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JAmes Cameron likes bold women. This seems to be a given now, after three Avatars and two especially strong hands that belong to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. Even the most beautiful Titanic of love involves a supportive boyfriend, kind enough to lend his love to increase the strength he needs to live a rich and famous life without him, until he lives 100 years in a sea of diamonds at ease. But in Cameron’s 1984 de facto debut The Terminator (following the Piranha sequel he tried to turn down), T2’s Hamilton is deranged and appropriately threatened by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s killer robot. It’s a great character that is highly recommended to follow in 1991. At the time, Cameron had a lot to try: he had already written and directed Aliens, probably the best movie ever made, which turned 40 this week.
Ellen Ripley, starred as the captain of the submarine Nostromo in Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi film. A strangerhe is already a major character by the end of the film. But although the legend about James Cameron putting a metaphorical sequence and putting a dollar sign on the head of Alien, showing briefly what multiplication can do, it may have passed the conviction of Ellen Ripley in the most published history of this movie, it is really the first chapter of the great combination of Cameron. Without showing the simplicity and courage of her character in the first film, Cameron re-introduced Ripley as a survivor, arriving on Earth almost 60 years after the events of the first film. (In a deleted scene that was restored in the special edition of the movie, Ripley learns that her daughter has died in time – at an older age, because Ripley had been sleeping for years.)
This is the only film where we see Ripley safely on Earth, for a short while. The Weyland-Yutani organization forces him to return to visit the moon where the Nostromo first encountered the creature that killed everyone on the ship. He reluctantly agrees, in part because he was met with disbelief at what happened in the previous film. They also want to destroy the creatures. This is where Cameron’s dollar sign comes in: of course the moon founded by the colonists has been rocked by HR Giger’s specially designed killing machine, and Ripley, who has joined a group of tough-talking soldiers, must fight her way out on the biggest scale, protecting a young widow (Carrien New).
Somehow, whether by genius or luck or both, Cameron was able to create one genre’s voice based on another’s movie. Ripley protects a child, just as the T-800 would go on to do in Terminator 2. The grunts speak in cornball-pulp tones just like the soldiers in the Avatar movies. The deaths and tragedies that befall many of the characters are dramatic in the truest sense of the word, just like in Titanic. Bill Paxton is there, as he is in many of Cameron’s longest-running films. And like Terminator 2 and Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron manages to create a sequel that’s bigger and stronger than the original.
Is it good? Hard to say. The original film is shocking and beautiful. You can accuse Cameron of changing this with cruelty. (Roger Ebert reported on this in his 1986 original commentslead with the question: “Do I appreciate his art, or am I telling you that it left me tired and unhappy?” He arrived at a good experience, bad vibes even.) For many fans of the series, it is a high point – followed by scaling like a rollercoaster through several loops.
What keeps this movie from feeling like a park ride – the way I’d make a movie like Alien: Romulus, fun as it is – is Sigourney Weaver’s performance. Yes, Cameron’s skill behind the camera is undeniable, his team is likable in a way that his Alien crew may not have been, and his performances are truly impressive. But Weaver gives it boldly as Ripley, not as the hero sings “get away from her, you whore” to the queen of the xenomorph – which will not reduce the moment, as brief and effective in the applause of the pig as it is made in the film of color. Weaver gets to play a lot here: the action hero, Cassandra’s artist cursed to warn everyone of the impending disaster and see what happens, the fish out of water within the military, the last girl on steroids, the birth mother. Throughout, Weaver maintains his signature style – he manages to express a surprising amount of emotion without the familiar tools of a Big Act. Neither the authority nor the threat was removed from his performance. It is not surprising that he received the best actress Oscar nomination for the role. But it is, because this rarely happens in a sci-fi/action movie.
Because this character feels so self-aware, Cameron and Weaver’s take on Ripley’s defense (whether or not the audience is aware of her loss as a mother) doesn’t register as cynically as it should. The movie doesn’t feel like Ripley is redeeming herself with extreme motherhood, either because she came into the movie with a clear and righteous purpose before meeting Newt, and/or because Cameron ditches her famous and boring accent when she gets rid of the eager couch potato before she’s defeated.
Although it continues to hold up today – and like many great movies before and after it – Strangers may have ruined some of its best moments by misinterpreting it. For years now, Ellen Ripley has been held up as a role model by many male detractors as proof that she really, really likes strong women. They love Ripley, they love Sarah Connor, they love the other Lara Croft video games (you can guess which ones are the most loved); It’s just that Supergirl, Captain Marvel, Harley Quinn, Rey, Furiosa, everyone – take your pick from any female character created after 1995 – are not doing well (that is, the ones that come out of their childhood, and, in most cases, are written by famous non-female James Cameron). Strangers, of course, has a lot to wake up to modern standards: Ripley is a leader and a hero (and not particularly sexual), and the assistant Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) has an ambiguous way of gender and sexuality that is clearly ahead of some 1986. But in a way it is still a cudgel for those who would be traditional.
It’s an easy mistake to make, not because Cameron is so consistent, but because Aliens has become part of the sci-fi/action/horror universe; it’s so good that the fan base goes so extreme, it’s as if pretending that what followed, especially strange or spectacular or terrifying in their own way, didn’t exist. Aliens was the last time almost anyone agreed that a movie in the series was undisputed, and it still is. But its most valuable legacy is not a culture that was inspired by accident. It’s among the most underrated female superheroes, the most followed creature sequels, and the best James Cameron movies that followed. When a person makes this good result, it has a way of opening up the whole world. Some fans are speculating about the Aliens sequel. Cameron, despite all the destruction, saw a bigger, stronger future.
