We Hate Movies - S16 Ep819: Aliens (W❤️M) [EXTENDED PREVIEW]

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

“She comes out in a mech suit to fold the burritos…” - Eric on Ripley working at Chipotle [This extended preview is only a small portion of our great, hilarious episode covering this fantastic movie! To get access to the whole thing, click through to our Patreon and sign up today!] On this month’s We ❤️ Movies, which also happens to be the season 16 premiere of the show, we’re chatting about one of the most requested titles in WLM history, James Cameron’s Aliens! Should Fox have let Cameron leave in that extra 20 minutes? Would this franchise have continued if Ripley were written out in the cold open of this movie? Has Lance Henriksen ever been better? And, hey, can we also volunteer to be cryogenically put to sleep for 57 years? PLUS: Congratulations to Jonesy, history’s oldest cat! Aliens stars Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein, Al Matthews, Mark Rolston, Ricco Ross, Colette Hiller, Daniel Kash, Cynthia Dale Scott, Tip Tipping, Trevor Steedman, and Paul Reiser as Burke; directed by James Cameron. Be sure to pick up our digital show on Terminator: Dark Fate, available now in our Patreon shop! Don’t sleep on snagging your tickets to our 15th Anniversary show this December where we’re talking all things Arnold in Total Recall! It’s gonna be a gas and we wanna see you there! Click through for tickets now! Throughout 2025, we’ll be donating 100% of our earnings from our merch shop to the Center for Reproductive Rights. So head over and check out all these masterful designs and see what tickles your fancy! Shirts? Phone cases? Canvas prints? We got all that and more! Check it out and kick in for a good cause! Original cover art by Felipe Sobreiro.

what was I going to say oh yeah you know so like we should say for the the purposes of this episode we did all watch the theatrical cut I had the extended on for a little bit and there's some interesting shit in there I have to say and I only paid attention to a couple of them that at the beginning, so I'm not going to be stopping us throughout the evening to be like, actually, but there's a couple of cool things that I think actually makes the story a little richer

and Cameron does a little intro for it. No clue when it was actually recorded, this audio of him. Is he the submarine at the time or what did we talking about? It could have been, because it does sound like shit so I don't know what's going on with this right. He was looking at the Titanic as he recorded.

Dude, it honestly might be because it's just like terrible audio and then just really old pictures of James Cameron when he was like making the movie. So I don't know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah, you got Jim. Yeah, I'm on a submarine. You're going to speak up. I can't, I can't hear you. No, I will not explain why I'm in a submarine, but I am.

So Alex was working on the eggs, you know, oh man, that's a short. Yeah, my immersibles don't implode. Yeah, that's right. Oh, totally, dude. Yeah, James Cameron will build you a fucking submersible that'll get down there and back. Oh, that's the bumper sticker. My emmercels does

not explode. This is why I will never be able to hate James Cameron ever in my life is because he just after that guy had the most unimaginable death in the world he was like fuck that guy what the fuck is wrong with him yep yep

although you know what he is he's forwarding the advances of AI and filmmaking I will say that for old Jim yeah not my favorite but anyway he says that the two hour and 37 minute cut instead of the

217 is actually his preferred is what was always intended and he was forced by Fox to cut a lot of the stuff out that actually gives things a little bit of a richer texture but we will get there my question is what's the pacing like because I think that this movie is I mean it's this movie is

you know 80 it's an 80s movie it's not a 70s movie but it just it has a very even though it's 217 it's got a very poppy pace it moves yeah it's it's very ruminative in the beginning but like an hour in once all them aliens come out you're like oh fuck and the rest of it

your heart is at your throat. Way more, I think it's better pace than the, like, the original. I love the original and I love the slow burn of it. But like this thing, like the minute you get inside the vessel when the guys go in to check at her and find her, like immediately you're moving and you don't stop. Even the stuff with the cat is like, again, as you say, rheumatative, but it doesn't feel like you're staying too long. It's like exactly the right amount of time.

Yes, I agree. Steve, but you were asking about the... Yeah, does the extended ruin that pacing? I would argue it doesn't because I mean I had to stop it because we were getting ready to roll here but it was pretty much right up to the final confrontation with the queen so I can't imagine there's much more that's different there

it's really just added on all at the beginning so by the time stuff has gone tits up and the movies like really chugging and full burn there's nothing that really stops it dead there's one cool combat thing that I don't think they left in the theatrical but otherwise like Yeah, all the added stuff is really kind of just pushed up front and it's mostly characterization. I would have preferred them to add more in this N3 because you are dealing with worlds.

