aliens

The film is faster paced and more action-oriented than its predecessor, but many fans see it as a worthy sequel to Scott's original horror film. The film was tremendously successful and helped to establish Cameron as a major Hollywood director. The film, like its predecessor, was shot in England, this time at Pinewood Studios, with a budget of about $18 million. The work on the film was beset by problems, being especially troubled with disputes between Cameron and the film crew, which eventually led to an all-out strike late in the production.

Plot

Ripley Rescued

Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only human survivor of the encounter with the Alien aboard the Weyland-Yutani Corporation star-freighter Nostromo, is found in suspended animation (stasis) aboard the Nostromo's escape vessel Narcissus by a deep-space salvage crew. She awakes from stasis onboard an unfamiliar (to her) space station located in orbit above Earth. During her recovery, she meets Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a Weyland-Yutani executive, who reveals to her that she was adrift in deep space for 57 years and that her daughter lived out her life and died two years previously.

During an inquest, Ripley attempts to explain to various Weyland-Yutani officials why she destroyed the Nostromo, but the officials, reading from her written report, are incredulous as it describes, amongst other things a creature that attaches itself to a host, has acid for blood, and matures so quickly it was capable of wiping out the ship's crew in 24 hours. She tries to convince them of the xenomorphs' existence and the danger they present, but as there is no physical corroboration, her rationale is dismissed and her flight status is revoked. Compounding her frustration, she learns at the end of the inquest that Weyland-Yutani has already returned to LV-426 (the planet where the Nostromo crew discovered the derelict spacecraft which was carrying the alien "eggs") and established there a terraforming colony called Hadley's Hope.

Ripley's worst fears are later confirmed when Burke comes to her tiny apartment with Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the United States Colonial Marines and tells her that contact with Hadley's Hope has been lost. Initially, she refuses Burke's request to join him and a USCM team led by Gorman to investigate the communications breakdown. However, her reluctance is undermined by her recurring nightmares about the xenomorph and she subsequently agrees to join Burke following his assurances that the mission will be to destroy the creature(s) and not bring any back for research or profit, and that her flight status will be restored.

The Crew is Assembled

The expedition, comprised of Ripley, Burke, and a squad of Marines, travels to LV-426 aboard the warship Sulaco (like Nostromo, the name is a nod to Joseph Conrad.) Following the expedition members' emergence from stasis, Ripley conducts a mission briefing during which she tries to explain to the skeptical squad of gung-ho Marines the true danger of the xenomorphs. Once again, her warnings fall on deaf ears as the Marines believe that their superior firepower and training will be sufficient to deal with any possible threat.

Before touching down on the planet in a 'dropship' carrying an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and the crew inside, Ripley gets acquainted with the Marines - among them, rock-solid Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews), mouthy Hudson (Bill Paxton), icy warrior Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), and soft-spoken Hicks (Michael Biehn). She also learns that one of the 'men', named Bishop (Lance Henriksen), is actually an android. Although Burke apologizes for not telling her that having a 'synthetic' onboard is now standard practice, she remains extremely suspicious of Bishop given her previous experience with the android Ash onboard the Nostromo, who was complicit in the deaths of the Nostromo's crew following orders from Weyland-Yutani to recover a live xenomorph at the expense of her crewmates. During the drop from orbit, she and the squad all learn that Lieutenant Gorman is very inexperienced - he has only completed two real combat drops (counting the current one). This information further undermines their already-scanty respect for the man.

Touchdown

Upon arrival at the colony's operations headquarters, the expedition quickly discovers that the aliens indeed attacked the colony: metal floor and ceiling gratings throughout the complex have been melted through as a result of contact with the aliens' acidic blood, there is battle damage from small weapons fire, and various attempts were made at barricading doors. More concrete evidence is provided by the presence of facehugger specimens that the colonists collected from human hosts (as established from medical records) and held in sturdy glass tanks for analysis; two of them are still alive. The colonists themselves, however, are nowhere to be found.

