Review of Aliens: Special Edition

Video

This is a SciFi action film if you didn`t know, and its really rather dark and claustrophobic. Even the planet LV-426 at the center of Aliens story line is pretty dark during the day. Its predecessor was pretty much the same, but even that had a few brightly lit rooms, these are noticeably missing from Aliens. Atmosphere is in abundance, tension is built up slowly and carefuly, but sod all this what are the special effects like?

The aliens themselves are incredible, and its really hard to work out how they are done. I know now from viewing the disc extras, but until that point I really had no clue. If you look really carefully you will see wires, but they are so well hidden due to the dark scenes and strobe lighting, you forget your looking at anything other than real aliens here.

Which leads me on to a quick warning, if you suffer from epilepsy you may want to give this a miss. The strobe effects are used for almost half of the film, gunfire and warning lights mainly.

One thing that has aged is the minatures, pretty much all the model shots look like what they are. Its a shame especially when you consider that the only thing that really dated in Star Wars was its dependancy on stop motion, but there we go. Hay, at least the acting hasn`t withered with time.

The transfer quality is quite good, but not the best I`ve ever seen. Sometimes it looks pretty grainy, maybe this is due to the films age or dark lighting conditions, but its noticeable. Hurrah for the 16x9 enhancement however, and considering this is a Fox title one should count ones blessings.

Audio

One of the things I most remember about this movie is the fantastic orchestral soundtrack, and its here as clear as I`ve ever heard it. Never over used, and always building tension, this is one of the best modern classic music pieces going. Sound effects are again very good, and help to give Aliens the distinct futuristic yet strangely familiar feel to its technology.

Now you may notice this has a full 5.1 track, but you would be forgiven for thinking this was 3 channel only on hearing it. The rears just aren`t used for anything more than the odd ambient effect, and are completely wasted on the face hugger sequence. I guess the original didn`t do much in this area anyway, and remixing it wasn`t deemed worth it. Tis a shame, what you get here just doesn`t stand up well against modern movies sound wise.

Features

Loverly animated menus adorn Aliens, making it a pleasure to navigate around. The visuals and audio clips do well to set the atmosphere just right before you dive right in and choose play.

There are also some nice extras on this disc, the behind the scenes footage is particularly interesting, as is the interview with James Cameron. Its a shame that the quality of images in the photo galleries are so bad, to spend so much expense on the menus and other parts of the disc authoring and then skimp on these seems a waste.

Conclusion

This is a scifi action classic, taking the tension of its predecessor and pumping it up to a new level. With the mystery and fear that one single alien could bring clearly done to death in Alien, this sequel has gone the only successful route available to it, turning the fighting into a war.

The collection of characters that make up the marine outfit are brilliant, and those that could be considered a little on the dull side don`t survive long enough to grate on your teeth. Michael Biehn is pretty casual in an unchallenging role, whilst Bill Paxton injects all the comic relief you could ever want in a film such as this.

Sigourney Weaver is still, as always, the center of the Alien universe. As tough, resourceful and bloody minded as everyone else in the film put together, her character Ripley is always a joy to watch. Shes far more interesting to see battle it out with the universe`s baddest than Schwarzenegger anyday.

One other thing to note, is this film carries the Directors Cut hallmark of good cinema. The last time I saw this film in its entirety, it was on that joke of a video format we call VHS, and the quality reached new depths. Maybe the buzzing of the audio or distortion of the picture distracted me at the time, but I honestly don`t remember a few comments in certain scenes of Aliens: Special Edition from the one I saw on cassette. This, my 10th viewing of Aliens in some form or another, once again added something new.

This is Aliens, its a great DVD, its a great SciFi action movie, and its where the trilogy should have ended, on a high.