Excellent in every regard - a superior sequel

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2000)

Aliens ranks as my favourite science fiction movie, and perhaps my favourite movie, of all time. It manages to get all the correct elements as far as I'm concerned, and still enthralls me after the umpteenth viewing due to success in many areas :
Characters - All of the characters stand out and are memorable. I have no problem distinguishing my Vasquez from my Gorman. Too many formulaic Hollywood movies today create forgettable cardboard people to populate their worlds - and science fiction is often one of the worst genre offenders. Ripley herself is now almost the archetype for the Female Action Hero, and is drawn well. The cast around her - Newt, Hicks, Bishop, Hudson et. al. are drawn just the correct amount for the movie to make you care about them.
Action - No-one can fault the movie on action. It's got your fix of blazing guns and explosions, as well as the final fight with the protagonist in the closing reels, interspersed with a decent amount of quiescent scenes to calm us down.
Atmosphere - Is where the film starts to take real credit. Taking Ridley Scott's vision of the future, it works with and creates the dank, went, dirty feel. This helps compound the tension caused by the aliens as they skulk around - I know of no other science fiction movie that creates as much tensive mood as this piece.
There are an equal other number of areas the film scores in - music, story, etc. It's ability to do each so well marks it far above the heads of nearly every other science fiction movie with only a few movies able to even remotely compete in it's league (namely, in my opinion, The Terminator, 12 Monkeys and The Matrix).
If you have somehow missed this seminal gem of the science fiction genre, than I urge you to rent it out as soon as possible.