During the ongoing search of the base, the team finds a sole human survivor - nicknamed "Newt", the furtive and traumatized young girl has managed to evade the xenomorphs by slipping unnoticed through the colony's system of ventilation and service ducts. She initially remains mute due to her horrific experiences and she cannot provide any information to the Marines. While Ripley starts coaxing Newt out of her shell, Hudson locates the rest of the colonists via transceivers that were implanted in each of them for just such a situation; they are all bunched together just below the primary heat-exchangers of the atmospheric generators located a short distance from the main buildings. The expedition hurries to the area aboard the APC, with Bishop remaining behind to examine the dead facehuggers. At their destination, the Marines exit the APC under the leadership of Apone - leaving Lieutenant Gorman, Burke, Ripley and Newt inside the APC to watch the Marines' progress via helmet-mounted video cameras. The searchers discover a large multistory nest fashioned from hard and brittle alien secretions. Ripley realizes that the construct is located immediately beneath important hardware that, if damaged by weapons fire, could result in the nuclear-powered atmospheric generator exploding. The Marines are ordered to remove the ammunition from their pulse rifles and and battery packs form their smart guns . This order is followed but Vasquez has extra batteries and gives one to her smart-gun compatriot, Drake, while Hicks resorts to a shotgun ("I like to keep this handy for close encounters").

Encounter

The nest is seemingly uninhabited except for the masses of unfortunate colonists, their corpses fastened in cocoon-like fashion to the secreted walls. One of the victims is discovered to be alive when she abruptly awakens. The marines rush to help her and tell her that she'll be fine once they get her out. The helpless woman doesn't seem to think so, as she raises her head and says to them, "Please, kill me." She, then, dies as a "baby" alien bursts through her ribcage, forcing the Marines to incinerate her and the squealing organism with a flamethrower. At this point, the Marines pick up signals on their hand-held motion trackers indicating 'movement' coming from all directions; the xenomorphs that were lying dormant in the walls awake and attack. Due to the Marines' inability to see the aliens in the dark confines of the nest, the infrared sensors' inability to detect aliens, and the previously stated removal of ammunition, the squad is quickly decimated. Apone and Deitrich are captured leaving the remaining squad members leaderless and cut off. When a panicking Gorman proves to be useless, Ripley drives the APC to the squad's location, crashes the vehicle into the nest, and rescues the handful of survivors. They escape out of the generator building at the cost of wrecking the APC.

With Gorman unconscious as a result of falling equipment in the APC, Hicks (the ranking soldier) assumes command. Over Burke's protests, he agrees with Ripley that leveling the colony from space with a thermonuclear weapon is the best way to handle the situation as there is no one left to save and it is the only way to be certain that the aliens will be destroyed. Before they can be evacuated by the dropship, the 2-person crew of the dropship (which was on the ground on standby) is killed during flight by a stowaway xenomorph, with the result that the vessel crashes into the generator complex. With no alternative, the survivors return to the operations headquarters and set up a defensive position using automated sentry machine guns recovered from the remains of the APC and barricading all the entry points/doors by welding them closed.

Their Numbers Thinned

Ripley puts Newt down to sleep in the med-lab, and promises that she will protect the girl from the 'monsters', no matter what. She also tells Bishop to burn the two surviving facehuggers as soon as his analysis of them is done, but Bishop responds that Burke wants the organisms taken back to Earth. Ripley confronts Burke, telling him that she knows he, after hearing her story at the inquest, ordered the colonists to search for the derelict, thus starting the invasion. Burke says that Weyland-Yutani is willing to pay a substantial sum for alien specimens, and that he will share his profits with her if she cooperates, an offer she vehemently rejects.

A major xenomorph attack begins; their advance is barely halted by the automated tracking guns and so the barricades remain unbreached for the time being, but the aliens are still out there probing for an entry-point, when Bishop points out that the atmospheric generator is damaged (as a result of gunfire from the earlier battle and/or the dropship crashing into it) and that it, along with the rest of the complex, will be destroyed in four hours by a nuclear blast. To escape, the survivors must bring down the other dropship from the Sulaco. Bishop volunteers to crawl down a pipe to the transceiver station at the other end of the colony complex in order to activate the ship and remotely fly it down to the surface.

