Funny moments in Aliens.
- An early one from Ripley:Burke: We're doing a lot of terraforming. Building Better Worlds...
Ripley: Yeah, I saw the commercials. - Aliens seems to have the most in the way of funny moments. Almost all of them are provided by surprise surprise, Hudson.
- Here's a good Hudson line.Gorman: Hicks, meet me at the south lock. We're coming in.
Hudson: He's comin' in. I feel safer already.Vasquez: Pendejo jerkoff... - One of his best is even earlier than that.Hudson: Is this gonna be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bughunt?
Gorman: All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved.
Frost: Excuse me, sir, a what?
Gorman: A xenomorph.
Hicks: It's a bughunt. - Also:Hudson: Man, this floor is freezing!
Apone: What do you want me to do, fetch your slippers for you?
Hudson: Gee, would you, sir? I'd like that.
Apone: (Apone points at his own eye with his middle finger) Look into my eye. - After Gorman's briefing, the sergeant tells Hudson he wants to have a little "chat".Sgt. Apone: Hudson, come here. COME HERE!
- Also speaking of Hudson on the receiving end:
- Who could forget his best one?Hudson: That's it, man! Game over, man! Game over!
- "Yeah, right, man, Bishop should go. Good idea!"
- Rescuing Ripley and Newt from Burke's setup with the facehuggers, Hudson lets out a "Jesus Christ kid!" as he moves to blast the facehugger Newt has pinned with a desk; it's difficult to tell if he's impressed by Newt's tenacity or alarmed by the situation.
- And from the novelization, when Gorman orders everyone to unload their weapons.
Hudson: What are we supposed to use, judo? What if they haven't got any arms?!Ripley: They've got arms... - Here's a good Hudson line.
- Apone is almost the original Sergeant Rock. He pops a cigar in his mouth even as he wakes up.Apone: (smiles broadly) A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every paycheck a fortune. Every meal a banquet. Every formation a parade. I LOVE THE CORPS!
- Bishop pulling his knife trick on Hudson. The latter's expression throughout is absolutely priceless. Made even better because when Lance Henriksen told people on set what he was going to do, he failed to discuss it with Bill Paxton. Bill's look of terror is very real.
- When Gorman orders the Marines to avoid using their rifles when confronting the xenomorphs, Frost drops an absolute gem.Frost: What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?
- Oddly enough one of the funniest lines goes to Burke of all people. Of course he's just doing it to be sarcastic, but still.Hudson: What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?!
Burke: Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don't we try that? - On the dropship down, Hudson swaggering in front of Ripley. His swaggering makes his later breakdown all the better — and then he picks up again.Hudson: We got sonic, electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks...
- On the dropship, Gorman is visibly nervous, and many of the Marines are swaggering and boasting. Hicks falls asleep. The camera returns to him a couple of times just to show it.Sgt. Apone: Somebody wake up Hicks!
- Hicks is doing the only smart thing; he has nothing else to do so he's getting some sleep now that he might need later.
- Ripley isn't sleeping - but she's not swaggering or paranoid - she's just probably absolutely sick of sleep given that she's been sleeping for fifty seven years at this point. The last thing she probably wants is more sleep.
- Hicks is doing the only smart thing; he has nothing else to do so he's getting some sleep now that he might need later.
- Bishop is about to crawl through a tunnel alone to the Comm Relay in order to remotely call down the spare drop ship from the Sulaco. Vasquez hands him a pistol to protect himself with. He takes it, turns it over in his hand briefly, and promptly hands it off to Ripley, evidently finding it entirely useless to him.
- Then, as they're lowering the plate they cut back onto the pipe, he reminds them to "Watch your fingers." Apparently, he takes that whole "through inaction, allow a human to come to harm" thing seriously.
- When he volunteers to go, he admits that he doesn't like the idea of crawling out there with the aliens on the loose either.
Bishop: I'm synthetic, but I'm not stupid. - Newt provides a couple of small ones.
