OVP: Aliens (1986)

Film: Aliens (1986)
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton
Director: James Cameron
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Actress-Sigourney Weaver, Art Direction, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound, Sound Effects Editing*, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This week we are randomly taking a look at Best Actress nominees from films I'd never seen before and am catching for the first time on quarantine (if you follow this blog more for politics, I'm aware we've been a little film heavy lately but know that I'm going to be restoring balance next week once my life settles down a bit more-the past two weeks have been a challenge and I'd already committed to this mini-project, and want to ensure I finish it but I'll be back in election analysis quite soon).  Today we go in a truly different direction entirely from our previous entries of a mother-daughter melodrama and a romantic Technicolor epic into a 1980's action blockbuster, one of the only films of this nature to actually secure a Best Actress nomination.  Women like Charlize Theron and Linda Hamilton have gotten some buzz for Oscar for action films, but it's extremely rare to get a citation like what Sigourney Weaver secured in 1986, and it was for her first round with Oscar (unlike someone like Sandra Bullock in Gravity, who was already AMPAS-blessed).  In order to get this kind of nomination, you have to be extraordinary, so I was pumped to finally catch this movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a follow-up to the 1979 film Alien, which I had seen many years ago but re-watched in anticipation of this particular picture (are Weaver and Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's the only two women who have been nominated for Best Actress for a sequel?).  The film shows Ripley, 57 years later (but in some form of stasis), being rescued after being the only people to survive the last attack.  She is convinced to go back to the colony of the alien attacks under the condition that they kill the aliens.  Once they arrive, though, it turns out that one of the crew members, Burke (Reiser) has been instructed to bring back the aliens at all cost, even if that means killing or impregnating some of his crew (specifically Ripley).  The aliens, of course, have other ideas, and we witness multiple different standoffs between the depleting human population and the aliens, including a particularly amazing sequence between Ripley and the alien queen (which encompasses Weaver's legendary line reading of "Get away from her, you bitch!").

Aliens doesn't really break a lot of new story ground.  Forgetting for a second that this is largely a retelling of the original movie, this is also a story that has been done repeatedly since the dawn of Science Fiction in movies.  But like most of James Cameron's films, it's not the story that you're coming for-it's the picture itself.  In a way that almost no other filmmaker can, Cameron can take the most basic of filmic readings and make them feel fresh, new, and inventive.  He does that with Aliens, better than its predecessor in virtually every way.

For starters, there's Weaver, who feels more confident in her Ripley.  She doesn't play her as an action hero (at least not until the very end), but instead as someone who wasn't intended for this life, but has learned from it.  So often with action-adventure sequels, they forget that the original person wasn't meant to be a superhero, and that one or two experiences isn't going to turn them into one (I'm not going to call out which franchise I'm subtweeting here, but I'm sure one came to mind).  As a result, this is still a performance, one that is well-felt and coming with some much-needed nuance.

The other Oscar categories were equally well-deserved (honestly, even though it gained a hefty 7 nominations, that feels a bit light from my perspective).  The Visual Effects are groundbreaking and game-changing, still impressive-looking some thirty years after-the-fact.  The sound work is marvelous; Cameron used the sound effects to keep us tense even when we shouldn't be, employing jump scares with caution & skill, but also genuine terror through the battles and alien cries.  The same can be said for the swiftness of the editing-the film doesn't feel rushed, but it also rarely skimps on the action.  The sets are so strong they became prototypical not just for the copycat films that would follow, but also what we'd see in movies like Gravity and Ad Astra decades in the future.  About the only nomination I might raise an eyebrow over is the score, but even there it's more James Horner being taken for granted (and using similar motifs to most of his other work) than it being bad.  All-in-all, Aliens is a terrific experience, and proof that Oscar should think outside-the-box more often, as it pays off with a classic performance being included in his annals.