51: Aliens (1986, James Cameron)

Owned version: The Fox Blu-ray released in 2010 as part of the Alien Anthology set.

Acquired: January 4th, 2016 from Amazon.

Seen before?: So many times on VHS, basic cable and pay cable through the years. Most recently from this disc on April 8th, 2017.

Gonna make this quick, if only to put it behind me and move on to the next item. Besides, what am I gonna say about Aliens? It's Aliens. It's one of the best action films ever made and maybe the single best hybrid of action and horror to ever exist. It stopped the Alien ripoff in its tracks - nearly every film that would use the template from here on out was riffing on the Cameron instead of the Scott. It pretty much singlehandedly popularized the idea of the Space Marine. Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar nomination for this despite it being at the intersection of two genres the Academy likes to pretend don't exist. It's major, and you and I and your granny know that.

What struck me about it this time is how much character work Cameron is able to do within the space of little gestures and signifiers. It's a relentlessly propulsive film, one that never really pauses for breath because to slow down is to die - indeed, the one sequence that explicitly has its characters try and rest turns into a battle for life. Because of this, there's not a lot of time to get friendly with the mass of new character. So, like everything in this film, the character work is done run-and-gun style, on the move. The comfortable nature of the locker-room jaw-jacking, especially the back-and-forth between Hudson and Vasquez, establishes an easy camaraderie between these meatheads and also evinces the confidence which the rest of the film works to undermine. There's also a number of touches that speak to a fully-realized person within the quick sketches of many of the Marines, a sop against militaristic anonymity. My favorite of these is Ferro having "Fly the Friendly Skies!" scrawled in chalk on her helmet, though there's also something to be said for Apone's grabbing his ever-present cigar as his first action upon waking from hypersleep or Hicks dozing off on the drop. It feels weird to say that a film that breaks the two-hour mark is a damn model of narrative economy, but that's what it is.

Also, it's a neat touch that the climax starts with Ripley taking an express elevator... going down.