When 20th Century Fox secured James Cameron as the writer and director for their sequel to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien, they were rightfully excited. Cameron’s Terminator script had caused some buzz in Hollywood and he was also working on the script for Rambo: First Blood Part II. After mapping out a story and some loose plot ideas everyone was on board.
The issue of course is that all of the scenes that Cameron put together included Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver’s character from the first film. She was yet to sign to a deal for the movie and needless to say Cameron wanted her. He had her picture on his wall while he wrote the outline of the screenplay. She was the unsuspecting hero of the first film. It’s hard not to separate her now but at the time she was largely unknown with a small role in Annie Hall under belt. But as the crew members of the Nostromo are picked off in Alien; she grabs a gun fights her way to stardom. Her role in Alien paired with her work in Ghostbusters brought her to the door step of A-List stardom. She would leverage the situation into a payday of $1 million dollars and a piece of the films gross.
I think we give Cameron a ton of success as a filmmaker when it comes to technology and VFX. Rightfully so but I think we lose the fact that he has a writing credit on all of his big movies. It is his script for this movie paired with one of the great movie stars of the 1980s that pulls this sci-fi sequel to new heights.
Upon a rewatch of Aliens it is genuinely a fantastic piece of writing. He makes a few moves in the story that seem so obvious now but things certainly could’ve done differently.
The first thing he does is as mentioned up top, commit to Weaver early and heavily. It was important that this movie carried over from the events of the last one. Again seems like a simple idea but this movie was going to be made regardless and a filmmaker not committed could’ve easily gone with an option that would’ve cost the studio less money. By committing to Weaver we have that continuity as an audience and are opened to all sorts of new things we can learn about the character. How does she feel after the attack? What are her motivations in this movie compared to the last? She had a kid?!
The next piece of the puzzle was taking what worked in Alien and building on it but NOT trying to make the same movie. Ridley Scott made an excellent horror movie. The sequel be bigger guns, bigger action and bigger aliens. You can’t scare the audience with the same trick twice. They’ve seen the threat they already know what it is. But what if instead of 1 we had 100? This allows for another incredible cast of characters. The marines are far more colorful than the crew in the first film with Bill Paxton delivering line after line of memorable dialogue that is still quotable to this day. We also get Michael Biehn and Jenette Goldstein who are both fantastic in the movie.
And of course we Newt. A character who’s left alone after the alien hive takes out everyone in the facility. And whose parents are killed on screen in the extended cut of the movie. The connection between Ripley and Newt is the movie. We have upped the scale and turned this into a blockbuster, now the script has to match that and we have to find a through line and a theme for our general audience. The movie is about parenthood. Her relationship with Newt is built on the fact that she had a child of her own but never got to have that same connection. You aren’t always sure with kid acting and I think was a little reluctant myself the first time I saw it but by the time you get to the climax you are ready to go back in with Ripley to find her. We are NOT leaving Newt behind.
When we talk about blockbusters I think the is the sort of clothes line that you need to have a movie. We have our star, we have our story, and we have our hook to make the audience care about the characters. Once you have that line is up you can really start to hang extra things on there and leave some crumbs for the audience to go a little deeper.
Obviously its no secret that Weyland-Yutani is the company behind everything that is going on. From listening to the audio commentary it didn’t seem like the evil corporation pulling the strings was nothing more than plot for him but its not hard to draw comparison to all sorts of things like European trade back in the day to modern day geopolitics. Big companies have their fingerprints on a lot of different issues and markets.
I think it was telling that the marines were very Vietnam era in terms of how they dressed and handled themselves. Private Hudson has writing all over his helmet like you’d often see in that era. And Private Vasquez’s bandana looks a lot like the one Charlie Sheen wears in the closing moments of Platoon. The marines bring big guns and technology while the Aliens nest in the dark and climb through the walls and tunnels often ambushing them. Compare the results of their combat with the Xenomorphs to their over confidence when they set out at the start of the film. A group of American troops over confidently going into an unknown land to battle an enemy using guerrilla warfare? It certainly works for the movie regardless but it’s hard not to think Vietnam.
The point is that if a movie can be about different things to different people – thats what makes a great blockbuster. You can watch the aliens blow up and be happy with the time you spent. But the story is so rich that it takes your mind to places you never would’ve thought. It is the quality and density of the storytelling in a movie like Aliens thats it apart from a lot of the work we see today out of big budget movies.
The Ambassador Almanac 