Aliens 1986 (by Gregory Perez)

Movie Analysis:  Aliens (Gregory Perez)

                Director James Cameron has made his fame directing many sci-fi films with movies such as The Terminator, Aliens and Avatar.  Cameron’s box office success with these science fiction movies has paved way for his successful career as a director.  Cameron built his prowess as a sci-fi director during the 1980s, a time when science fiction blockbuster films such as E.T, Star Wars and Blade Runner were taking box offices by storm.  After the success of The Terminator in 1984, Cameron directed a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien; Cameron was able to interpret the sequel and continue the series of Alien movies.  In James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens, Cameron portrays feminist ideals, corporate greed’s danger to society, and criticism of the Vietnam War. 

Aliens has a feminist agenda with female characters in the movie as physically adept, mentally strong and critical figures in the storyline.  The lead character, Ellen Ripley, is shown as the most experienced space pilot, and a tough girl; she is shown as a mother figure, who has escaped the clutches of the parasitic alien race once before and now the protector of Newt.  As the main character she advises the team that goes to explore a planet that has lost contact with the Weyland Industries ship.  Even Newt, who survived the alien attacks, is seen as a strong girl as she was the lone survivor of the alien infestation out of the 77 families that were colonized there.  Private Vasquez is the toughest female that stands out amongst the space marines; she knows how to wield a large canon; her character has close up shots doing exercise more frequently than the men.  The importance of the females in the film is capitalized with the theme of a queen alien that hatches all of the alien eggs.  Once Ripley encounters the mother alien, Cameron uses a wide angle to display the queen’s massive size and amount of eggs in her chamber.  As Ripley threatens to destroy the alien eggs, the queen shows her authority by commanding approaching guard aliens to leave; the queen’s authority over the other aliens coincides with Cameron’s feminist appeal throughout the movie.  Ripley ultimately burns the queen’s eggs and runs off; the scene concludes as a fight between two mother figures, Ripley and the queen.  The queen returns to chase and attack Ripley on the rescue spacecraft but fails and is ejected from the Weyland spacecraft just as the Ripley did in Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Weyland Industries is introduced in the series as a private industrial space company. Through Weyland Industries agents, James Cameron criticizes corporate greed as dangerous to human health.  Bishop and Carter Burke are sent to the colonized planet to investigate and potentially gather alien species and bring back specimens to develop biological weapons.  Bishop, a cyborg created by Weyland Industries, finds two aliens organisms to study and he tells Ripley that he had specific instructions from the president of Weyland to bring back the organisms; he disregards the aliens attacking and puts the crew’s safety at risk.  Carter Burke constantly refuses to exterminate the aliens on the planet for the chance to study them.  Weyland Industries represents large corporations like Walmart, who do not care for their employees to provide benefits like health care.  Cameron’s criticism is that large corporations focus on what will bring profits to the company not the welfare of the employees.  In the case of Aliens, the large corporation, Weyland Industries, was trying to use the aliens for biological warfare.

Cameron provides a criticism of the Vietnam War in Aliens.  Before the journey to the space colony, Ripley tells Carter Burke that they are entering a war that they can not win.  Cameron expressed the feelings of many people before the United States entered the Vietnam War; they felt that it was a war in which they could not win; the United States was did not know the territory around Vietnam, yet they entered the war.  Many of the soldiers had died in the Vietnam War figuring out the terrain.  Cameron depicts an interpretation of a possible scenario of the Vietnam War with the swarm of aliens that surrounds the marines inside the colony.  Cameron draws another parallel with the Vietnam War by featuring the marines fighting off aliens with flamethrower rifles.  In the Vietnam War, flamethrowers were a weapon used by marines and mounted on tanks to try and invade territories in Vietnam. 

James Cameron uses a similar signature style of directing as in The Terminator; the films he directs begins by the audience discovering who the characters are, then heavy tension builds.  Although the aliens that once attacked Ripley’s space crew once before are mentioned, Cameron does not show the fully grown aliens until an hour into the film; the alien queen is the last alien to be shown.  The suspense to see what has happened to the people of colonized planet is built in several scenes with the musical score playing a key role in several scenes; when the aliens have the marines cornered in a room for the first time the string section intensifies the scene with high pitched notes.  As Newt and Ripley are being chased by a newly hatched alien parasite, the strings and French horns play sudden, frightening high notes.  During the final sequences of the battle between the queen and Ripley, the musical score behind the explosion sounds further accents the tense scene.

James Cameron managed to create a unique sci-fi film in Aliens while featuring his ideas of feminism, corporate greed, and criticism of the Vietnam War.  Cameron emphasized feminism with his strong-willed female characters in Ripley, Private Vasquez and the queen alien.  Characters Bishop and Carter Burke were identified as agents of a selfish corporation as the representatives of Weyland Industries.  Their interest for research for biological warfare surpassed the safety of their human passengers.  Lastly, Cameron features his commentary on the Vietnam War with the flamethrowers and dialogue from Ripley mentioning that they will not win a war on the planet.