After his departure, Ripley goes to check on Newt and falls asleep beside her. She wakes up to find herself and Newt locked in the soundproof med-lab with the two live facehuggers, placed in the room by Burke. Ripley sets off a fire-alarm and she and Newt are rescued by the Marines. After the destruction of the facehuggers, she informs the group that Burke had planned to have Newt and Ripley impregnated by the creatures then sabotage the Marines' hypersleep capsules on the Sulaco while en route back to Earth. They debate executing Burke for his scheme, but before they can reach a consensus, the aliens cut the power and pour into operations, slipping in through a gap in the overhead ducting/roofwork. In the confusion, Burke escapes and locks a door separating himself from the other humans, only to turn and find himself face-to-face with one of the invaders.

On the other side of the door, the Marines fight heroically, killing one alien after the other, but the number of swarming attackers forces them to fall back. After Hudson is pulled through the floor, fighting to his last breath, Newt guides the group away through the ventilation system she used to stay alive before the arrival of the Marines. Vasquez and a revived Gorman kill themselves with a grenade after being cut off and surrounded. The resulting explosion causes Newt to slip off of a large ventilation fan, slide down a long air duct and into a reservoir, where she is captured by an alien.

Leaving the Colony

Hicks is badly injured after being sprayed with a dying alien's acidic blood, but he and Ripley reach Bishop just as the android finishes bringing down the other dropship. Ripley tends to Hicks, orders Bishop to wait on standby as she collects weapons, and goes back to rescue Newt. She finds the girl cocooned in the previously-described nest just in time to save her from impregnation, but their path is blocked by fire and they stumble into the xenomorph primary egg chamber where the enormous Alien Queen is laying her eggs. Ripley uses her flamethrower to persuade the queen to call off her warriors, but seeing two eggs hatch, she incinerates the nest. This enrages the queen into ripping free of her egg-sac and pursuing the two humans. With the queen snapping at their heels, Ripley and Newt manage to board the dropship and escape just before the reactor blows up, destroying the colony.

Back aboard the Sulaco, all seems well, but as Ripley compliments Bishop for all his selfless assistance, the android is abruptly impaled from behind by the queen's barbed tail and torn in half -- the creature managed to hitch a ride on the dropship's landing gear. Newt attempts to evade capture under the loading dock's grated floor, while Ripley jumps into a powerloader, a heavy-duty mechanical exosuit used for cargo lifting. She emerges as the queen corners Newt, the girl she has poured all of her frustrated maternal love into.

Following an intense battle between the two in the Sulaco's hangar, Ripley manages to lift the creature up and drop her into a large vertical airlock. However, the exosuited Ripley is pulled in as well. After a close escape, she opens the outer door of the ship and expels the alien into space; the badly-damaged but still-functional Bishop grabs Newt as she and the air in the hangar is evacuated through the open airlock, saving the girl from sharing the queen's fate. Crawling out of the airlock, Ripley manages to close the inner door. Newt runs to her, and as they embrace Newt calls Ripley "Mommy".

Along with Bishop and Hicks, Ripley and Newt enter hypersleep capsules as the Sulaco begins the long journey back home. Ripley and Newt are both free to dream again.

Analysis

The story adds much to the overall mythos of the series, including Cameron's introduction of an insect-like social structure and life cycle for the xenomorphs, and is notable for its portrayal of strong women in leading action roles. It also re-introduces an android, this time in an extremely sympathetic role. Bishop is also the only character except Ripley (and her cat, Jonesy) to appear, more or less alive, in more than one film in the series.

Gun violence

Sigourney Weaver, who holds strong views on gun control, has stated that she was deeply uncomfortable with the amount of gun violence in the movie, most especially the fact that Ripley would be required to strap on firearms herself. However, she admitted she ended up enjoying the firearms training she received, and that this only added to the strength inherent in her character. She has also admitted that the gunplay held a seductive appeal. She talks about her opinions on gun violence on the Alien Quadrilogy DVD, and spoke at length on the subject in several articles in Starlog magazine in the 80's, mentioning that she was a bit more at ease with the guns because they were depicted being used 'against monsters and not other human beings'.

