Cinema View Anew – Aliens Part 1

Imagine this: Ridley Scott created one of the most successful horror films of all time.  The advertising campaign for the movie is credited as being the most influential in the history of advertising.  “In space, no one can hear you scream” became an instant icon, and the move scored over twenty times its entire budget in box office sales alone.  That does not include almost twice that amount in tie in sales, comic books, toys, model kits, etc.  The movie is a genuine phenomenon, a generational occurrence.  

A sequel seems set in stone at this stage.  Ridley Scott has proven that he can captain a movie on a very low budget to amazing results, and this is something the public is primed to consume en masse.

A sequel obviously happened, but what they did to make it so is either genius or madness.  Ridley Scott?  Out.  Instead, they bring in James Cameron.  Directing credits to his name?  NONE.  James was opted into directing after a script reading.  Not a release, not a movie in pre-release stage.  A script reading.  Basically, someone picked up his first draft and liked it so much they decided to let him write the next entry in a New York Times best-selling series.  Think about it this way: James Cameron was brought in to captain a cultural icon over Ridley Scott who made both Alien and Blade Runner!  Two sci-fi cornerstones to this day.  It’s madness that the movie even happened at all.

Happen it did however.  Cameron instantly opted out of the thriller-movie-in-space that was the Alien calling card.  Instead, Cameron used recent events in American history for his inspiration.  Namely, the Vietnam War.

I’m going to throw this out there, and I’m willing to die fighting on this hill: Aliens is the single greatest war movie ever made.

Don’t believe me?  Check this out.  Aliens is plotted entirely around the marine crew of the USS Sulaco.  This crew, a group of highly trained and highly armed cocky US Marines given the task of shepherding Ellen Ripley to a backwards colony on what is, in their mind, a non-mission.  The Vietnam War was pitched by every Congressman and General in exactly the same terms.  Go in with superior firepower, and rout the enemy in no time flat.

Fast forward to the halfway point of the movie, and the entire crew is being picked off in hostile territory with little to no information on what exactly is going on.  Each engagement is a larger disaster than the last, and in the end, only one of the marines manages to outlast the war after suffering life-altering injuries.  At every step, the Marines lose and lose and lose.

It is a story about survival in a situation they were thrown into without preparation or appropriate consideration by those in charge.  They were given none of the information necessary for their survival, all of which was present but largely ignored by the person or persons who instigated the entire conflict.  Their superior weapons and firepower were comically unwieldy and ultimately useless, being described or shown in memorable scene after memorable scene and then doing absolutely nothing as the circumstances evolved the combat parameters to obviate their potential. In the end, the most impressive technology used were the automated turrets, and they served only to stave off the inevitable advance and pulled no miracles out of thin air.

So, here we go, we’re going step by step through the hellish, ill-fated voyage of the USS Sulaco.

Ellen Ripley is played by Sigourney Weaver, and she starts off the ensemble cast of this movie with one of the most accurate portrayals of PTSD on film.  It’s up there with Rambo: First Blood and Jessica Jones.  Her symptoms and constant struggle with her past experiences is shown in one expertly written scene after another.  I am thoroughly convinced that someone either with the condition or extremely familiar with it is behind the writing.  The trauma of war reflected on the warriors is the basis for every single good war movie.  Full Metal Jacket,  Apocalypse Now, and even Forrest Gump showed how hellish war truly is on the living and the dead.

Again, bear in mind, this movie was written in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict.  Even though World War II involved significantly more combatants, the conflict itself was (to an extent), less psychologically traumatizing to its combatants than Vietnam was to its survivors.  Society was better equipped in the post-WWII era to reabsorb men back into functional society.  In the aftermath of Vietnam, you had stagflation, horrendous unemployment, and extreme resentment and distrust of those coming back from the war.  Far from being displayed as the heroes they deserved to be, the soldiers were depicted as murderous villains and spurned of both trust and reintegration.

That brings us back to the treatment and characterization of Ellen Ripley.  Her suffering, both in her PTSD and in her treatment by her superiors, is reflective of real-life events.  Automatically, we relate to the character of Ellen Ripley, simply because she is bringing to light the tears present in the fabric of society during the 70’s and 80’s.  Think about it: Do you relate to characters who are impervious to the perils they face?  Doesn’t it cheapen any sense of danger or connection when they can laugh off any damage and barrel on without a scratch?  In recent memory, Lucy by Luc Besson is the most egregious example of sapping any sense of attachment or drama by making the protagonist immune to harm.  The first character we meet, the only surviving member of the Nostromo, was not free of the scars of her experience and we felt an instant kinship with her.  From the word go, she loses her daughter, then her license, and finally her credibility.  For James Cameron to take that tactic in an era of masochistic action heroes dominating the box office by causing mayhem they were distinctly impervious to was either sheer genius or complete lunacy.

ALL OF THIS AMAZING CHARACTERIZATION HAPPENS IN THE FIRST TWENTY MINUTES OF THE FILM.  

Enter the uncaring bureaucrat who is able to callously dispense death for political (or personal) gain.  Carter Burke, played by Paul Reiser, is a slick and ambitious desk-jockey who is clearly unwilling or unable to relate to others on his quest for power.  At every turn in the opening character development with Ellen Ripley, he attempts to duck out of having to deliver any meaningful news or share emotional moments with Ellen.  He is clearly uncomfortable dealing with anything involving actual human feelings, and after abandoning Ripley to the wolves he turns around and commits wholesale slaughter to get the movie plot rolling on the eventual downward spiral of loss, death, karma, and salvation which is at the core of the entire film.

Ellen, after more amazing dialog and character development (including some top-notch world-building / plot device insertion moments) is swept up into the Sulaco’s stasis pods in an effort to save the colony which has taken root on the world involved in the events of the original Alien movie.  After more scenes of exceptional world-building, we are swept up in a time skip to the arrival of the marines at ground zero.

It is a torturous scene, that initial landing.  Ellen can only stare at the carnage caused by refusing to heed her dire warnings and stern admonitions.  You can see the hurt in her whole body, the terror at having to go in after the demon which had so nearly claimed her.  The aftermath of the colonists struggles is horrific, and serve to reinforce the constant chant underlining the movie: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Continued next week…