A dodgy attempt to go back to the well

Rating: 6/10 (31 August 2004)

Good individual performances save an otherwise very ill advised addition to the franchise.
Ropey connections to the main history and the occasional 'Whoa ... look what wee can do with SFX' moments add little to what is otherwise a damn fine set of movies.
The first 'Alien'offerd a trip into the unknown. Aliens said ' we now have an idea what we are dealing with, but the scale of the problem is increased exponentially. #3 tried to return some of the first films aspects of horror an suspense and removed #2's firepower. But now we know exactly what we face and this time we don't really care.
As a stand alone movie, It would probably score a little higher, not least because of the the performances by Weaver, Ryder and Perlman among others making the best possible of the writing provided., but the weight of such formidable predecessors as he first two drag like a millstone around the neck of this film