Tag Line : This time, it's War.
This sequel to the original
Alien was directed by James Cameron, better known for his earlier
sci-fi pic "The Terminator" ( and more recently "Titanic"
YUK ! ). Whereas the original was a sci-fi/horror pic, this is
more of a sci-fi/action/adventure film, but there's still plenty
of shocks and lots of violence to keep most horror fans happy.
Picking up some 57 years after the original Alien, Flight Lt. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver reprising her earlier role), is rescued by a deep space salvage team, finding her life raft drifting aimlessly through space. Awakened from hypersleep, she finds to her horror that the planet she encountered the derelict spacecraft on has since been colonised by terraformers.
Her warnings about the planet go unheeded, until one day when contact with the colony is lost. A group of highly elite space marines, are called in to investigate, and Ripley is persuaded against her will to go along with them. They find the colony apparently desserted, apart from one 9 year old girl called Rebbecca "Newt" Jordan, who's been hiding in the ventilation ducts. Then things start to go wrong in a big way as the aliens show themselves and all hell breaks loose.
Some spectacular battle scene's follow, as the aliens and the marines clash with each other. One particularly memorable scene is where one marine blasts an alien at point blank range, with a "bloody great" high powered machine gun. He subsequently gets showered with alien acid blood, and melts before the camera. Great stuff !.
This film introduces another type of alien, an "Alien Queen", who lays the eggs that the facehuggers hatch from, there's also a great scene where Ripley takes on the alien queen using a giant "power loader", and fans of miss Weaver will be happy to see there are plenty of scene's of her running around in her underwear (Hooray !), as there was in the first film. The film also co-stars actors Micheal Beihn, Bill Paxton and Lance Henrickson, who all appeared in "Terminator",
A great sci-fi/action film, with elements of horror to keep fans of the original happy. In many ways the second actually betters the first.
Overall marks : 9/10.
Other Information. Cameron best describes the film by saying "The original was like a ghost train ride, where things would leap out of the darkness at you. This film is more like a roller coaster, you can see what's coming up but you just can't stop yourself". And he's quite right. I loved this film and consider it far superior to the original, even though the emphasis here is firmly on sci-fi and not so much on horror. As with a lot of James Cameron's films, the original version was far too long, and so was heavily trimmed for it's theatrical release. A "Special Edition" directors cut version, featuring many of the restored scenes, was later released on video as a limited edition only. With 2 exceptions, all subsequent re-issues of this film have been of the edited theatrical version. The first "Special Edition" re-issue came in a special plastic "Facehugger" case, together with the original "Alien" and "Alien 3", and packaged with a collection of books and production stills, showing the making of each film. But with the pricey tag of £80, this was out of reach of most collectors budgets. The second was in a limited edition DVD box set in 2000, with the other 3 "Alien" movies. One scene that was filmed, but not included in either the original or special edition versions, showed the company rep. Burke still alive, despite being grabbed in an earlier battle in scene. In the scene where Riply goes back inside the processing station to find "Newt" she finds Burke cocooned in one of the walls. He begs her to kill him as he can feel an alien moving inside him, but instead she hands him a grenade and tells him to do it himself. |
Extra Info. |
| Video Clips. Requires RealPlayer. Theatrical trailer. (1.01MB) US theatrical trailer. (1.09MB) |
|
| Buy
Online.
Buy the Special Edition DVD at BlackStar. Buy the Alien DVD box set at BlackStar. Buy the video at BlackStar. Buy the Widescreen video at BlackStar. Notes on affiliate sites. |
Other films in the series.
 |
 |
 |
