Speaker Michael Aranda
While it's easy to love a straight-up superhero movie or a car chase flick, not all films fit neatly into one genre.
An in-depth analysis of James Cameron's Aliens, exploring its genre blend, feminist hero, war themes, and cultural implications.
Key Takeaways
- Aliens blends sci-fi, horror, and war genres to create a multifaceted film experience.
- Ellen Ripley is a landmark feminist character who challenges traditional gender roles in action cinema.
- James Cameron's direction brought a gritty, realistic military tone influenced by the Vietnam War.
- The film critiques corporate greed and military hubris while also inviting cultural and racial analysis.
- Aliens remains a culturally significant and critically acclaimed film with lasting influence.
Summary
- Focuses on the 1986 film Aliens, directed by James Cameron, as a sci-fi action classic with horror and war elements.
- Examines Ellen Ripley as a pioneering strong female protagonist and her role through a feminist lens.
- Contrasts Aliens with the original 1979 Alien film, highlighting differences in tone and genre.
- Discusses the film's plot, including Ripley's return to LV426, the military expedition, and the fight against the Alien Queen.
- Details the production background, including Cameron's directing style and challenges during filming.
- Highlights the film's critical and commercial success, including awards and cultural impact.
- Analyzes Aliens as a war movie with parallels to the Vietnam War and critiques of military overreliance on technology.
- Explores racial and cultural interpretations of the alien antagonists and their representation in media.
- Places Aliens within the broader context of Cold War-era sci-fi and horror themes about invasion and identity.
- Considers the film's legacy as a seminal work in multiple genres and its enduring relevance.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker Michael Aranda
Take the Alien series for instance, you've got some sci-fi thriller movies with action and horror elements thrown in, and not to mention a protagonist who arguably helped pioneer the trope of a strong female character.
Speaker Michael Aranda
In this episode, we're going to focus on the second film in the series, James Cameron's Aliens, the theatrical cut, not the extended special edition.
Speaker Michael Aranda
With its carefully crafted plot points and ensemble cast of characters, this sci-fi action classic rewards a deeper look.
Speaker Michael Aranda
On one hand, you can think about Aliens as a war movie and unpack the battle between human marines and vicious aliens through a racial and cultural lens, whether or not that's what Cameron intended.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Or you can look at it as an action movie and analyze Ellen Ripley as a hero through a feminist lens, because her character is part of what's really special about this film, both for fans and historically in cinema.
Speaker Michael Aranda
I'm Michael Aranda, and this is Crash Course Film Criticism.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The original Alien came out in 1979, directed by Ridley Scott, it's slow, methodical, and spooky, a horror movie in space.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Whereas Aliens is a different kind of film, an intense war movie in space.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The first Alien film stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, a space trucker whose crew responds to a distress call that brings them to LV426, a desolate planet with an alien life form that incubates inside humans.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Through her smarts and tenacity, Ripley survives, blows the alien into space, and seals herself into a hypersleep pod with her cat Jones.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Because Alien straddles the science fiction and horror genres, Ripley's sort of a combination of an action hero and the final girl movie trope.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The term final girl was first used by the film scholar Carol J. Clover to describe a pattern in slasher movies, a typically virginal woman tends to be the only survivor of a killer's murdering spree, fights them, and lives to tell the story.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And James Cameron's Aliens picks up her story later.
Speaker Michael Aranda
57 years later.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Ripley is found by a salvage ship and brought back to Gateway Station near Earth.
Speaker Michael Aranda
She has to defend herself in a room full of suits for destroying a ship while fighting an alien she can't prove existed, which doesn't go well.
Speaker B
But I'm telling you that those things exist.
Speaker C
Thank you, Officer Ripley.
Speaker C
That will be all.
Speaker B
Please, you're not listening to me.
Speaker Michael Aranda
So she gets demoted and is forced to work in a loading dock.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Eventually, the Wayland Yutani Corporation, a sinister conglomerate also known as the company, asks her to be a consultant on a military expedition that's being sent back to LV426. Now there's a colony there that, surprise, they've lost contact with.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Suffering from PTSD, Ripley rejects their request, following the pattern of most characters on a hero's journey.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But she eventually agrees to go back, feeling a special duty to protect any survivors and eradicate the aliens, an enemy no one knows better than she does.
Speaker B
Just tell me one thing, Burke, you're going out there to destroy them, right?
Speaker B
Not to study, not to bring back.
Speaker B
But to wipe them out.
Speaker C
That's the plan, you have my word on it.
Speaker B
All right, I'm in.
