Box Office
Eagerly anticipated by fans following the success of Alien,[18] Aliens was released in America on July 18, 1986, and September 26 in the United Kingdom. The film opened in 1,437 theaters with an average opening gross of $6,995 and a weekend gross of $10,052,042.
It was number one at the United States box office for four consecutive weeks, grossing $85.1 million, and remains the highest-grossing Alien film at the U.S. box office when not adjusting for inflation. The film took a further $45.9 million outside of North America, for a total gross of $131 million.
Budget $18,500,000
Widest Release: 1,454 theaters
Gross revenue
Domestic: $85,160,248 / 65.0%
+ Foreign: $45,900,000 / 35.0%
= Worldwide: $131,060,248
Screenplay, Directed by James Cameron
Produced by Gale Anne Hurd, Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill
Story by James Cameron, David Giler,
Walter Hill
Music by James Horner
Cinematography Adrian Biddle
Editing by Ray Lovejoy
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) July 18, 1986
Running time 137 minutes
Language English
Preceded by Alien
Followed by Alien 3
Casting:
Cameron opted to hire actors who had, or could create, American accents. Over 3,000 residents in the United Kingdom auditioned.
After auditions of UK residents proved unsuccessful, the crew imported actors from America including Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Michael Biehn, who had all worked with Cameron on The Terminator.
The role of Newt was the most difficult to cast according to the casting director. The casting team auditioned schoolchildren, but found that many of them had acted in commercials and were accustomed to smiling after saying their lines, a trait that the producers wished to avoid due to the dark tone of Aliens.
Carrie Henn, whose father was stationed at a United States military base, was chosen out of 500 children for the role of Newt, although she had no previous acting experience.
Actors who played Marines were asked to read Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers and undergo military training which included running, lifting weights, learning salutes, marches, deployments, and maneuvers for two weeks.
Al Matthews had experience in the military and believed he was cast as Sergeant Apone because of this experience. Cameron wanted the Marines to train together, so that they would form bonds that would show on-screen.
Sigourney Weaver, William Hope, and Paul Reiser were absent from training due to other obligations, but Cameron felt that this suited their characters as "outsiders" in the film. Michael Biehn was also absent from the training, as he was not cast until one week after filming had commenced.
Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley
Paul Reiser as Carter J. Burke
Michael Biehn as Corporal Dwayne Hicks
Lance Henriksen as Bishop
Carrie Henn as Newt
William Hope as Lieutenant William Gorman
Al Matthews as Sergeant Al Apone
Cynthia Dale Scott as
Corporal Cynthia Dietrich
Bill Paxton as Private William Hudson
Jenette Goldstein as Private Jenette Vasquez
Mark Rolston as Private Mark Drake
Ricco Ross as Private Ricco Frost
Colette Hiller as Corporal Collette Ferro
Daniel Kash as Private Daniel Spunkmeyer
Tip Tipping as Private Tim Crowe
Trevor Steedman as
Private Trevor Wierzbowski
Awards and Accolades:
Aliens was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Music, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration.
Time Magazine named Aliens in their Best of '86 list calling it a "technically awesome blend of the horror, sci-fi and service- comedy genres." In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named Aliens as the second-best action movie of all time, behind Die Hard.
In a Rotten Tomatoes analysis of the top 100 science fiction films, Aliens ranks tenth among the best-reviewed films of the genre.
In 2004, Aliens was ranked thirty-fifth on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments" for the scene in which Ripley and Newt are attacked by facehuggers; the original Alien was ranked second for the chestburster scene.
IGN ranked it third in its "Top 25 Action Films of All-Time", stating that "there won't be an Alien movie as scary – or exciting – as this one made ever again."
ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards
1987 Won ASCAP Award Top
Box Office Films: James Horner
Academy Awards, USA
1987 Won Oscar Best Effects, Sound
Effects Editing: Don Sharpe
Best Effects, Visual Effects:
Robert Skotak, Stan Winston,
John Richardson, Suzanne M. Benson
Nominated Oscar Best Actress in a
Leading Role: Sigourney Weaver
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration:
Peter Lamont, Crispian Sallis
Best Film Editing: Ray Lovejoy
Best Music, Original Score: James Horner
Best Sound: Graham V. Hartstone,
Nicolas Le Messurier, Michael A. Carter, Roy Charman
Academy of Science Fiction,
Fantasy & Horror Films, USA
1987 Won Saturn Award Best Actress:
Sigourney Weaver
Best Director: James Cameron
Best Performance by a Younger Actor:
Carrie Henn
Best Science Fiction Film
Best Special Effects: Stan Winston,
Robert Skotak, Dennis Skotak
Best Supporting Actor: Bill Paxton
Best Supporting Actress: Jenette Goldstein
Best Writing: James Cameron
Nominated Saturn Award Best Actor:
Michael Biehn
Best Costumes: Emma Porteus
Best Make-Up: Peter Robb-King
Awards of the Japanese Academy
1987 Nominated Award of the Japanese Academy Best Foreign Language Film
BAFTA Awards
1987 Won BAFTA Film Award Best
Special Visual Effects: Robert Skotak,
Brian Johnson, John Richardson,
Stan Winston
Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Make Up Artist: Peter Robb-King
Best Production Design: Peter Lamont
Best Sound: Don Sharpe, Roy Charman,
Graham V. Hartstone
Casting Society of America, USA
1987 Nominated Artios Best
Casting for Feature Film, Drama:
Mike Fenton, Jane Feinberg, Judy Taylor
Golden Globes, USA
1987 Nominated Golden Globe
Best Performance by an Actress
in a Motion Picture - Drama:
Sigourney Weaver
Hugo Awards
1987 Won Hugo Best Dramatic Presentation
Kinema Junpo Awards
1987 Won Readers' Choice Award Best
Foreign Language Film: James Cameron
Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA
1987 Won Golden Reel Award Best
Sound Editing - Foreign Feature
Young Artist Awards
1987 Nominated Young Artist Award
Exceptional Performance by a Young Actress, Supporting Role in a Feature Film - Comedy, Fantasy or Drama: Carrie Henn
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Synopsis
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only survivor of the space freighter Nostromo, is rescued and revived after drifting for fifty-seven years in hypersleep. At an interview before a panel of executives from her employer, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, her testimony regarding the Alien is met with extreme skepticism as no physical evidence of the creature survived the destruction of the Nostromo. Ripley loses her space flight license as a result of her "questionable judgment" and learns that LV-426, the planetoid where her crew first encountered the Alien eggs, is now home to a terraforming colony.
Ripley is visited by Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the Colonial Marines, who inform her that contact has been lost with the colony on LV-426. The company is dispatching Burke and a unit of marines to investigate, and offers to restore Ripley's flight status and grant her a commission as a lieutenant if she will accompany them as a consultant. Traumatized by her previous encounter with the Alien, Ripley initially refuses to join, but accepts when she realizes that the mission will allow her to face her fears.
Arriving aboard the warship Sulaco she is introduced to the Colonial Marines, including Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), Privates Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) and Hudson (Bill Paxton), and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), toward whom Ripley is initially hostile due to her previous experience with the android Ash aboard the Nostromo. The heavily-armed expedition descends to the surface of LV-426 via dropship, where they find the colony seemingly abandoned. Two living Alien facehugger specimens are found in the colony's medical lab, and the only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn).
The marines determine that the colonists are clustered in the nuclear-powered atmosphere processing station. There they find a large Alien nest filled with the cocooned corpses of the colonists. The Aliens attack and kill most of the unit, but Ripley rescues Hicks, Vasquez, and Hudson. With Gorman knocked unconscious during the rescue, Hicks assumes command and orders the dropship to recover the survivors, intending to return to the Sulaco and destroy the colony from orbit. A stowaway Alien kills the dropship pilots in flight, causing the vessel to crash into the processing station. The surviving humans barricade themselves inside the colony complex.
Ripley discovers that it was Burke who ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship where the Nostromo crew first encountered the Alien eggs, and that he hopes to return Alien specimens to the company laboratories where he can profit from their use as biological weapons. She threatens to expose him, but Bishop soon informs the group of a greater threat: the damaged processing station has become unstable and will soon detonate with the force of a thermonuclear weapon. He volunteers to use the colony's transmitter to pilot the Sulaco's remaining dropship to the surface by remote control so that the group can escape.