List of Conceptual Weapons

As noted below, the weapons in Aliens seemed to be mostly based around updated versions of modern armaments. Indeed, the two main weapons in the film were built around the basic frames of existing weapons:

• M-41A pulse rifle with underslung 30 mm grenade launcher — the basic armament of the Colonial Marines, this was, as mentioned in the Trivia section, actually a remodelled Thompson submachine gun with a Franchi SPAS 12 pump-action shotgun welded beneath the barrel to act as a grenade launcher. In the film, the M-41A was portrayed as a compact, angular assault rifle with an impressive rate of fire, using 10 mm caseless explosive-point ammunition. It is seen in action in the Colonial Marines' various confrontations with the aliens, not to mention Ripley's epic battle through the Atmosphere processor towards the end, and has significant stopping power — enough to blow an alien in two with a single burst.
• M-56A2 Smartgun — based on a modified MG-42 general-purpose machine gun, this was the Colonial Marine's tactical heavy support unit, and was portrayed as an auto-targeting computerized chain gun steadied by a suit-mounted battle mounting (actually a Steadicam harness — see Trivia). It was used to devastating effect against the aliens by the two smartgunners, Vasquez and Drake, during the chaotic battle under the heat exchangers midway through the film.
• M-240A1 Incinerator — a futuristic-looking flamethrower unit, this powerful weapon was used to incinerate countless aliens during the Marines' battles and Ripley's epic Atmosphere Processor attack. Built using M16 and M203 parts, it fired a napalm compound with excellent adhesive properties but ran out of ammunition very quickly when used in extended bursts.
• UA 571-C Sentry Gun — essentially a Smartgun with a motion sensor, set up on a tripod base. This robotic sentry gun used high-powered 10mm explosive rounds and supported extremely high rates of fire. When the Marines were sheltering in the Operations Centre, they set up four of these guns to guard the entrances. The guns destroyed dozens of aliens, but quickly ran out of ammo.
• Shotgun — This shotgun, which resembles an Ithaca stakeout 12-gauge shotgun was used by Hicks. It is seen in the movie when Hicks pulls it off of his back inside the alien nest after the marines are forced to surrender their pulse rifle ammo. When the marines are fleeing the ambush at the alien nest, Hicks uses this shotgun and puts it into the mouth of the alien that is trying to enter the transport.

View of Futuristic Weapons Re-imagined

Aliens was part of a wave of films that defied the common assumption that futuristic guns and weapons would be variations on energy beam firing devices such as lasers, plasma or particle emitters; most notably the blaster weapons of Star Wars or the multisetting stun/kill/vaporize beam of the often imitated Star Trek phaser. In Aliens, weapons are depicted as simply more advanced versions of today's weapons. They still fire bullets or projectiles instead of clean "death ray" beams. The primary weapon of the Colonial Marines in the movie is an assault rifle/grenade launcher combination weapon similar in many respects to the contemporary assault rifles fielded by many modern armies. Even the more "high-tech" SmartGun used by two characters in the movie are little more than partially self-guiding versions of conventional squad-support machine guns. (A description of the actual construction of these weapons can be found below in Trivia.) However, a concession was made to technophiles during one sequence of the film, omitted in the theatrical release but later reintroduced in the Director's Cut sold on VHS and DVD. In this short scene, one of the marines lists several decidedly non-conventional weapons including a particle beam weapon, "phased-plasma pulse" weapons, as well as apparently advanced sonic weapons.

The Colonial Marines' battleship, the Sulaco, features a mixed, more typically futuristic arsenal, including atomic weaponry.

Films with futuristic non "laser" type weapons, include Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element and the Matrix series.

Genre parallels

The film conforms to the majority of the common traits of the Western, as laid out in Will Wright's Sixguns and Society (University of California Press 1977). However, as the film borrows from and adapts so many genres and themes, it is more useful to classify it as an action-based sci-fi/horror film, with several developed subplots.

Indeed, it is one of the most surprising aspects of all of James Cameron's films that each contains a moving love story -- whether that of a soldier for a woman he had only met in his dreams (The Terminator), a mother for her newfound adopted daughter (Aliens), a husband for his estranged wife (The Abyss, True Lies), a boy for a strong robotic father-figure (Terminator 2: Judgment Day), or two doomed teenagers (Titanic).

