Aliens

The Official Movie Novelization

By: Alan Dean Foster

Narrated by: William Hope

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's Summary

Returned to Earth, Ellen Ripley learns that a colony has been established on LV-426, the planet where the crew of the Nostromo found the original Alien.

But contact with the colonists has been lost, so she must accompany a unit of colonial marines to discover their fate. And to destroy any Aliens found on the planet known as Acheron.

This is a groundbreaking sequel by science fiction legend Alan Dean Foster, with the wonderful characters and rapid-fire action that make Aliens one of the greatest science fiction films of all time.

©2014 Alan Dean Foster (P)2015 Audible, Ltd

Game Over, Man....

The first novelization, 'Alien' was excellent, but this version falls short. Here's why:

1) No swear words! 'Aliens' is just one of those movies that you can't dumb down. The effective use of illicit language is in itself a character in the story. Great, anticipated moments fall flat with lines like: "Get away from her, you!"
2) The author adds unnecessary length to scenes. He adds nothing new to the existing story.
3) The narrator is not up to the task of delivering 'Aliens.'

That's it. Re-imagining the movie over nine hours was the best part.

So when Frost asks, "What the hell are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?" This audio book says 'no.'

"Get away from her, You." - Really?!

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I love the first two movies in this franchise so much! So how can a book that essentially follows the movie scene for scene be disappointing? Let me explain how.

1. It has been sanitized. As indicated by my review title, nearly all the expletives have been omitted. Instead of the most loved line in the movie, "Get away from her you bitch!" we are given "Get away from her YOU!" Now I'm not that attached to swearing; I'm not a 12-year old on the playground trying to sound grown up. But many of the best lines from the movie completely lose their force, rhythm, and impact from being sanitized. C'mon. These are marines and blue collar workers (Ripley). They need to swear to sound natural.

2. The reader struggles with doing multiple voices. I think a reading with less-differentiated voices would be much better. There is no way a single narrator can imitate all the great voices in the movie exactly. This narrator (Hope) tries, and/or invents voices for ones he can't approximate, but it really doesn't work. It's an impossible task to measure up to a full cast of actors in this regard and I wish Hope or the person who produced/directed this audiobook hadn't tried.

3. Sensory descriptions are missing and the novel is flat without having seen the movie. If the reading/writing had tried to be more stand-alone, the book might be more successful. But lots of bits that you would put in for a stand-alone work just aren't there; the author seems to be relying on the reader to have seen the movie. Mostly I am talking about solid description. Foster doesn't help you visualize the aliens much. Textures, colors, smells, sounds, and visuals aren't not given much text at all and the novelization feels pretty flat as a result.

4. The scope is the movie and only the movie. You get very little detail/background for the story that isn't supplied on-screen. I think the major reason for reading a novelization of a movie is to get interior thoughts/feelings for the characters and to pick up more in-depth explanations of character motives, technical details, etc.

Foster basically just wrote down the movie. Hope tried to (unsuccessfully) imitate the movie voices and was hampered by sanitized dialogue. The result is disappointing.

Who might enjoy this? Well, I was 10 years old when Alien came out and my parents wouldn't take me to see it. So I read the book. That worked, until I could see the movie. The only people who I think would really enjoy this book are kids in the same situation. :) If you can see the movie, just do that and only that. The book isn't worth it.

Really bad... really.

This is a sanitized rewrite of a far better story. Ellen Ripley is made weak and romantic. all of the things that made Aliens great were replace with cliches, superlatives and outright silly changes. I feel sorry for the performer who was in the actual film.
The author, who is wildly successful and rightly so, seems like he didn’t understand what made the film great or just could not relate so he wrote this book in a style that suited his own writing.

A Large Disappoint, Too Sanitized...

I had high hopes for this novelization, sadly I find myself rather disgusted with what was done. This novelization was grammatically sanitized from all swearing, did the publisher realize how inaccurately that portraits The Marines Corp? Seriously have you ever been in a room full of Marines, they swear constantly it's a part of noncom life..

This (in movie format) is a classic, one of the best sci/horror films ever created. The correct balance of suspense and drama. This novelization fails mightily, one of the most famous catch phrases of my generation was even sanitized ("Get away from her you BITCH!"). They choose to completely remove all the swearing from the book which completely divorces the emotion from the situations.

The narration was fairly bland with little emotion, even in the most stressful situations. The world creation was better but too bland and analytical in the narration also.

I can't recommend this title being an fan of the film.

Aliens

This book has been sanitized of any swear words. Given that the characters are colonial Marines, the removal of swear words make them sound like Mr Rogers while being slaughtered by horrific aliens.

Gorman you have always been...stupid?

Any additional comments?

What in heavens name were they doing by sanitizing the Aliens.The two best lines in almost every movie I have ever seen are in this movie...three actually. One is when Vasquez was asked if she were ever confused for a man and she said 'No! Have you?" they kept that one.But the one where Vasquez and Gorman were in the a.c duct ready to blow themselves up, Vasquez says "You've always been STUPID Groman" seriously. The line is "you have always been an asshole Gorman!" Then of course we have the ever-faithful "Get away from her you bitch!" sanitized to "Get away from here...YOU?" Who did they think would be listening to this book. School-age children who didn't have their little nerves hardened by FOUL language. What a disappointment to do this to a die-hard fan. However...when you get right down to it...you couldn't screw it up too bad.

I am ecstatic about listening to Aliens!