Speaker Michael Aranda
These become the two instincts that most define her as a character, the drive to protect and the duty to kill.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The basic plot is similar to the original film, the aliens get loose, people run, and most of the Marines die in a lopsided fight early in the film's second act.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But after an intense battle with the Alien Queen, Ripley survives, along with her found family, a surrogate daughter named Newt, who's the only surviving colonist, a corporal named Hicks, and an android named Bishop.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The plot of Aliens came from the brain of James Cameron, he was given the opportunity to write a treatment by 20th Century Fox producers David Giler and Walter Hill on the strength of his original Terminator script, his treatment hit every note they hoped for in a sequel, so he was given $18 million and sent to Pinewood Studios in England to make it.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The British film crew buckled under Cameron's exhaustive shooting schedule and inexperience, Cameron had guerrilla filmmaking expectations where 12-hour days were normal to finish projects on time and under budget.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The first AD even led a revolt against Cameron that was eventually put down by producer Gale Anne Hurd and effects guru Stan Winston.
Speaker Michael Aranda
After the movie was finished, it had massive success with a worldwide gross of $130 million off that original $18 million investment.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Plus, the awards and accolades piled up from Oscar nominations to wins for visual effects and sound effect editing.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Aliens is now considered a seminal classic in sci-fi, horror, and 80s pop culture.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Its structure and themes are incredibly effective and stand the test of time.
Speaker Michael Aranda
You can look at the original Alien as a haunted house film set on a spaceship.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Ripley was the lone survivor after her companions were picked off one by one by a horrific alien monster.
Speaker Michael Aranda
The same as any Halloween or Friday the 13th film, really.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But Aliens takes the basic elements in a different direction, it's more of an action or war movie where a squad of Marines is pitted against a squad of aliens.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Roger Ebert wrote of Aliens in his 1986 review, when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film's roller-coaster ride of violence.
Speaker Michael Aranda
He gave it a thumbs up, but also couldn't really recommend it.
Speaker Michael Aranda
So it's intense, at least for 1986.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Cameron has said that the Marines in his film were meant to parallel a group of American army soldiers toward the end of their tour in the Vietnam era.
Speaker Michael Aranda
He wanted to make it feel like a gritty, realistic expedition.
Speaker Michael Aranda
With a fairly tight budget, he used story elements like the beeping motion tracker to build tension.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Like the shark in Jaws, sometimes not seeing the monster is even scarier.
Speaker Michael Aranda
It's classic horror storytelling.
Speaker D
Six.
Speaker B
Can't be, that's inside the room.
Speaker D
It's reading right, man.
Speaker D
Look.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Not to mention, he didn't have to spend money he didn't have on huge swarms of alien creatures.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Cameron has also said he was trying to show how cockiness and overreliance on technology can bring about the downfall of large military institutions.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And it's true that his space Marines are basically a tool of the company and don't come off so well.
Speaker Michael Aranda
He mentioned how Americans' advanced weapons didn't matter in the Vietnam War, because they didn't understand how to fight their low-tech but very stealthy and determined enemy.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But whether or not Cameron intended this, painting both military adversaries and other races as savage aliens is not uncommon in media, especially when you look at texts through a cultural or racial critical lens.
Speaker Michael Aranda
There are lots of examples of narrative fiction where aliens are described as faceless, dangerous enemies which are pitted against our usually white, Western-coded heroes.
Speaker Michael Aranda
During the Cold War, for instance, alien invasion was a common plot point in sci-fi and horror in the United States.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Think of films like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which really struck a nerve at the time.
Speaker Michael Aranda
People were afraid of foreign invaders sneaking into our society, attacking us, and robbing us of our identities and way of life.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Other aliens in fiction are much more primitive than humans.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Think of A Princess of Mars, which was adapted into the film John Carter, or even James Cameron's later film Avatar.
Speaker Michael Aranda
These aliens can be seen as stereotypical portrayal of non-white racial others, especially native peoples, and they usually end up fighting the heroes or depending on them to swoop in and save their troubled societies.
Speaker Michael Aranda
So, by one interpretation, Cameron's choice to compare his vicious aliens to the Vietnamese army makes this another film that parallels xenophobia in the real world.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And even though his main intent was to criticize the company, and he might not have been trying to make a racial commentary, it's definitely worth looking at the way aliens in many other sci-fi and horror stories portray alien enemies.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Now, despite Aliens being a gritty war movie, the camaraderie and one-liners from the Marines are part of what makes the film so memorable and entertaining.
Speaker E
Baby, get it on.
Speaker E
You know it.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Another huge part of that is the setups and payoffs in the screenplay.
Speaker Michael Aranda
You can think of Aliens as a series of well-crafted chain reactions, A leads to B, which leads to C.
Speaker Michael Aranda
There's always a reason for what's happening on screen.
Speaker Michael Aranda
By today's standards, these plot points might be a little bit obvious, but by planting ideas that come back around, Cameron lets us anticipate and appreciate his cohesive vision for the story.
