I agree that for a theatrical release, these scenes are not necessary, but they are pretty cool. I do agree that the scene of the colonists (Newt’s parents, actually) finding the ship was near-completely useless with the small exception that the dialogue between the kids reveals that:
A. The children of the colony like to play games in the air ducts; and
B. Newt is particularly good at it.
This helps (but is not necessary) to explain her survival.
And the robosentry scene is just all kinds of awesome.
Just recalling something similar from Vietnam/ Airedale Navy days. Guys would do the same gesture and say “See this?..it’s my give-a-fuck eye”, pretty much implying ‘leave me be, get outta my face’.
See, I agree completely with your thinking on why the scene about the colonists is included (else people would be asking how Newt had survived when nobody else had). I also think it helps establish a little more horror - these are ordinary working families, not faceless corporate henchmen.
But, on the sentry guns, I’m glad they took that out. The film had already established pretty well that smartguns, APCs and dropships weren’t going to protect the Marines; the sentry gun scene seemed to me just to be a redundant additional case of “Yay! Superweapon to save us! O noes, it didn’t!”
But on examination, the motivation is exactly the same. Newt’s father, when he realizes the object is artificial, possibly alien, says (more or less) to his family “People, we have hit something big here.” Cartoon dollar signs coming out of his eyes would be redundant.
Heck, it kept the aliens from coming up and knocking. Got 'em all demoralized.
The question I always had was why did the Marines bring the extra mass of the spare dropship but only one flight crew? If they did not have Bishop around to fly it down they would have had no way to use it as it seems everyone on board the Sulaco went down to the planet’s surface.
Also, did the Sulaco have a crew at all? The only people we ever see are the Marines. No Command crew, no techs or medical personel to revive them, no deck crew to load for them.
I thought the thrust of the sentry gun scenes, besides being awesome, was to explain how the entire colony of aliens was reduced to a (relative) handful by the time the remaining marines start to make their escape. And why Ripley wasn’t just swarmed with two hundred aliens on her final jaunt through the complex.
But did we ask about that, in great numbers? I’ve never been bothered by that little mystery since seeing the film in its original theatrical release. It’s not hard to believe that an 8 year-old kid would notice the air vents and hide in them, either before the sh-it hit the fan (for playing), or afterward (for survival).
So when I saw the Director’s Cut a few years ago, with all the additional scenes, I found them interesting, because they added some backstory to a favorite film, but mostly unhelpful to the plot.
With maybe one exception. I’m going to disagree a bit with Uosdwis R. Dewoh above. I thought the scene where Ripley learns of her daughter’s death gave us some better reasons why (1) she bonded so strongly with Newt, and (2) why she blew her cool during her debriefing, which she had to endure immediately after hearing the bad news.
I’ve often wondered why Ripley wasted a lot of time machine-gunning, flame-throwing and grenading the nest, when she knew the whole place was gonna blow up in less than ten minutes. I guess she needed to express her feelings.
That little cock of the head before she opens up kills me every time, though.
Well, the egg was opening to throw a face-hugger at her and she was surrounded by a whole lot of eggs. Torching them all “in the shell” would be a lot easier than running away while being chased by three dozen scuttling alien baby-makers.
The marines loaded their own dropship and Bishop served as a one-man tech & medical crew. Dietrich seemed to be a medic as well (she checks out Newt and calls out that the ‘pregnant’ colonist is going into convulsions before the alien comes out).
I don’t know that this excuses the Sulaco having no crew remaining on board, of course.
Fanwank; Equipment is advanced enough that it’s cheap, labor is expensive. If they can have synthetic persons with AIs that can pass the Turing Test, I can imagine the Sulaco has an AI like a HAL 9000 or better.
Plus, the marines weren’t really expecting much trouble. They figured they’d show up, shoot some of the local wildlife (the ‘bug hunt’), fix the transmitter, and spend a week drinking and whoring.
Over 50 years before, the Nostromo had a crew of only seven people for both the ship and the ore carrier/refinery, and they spent most of their time in hibernation. All routine operations were handled by the AI, Mother. The crew was really only there to handle the beginning and end of the trip, and any emergency situations that cropped up that were beyond Mother’s ability to handle. Even at that, Mother was a relatively crude AI compared to Ash, suggesting that it was old tech (which the general condition of the Nostromo supports), that ship AIs were designed to be limited, or both.
So, at the time of Aliens, they’ve had AIs capable of handling ship operations for the better part of a century. There’s really no reason for the Sulaco to have any crew other than the marines and Bishop; that gives them two pilots and at least one technical/computer expert to handle any emergency big enough for the AI to wake them. I suspect that some missions would see the ship more populated, but it would be with more Marines, not crew who would spend all their time in hibernation; as EvilTOJ pointed out, they were seriously underestimating the threat. If they had actually listened to Ripley and prepared accordingly, there would have at least have been another squad that stayed on board, ready to drop and cover a retreat to the ship.
I agree as well. In both cases the extra-terrestrial element is superfluous.
I watched “Alien” as youngster and it scared me witless. It is a true “horror” film and one of the best.
I watched Aliens some years later and it remains the dictionary definition of Action/Suspense and the best example of it’s genre.
My palms were sweaty during Ripley’s elevator descent. As she prepares for Newt’s rescue on the way down you instantly perceive that she has become monumentally badass. In a UK movie magazine not too long ago she was voted the top action hero of all time.
Very hard to argue with that, just thinking of her stepping out in the loader and delivering the immortal lines “get away from her you BITCH!” raises goosebumps.
It is, of course, every person’s secret dream to one day walk into a room in a giant robot suit and get to say that before issuing a righteous ass kicking.
Much like Dietrich seemed to be the human medic, I had the impression that Hudson had more technical/computer training than the average marine. He’s the one who is told by Gorman to get the Operations computer online, runs the bypass to open the gate, finds the colonists (on the operations computer) via their tracking devices and is sent my Ripley to find schematics for the base.
Again, I’d expect Bishop to do a lot of the heavy lifting on the technical front but they do have some redundancies.
