Review: Alien and Aliens

With the impending release of the next installment in the Alien franchise, Prometheus, I figured it would be a good time to introduce myself to the movies.  So far, I have watched both Alien and Aliens, which are the first two movies in the series that were released.  I went into watching both of these movies with low to moderate expectations.  I had never heard of Ridley Scott until now. As for James Cameron, can anyone say Titanic and Avatar?  My experiences with both of these directors were rather limited, until now.

I have to say, these two movies are probably the two most suspenseful movies that I have ever watched.  The movies each accomplish this in their own, different ways; however, the feeling is the same.

Alien accomplishes the feeling of suspense and terror with much less effects, guns, and explosions than Aliens or any other movie than I can recall seeing.  I think that's why I liked it so much.  I feel like it was very basic by today's standards.  The movie uses what it needs to tell the story.

Aliens, on the other hand, uses more guns and explosions.  I do not think that these additions made the film anymore suspenseful.  They did assist in telling the story, but with or without the guns, it would have still been an intense movie.

Both of these movies made me, I'll admit, scream.  As the title gives it away, there's an alien.  I won't give away much about how exactly the Alien or Aliens are involved.  However, I will say that I never knew when the Alien was going to pop up.  Even when I did expect it to appear, it still made me wince or jump.

What I like about both of these movies is Sigourney Weaver's character Ellen Ripley.

The character is probably one of the best that I have seen in a movie, especially a female one, and it's the one that makes the movie.  The rest of the characters are all secondary, in my opion.  Ripley is both strong and compassionate.  Even though she does have her faults, I think that these faults make her character even better.  I also think that Sigourney Weaver did an awesome job portraying the character.  Her performance does the character well and is a strong and symphatetic one, just like the qualities of Ripley.  The only downside that I found to her character, was that sometimes I found Ripley to be just a little bit too stuborn or compasionate.  I found this to be moreso true in the first movie, with her cat Jones.  If it were me, I would have gone back for my cat at the end but I don't like how it worked in the movie.  In Aliens, I think this worked well because of the character Newt, a young girl that is the sole remaining survivor on her home planet. I think Ripley's compassion and stubborness worked well in the situtations that she faced with Newt.

The other thing I liked, with this franchise, is that I could have watched Aliens without watching Alien.  A lot of times with a movie series, you are totally lost if you have not seen the prior released movies.  With Aliens, I don't think that this would be the case.  Watching Alien first would add a bit more to the story, knowing what Ripley went through etc, but I don't think it is necessary.

The one thing that I disliked about these movies was how they ended.  Both ended in a similar manner and I think the final moments of both were too expected.  It was fine in Alien, the first movie, because while I did expect what happened, I was not totally sure what would happen.  In Aliens, the second movie, I 100% expected what was going to happen and almost felt that it was a cop out.  I think the movie would have been even better and opened up more to the series if the final moments back on board the ship would have been the total opposite of what went down.  It would have been more suspenseful and something that would have thrown the audience off.

Overall, I recommend seeing both of these movies, if you haven't already.  I have already seen them, then I recommend watching them again.  I think that these are two movies you can watch again and again and still feel terror, suspense, and all the same emotions as the first time. I'd give both 4 out of 4 stars.