Aliens

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

Aliens begins with Ellen Ripley being found adrift in space, still asleep in an escape shuttle. She is brought to a station and learns that 57 years have passed since the Nostromo disaster. The company no longer believes her account of the alien, and has allowed a settlement to develop on LV-426, the moon where she first encountered its eggs. When contact with the colony disappears, company representative Carter Burke asks Ripley to return as an adviser to a group of marines. She resists because the first encounter has left her traumatised, but agrees after being assured the mission will destroy the creatures rather than collect them for research. Ripley is being asked to revisit the place that destroyed her crew.

The mission brings a military unit aboard a transport ship. Corporal Hicks, Private Vasquez, the talkative Hudson, Lieutenant Gorman and android Bishop are among the people Ripley must persuade to take the threat seriously. The soldiers assume their weapons and training will be enough, while Gorman's inexperience makes the chain of command fragile. On LV-426, they find the settlement's atmosphere-processing plant and discover that most of its colonists have disappeared. Newt, a young girl hiding in the ducts, is the sole surviving child. The colony's environment has been altered to support human life, but the massive industrial plant and the surrounding dark corridors offer the aliens a place to nest. A rescue trip has turned into a search through an occupied structure.

The marines find colonists embedded in resin, and learn that the creatures reproduce by placing an organism inside a living host. Ripley's earlier warnings prove accurate, but the company has kept its interests in the settlement and its research programme close to the surface. When Burke reveals that he wants to bring back specimens, Ripley understands that the same pursuit of profit and knowledge has followed her from the Nostromo. The team's firefight inside the plant goes wrong, and the survivors retreat to their armoured vehicle. The aliens attack through ceilings and ventilation spaces, places where a gun line cannot protect the marines. Hicks takes over more of the practical leadership as Gorman is injured, while Ripley focuses on keeping Newt alive. The story gives each character a different response to a situation that cannot be contained by command alone.

Damage sustained during the firefight threatens the atmosphere processor with a catastrophic explosion, giving the survivors another reason to escape. The aliens later cut the power as they close in on the group's shelter. Hudson tries to measure how many are approaching, but the readings only make their predicament worse. Burke attempts to trap Ripley and Newt in a medical room with two facehuggers, apparently hoping they will become hosts. Ripley exposes what he has done; before the marines can decide his fate, the creatures break through and the team loses more of its members. Ripley and the others flee through the ducts, moving from one vulnerable compartment to another. Bishop, who is revealed to be more considerate than Ripley's experience with Ash led her to expect, works remotely to bring a dropship to the surface. The plan depends on a narrow window of time and the cooperation of someone she initially distrusts.

Newt is pulled into a shaft and captured during the group's attempt to escape. Ripley refuses to leave her behind, even though she has only just met the child and the remaining marines are badly hurt. She arms herself and returns to the plant alone, following the route into the aliens' nest. There she finds Newt alive and discovers the queen, the source of the colony's infestation. Ripley sets the nest on fire, rescues Newt and fights her way back to the dropship. They escape the moon with Hicks and Bishop, but the queen has hidden aboard their transport and reaches the Sulaco with them. The final showdown takes place in the ship's cargo area, where loaders and equipment become tools for a desperate attempt to keep the creature away from Newt. Ripley forces the queen through an airlock, and the survivors return to hypersleep.

James Cameron reshapes the first film's small crew and solitary creature into a rescue story with a military ensemble and a much larger nest. The shift changes the rhythm: briefings, equipment checks and troop banter establish the unit before its confidence collapses in the plant. Individual weapons and jokes do not erase the danger; they make the loss of control more visible. The sequence of the marines entering through helmet cameras lets the audience share their uncertain view, while movement sensors turn unseen spaces into measurable but still frightening territory. Ripley's experience provides the audience with a reference point, but she cannot simply make the other characters understand the threat. The film's action depends on that gap between what she knows and what the group is prepared to believe.

Ripley's bond with Newt gives the mission a clear emotional line. Ripley has awakened decades after losing her crew, and now finds a child who has survived by hiding and watching carefully. Newt's isolation echoes Ripley's position among people who initially treat her as unreliable. Their relationship develops through practical acts: staying close, protecting one another and making decisions that keep the other alive. Hicks also earns Ripley's trust by listening and responding calmly, rather than by dismissing her warning or using force to assert rank. Bishop's actions complicate the suspicion attached to artificial intelligence in the earlier film. These relationships do not remove the threat; they give the survivors reasons to coordinate when the formal structure has broken down.

The ending lets Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop return to hypersleep. The queen is gone, but the company’s failure has cost the colonists and most marines their lives. Ripley becomes someone others rely on. Aliens combines military action with protection and trust, in a world where commercial expansion has left people vulnerable. They leave with a shared purpose and an uncertain future, finally free to return home.