Ripley and Newt fall asleep in the medical laboratory, awakening to find themselves locked in the room with the two facehuggers, which have been released from their tanks. Ripley is able to alert the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. Ripley accuses Burke of attempting to smuggle implanted Alien embryos past Earth's quarantine inside her and Newt, and of planning to kill the rest of the marines in hypersleep during the return trip. The electricity is suddenly cut off and the Aliens attack en masse through the ceiling. Hudson, Burke, Gorman, and Vasquez are killed and Newt is captured by the Aliens.
Ripley and an injured Hicks reach Bishop and the second dropship, but Ripley is unwilling to leave Newt behind. She rescues Newt from the hive in the processing station, where the two encounter the Alien queen and her egg chamber. Ripley destroys most of the eggs, enraging the queen, who escapes by tearing free from her ovipositor. Closely pursued by the queen, Ripley and Newt rendezvous with Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the colony is consumed by the nuclear blast.
Back on the Sulaco, Ripley and Bishop's relief at their narrow escape is interrupted when the Alien queen, stowed away on the dropship's landing gear, tears Bishop in half. Ripley battles the queen using an exosuit cargo-loader. The two of them tumble into a large airlock, which Ripley then opens, expelling the queen into space. Ripley clambers to safety and she, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop enter hypersleep for the return to Earth. At the end of the credits the sound of an alien egg opening can be heard setting up the third film in the series.
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Inspiration
While completing pre-production of The Terminator in 1983, director James Cameron discussed the possibility of working on a sequel to Alien (1979) with producer David Giler. A fan of the original film, Cameron was interested in crafting a sequel and entered a self-imposed seclusion to brainstorm a concept for Alien II. After four days Cameron produced an initial forty-five page treatment, although management changes at 20th Century Fox resulted in the film being put on hiatus, as they felt that Alien had not generated enough profit to warrant a sequel.
A scheduling conflict with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger caused filming of The Terminator to be delayed by nine months (as Schwarzenegger was filming Conan the Destroyer), allowing Cameron additional time to write a script for Aliens. While filming The Terminator, Cameron wrote ninety pages for Aliens, and although the script was not finished, Fox was impressed and told him that if The Terminator was a success, he would be able to direct Aliens. Following the success of The Terminator, Cameron and partner Gale Anne Hurd were given approval to direct and produce the sequel to Alien, scheduled for a 1986 release.
Cameron was enticed by the opportunity to create a new world and opted not to follow the same formula as Alien, but to create a worthy combat sequel focusing "more on terror, less on horror". Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in Alien, had doubts about the project, but after meeting Cameron she expressed interest in revisiting her character. 20th Century Fox, however, refused to sign a contract with Weaver over a payment dispute and asked Cameron to write a story excluding Ellen Ripley. He refused on the grounds that Fox had indicated that Weaver had signed on when he began writing the script.
With Cameron's persistence, Fox signed the contract and Weaver obtained a salary of $1 million, a sum equal to thirty times what she was paid for the first film. Weaver nicknamed her role in the Alien sequel "Rambolina," and stated that she approached the role as akin to the titular role in Henry V or women warriors in Chinese classical literature. Cameron drew inspiration for the Aliens story from the Vietnam War, a situation in which a technologically superior force was mired in a hostile foreign environment: "Their training and technology are inappropriate for the specifics, and that can be seen as analogous to the inability of superior American firepower to conquer the unseen enemy in Vietnam: a lot of firepower and very little wisdom, and it didn't work."
In the story of Aliens the Colonial Marines are hired to protect the business interests of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, corresponding to the belief that corporate interests were the reason that American troops were sent to South Vietnam. The attitude of the Marines was influenced by the Vietnam War; they are portrayed as cocky and confident of their inevitable victory, but when they find themselves facing a less technologically advanced but more determined enemy, the outcome is not what they expect.
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Concept
Early concept art was created by Syd Mead, who had worked on 2010 and Tron. One of the original designs for the spaceship Sulaco was spherical, but it was redesigned as the ship would be out of frame due to the film's aspect ratio. Cameron showed Mead his own concept art and the final result was described as a "rocket gun that carries stuff". Concept artists were asked to incorporate subliminal acknowledgments to the Vietnam War, which included designing the dropship as a combination of a F-4 Phantom II and AH-1 Cobra.
