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Starring: Sigourney Weaver,  Carrie Henn,  Michael Biehn,  Lance Henriksen,  Paul Reiser, 
Directed By: James Cameron, 
Rated: R (Restricted)
Release Date: 1986-07-18
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Format: Anamorphic,  Closed-captioned,  Color,  Director's Cut,  Dolby,  DVD-Video,  Special Edition,  THX,  Widescreen,  NTSC, 

Editorial Reviews and DVD Information about Aliens (Special Edition)

Description
In this action-packed sequel to Alien, Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, the only survivor from mankind's first encounter with the monstrous Alien. Her account of the Alien and the fate of her crew are received with skepticism - until the mysterious disappearance of colonists on LV-426 leads her to join a team of high-tech colonial marines sent in to investigate.

Personally supervised by director James Cameron, this special edition includes scenes eliminated prior to the film's 1986 release which broaden the narrative scope and enrich the emotional impact of the film.

Amazon.com essential video
Aliens is one of the few cases of a sequel that far surpassed the original. Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, who awakens on Earth only to discover that she has been hibernating in space so long that everyone she knows is dead. Then she is talked into traveling (along with a squad of Marines) to a planet under assault by the same aliens that nearly killed her. Once she gets there, she finds a lost little girl who triggers her maternal instincts--and she discovers that the company has once again double-crossed her, in hopes of capturing one of the aliens to study as a military weapon. Directed and written by James Cameron, this is one of the most intensely exciting (not to mention intensely frightening) action films ever, with a large ensemble cast that includes Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, and Michael Biehn. Weaver defined the action woman in this film and walked away with an Oscar nomination for her trouble. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews for Aliens (Special Edition)

JollyGreenGiant
This film was a staple of my youth. I was an usher in a movie theater when it was released in the '80s. The reactions I kept hearing from the crowd were amazing and now twentysomething years later it still is one of the best Sci-Fi films ever made. The DVD looks great and the sound is incredible but the special features disc is the treasure. The feature length "making of" documentary was very entertaining and informative from, casting, to set construction, to special effects and creature design it had it all. That's the kind of features I like to see not the ones where they all talk about how great working with each other was. But, to delve into character development and script writing what it took to bring James Cameron's vision to the screen, that's the good stuff. Forget all the other special editions this is the one to have.Aliens (Special Edition)

Outstanding sci fi shooter!
This is one of the best sci fi films I've ever seen. It's got tension, gore, excellent setpieces and some brilliant lines. The direction is incredibly good and the DVD is well worth getting. It's a superb film that can be watched over and over again. Amazingly good.Aliens (Special Edition)

How can't you like this?
Seriously, if you like either sci-fi or action movies, I can't really give you a reason not to like this movie. i think people who rate this movie below a 3 are really either not fans of either genre of film mentioned above or really really stupid. Great action scenes, great special effects(for the time) and great pacing. Listen, they already did the suspense portion of the story. You already seen the alien so it makes sense to put you face to face with it. What better way of doing that then space marines. What, are they going to send scientist or another mining crew? Then you have the same movie over again. So, we finally get a bigger picture of who the "company" really is, and what they will do to secure said alien. What that means to us action fans is a lot, and I mean LOT, of firepower. The action scenes are a delightful mixture of frenetic helmet camera shots and pretty good solid camera work. The camera does not bounce from shot to shot as much as 90 percent of action movies from that era. Oh for the sci-fi fans, we have wonderfully detailed aliens here. The designs are top notch and the way we see how they live and hunt as a pack would scare you out of your skin if you were one of those marines. I loved how this movie played out. To me, it was fast enough that I never got bored, yet seemed to take it's time to let fans of the original get involved in new plot lines and newcomers get a understanding of the alien mythos. I don't know what else to say except, I love this movie.Aliens (Special Edition)

Easily, the best out of the series!
Rarely do you come across sequels that surpass the original by a very long shot and this one does just that. James Cameron easily brings probably his best movie of his career to the screen while making the franchise a world wide million dollar hit. This comes with great action sequences, nerve wrecking tension and special effects with fantastic performances by Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton as well as boasting a lot more action than the original Alien which is still a fantastic movie.

