This Time It's Score: James Horner's "Aliens"

Horner follows Goldsmith, round two...

This time it's war. Where "Alien" was ostensibly a haunted house movie in space, James Cameron's 1986 sequel "Aliens" took on the Vietnam War and leaned into its title, with swarms of aliens coming out of walls, vents, and the odd human chest. Taking over from Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner pulled action film scoring elements alongside the horror, setting the stage for some of the best film music ever composed.

Like its predecessor, the music of "Aliens" is designed to fill you with dread from the first second. For the opening titles, low foreboding notes overlaid with sparse military drumming—inferring the marine presence in the film—build to an overwhelming orchestral swell with a surround of insectoid noises that are almost vocal. The subsequent cacophony foretells what will happen to the Marines as it wipes out the percussion, some canny sonic storytelling from Horner.

With the horror element taken care of, the cue segues to a reflective motif that Horner based on the adagio from the Gayane ballet by Aram Khachaturian (also heard in "2001: A Space Odyssey"). The use of the haunting adagio—which bookends the film—provides an emotional anchor for the character of Ripley as it tracks the Nostromo's lifeboat through the void, echoing the character's isolation in the vast unknown. Incidentally, Horner would continue to reference the adagio in the two Jack Ryan pictures he scored, Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

Horner's music is the key to building tension throughout the film. The disturbing ambient wind carries on from Goldsmith's score, and drawn-out melodic strings supply an unsettling atmosphere. These are then interrupted by piercing high strings for those jumpy moments that are a jolt to your system, the kind of thing that "Aliens" is so good at.

Horner worked hard to establish a reverence for Goldsmith's score without just copying. The film provided more opportunities for melody, such as the heroic theme of the Marines, which can be found on the track 'LV-426' on the soundtrack album. The cue opens with a minimal reading of the Gayane motif before launching into a bold statement of the theme and contrasts the contradictory nature of both themes. In the film, the Marine part of the cue scores the first shot of the spaceship Sulaco, with the Gayane portion omitted.

It's worth mentioning, especially when discussing themes and motifs, that James Cameron screwed around with Horner's score as much as Ridley Scott did with Jerry Goldsmith's. Both films had a similar outcome—the music nonetheless still worked its magic. That said, there were a pair of cues that Cameron replaced that would not have worked in the final film.

For the famous "combat drop" sequence, where the marines suit up and take the dropship to the planet's surface, Horner wrote two cues in a call-to-arms fashion that underlined the bravery of the Marines and excitement of the scene. Based around the Marine theme, the cue used a lot of heroic brass and was reminiscent of another piece written by Horner for a science fiction epic; the 'Battle In The Mutura Nebula' cue in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," where the Enterprise and the Reliant face off in the nebula. That cue worked perfectly in that picture because it was for a big moment in the climax of the film where the heroes have the advantage. In "Aliens," it's for a bunch of badass marines off to exterminate a deadly species, which is why it was replaced by a martial percussive piece by composer and arranger Harry Rabinowitz, and the new cue honestly works a lot better.

That's not to discredit Horner; "Aliens" is a fantastic score with some killer action cues that have become classics. The scene where Ripley saves the Marines in the APC is a prime example, with thundering brass propelling the vehicle as it smashes through an alien structure to reach its destination. The interesting thing, which helps proves the point about the film's score working amazingly despite being cut up, is that the cue was written for the later scene where the surviving Marines try to escape the complex. Inevitably, that sequence used music intended for the APC scene, entitled 'Ripley's Rescue.'

Horner's score is the very definition of the oft-used musical adjective "pulse-pounding", and this is all summed up with his scoring of the false climax when the dropship escapes from the exploding colony. Known as 'Bishop's Countdown,' this is simply the action cue and is neck and neck with 'Anvil of Crom' from Basil Poledouris' score to "Conan The Barbarian" in terms of how many times it's been used for trailers and the like. And it's no surprise, it's a wonderfully intense explosion of brass that uses a thrilling version of the Marine motif, followed by a countdown so good it could make brushing your teeth feel like a life and death situation.

Nominated for an Academy Award, "Aliens" was originally released on LP and CD by Varese Sarabande in 1987, running just under forty minutes. The programme was expanded Varese in 2001 to a deluxe edition containing most of the score as intended by Horner, along with several alternate cues including the aforementioned 'Combat Drop.' You can also listen to Horner's intended version while watching the film on Blu-ray as one of two isolated score tracks; the other track is the final theatrical version of the score, edits and all. However, most audiences have likely heard another deleted cue without knowing it, as an unused piece for the film's finale turned up two years later in "Die Hard." The cue scores the climactic scene where Karl is shot by Al and is hilariously inappropriate.

Even with Horner swearing he would never work with Cameron again due to the undue pressure placed on him by the director and producer Gale Ann Hurd, he obviously went back on his word for "Titanic" and later "Avatar." However, his mark is still felt in the "Alien" franchise, with his music used for trailers for 1992's "Alien 3" and 1997's "Alien: Resurrection," as well as Cameron's underwater opus "The Abyss" in 1989. Even video games, which are now also afforded large orchestral scores similar to movies, carry his influence.

And just like "Star Trek," people will be arguing forever over who wrote the best scores out of the first two "Alien" movies: Jerry Goldsmith or James Horner.

That's a hell of a thing to be remembered by.