you owe it to yourself to see this film. So get some mates round on a Saturday night, really late, turn on the surround sound and prepare to be entertained. I give it a 9.5/10 and a high recommendation. See it now."

Hope you're happy, Andrew.