“Aliens” And Two Perfect Movie Moments

Last Saturday Tananarive and I attended our first Covid-19 movie party: held in the driveway of a major television producer, on an inflatable screen as large as the side of a small house, sitting on lawn chairs, all masked and socially distanced. It was wonderful. We watched ALIENS, a nearly perfect film. I have issues with Cameron I’ve mentioned before, and a few of the FX show the budgetary limitations (it was produced for 18.5 million, about 40 million today. The unadjusted box office was 131,060,248 worldwide.)

I’d not seen it on the big screen for twenty years. And trust me: it did NOT disappoint.

The effects and action are VERY expertly scaled to be executed on that relatively small budget — the majority of the time you don’t realize you’re looking at a medium-sized movie at all. As with “Princess Bride” everything seems to fit together to the point that even the limitations work for it most of the time.

I’ve been struck by two moments that to me, define the film. One is the iconic image of Ripley holding Newt on the platform, everything falling apart, all hope lost. The Alien Queen coming out of the elevator: “Close your eyes, baby.” Ripley says. That was possibly the single tensest moment of film I’ve ever seen. Sweat was quite literally rolling down my face as I watched it.

Sometimes, you create a moment in a script, realize that you have done something good, and that you can “anchor” your story around it, use it to elevate everything else.