Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton
The moon from Alien (1979) has been colonized, but contact is lost. This time, the rescue team has impressive firepower, but will it be enough?
As I don’t go to the cinema, instead of joining the crowds wearing the silly glasses at Cameron’s Avatar, I watched his cut of Aliens last night – and also this morning as it’s so long. Pondering my response-in-fewer-than-26-words: which one of my own previous avatars do I find myself channeling: lit, narrative, cinema, or … psychoanalysis? I find myself seeing the film as being partly ‘about’ correct sexual identification, but mostly about what’s wrong with … motherhood, of all things. The ‘Special Edition’ shows Ripley’s (dead) child, the principal relationship in the film is that between Ripley and Newt, the surrogate little girl, and the story’s climactic moment is when Ripley calls the mother alien a ‘bitch’ before disposing of her. Ripley correctly chooses (her own) motherhood over everything else, but the film delights in blowing away the mother of all (mother) aliens. It’s subversive.
Garry Gillard | New: 4 March, 2017 | Now: 22 May, 2022