- When Ripley has driven the car out of the first alien attack, she asks if Newt's okay. Newt gives her the thumb's up with the most deadpan expression on her face.
- Newt doesn't want to sleep because she has scary dreams. Ripley tells her that her doll head Casey doesn't have scary dreams, and "Maybe you should just try to be more like her, huh?" Newt very seriously replies, "Ripley, she doesn't have bad dreams because she's just a piece of plastic."
- The script's description of this moment: "Newt rolls her eyes as if to say 'don't pull that five-year-old shit on me, lady. I'm six.'"
- Newt has found a marine's helmet and is wearing it while Hudson is having a freak out. When Ripley reminds him how long she survived, she says "am I right?" and Newt salutes Hudson. Again her expression is hilarious.
- And this leads to another Hudson CMOF: "Why don't you put her in charge!"
- "She thought they said illegal aliens and signed up." Not that funny on its own, but definitely gets there when you learn it was put in as a reference to Jeanette Goldstein actually making that mistake when she saw the casting sheet, causing her to show up dressed as a poor Mexican immigrant surrounded by people in army fatigues. This also adds a lot of context to her response: "Fuck you, man!"
- A surprisingly funny moment in the middle of a very tense situation: When Ripley has nonverbally convinced the Queen to let her and Newt go, an egg near them starts to open. Ripley responds with a look that basically says, "Are you fucking kidding me?"
- You can alternately read that reaction as, "Mmmwhelp, I was trying to play nice, but I guess we're doing this..."
- The Alien Queen's Quizzical Tilt when she realizes how an elevator works.
- Apone and Hicks are positively amused when Ripley shows her skill with the power loader, proving them she's more than meets the eye.
- Before that, Apone's pitch-perfect retort to Ripley:Ripley: I'm starting to feel like kind of a fifth wheel around here, is there anything I can do?
Apone: I don't know, is there anything you can do?
- Before that, Apone's pitch-perfect retort to Ripley:
- Upon hearing about the deadliness of the xenomorph, Hudson immortally snarks "How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?"
- The situation is particularly serious, since it's right after Newt's capture by a xeno, but this, due entirely to Bishop's incredulous tone:Ripley: Bishop, how much time!?Bishop: Plenty. Twenty-six minutes!Ripley: We're not leaving!Bishop: ...We're not!?
- A blink and miss moment, but when Ripley at the Weyland-Yutani corporate debriefing angrily grabs a bunch of papers to illustrate her scorn for their bureaucracy, a hand from one of the corporates weakly tries to grab the papers back from her.
- As the Aliens swarm the Marines in Operations, Gorman and Burke are behind a desk and some shelves. Gorman levels his pistol and starts firing. Burke claps him on the shoulder, shouts "Do something, Gorman," then books for the exit.
- Meta: During filming, the crew kept trying to scare young Carrie Henn, but she was unfazed by all the goings-on, knowing it was all make-believe and that alien monster was just so-and-so in a funny suit, or that grisly sight was just something the effects guys put together. Then during the premiere, one scene she wasn't present for filming cropped up: the Jump Scare in the medbay when the facehugger slams against the stasis tank to try and get Burke. Carrie jumped out of her seat. James Cameron happened to be sitting right behind her, and crowed "We got you! We finally got you!"
- More meta: After each actor filmed their death scene, Sigourney Weaver would gift them a bouquet of flowers like it was a funeral. Because Burke was such a Hate Sink Asshole Victim of a villain, when Paul Reiser filmed his death scene, Weaver gave him a bouquet of dead flowers.
- Just to put it in perspective, when the film ended both his mother and sister were mad at him for being such a massive jerk on-screen. Honestly, that speaks volumes of hilarity.
- Taking all the above into consideration, though, perhaps Paul Reiser, normally known for his comedic roles and stand-up comedy, deserves a CMOA nod for playing the part that effectively.
