Not as great as I was lead to believe...

Rating: 6/10 (8 January 2000)

The whole first hour could have been cut down to about 15 minutes and not have lost anything. Why? Because nothing happens. Nothing. We get the plot set up and are introduced to a bunch of 2 dimensional macho marines, and that's it. It didn't need to take an hour to present this. It didn't establish a mood, all it did was make me wonder why they are wasting my time like this. I also thought the introduction of Newt was a pretty lame attempt to get me to care about the story. I'm glad she died in the third movie after seeing this. "They mostly come out at night... mostly..." What a joke.
Now, after about the hour and a half mark things actually start to get interesting, and from there on out it's a pretty cool movie. Even though the whole ending battle was forced and shouldn't have happened at all if Ripley didn't take pot-shots at the queens eggs (even thought they would have died anyway), It was still a pretty good ending.
BTW, I saw the 168 minute directors cut, which may be why I think it drags for so long at the beginning.