Some scenes of the Alien nest were shot in a decommissioned power plant in Acton, London. The crew thought it was a perfect place to film due to its grilled walkways and numerous corridors. Problems were encountered with rust and asbestos, however, and the crew was required to spend money to clean the asbestos. The Alien nest set was not dismantled after filming, and was reused in 1989 as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman. When the crew of Batman entered the set, they found most of it intact. British Airways was re-equipping several of its aircraft towing vehicles, and the crew managed to purchase an old one to use as the armored personal carrier.
It initially weighed 70 tons, and although the crew removed 35 tons of lead, the power station floor had to be reinforced to support the weight. The crew used many "junk" items in the set designs, such as Ripley's toilet, which came from a Boeing 747. Lockers, helicopter engines, and vending machines were used as set elements in the opening hypersleep scene. Production designer Peter Lamont was asked to reduce the cost of several scenes, including the not-yet-filmed marine hypersleep sequence.
Gale Hurd wanted to cut the scene altogether, but Lamont and Cameron felt it was important to the sequence of the film. To save on cost, only four hypersleep chambers were created and a mirror was used to create the illusion that there were twelve in the scene. Instead of using hydraulics, the chambers were opened and closed by wires operated by puppeteers.
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Filming
Aliens was filmed on a budget of $18 million at Pinewood Studios, with production lasting ten months. Production was affected by a number of personnel and cast disruptions. Shooting was said to be problematic due to cultural clashes between Cameron and the British crew, with the crew having what actor Bill Paxton called a "really indentured" way of working. Cameron, who is known to be a hard driving director and at the time was bound to a low budget with a release date set that he could not delay, found it difficult to adjust to working practices such as the regular tea breaks that brought production to a temporary halt.
The crew were admirers of Ridley Scott, and many believed Cameron to be too young and inexperienced to be directing such a film as Aliens, despite Cameron's attempts to show them his previous film, The Terminator, which had not yet been released in the UK. At one point the crew members mocked Cameron's wife, producer Gale Anne Hurd, by asking her who the producer was and insisting that she was only getting producer's credit because she was married to the director.
A walkout occurred when Cameron clashed with an uncooperative cameraman who refused to light a scene the way Cameron wanted. The cameraman had lit the Alien nest set brightly, while Cameron insisted on his original vision of a dark, foreboding nest, relying on the lights from the Marines' armor. After the cameraman was fired, Hurd managed to coax the crew members into coming back to work.
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Visual Effects
Brothers Robert and Dennis Skotak were hired to supervise the visual effects, having previously worked with Cameron on several Roger Corman movies. Two stages were used to construct the colony on LV-426, using miniature models that were on average six feet tall and three feet wide. Filming the miniatures was difficult due to the weather; the wind would blow over the props, although it proved helpful to give the effect of weather on the planet. Cameron used these miniatures and several effects to make scenes look larger than they really were, including rear projection, mirrors, beam splitters, camera splits and foreground miniatures.
The Alien suits were made more flexible and durable than the ones used in Alien, to expand on the creatures' movements and allow them to crawl and jump. Dancers, gymnasts and stunt men were hired to portray the Aliens. The creature's head was changed from the sleek shape used in Alien, as the crew thought that the original shape would crack with the creatures' increased mobility. Ridges were added along the head to increase its durability during movements.
Scenes involving the Alien queen were the most difficult to film, according to production staff. A life-sized mock-up was created by Stan Winston's company in the United States to see how it would operate. Once the testing was complete, the crew working on the queen flew to England and began work creating the final version. Standing at fourteen feet, it was operated using a mixture of puppeteers, control rods, hydraulics, cables, and a crane above to support it. Two puppeteers were inside the suit operating its arms, and sixteen were required to move it. All sequences involving the queen were filmed in-camera with no post-production manipulation.
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Music
Music composer James Horner felt he was not given enough time to create a musical score. Horner arrived in England and expected the film to be "locked" so he could write the score in six weeks, which he thought was a sufficient amount of time. Horner, however, discovered that filming and editing were still taking place, and he was unable to view the film. He visited the sets and editing rooms for three weeks and found that editor Ray Lovejoy was barely keeping up with the workload due to time restrictions.