Accolades

Aliens was nominated for seven Academy Awards and ended up winning two (Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects). Sigourney Weaver received her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress) for this film. Although Weaver did not win, it was considered a milestone for a Best Actress nomination to be granted to a science fiction/horror film, a genre that is usually given precious little recognition by the Academy, even today. Weaver has credited this reprise of her earlier role with placing her in serious contention for other leading female roles, and giving a significant boost to her career.

Lance Henriksen and Paul Reiser also significantly raised their acting profiles, later starring in the critically-acclaimed television series Millennium and Mad About You, respectively.

Bill Paxton

Another actor whose career benefited from Aliens was surely Bill Paxton who plays Hudson. Hudson, especially in the Special Edition, is perhaps the most gung ho and arrogant of the marines, only to descend into self-pity and near-madness when confronted with the aliens themselves, ultimately redeeming himself as he defiantly battles to the death when swarmed by the xenomorphs. Paxton's portrayal of the role through these facets endears the audience to the character, at first we are cynical of his confidence, then sympathetic to his pessimistic and reluctant attitude throughout the second act and finally we like him because he continues to fight after it is clear he will die shortly.

Some of his lines during his pessimistic stage may be seen as a comic relief, sometimes understating an intense scene in retrospect or exaggerating the hopelessness ahead: "Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!", "Why don't we put her in charge!" referring to the child character, Newt. And also the occasionally repeated quote in different media, "That's it man. Game over, man. Game over!"

Impact

The depiction of the female characters, especially Ripley and the ultra-macho Private Vasquez, as fearless warriors made a considerable impression in the North American perception of women in action films, particularly in futuristic science fiction. The medic, Corporal Dietrich, and Pilot Ferro both demonstrated a professional competence in their military roles, a major difference from previous films in which most females lacked such strength and apparent sense of duty. Since Aliens, it grew to be expected in futuristic stories that the female characters be as ready to bear arms and do battle on an equal basis with the male characters. The producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation were inspired by Vasquez to create the character of Tasha Yar (originally a hispanic character named Macha Hernandez in the first casting calls and writer's guides).

The film heavily influenced many later science fiction works to depict a more realistic world that looks 'lived in': while in Star Trek, the sets and equipment usually look pristine, in Aliens they look 'banged up', like they've been given makeshift repairs over time. The film is often cited as an influence by writers and video-game designers who are designing a realistic-looking, near-future military. The Colonial Marine Corps has been used as a template in the 1995-1996 TV series Space: Above and Beyond, the popular RTS computer game StarCraft and the Halo series. One also feels that the look of the Nebuchadnezzar of The Matrix trilogy owes much to the Sulaco.

Versions

The theatrical running time of Aliens was 137 minutes. Later, James Cameron cut together a 154 minute Special Edition (a true Director's Cut, since Cameron was forced to release the theatrical cut to fit a contractually mandated two-hour-and-fifteen-minute running length against his better judgment) that contained the daughter subplot, as well as scenes of the colony before the alien infestation, and extra battle scenes involving the marines' robot sentries.

The original theatrical cut introduces an element of uncertainty into the proceedings—the backstory exploring the fate of Newt's parents is not shown, and the audience is thus unaware of what has transpired beforehand. The scenes with Ripley's daughter and the robotic gun sentries provide subplots in themselves. However, some fans of the movie prefer the original theatrical release (the idea that the audience ought to know as much as the characters do, upon their arrival on LV-426, is crucial from this perspective) and consider the extra scenes in the Special Edition to be superfluous, despite the wishes of the director.

This Special Edition was first released on laserdisc and VHS in 1992 and in The Alien Legacy in 2001. Both versions of the film were released together for the first time in the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set.

Nevertheless, a scene was filmed which is not included in any version: when Ripley is searching for Newt, before her encounter with the Queen, she finds Burke cocooned and impregnated. Burke begs Ripley to shoot him, instead she hands him a grenade. Some magazines published a few frames of this scene, explaining that it was cut because, according to the estabilished Alien impregnation timetable, by that time Burke would still have had a facehugger attached to his face.

