‘Maybe the best sequel ever made’: James Cameron’s ‘Alien’ turns 40 | James Cameron

CAmis Cameron loves strong female characters. That seems like a given now, after three avatars and strong arms belong to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. Even the lush romance Titanic is about a supportive, kind friend whose love gives her the extra bit of strength she needs to live a rich, rebellious life without him, until she freely throws the diamonds into the sea when she’s 100. But in Cameron’s first actual film, 1984’s The Terminator (after a Piranha sequel that he tried to disavow), T2’s Hamilton is stalked and suitably terrorized by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s slasher-like killer robot. It’s a fascinating character who was greatly motivated by the sequel in 1991. By then, Cameron had gained a lot of training: he had already written and directed Aliens , perhaps the best sequel ever made, which turns 40 this week.

Ellen Ripley, who was introduced as a petty officer aboard the Nostromo in Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, is already a fascinating character by the end of that film. But while the anecdote about James Cameron promoting a sequel by appending a dollar sign to the title of Alien, which succinctly demonstrates what a simple plural can do, may have transcended Ellen Ripley’s polish in the more widespread lore about that film, it’s really the first subject of Cameron’s brilliant additions. Without betraying the simplicity and resilience of her character in the first film, Cameron reintroduces Ripley as a survivor, landing on Earth nearly 60 years after the events of the previous film. (In a deleted scene restored in the longer special version of the film, Ripley learns that her daughter has died in the meantime — as an adult, given that Ripley has been in a deep slumber for decades.)

This is the only film in which we see Ripley living safely on Earth, at least for a short time. Weyland-Yutani pressures her to return to duty to visit the moon where the Nostromo first encountered the creature that killed everyone else on the ship. She reluctantly agrees, partly because she doesn’t believe her version of the events of the previous film. She also wants to destroy the creatures. That’s where Cameron’s dollar sign comes in: In reality, the since-colonized moon has been overrun by an alien killing machine designed by H.R. Giger, and Ripley, allied with a group of tough-talking space marines, must fight her way out on a much larger scale, all while protecting an orphaned little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn).

Somehow, whether through brilliance or opportunism or both, Cameron has managed to deliver a script that’s a direct sequel of sorts to someone else’s film. Ripley protects a child, just like the T-800 does in Terminator 2. The grunts speak in a colorful, cornball-like manner just like the soldiers in the Avatar movies. The deaths and disasters that befall many of the characters are fantastic in the true sense of the word, just as they are in Titanic. Bill Paxton is there, as are most of Cameron’s films made during his all-too-short life. And just like Terminator 2 and Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron was able to create a sequel that was bigger and more powerful than the original.

Is it better? It’s hard to say. The original film unnerves with style. You could accuse Cameron of replacing that with brute force. (Roger Ebert certainly alluded to this in his original 1986 review, where he began with the question: “Shall I praise its ingenuity or tell you that it has made me feel frustrated and miserable?” He hits on a positive note, despite the bad feelings.) For many fans of the series, it’s a high point — followed by a rollercoaster-like zoom across multiple episodes.

What keeps the film from feeling like an amusement park ride – which is how I describe a film like Alien: Romulus, entertaining as it is – is Sigourney Weaver’s performance. Yes, Cameron’s craft behind the camera is undeniable, his ensemble is likable in a way that Alien’s more gruff crewmates perhaps weren’t, and the action sequences are hugely impressive. But Weaver delivers a spunky turn as Ripley, and not just when the action heroine sings “Get away from her, bitch” to the alien queen — which doesn’t take away from that moment, as succinct and effective as it is to wild applause as never before in any film of this genre. Weaver plays a lot here: the action hero who takes charge, the Cassandra figure cursed to warn everyone of the impending disaster and watch it unfold anyway, the fish out of water within the platoon of soldiers, the final girl on steroids, and the surrogate mother. Throughout it all, Weaver maintains her characteristic poise, able to convey a shocking emotional range without the familiar tools of big acting. Neither power nor vulnerability disappear from her performance. No wonder she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the role. But still, that doesn’t happen very often in sci-fi/action movies.

Because the character seems so fully realized, Cameron and Weaver tap into Ripley’s fiercely protective side (whether the audience is aware of her loss as a mother or not) never registering as condescending as they should. The film never feels like Ripley is redeeming herself by taking motherhood to the extreme, perhaps because she arrives at the film with a clear, valid purpose before she meets Newt, and/or because Cameron abandons the now-so-popular cliché of the gruff loner who ignores her pining young boyfriend before finally succumbing to warmer feelings.

Despite its continued freshness today – and like so many great films before and after it – Alien may have done some damage through misinterpretation alongside its countless hours of good. For years at this point, Ellen Ripley has been held up as an example by countless misogynists as proof that they love strong female characters. They love Ripley, they love Sarah Connor, they love some of the video game incarnations of Lara Croft (you can guess which one is more likable); It’s just that Supergirl, Captain Marvel, Harley Quinn, Rey, Furiosa, and whoever – take your pick of any female character created after 1995 – don’t do it right (i.e., they appeared during their infancy and, for the most part, are written by James Cameron, who is not a famous woman). Aliens, of course, has plenty of touches that are sober by contemporary standards: Ripley is an unambiguous (and not particularly sexualized) hero and leader, and special supporting character Vasquez (Ginette Goldstein) has an ambiguous approach to gender and sexuality that seems well ahead of the norms of 1986. But it’s still somewhat of a cudgel for would-be traditionalists.

It’s an easy mistake to make, not because Cameron is similarly aligned, but because aliens have become part of the sci-fi/action/horror firmament; It’s all very well for a sect of fans to loudly and furiously pretend that later entries, weirder or more outlandish or spiky in their own ways, don’t exist. Aliens was the last time almost everyone agreed that a film in the series was unimpeachable, and it still is. But her most valuable legacy is not the traditionalism that she accidentally inspired. It’s present in lesser-known female action heroes, lesser-known creature sequels, and less-than-shocking James Cameron films that followed. When someone makes a sequel this good, it has a way of opening up entire worlds. However, some fans imagine a sequel to Aliens. Despite all this doom, Cameron saw a bigger, more powerful future.