Horner believed Cameron was preoccupied with sound effects, citing that Cameron spent two days with the sound engineer creating the sounds for the pulse rifles. He also complained that he was given an outdated recording studio; the score was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, a thirty-year-old studio that was barely able to patch in synthesizers or use the electronic equipment that Horner required. Six weeks from theatrical release, no dubbing had taken place and the score had not been written, as Horner was unable to view the completed film.
The final cue for the scene in which Ripley battles the Alien queen was written overnight. Cameron completely reworked the scene, leaving Horner to rewrite the music. As Gale Hurd did not have much music production experience, she and Cameron denied Horner's request to push the film back four weeks so he could finish the score. Horner felt that, given more time, he could get the score to 100% of his satisfaction, rather than the 80% he estimated he had been able to achieve. The score was recorded in roughly four days.
Despite his troubles, Horner received an Academy Award nomination (his first) for Best Original Score. Horner stated that tensions between himself and Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. Horner believed that Cameron's film schedules were too short and stressful. The two parted ways until 1997 when Cameron, so impressed with Horner's score for Braveheart, asked him to compose the score for Titanic.
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Interpretation and analysis
Philosopher Stephen Mulhall has remarked that the four Alien films represent an artistic rendering of the difficulties faced by the woman's "voice" to have itself heard in a masculinist society, as Ripley continually encounters males who try to silence her and to force her to submit to their desires. Mulhall sees this depicted in several places in Aliens, particularly the inquest scene in which Ripley's explanation for the deaths and destruction of the Nostromo, as well as her attempts to warn the board members of the alien danger, are met with officious disdain.
However, Mulhall believes that Ripley's relationship with Hicks illustrates that Aliens "is devoted ... to the possibility of modes of masculinity that seek not to stifle but rather to accommodate the female voice, and modes of femininity that can acknowledge and incorporate something more or other of masculinity than our worst nightmares of it." Several movie academics, including Barbara Creed, have remarked on the color and lighting symbolism in the Alien franchise, which offsets white, strongly lit environments (spaceships, corporate offices) against darker, dirtier, 'corrupted' settings (derelict alien ship, abandoned industrial facilities).
These black touches contrast or even attempt to take over the purity of the white elements. Others, such as Kile M. Ortigo of Emory University, agree with this interpretation and point to the Sulaco with its "sterilized, white interior" as representing this element in the second film of the franchise. Academics analyzing the role of the Ripley character remark on the symbolism of the Sulaco's cryo chamber. Ripley is compared with an incorrupt Catholic saint preserved in a glass coffin (akin to Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, both in her lying in state in the cryotube as well as her incorrupt body, which has twice survived being almost "impregnated" by the Alien).
Accompanied by the Agnus Dei of the Ordinary Mass playing in the background of the opening scene, these scholars argue that the Sulaco is transformed "into a holy site where the iconic bodies of a fetishistic religion lie in state," setting the scene for a lone facehugger attacking its victim (corrupting it) and also causing the emergency system to eject the cryotubes into space and to plunge to Fiorina "Fury" 161 (representing the Fall of Man). While some claim that the shape of the Sulaco was based on a submarine, the design has most often been described as a 'gun in space' resembling the rifles used in the movie.
Author Roz Kaveney called the opening shot of the ship traveling through space 'fetishistic' and 'shark-like', "an image of brutal strength and ingenious efficiency"—while the militarized interior of the Sulaco (designed by Ron Cobb) is contrasted to the organic interior of the Nostromo in the first movie (also designed by Cobb). David McIntree noted the homage the scene pays to the opening tour through the Nostromo in Alien. The android character Bishop has been the subject of literary and philosophical analysis as a high-profile fictional android conforming to science fiction author Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and as a model of a compliant, potentially self-aware machine.
His portrayal has been studied by writers for the University of Texas Press for its implications relating to how humans deal with the presence of an "Other," as Ripley treats them with fear and suspicion and a form of "hi-tech racism and android apartheid" is present throughout the series. This is seen as part of a larger trend of technophobia in films prior to the 1990s, with Bishop's role being particularly significant as he proves his worth at the end of the film, thus confounding Ripley's expectations.
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References:
abc.net,
beyondhollywood.com,
boxofficemojo.com,
cinemaroll.com,
comicsbulletin.com,
dailyscript.com,
denofgeek.com,
filmtracks.com,
imdb.com,
nytimes.com,
quipster.net,
time.com,
wikipedia.org
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