The extras are pretty indepth including Cameron's original story treatment and every from pre to post production footage and information. Also you have the choice of choosing the original theatrical version or the new extended version. The theatrical version gives you the 1986 classic original and is great fun. But the extended is far more entertaining with making a difference of about 17 minutes with more story and character design and of course more action. This is great and the added are mostly for good reason, but occasionally it is unnecessary and may slightly damage the suspense. However both of the version are brillantly executed.

This is by far the best out of the series followed by the original and also helped Sigourney Weaver walk away with an oscar nomination from a movie that will be a classic forever. However this is where you stop in the quadrilogy because three and four are ruined by poor storytelling and stupidity.Aliens (Special Edition)

Follow-up that doesn't disapoint...for the most part
Aliens is the successful sequel to Ridley Scott's classic Alien, and sets the tone for a multitude of future science fiction films. Moving away from the horror genre of Alien, Aliens is a pretty straightforward action film, full of violence and colorful dialogue, which certainly won't disappoint most viewers. Being a follow-up to a film like Alien Director James Cameron made sure to make this his film and not reuse concepts from the ground breaking original. That being said, however, some of Cameron's changes do cause the aliens to lose their mysterious nature that we were presented with in the first film, but I'll be back with more on that in just a second.

The plot revolves around the first film's lead female character, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and how she goes back to the planet where she first encountered the alien that killed off her crew. Having been in cryo-sleep for decades a lot of things have changed, such as her daughter dying of old age. Ripley doesn't seem to have much to live for anymore so she goes along with the operation when contact with a local colony is lost. Escorted by the marines, she encounters the only survivor, a girl by the name of `Newt'. Having just lost her own daughter, Ripley quickly bonds to the child. Of course this wouldn't be Aliens if everything didn't go wrong, and soon all the characters are fighting for their lives (and quickly losing). Ripley must step up to the challenge and confront her fears once again.

Aliens is probably my favorite film in the series, due to high levels of action, colorful characters, and memorable scenes, but do I think it's better than Alien? No, I most certainly do not think that this film tops the work of Ridley Scott. I love James Cameron's work, and Aliens, but his film is not as well made as Scott's first film, even if I do enjoy Cameron's film more. A key issue I find with Aliens is the liberties Cameron took on the species, which in so doing, destroys their mystery.

In Alien we were presented with a terrifying creature that was quite frightening. This creature crawled, and moved across the Nostromo with great elegance, and was always able to catch its victims by surprise, often showing an advanced level of intelligence. Driven by its survival instincts this animal did whatever it took to survive, while also showing curiosity (examining the cat, but not harming it, and not attacking Ripley upfront in the escape pod). In Cameron's action-packed sequel most of these aspects of the species are lost. The first hive scene, seeing the aliens come out of the walls which they had blended into so very well, was in the nature of the first film, but after that they lose most of the nature of the sleek skinned alien of Scott's film, and came across as having the inteligence of your typical pack animal. They're noisy, they swarm, exhibit very little intelligence and just lose a lot of their "scare factor." In this film the aliens are like zombies; there's a lot of them, they swarm, get blown to bits in mass to the cheers of audience members (honestly, you know the zombie genre is popular because people love seeing mass quantities of things blown up in gruesome fashions). The Alien Queen is probably just as iconic as the original "drone" class of the species, but Cameron's "ant hive" structure just doesn't seem to fit in as well with what we saw exhibited in the first film of the franchise. It's just too simple, and well... down to earth. I don't think if there had been a hive full of Scott's aliens that they would've simply run headlong into gunfire, because in the first film the species was shown as being something that would do ANYTHING to survive and multiply.

Okay, critic time is over, and I must say that the hive structure does work out very nicely in this film, and the aliens look great, especially the queen. The action is intense, but never really frightened me for a second. The action is very well shot; Cameron having just shot The Terminator knew how to do entertaining action sequences.

This is my favorite film in the franchise, and it is that way for most viewers, but I can't bring myself to say it is on par with the greatness of Scott's Alien. Aliens comes pretty dang close to besting it, but in the end it comes down the atmosphere, and Scott's film had it more so than Cameron's. I will always love Aliens, and will never deny it as my favorite film in this series, but Alien was a film that ultimately had everything needed to become a classic.

I give Aliens a strong 5/5
Aliens (Special Edition)