Aliens: Special Edition (Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn)
When we were in junior high, my friend Brian Barnett and I watched the network TV version of James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens. It was unlike any action or sci-fi film I had ever seen; violent, riveting and suspenseful all at once. Two scenes in particular quickly became my favourites: one was late in the picture, when Sigourney Weaver's character Ellen Ripley makes a startling discovery as to how a motley pack of aliens had made it through their makeshift barricade. The other was a crucial scene where the barricade is first set up -- a remote set of sentry guns are strategically positioned to scare off the aliens. When they try to attack head on, the guns begin to fire round after round until, with only 4 bullets left in the final gun (a fact the aliens obviously wouldn't know), they retreat and thus the humans manage to buy some more time. I thought that scene rocked. Unfortunately, every subsequent viewing I had of Aliens after that point curiously, conspicuously, infuriatingly, did not contain that scene and it drove me bonkers. When the Special Edition finally came out, I bought it, even though I'd already purchased a prior edition of the film. Finally, I was able to see the scene I was beginning to think I had made up. I guess it's the little things that make me happy.
All of this aside, Aliens has to be my favourite sequel of all time. It is probably my favourite action movie of all time. It surprisingly also rates very high on my list of the most suspenseful movies of all time -- the first hour and a half of this movie is well-developped and layered to an almost Hitchcock-ian level. And because we aren't formally introduced to the acid-blooded critters until halfway into the picture, for me, it does for sci-fi what Spielberg's Jaws did for horror movies. The threat is so palpable and so well-sustained that, in retrospect, it's uncanny how little screen time was actually devoted to the aliens themselves
The story picks up as Ellen Ripley (Weaver) is left drifting in stasis for decades, after surviving the chaos from the first film. She is revived only to find out the planet her team had first landed on has now been colonized with dozens of families. She agrees to accompany a miliary team back to the planet as a strategic advisor and, of course, the team completely overestimates their chances with a new batch of aliens. Michael Biehn plays the quiet Corporal Hicks, Paul Reiser is the Company man Burke, Lance Henriksen plays the mysterious android Bishop, and James Cameron-favourite Bill Paxton is the whiny Hudson. Carrie Henn, who hasn't been in anything before or since this movie came out, plays the little orphan Newt.
There are many edge-of-your-seat moments that really propel writer-director James Cameron into a special classification. It's only on multiple viewings that you can see how the tiniest details are carefully addressed, so there is no doubt as to the minutiae of the plot structure. His characters are definitively realistic, and unlike every other suspense movie heroine, Ripley, though battling her own inner demons, is always thinking and not simply reacting to what is happening. Her showdown in the last half hour is not just a battle of strength, it's a battle of wits.
I'm only skimming the surface of reasons -- strange as they may be -- that Aliens is one of my favourite movies. Arguments can always be made for and against the other three movies in the series, but for sheer adrenaline and excitement, and after having seen it close to 20 times now, in my opinion this one tops them all.