If I was excited about listening to Alien, I am ecstatic about listening to Aliens! I remember this movie the most. Maybe partly because of Newt but also due to the outstanding characterization of the marines. And also in part because Ripley has really started to come into her own.

What I could not remember of the movie, the book made extremely clear. Ripley dealt with some issues in book one (if they can be called issues!!) and has grown tremendously. The words used to describe her in Alien have changed to words that mean a woman that is determined, strong, relentless, and will stop at nothing to keep herself, and her friends, safe. The only time she faltered was when asking herself WHY in the world she allowed herself to be talked into coming back to this alien world. I would have to ask myself the same question after all she went through.

The novelization, including fabulous narration, is even more exciting than book one. This book adds details that were unknown in the movie. There is just no time to go into character's backgrounds. I loved the story of Newt! Getting to know her was a great part of the book and really explained her connection with Ripley. There was a lot that the movies just could not give the viewer and the book fixes all of that!

The narration was yet again on point. There is not a minute where I was not on the edge of my seat. With the marines, multiple women, and a child, you think this is when the narration would falter but William Hope does an outstanding job of keeping the voices separate and understandable, while also adding in those accents that made them stand out in the movie. Vasquez is one of those that stands out quite a bit, in the movie and in the book, and the narration kept that character exciting.

The audible was outstanding and I was pleased that it kept up to my expectations. The only thing that would have made this better is a full cast of narrators. Otherwise, it still was able to pull me in and keep me entertained.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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great story, poor choice of narration

I was hoping for much more new content in the novelization though it was absent. I did not care for the fact that this version of the story had the aliens possessing Stingers in their tails that cause paralysis. that creativity has never been replicated in Prior or subsequent episodes of the alien story therefore it does not fit with any chronologic event. the narrator has a very lazy sounding voice which does not fit well with a horror sci-fi suspense story. I have always been a die-hard aliens fan and will continue to be so the this novelization does not mean or merely meet my standard

Best Movie Ever! Let's Rock!

Where does Aliens rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's hard to separate the movie from the book. And the movie is in my all time top five so yeah, this was REALLY awesome. Well done!

What was one of the most memorable moments of Aliens?

All of them. Everyone.

Have you listened to any of William Hope’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't think so but he did a great job here.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Just in case there's someone out there who hasn't read the book, seen the movie or listened to the audio, I won't say.

"We're all gonna die, man!!!"

This is the audiobook of the movie novelization by Alan Dean Foster, narrated by William Hope.

The author has numerous movie adaptations to his credit and it seems like I have read a few of them over the decades, so it should come as no surprise to me that he did such an outstanding job on this one. But it does. It is very difficult to satisfy avid fans when trying to “muck about” with whatever it is those fans are so crazily passionate about, be it Star Trek or Star Wars or the Terminator or the Transformers franchises. (For fun, go to a ComicCon and, in the crowded auditorium, yell out “Picard would kick Kirk’s ass!!!” and just watch the ensuing chaos…) Maybe it is because Mr Foster has so much experience “mucking about” with those very polarizing entities that he did such a superior job with arguably the greatest Sci-Fi movie ever made (more on that later). But I think it was more than that. The author took a deliberate and obvious attention-to-detail approach and faithfully transcripted an almost frame-by-frame account of the movie. We also get to delve into the minds and motivations of the characters more than I initially thought he would. He particularly excelled at giving peeks into the psyches of the Marines as well as Bishop without going overboard and remained remarkably faithful to the movie.

The narrator, William Hope, was good. He particularly did a good job of building suspense with his tone and timing. Personally, I would have liked a more varied range of accents and voices for the characters but Mr Hope did a more than adequate job. I initially thought that a female narrator would have been more appropriate since the protagonist is female. After all, the movie is all about Ripley and the aliens, right? Well, listening to the novelization served as a much-needed reminder that the marines did much more than provide the aliens with bone splinters with which to pick their teeth. And the amount of time Ripley is running around by herself kicking ass is significant, so a narrator choice didn’t need to be based on the protagonist’s sex but rather who could provide the suspenseful ambiance. There were no production problems but I thought the music snippets played between chapters could have been spookier…I mean we are talking about possibly the spookiest horror movie of all time, here! Your “average spooky music” just ain’t good enough for such an epic cult classic.

I was reminded of a pet peeve of mine while listening to Aliens. Namely, ask anyone, literally anyone, what their top 3 Sci-Fi movies of all time and everyone will list Aliens as number 1. But listen to the audiobook and it is glaringly obvious that it is a horror movie and not true science fiction. By that, I mean you could change the setting to Afghanistan and have the Marines enter an Afghan cave then retreat to a Forward Operating Base and the movie/book is essentially unchanged. I am probably just ranting here but it should be stressed that Aliens falls into the horror genre. While it is impossible to do the Geiger imagery that we all associate with the Alien movies (and that initially freaked us all out in the ‘80s), the book does a better-than-expected job at describing the indescribable. Having said that, I have to admit the book isn’t as scary as the movie I remember and it is probably unrealistic to expect it to be. The movie sets were so unique, the background music was so chilling, and Sigourney Weaver’s brilliant acting was so perfect, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, while audiobooks are my personal favorite medium, an almost perfect movie can’t quite translate the same butt-clenching horror that you get in a darkened theater. I know: Blasphemy to us audiophiles! But we are talking about Ripley Scott’s “Aliens” here, a category unto itself.

Bottom Line: If you have seen Aliens, you will enjoy this audiobook. It allows exploration of the characters and situations that a 2 hour movie simply can’t do while remaining authentic to the unique vision of one of the iconic films of the 20th century.