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Directed by James Cameron from a story written by him and David Giler, the film is more a high-paced, action adventure than the tense sci-fi horror of the first film. It was tremedously successful, following Cameron's The Terminator in helping to establish him as a major action director. The film, like its predecessor, was shot in England on a budget of only about $18 million.
In this film, Ellen Ripley (Weaver), the only human survivor of Alien, is rescued from space after 57 years in suspended animation. She learns that a colony has been founded on the original planet she visited. When contact with the colony is lost Ripley is drafted to assist a squad of gung-ho Marines to investigate.
The Marines and Ripley find themselves trapped in the colony while literally armies of aliens come after them. The story adds much to the overall mythos of the series, including Cameron's introduction of an "alien queen" to the creatures' life cycle.
It has been pointed out by some critics that Aliens works as an allegory of the Vietnam War, in that an overly confident military finds itself in a quagmire battling an unseen opponent they cannot comprehend. 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, and that Ripley would be required to strap on heavy artillery herself. But she admitted she ended up enjoying the role, and that the gunplay held a seductive appeal.
The film added an additional level of depth to Ripley's character by establishing a daughter who grew old and died while Ripley was lost in space. Thus, when Ripley discovers the little girl Newt (Carrie Henn) hiding in the ruins of the colony, Newt becomes a surrogate daughter for Ripley, allowing Ripley to overcome her feelings of guilt and achieve redemption and closure.
Sigourney Weaver won her first Academy Award nomination for this film. Another actor whose career benefited from Aliens was Bill Paxton, who plays the cowardly grunt Hudson.
Aliens’ theatrical running time was 137 minutes. Later, Cameron cut together a 154 minute version that, among other things, expands upon the daughter subplot and includes scenes of the colony before the alien infestation. This was first released on laserdisc and VHS in 1992. Both versions of the film were released together for the first time in the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set.
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