Video games

Direct Licenses

Two games based on the movie were released by Electric Dreams in the 1980s for the Amstrad CPC 8-bit home computer, the ZX Spectrum, and the Commodore 64:

• The first, released in 1986, featured six characters from the film (Ripley, Gorman, Hicks, Vazquez, Bishop and, bizarrely, Burke) armed with smart guns, moving independently through the base searching for the Queen's chamber. The quasi-3D view is that from each character's helmet camera, a monitor showing the character's life signs. If caught by aliens a character would be killed or impregnated, but could be rescued by others. The game package included a map of the base.
• The second game, released in 1987, featured various scenes from the movie with different forms of gameplay, including guiding the dropship through the planet's atmosphere, fighting off Aliens with a flamethrower while Vasquez cuts through a door, and fighting the Queen in Ripley's lifter. It also included dialog sequences from the film, edited for language. It is known as the "US Version" because it was released in the US before the Amstrad's main market, the UK.

In 1990, Konami released an arcade game, Aliens, based on the movie. The game is an isometric-perspective 3-axis run and gun side-scroller (similar to Midway's NARC), where you play as either Ripley (Player 1) or Hicks (Player 2). Because it introduces additional monsters such as winged xenomorphs, giant spiders infested with chest-bursters, and undead soldiers, the game is not very true to the series. Still, the plot elements of the film will be apparent to fans of the series who play the game. The marine campaigns in the Aliens Versus Predator computer games are heavily influenced by the action sequences of this movie, much more so than by the prequels and sequels.

While the Super NES video game Alien³ was primarily based on the movie of the same name, it armed Ripley with the weaponry used in the climactic scenes of Aliens. It also included Hudson's well known "Game over, man!" line from this movie. However, due to cinema rules limiting the use of intellectual property and compensation of actors, the developers of Alien³, Acclaim Entertainment, were forced to use a voiced impression of Hudson rather than an excerpt of his line from Aliens.

Influence

The influence of Aliens on the video game industry is undeniable. The seminal first-person shooter Doom presented an environment quite similar to that of the colony in Aliens, complete with dark corridors and flickering lights, patrolled by space marines wielding futuristic upgrades of modern weapons (including a shotgun). Coincidentally, an Aliens .WAD was a prominent early fan made mod for Doom. It could be said that the corridor crawl sub-classification of the first-person shooter genre owes itself completely to the vision conceptualized in Aliens.

Specific instances of Aliens' influence on gaming:

• The digital ammo counter on FPS machine guns in games like Unreal and Halo was influenced by the M41A pulse rifle.
• The concept of a weapon with secondary-fire mode was influenced by the M41A pulse rifle with its grenade launching capabilities. This concept was first heavily used in the game Blood and after in Unreal.
• Halo and Halo 2 feature a character named Sergeant Avery J. Johnson. aka "The Sarge." This character, who is a hard-talking veteran black man, seems to be heavily influenced by the Aliens character Sergeant Apone.
• In the Halo series, the marines have the same 'Gung-ho' attitude to killing aliens, and even the sergeant says the famous line, "Go go go! The corps ain't payin' us by the hour!" In addition the Xenomorphs could also be compared to The Flood who also parasitically use humans to reproduce.
• StarCraft is heavy with Aliens influence, including a Xenomorph-like species, the Zerg, and a human species complete with space marines, Terrans. StarCraft also features a variety of quotes from the film. For example, the drop ship pilot for the Terran (who happens to have a very close resemblance to Cpl. Ferro) says, "We’re in the pipe, five by five." and "Hang on, we're in for some chop." The Marines also say "How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?"
• The machine gun sentry turrets in the game Half-Life 2 look similar to and serve the same purpose as the UA 571-C Sentry Guns.
• A female character in the game Duke Nukem 3D is covered in "alien goo" and begs that the player kill her.
• The vehicles in the film have inspired several similar designs, including Bungie Studios' Halo video game, which has a vehicle based on the UD-4L Cheyenne Dropship, also evident in games such as Blizzard's StarCraft and Westwood's Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Additionally, Tiberian Suns, Amphibious APC is loosely modelled on the APC from this movie. The Orca Fighter and Bomber units were also loosely based on the dropship as well.
• In the classic video game Contra many of the enemies are clearly inspired by the xenomorphs.
• In the Xbox 360 game Quake 4 the dropships used are nearly identical to those used in the movie, also the entire space marine hunting for aliens down dark futuristic corridors feeling is closely imitated.
• James Horner's score has been recycled in dozens of film trailers.
• Psygnosis and Wheelhaus's Sony Playstation title, G-Police has multiple variants of the M41A Pulse Rifles and dropships shown in briefing screens during the FMV cutscenes.

