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Adam Duncan reviews

Aliens: Special Edition

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

Cert:
Cat.no: 01802DVD
Running time: 148 minutes
Year: 1986
Pressing: 2000
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 34 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired, Polish, Czech, Hungarian Icelandic, Hebrew, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian.
Widescreen: 1.85:1
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: £19.99
Extras: Original Theatrical Trailer, Interview with James Cameron, Behind-the-scenes footage, photo gallery

Director:

James Cameron

Producer:

Gale Ann Hurd

Screenplay:

James Cameron

Music:

James Horner

Cast:

Ripley: Sigourney Weaver
Corporal Hicks: Michael Biehn
Bishop: Lance Henriksen
Burke: Paul Reiser
Newt: Carrie Henn
Hudson: Bill Paxton
Gorman: William Hope
Vasquez: Jenette Goldstein

Aliens is a excellent sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror Alien. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is awoken from hypersleep after 57 years to discover that the planet where she found the alien has now been colonised.

The problem is that contact with the colonists has been lost and after hearing of Ripley's experiences, they ask her to accompany a team of marines who are going to investigate. Naturally, she is reluctant at first but she later decides to go with them.

They find a young girl called Newt (Carrie Henn) who is the only survivor of an attempted attack on the colonists. Then, along come the aliens who pick off some of the marines. From then on, no-one is safe.

What makes this sequel work so well is that James Cameron has decided not to mimic Ridley's film and do his own unique version of the Alien saga. He even puts forward his own ideas on the life-cycle of these creatures as this had not been presented before to the audience at the time (Ridley Scott did film a scene which decipted the alien's survival habits but it was not used). All the main cast do well in their roles but particulary Sigourney Weaver as Ripley who even received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (The film received 7 Oscar Nominations. It won 2: Best Visual Effects and Best Sound)

This version of the film is the Special Edition first released on video in 1993. It has an extra 17 minutes of footage which was not included in the theatrical version.

The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and is in widescreen. The picture is very good for a film this age but it is not quite as good as the transfer for Alien. There is some grain and sprakle throughout the film but none of it is distracting. Overall, this is a fine transfer for a 15 year old film

The sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 and is excellent. Gun fire, explosions, flame throwers and James Horner's music score come across very well. The scene where a power suited Ripley has a fight with the Alien Queen sounds great on a home cinema system. You can really feel the vibrations as Ripley strides into scene.

Extras:

Chapters/Trailer: There are 34 chapters spread throughout the film which is very good but maybe it could have used a couple more (DVDfever Ed: The PAL laserdisc contained 51 chapters). A theatrical trailer is included.

Languages and Subtitles: There is only one language on the disc and that is English Dolby Digital 5.1. There are subtitles in English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Icelandic.

Interview with James Cameron: This is a 12 minute item which was filmed at the time of the film's release. It features the director talking about the film and he reveals some interesting facts such as that only 6 alien costumes were made for the film!

Behind-the-scenes footage: There are 8 video clips which show construction of model sets, chestbursters and the alien queen. There is also a text explanation for all the clips. All but two of the clips are silent. The exceptions being a member of the visual effects team demonstrating the mechanism for the facehuggers and a testing of the alien queen which was directed by Cameron. Altogether, the footage lasts nearly 8 minutes.

Photo gallery: This is a very large gallery which shows stills from the film, behind-the-scenes and also publicity material. A nice collection.

Menus: The menus are excellent. They recreate the video cams used by the marines which takes us down the corridors of LV-426. They include sound bites from the film and even use the names of some of the marines on the cams (Vasquez, Apone, Hicks and Hudson) as well as adding interference to the picture.

This film is a classic of the sci-fi genre and is well represented on this disc. However, so much more could have been on here. There could have been a documentary or even a lengthy featurette from the time, an isolated music score, the choice between the Theatrical and Special Edition versions, deleted scenes not in the special edition (the scene between Ripley and a cocooned Burke would have been great to see) and a commentary from James Cameron but he doesn't appear to like doing commentaries as none of his other films on DVD have a commentary from him.

(The R1 version of Terminator 2 doesn't count as it was made up of interview footage and featured other members of cast and crew.)

Overall, this is the best version you can buy at the moment. The R1 version is exactly the same so we are not missing anything.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Adam Duncan, 2001.

E-mail Adam Duncan

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