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Aliens: Emotion, Action, Suspense, Horror
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11342 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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11 / 1986 |
896 Words |
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Kenneth Chanko
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James Cameron is the Bruce Springsteen of movie directors. Watching a Cameron film, like attending a Springsteen concert, is an extraordinarily entertaining test of emotional endurance. Toward the end, just when Cameron has fully drained his audience through a series of expertly crafted and sustained shock and suspense sequences, he pulls out yet another action scene that tops everything that has come before. Aliens, which Cameron wrote and directed, is probably the best action suspense-horror film since Jaws, and it is certainly the most emotionally satisfying sequel since The Godfather, Part II.
The Ridley Scott directed original, Alien, was a far more subdued and detailed film. It was the first to bring horror type shocks to outer space and, perhaps more interestingly, it was the first to portray space travel as something other than inspirational or exhilarating. Instead of a technically wondrous ship featuring gleaming white surfaces, the Nostromo was a grimy, second-class freighter on routine assignment with a work weary crew aboard. Having set virtually the entire film on the Nostromo, Scott paid as much-if not more attention to atmospherics as to action. Cameron, however, has rightly emphasized action in the sequel. Not limiting himself to just one or two sets, he doesn't have to spend as much time detailing the environment, though he has followed through on the original's concept of a less than technologically perfect future world in space. And since the alien was finally revealed at the end of the original film, Cameron doesn't have to play around with hiding the creature from the audience in the sequel.
Aliens begins with Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) - sole human survivor of an encounter with a large, lizard
... (1999 of 5378 Characters)
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