Trivia

• The 19-foot queen alien model is currently on display at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, as of 2005. It is on loan from its owner and an advisory board member of the museum, James Cameron.
• Burke tells Bishop that Ash from the original mission was a "Hyperdyne" model of android; this is an inside joke by James Cameron as the the Terminator in his film of the same name was a "Cyberdyne" model.
• The Alien nest set (built inside a disused power station in Acton, London) wasn't dismantled after filming. It was unused until several years later when it was used as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman in 1989. When the crew of Batman first entered the set, they found most of the Alien nest still intact.
• Composer James Horner stated in an interview that he felt that James Cameron had not given him enough time to write a musical score for the film. Because of this he said he was forced to cannibalize previous scores he had done as well as adapt a rendition of "Gayane Ballet Suite" for the main and end titles. Horner stated that the tensions with Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. Cameron, however, was so impressed with Horner's score from Braveheart that he later asked him to compose the score for Titanic.
• Horner had to incorporate much of his scores for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (see above entry), thus resulting in samples of the original Star Trek theme song to be heard on a few occasions by a careful listener.
• As the end titles finish scrolling and the score fades to silence, an extremely faint sound can be heard in the background: an alien egg sac opening to release a facehugger. This can be interpreted as foreshadowing the events at the start of Alien³.
• The optional director and cast audio commentary on the film included in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set has the director and cast talking about their disappointment with the Alien³ film, and Weaver (jokingly) mentioning how she only agreed to do Aliens 4 because she wanted to prevent the making of the Aliens vs. Predator film.
• Paul Reiser (Burke) mentioned a humorous story in his book Couplehood, about how early in his marriage when he was a struggling comedian and actor, he and his wife one day made a playful list of celebrities they were "allowed" to cheat with. One person on his list was Sigourney Weaver. This made for much playful teasing of his wife when he was cast in Aliens.
• In the cut scene where Burke shows Ripley a picture of her aged daughter, Amanda (Amy) McClaren, it is actually a photo of Sigourney Weaver's real life mother, Elizabeth Inglis.
• Jones (aka "Jonesy") the cat is the only "character" from the first two Alien movies that ultimately survives the rest (xenomorphs included). Ripley and Jones are the only two survivors at the end of Alien, and, in Aliens, Jones gets to stay behind (apparently on the "Gateway" Earth-orbital space station) when Ripley returns to LV-426. When Ripley and the other survivors from Aliens die in Alien³, less than two months have passed since we last saw Jones, so we can assume he's the sole survivor.
• Carrie Henn (Newt) never appeared in another role in film or television. She is currently a school teacher.
• Carrie Henn's brother Christopher appeared in Aliens as Newt's brother, Timmy. The scene was cut from the original release, but is available on the Special Edition DVD or the European Edition VHS.
• When the Marine viewpoints are seen on monitors via their helmet cameras, their surnames and first initial are shown on the read-out. With the exception of Hicks, the first name initials are that of the actors who played the respective marines: W. Hudson, J. Vasquez, A. Apone, etc.
• Pvt. Frost remarks that he "sure wouldn't mind getting some...Arcturian poontang." Arcturians were an alien race featured in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Literary inspirations

• Apparently, names of some Marine characters were drawn from A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan's account of the Operation Market Garden in WWII. Gorman, Wierzbowski, Hicks et al feature as prominent characters in the book.
• "Sulaco" is the name of the town in Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, which was the name of the ship in Alien. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, is an admirer of Conrad's.
• The film contains numerous (and often somewhat obscure) nods to Robert A. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers." The references to "bug hunts," "drops," and having female pilots all echo Heinlein's work. (In a discussion about the then-upcoming film version of "Starship Troopers," Harlan Ellison wondered aloud why anyone would make the film, since in his opinion it had already been made, and was called "Aliens.")