Speaker Michael Aranda
For instance, because the compound is basically a big bomb, the Marines dump all their high-tech bullets into Private Frost's bag and are told to only use flamethrowers.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But when the aliens attack, Frost is accidentally set on fire and the satchel explodes, killing another Marine and leaving the survivors with very little ammo.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Or like when Ferro, the pilot, doesn't let her co-pilot explain that something's wrong, then an alien gets on board and kills her, so the dropship crashes.
Speaker Michael Aranda
This strands our heroes, damages the compound, which is a big bomb, as we already know, and forces a ticking clock that motivates everyone for the rest of the film.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Overall, a lot of Cameron's setups and payoffs work to build up Ellen Ripley's character, especially her humanity and heroism.
Speaker Michael Aranda
She's at the heart of the film, and at the heart of her story is love, which is one of Cameron's self-proclaimed favorite themes to explore.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And that's really unusual for an action movie.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Like, lots of action-packed stories revolve around traditionally masculine ideals, there are beefy cars and gearheads in films like The Fast and the Furious, or brooding old men in movies like Logan.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Things like anger, vengeance, and power tend to be at the center of conflicts.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Now, in the Alien series, power is still a major theme, but partially because these movies ultimately focus on a female hero, it's interesting to unpack them through a feminist critical lens.
Speaker Michael Aranda
There have been countless essays written about the Alien franchise from this critical perspective, like how the aliens could represent fears of sexual power, rape, or female reproduction.
Speaker Michael Aranda
One of the most horrifying parts of these movies is also what Ripley has nightmares about.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Humans are violated and essentially become pregnant with aliens, which ultimately kill them.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Like, the facehugger aliens implant babies into human chests, which incubate and burst out in bloody explosions.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Plus, I mean, it's a penis.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Just look at it.
Speaker Michael Aranda
So, throughout the first film, Ripley can be seen as a version of the maiden archetype, a damsel in distress running from a horrible monster.
Speaker Michael Aranda
She fits right into the final girl movie trope where the last woman standing goes from helpless victim to defeating the murderer.
Speaker Michael Aranda
By the time Aliens happens, Ripley is a traumatized action hero who is haunted by alien implantation and chest-bursting gore.
Speaker Michael Aranda
A very specific kind of violence.
Speaker Michael Aranda
A sense of duty compels her to return to LV426 and fight the aliens.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But when she discovers Newt on the base, protectiveness becomes an even bigger motive.
Speaker Michael Aranda
You immediately get a sense that Newt becomes her surrogate daughter.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And the force of motherly love is powerful.
Speaker Michael Aranda
It compels Ripley to survive in the compound and fight off the aliens, not only for herself and the Marines, but for this young girl.
Speaker Michael Aranda
So, in a way, Ripley transitions from the maiden archetype in Alien to the mother archetype in Aliens.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Her character is allowed to be feminine and embrace the idea of motherhood and family.
Speaker Michael Aranda
But she's not excessively weak or emotional or made to be the butt of a joke.
Speaker Michael Aranda
This perfectly sets up Ripley and the Alien Queen in direct conflict, two mothers, both protective of their children, and they're locked in combat because their goals are in opposition.
Speaker Michael Aranda
It's very basic, but also very effective screenwriting.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And it leads us up to one of the ultimate payoffs of the film, Ripley getting into the power loader suit to fight off the queen.
Speaker Michael Aranda
This is Cameron planting the seeds for the climax of the movie when Ripley's skill is the key to protecting her newfound family, Newt and an injured Corporal Hicks.
Speaker Michael Aranda
As Ripley yells, Get away from her, you jerk!
Speaker Michael Aranda
We're all cheering for her and the strength of motherly love.
Speaker Michael Aranda
And audiences weren't the only ones cheering.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Sigourney Weaver was nominated for the 1987 Oscar for Best Actress for this role, an honor that hadn't been given to an action movie heroine before, and it was for a protagonist motivated by love for her found family.
Speaker Michael Aranda
So, you've got to give Aliens some credit.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Whether you appreciate it as a well-constructed sci-fi classic or for Ellen Ripley's impact on female heroes in decades to come, but it's also a great example of using film criticism to look at genre-transcending stories in multiple ways, which the directors may or may not have intended.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Next time, we'll talk about the critically acclaimed Selma, a historical drama film about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the role that media can play in shaping our idea of what actually happened in the past.
Speaker Michael Aranda
Crash Course Film Criticism is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.
Speaker Michael Aranda
You can head over to their channel to check out a playlist of their latest amazing shows like Eons, PBS Infinite Series, and PBS Spacetime.
Speaker Michael Aranda
This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Dr. Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio with the help of these nice people and our amazing graphics team is Thought Cafe.
Topics:AliensJames CameronEllen Ripleysci-fihorroractionfeminismVietnam Warfilm criticism1980s cinema