I would have liked to see more of the outer world. So 3 also has that stuff and you can see a little bit of it and different cuts of it. But that stuff like the first one and the fourth one don't have that because it's just on ships. That's all they're dealing with. But like when you're dealing with the world, I do kind of want to see it. But, you know, I can't, you know, this is a, it's well-paced, it's good, it's 2-17, I cannot advocate for it being longer. The original is like 20 minutes shorter and very, very good. Yeah.

Well, I mean, because the original is like, it's doing a different thing. I mean, this I feel like, kind of just by the nature of what it is, it has to be a little longer. I'll get them out of the way now because it's kind of irrelevant. But so one of the things is after they get Ripley back to the big space station, Paul Reiser informs her. She asks up front, and I don't believe this has mentioned at all an alien, and it's nothing in this movie in the theatrical. She has a daughter, and she asks Paul Reiser, how's my daughter? And the daughter, because it's 57 years in the future, the daughter has died. Oh.

The daughter lived to be 66 years old and died two years before they found Ripley. That's wild. So it's a wild-ass thing, and it makes her connection to Newt and her determination to save Newt. you know, I mean, you believe it in the theatrical, but this is like, oh, this is that connection. She just learned she lost this daughter and she's not going to lose another one. That's interesting.

I would like that now I could see advocating to have that back because in this it just kind of feels like a retread of the last one where it's like, save the cat, save the sweet, precious baby angel child. But I do kind of like, I like the ambiguity, like she is about life. Like it's not about, it's not so specific about something she lost. It's like, no, this company,

doesn't care about life but I do I really care about it and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure as many lives as I can are saved and everything she does in this movie comes back to that yeah and I think that like you even without her having lost a daughter

it I mean it was an interesting fact I think you get enough of it from you know she the way the movie plays is she never had a child and now she's surrogating onto that's not really a word but onto onto Newt like you know what I mean kind of like that works.

Nowadays she sort of has a spiritual successor daughter now, right? Because Romulus has happened by the time this movie happens, right? In the timeline. Yes, Romulus also happened. The other cool thing, there's a big sequence that I think is actually rad. And again, it just adds to stuff. Like instead of Newt just saying like my parents are dead, you see what's going on. and her parents were like scavenger people like for the company so they go out and like find shit and bring it back right so you have this scene where it starts off with like people working in the facility so you see it before the alien attack which is kind of neat and then it's like oh where are those someone says someone's calling in saying they got the big find and are we going to pay him top dollar for the fine that he had yeah tell them we'll pay whatever so then it cuts to this like little it actually looks like the snow cat from uh the shining

little bit. Oh, nice. And they're driving out. And it's the parents and then Newt and the brother in the back seat. And what they, you see the crashed ship again. And it's the beautiful Matt painting. And they go, her parents go into this ship and make the kids wait in the fucking snow cat. And then, like, eventually it's like, oh, where's mommy and daddy?

And mommy runs up to the door and immediately opens it and grabs the radio like, help, help, help. And you look. And the father's on the ground. He's got a face hugger attached to it. Oh, nice. I mean, it sounds, you know, it sounds like maybe some inspiration for the Force Awakens was from this, yeah. Totally. Three portions.

Yeah. She just left her with a fat guy. I'm also curious, I do have audio of Ripley's daughter. Oh, yeah. Yeah, my mom's in a spaceship in her underwear. It's in, oh. It is, I believe when you see it, it's like a. a photoshop, like,

aged up picture of So Forney Weaver, which is very funny. Oh, weird. I don't know about that. Or it might be like a relative. It doesn't look exactly like it. Maybe it's a picture for grandmother. I think it's her mother, actually,

which I don't remember about this. It's going to be trivia. Not bad. I do love the beginning of the, the miniatures of, oh, yeah. It's so good, this miniature shot of like just the ship. A, also great logo.

And also aliens is just an awesome title. Sorry, but the logo is great. And then like the ship getting completely dwarfed by whatever the salvage ship is. Yeah, this salvage ship's awesome. Fucking models, dude.

It always works. It always fucking works. It never doesn't work. Like that's a thing in the trivia was apparently a bunch of Fox executives saw the movie and they were like, you spent all of this shit on like the productions.

Look how expensive all this stuff is. Why did you fucking do this or whatever? And they were like, it's all miniatures, dumbass like you're falling for all of this and like all of the special effects people were like hell yeah you built an alien aliens are real

when you see the fucking like Batmobile tank drive in whatever it's a little and they thought like they souped up some big ass car for this thing like that kind of shit yeah come on don't embarrass yourself like that James we don't have it in our

budget for a killdozer could you not you want us to you want a to make a whole planet. Are you fucking serious, James? If you like what you just heard and want to hear the rest of this episode, go to patreon.com slash we hate movies

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Thank you. You know, Bhopin.