I pitched an article to Cracked.com which included this point. The editors thought it was too narrow in scope, but I think my points are still valid. I have edited it for Art's Grandma.
5 Reasons Why Joining The Army Ruined Aliens For Me
Aliens has always been my favorite science fiction movie. I had to wait until 1988 to see it, as my parents just laughed at me when I asked to come with them to the theater two years earlier. I fell in love with the film immediately, beginning an annual tradition of watching it and insisting that any friend who hadn't seen it drop everything immediately and sit down in front of the TV. Occasionally, hog-tying was required, but the general consensus has always been that Aliens ranges from "okay" to "jaw-crushingly awesome." Then, in 2005, I joined the United States Army, and that was pretty much the end of my man-crush on James Cameron.
1) The United States Colonial Marine Corps sends one squad to LV-426
I was trained as an infantryman in the Army. One of the first things you learn is that you never go anywhere alone. You also never engage the enemy unless you have a 3 to 1 advantage, or if you're in a defensive position that you have to hold at all costs. The USCMC chooses to send, into an unknown situation (ostensibly) with one green lieutenant, four non-commissioned officers, eight enlisted Marines, and a brave, potentially kick-butt but strangely pacifist android. There are no indications that this is a "do or die" mission, nor that the USCMC is short on personnel. The Sulaco is a huge freaking ship, with a spare dropship even, but instead the entire mission is entrusted to one squad. That's bad enough, but:
2) The Marines are mostly a bunch of dirtbags
I figure that Cameron wanted to give the Marines some extra character by making them a bunch of rag-tag non-conformists. Private Hudson is a standout as the wise-cracker, but many others, including PVT Drake and PVT Vasquez, demonstrate an unacceptable level of unprofessionalism. We're at least given hints that this squad has been subject to prior missions that were either boring or not much of a challenge, but unless they came directly from a prolonged fight, their demeanor is something any self-respecting NCO would put the kibosh on right quick. I'm in the National Guard, and even we've got our crap together ten times over these guys.
In all fairness, there are some good Marines in the bunch. Corporal Hicks, obviously, as well as CPL Dietrich (the medic) and CPL Ferro (the dropship pilot) all perform admirably. Why they haven't smoked their team members with a million pushups and twice as many mountainclimbers is beyond me. Instead, we get a squad leader (SFC Apone) who is so distrusting of his Marines that he:
3) The squad is relieved of their ammo at the worst possible moment
When under the cooling system for the reactors, Ripley points out that a stray round could damage the system and result in a meltdown. Apparently, Weyland-Yutani is the only company in the galaxy that builds nuclear reactors without several redundant (and automatic) safety mechanisms to ensure that wouldn't happen. Even the very first nuclear "reactor," the Uranium pile at the University of Chicago in 1944 (CP1) had an automatic mechanism to drop neutron moderators into the pile in the event of a runaway chain reaction. Even if the Marines perforated the cooling system like a ream of Floridian election ballots, the worst that would happen is that the reactor would shut down... harmlessly. While the cost of repairing the reactor is perhaps the true motivation behind Carter Burke's tacit approval of the ammo confiscation, it ultimately doesn't justify SFC Apone's decision to neuter the squad's firepower.
PVT Frost is given the duty of carrying the magazines, which in real life would be anywhere from 7 to 10 mags per Marine (not including however many belts Vasquez and Drake hand over), which would be about a hundred pounds of ammo. PVT Frost then gets turned into Marine flambe (probably because he couldn't move), and drops the ammo into some flaming napalm. The ammo inexplicably explodes with enough force to kill another Marine (PVT Crowe).
So, the squad gets jumped and several Marines die needlessly. Time to call the dropship and pack it in. Unfortunately:
4) The dropship has no security whatsoever
The Marine's dropship is something we in the military like to call a "mission-critical asset." That means if you lose it, everybody's doomed. The lack of overall manpower notwithstanding, leaving only CPL Ferro and PVT Spunkmeyer behind to guard it is an unforgivable error. Even still, two Marines should be able to at least ensure that the dropship isn't captured or destroyed without one last desperate transmission to the others declaring just how screwed they're about to be. Instead, CPL Ferro is apparently content to watch Youtube on her cockpit console while PVT Spunkmeyer runs around the landing zone doing everything but paying attention to the dropship's open ramp. The inevitable crash occurs, leaving the surviving Marines with precious few resources and only one option to call for the remaining dropship, which is left, rather conspicuously, on the unmanned Sulaco. The option of waiting it out for seventeen days with hilarious and addictive Gin Rummy competitions is obviated by the destabilized nuclear reactor, which was improbably damaged during the dropship crash. Barring again the problem with the reactor's apparent lack of reasonable safety mechanisms, the Marines are left to hold out in the command center while Bishop gets to the transmitter station. Which leads us to:
5) The Marines have terrible fire discipline
This is my favorite part of the movie, and I don't have much of an issue with the way that the Marines handle the situation from here on out. Once the sentry guns run dry (what, you haven't watched the special edition? What the hell is wrong with you?), xenomorphs soon overrun the complex. When the fecal matter finally hits the oscillating blade (and there are a lot in the complex, aren't there?), the surviving Marines prepare to make a last stand.
Soldiers and Marines are trained to conserve ammunition. Riflemen most often fire their weapons in semi-auto, and M249 and M240 gunners fire in short, controlled bursts. At the very least CPL Hicks reminds his people of this, advice they all promptly ignore. Now in a panic situation, anything goes, but the Marines are well aware of how little ammo they have. Furthermore, why is Ripley allowed to hold onto the M41A once LT Gorman wakes up? The Marines are understandably pissed at him for what happened at the reactor, but if they trust him enough to give him a pistol, why not give him the pulse rifle? He still has about a hundred times as much experience with the rifle than Ripley. Still, they bravely slug it out, Burke gets what's coming to him, and Ripley lives long enough to mount a rescue mission for Newt. The improbability of that endeavor has already been covered on Cracked (link to article), so I won't go over it again.
I've heard it argued that Weyland-Yutani intentionally sent in a small group of messed-up soldiers, but this doesn't make sense in the context of Burke's mission. If the company really wanted to bring back a live alien, why not request a battalion of Marines? Furthermore, why not bring the Marines into the loop? If the company has enough power to influence the United States Colonial Marine Corps to run missions for them, why couldn't they just order them to bring back some eggs? The dramatic impact of Ripley's discovery wouldn't have been lessened, she'd simply have fewer allies to get all pissed off at Burke. Cameron could have simply killed far more Marines with far more aliens, which would have been just as much of a blast to watch.
