57 years after an alien killed the crew of the spaceship Nostromo, the ship’s only survivor, officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), is found in the hypersleep cabin of a small rescue ship, floating in the endless expanse of space. At the space station no one believes her account of the terrifying events that occurred on the Nostromo. She finds out that planet LV-426, where the ship’s crew originally came across the alien eggs, has been made inhabitable for colonization purposes from some 20 years now. When contact to the colony is lost a short time afterwards, a search team of elite soldiers is sent to the planet under Ripley’s command. While the first part of the tetralogy, Ridley Scott’s Alien (GB/USA 1979), which functioned according to a classic horror film dramatic structure and was marked by a palette of dark-greens, James Cameron’s second part ALIENS (USA 1986) shifts the color spectrum towards glowing blues and the genre elements towards the action film. (hjf) (1.10.)
