No sir, I don't like it

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2003)

SPOILERS
BEGIN RANT.
I'm one of those dissenters who loathes ALIENS, and pretty much everything else James Cameron has directed. Judging from his body of work, Cameron believes that if something is loud and showy and sentimental enough, then it's good. I disagree.
One of my bigger complaint about ALIENS is the characters. While the characters of the original ALIEN were flawed, they weren't unlikeable people, and their constant bickering worked for the movie, setting up tension long before the alien makes its debut. I believed in them, I cared about them, and I was sorry to see them die.
I admit to caring for Ripley and Newt in ALIENS--but that's because Ripley is already established from the first film, and Newt is A LITTLE GIRL, for cripe's sake. Too easy! The remaining characters, the Space Marines, are by contrast incredibly obnoxious and unprofessional in the extreme. (Here's hoping that the real US military is nothing like the way they are portrayed here.)
Their machismo dialogue is so dreadful, it's funny. Take for instance this line delivered to an hispanic Marine: "Somebody said 'alien'; and she thought they said 'illegal alien' and signed up." It took three people to write that?! Good grief. Little wonder that I root for the Space Marines to die. Anything to get them to shut up.
But my real beef with ALIENS is its utter lack of suspense. Ridley Scott's ALIEN was an elegant, Lovecraftian ghost story of a horror movie. ALIENS, of course, is an action movie instead, but that only makes it unscary and predictable. It's nothing but guns and ammo, and you know right off the bat who will live and who will die. Would it surprise anyone who hasn't seen it yet to hear that the protagonist, the adorable little girl, the hunky love interest, and the humble mechanoid are the only ones who make it out alive? Yeah, well, they are. (But here's some good news: they all die in ALIEN^3!)
Some other issues with the movie: the pacing that is too fast; THE LOUD NONSTOP ONLY-IN-HOLLYWOOD MUSIC THAT WILL MAKE YOUR EARS BLEED (compare to Jerry Goldsmith's spookily understated score for ALIEN); the lazy secondary special effects (my boyfriend points out that there is no way the dropship (?) would work, given that one of its wings unfolds before the other!!); and of course Paul Reiser.
Okay, if there is anything I do like, wholeheartedly, about ALIENS it is the aliens themselves. Giving them an insect-hive-like social structure was a masterstroke, and, although too gooey, the aliens--particularly their queen--are downright gorgeous to look at. (No surprise, with the brilliant Stan Winston adapting the designs from the brilliant H.R. Giger's original.)
Trouble is, there is so much of them TO look at! Cameron shows so much of the aliens that they are, ultimately, not scary. As every fan of the genre knows, the best monster is the monster that largely goes unseen.
And now there is ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, with Paul S. Anderson directing... Darn it.
END RANT.