Cast and crew in other films

• Director James Cameron has been known to use Aliens actors in other films. Michael Biehn (Hicks), Lance Henriksen (Bishop) and Bill Paxton (Hudson) all appeared in The Terminator. Jenette Goldstein (Vasquez) appeared in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Titanic. Biehn was also in The Abyss. Bill Paxton has also appeared in True Lies and Titanic.
• Bill Paxton is the only actor to have been killed by The Terminator (The Terminator), an Alien and a Predator (Predator 2). Though Lance Henriksen was killed by both a Predator (Aliens vs. Predator ) and The Terminator, he was severely wounded by an Alien and eventually was given a mercy killing by Ripley.
• Kathryn Bigelow (now Cameron's ex-wife, though at the time they were married) directed Near Dark, a vampire movie starring Aliens alumni Henricksen, Goldstein and Paxton. She also directed the music video for the New Order song, "Touched by the Hand of God", which starred Bill Paxton.
• Paxton and Biehn appeared together in Tombstone as well as Navy SEALs. (Navy SEALs also had Rick Rossovich, a Terminator alumnus.) These three actors also appeared in The Lords of Discipline together.
• Lance Henricksen also starred in Pumpkinhead, the first directing effort by Aliens special effects wizard Stan Winston.
• Both smart-gunners appeared late in the 3rd season of the FOX drama 24 although they shared no scenes nor were in the same episode together:
  • Mark Rolston (Pvt. Drake) portrayed Bruce Foxton a private investigator hired by Wayne Palmer.
  • Jenette Goldstein (Pvt. Vasquez) portrayed Rae Plachecki, a Division agent who conducts an internal interview with Jack Bauer and later, Tony Almeida.
• Two degrees of separation: Bill Paxton starred in the film Twister with Helen Hunt, who played the wife of Paul Reiser's character in the television series Mad About You.

References in other works

• In the Family Guy episode "Da Boom", Stewie mimics one of Hudson's lines from Aliens: "Game over, man! Game over!"
• In The Simpsons episode "The Last of the Red Hat Mamas", Homer tells Marge "Game over man ... game over" after a failed heist.
• The famous red-lit "Game Time" scene was spoofed in the television series NewsRadio.
• In the Vicar of Dibley in the 40 minute christmas special "Engagement" Hugo says to alice "I won't leave you Alice, thats a promise" which is a slightly altered version of what Ripley said to Newt.
• In a South Park episode entitled "Cat Orgy", Cartman is shown watching a cartoon-version of Aliens on TV, specifically the scene where Newt says "we better be getting back because it'll be dark soon and they mostly come at night... mostly." Later in the episode, Cartman repeats the "mostly" line to himself.
• In the Mary Gentle novel Grunts, a squad of orcish marines reports in via a Corporal Hikz — this coming specifically at a time when large, chitinous insectile aliens with acid blood are threatening the planet.
• The two hospital levels of the PC game Ghost Master feature mortals with modified names of the Aliens cast and their characters (first name of the actor and last name of their character) with patient descriptions that match their fates in the film.
• The Invader Zim episode "Lice" contains a "Queen Louse" that resembles the Alien queen who disconnects herself from an egg-bearing thorax. Countess von Verminstrasser says "Close your eyes, baby" just before she fires a "blender gun" at the Queen Louse that uses Zim's skin as a projectile.
• In an episode of The Mask: The Animated Series the villain Kablamus attempts to use a massive warhead to blow up Edge City. However, the Mask appears ready to save the day and grabs the warhead and turns himself into a character with dark, curly hair, a sleevless shirt and ammunition strapped around him. Then he says "Get away from her, you witch!" this is an obvious reference to Aliens as the Mask being Ripley. However, for obvious reasons, the word "bitch" was substituted with "witch". ("witch" was also the dub used in network airings of the film)
• In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, "Fire Maidens of Outer Space," Crow T. Robot encounters his evil doppelganger named "Timmy." By the end of the episode, Timmy has cocooned Crow and Tom Servo in a gooey xenomorph nest. Joel Robinson comes to the rescue, shouting, "Get away from him, you BITCH!" After a brief struggle, Joel shoots Timmy out of the airlock, as Ripley does to the Queen in the film.

Cast

Crew

External links

• Aliens at the Internet Movie Database
• Aliens first draft script
• Aliens arcade game review