aliens

Rating: 6/10 (27 September 2005)

Director/Script: James Cameron, Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Paul Riser, Lance Henriksen, Michael Biehn
Picking up right where the previous film left of, Ripley is wakened out of hypersleep by a salvage crew 57 years after the ship left the alien planet. She is brought back to the 'company' where she tells the story of what happened to the the rest of the crew. However, they don't believe her because the planet is now colonized with about 60 families living on it with no altercations. Evuantally, they loose contact with the colony so they want to send a group of marines to investigate and they want Ripley to go along as an adviser due to her knowledge of the planet. After they arrive on the planet, they discover that the whole colony has been massacred shy of a little boy and girl. The marines become victim.
These alien films are rather interesting to review because they are all so different and fans of the series have such passionate differences of opinion as to what their favorite one is, most people favoring the first two. Aliens may be second only to the Star Wars films in the loyal following it gets from its fans. Aliens is unique amongst sequels in that it is actually favored by many fans. No doubt about it, this is a very effective film. It's got good special effects, cinematography, and action sequences. This plays much more like an action film than the previous. James Cameron did not want to duplicate Ridly Scott's film so he took a whole different direction. He had earlier made the Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger which was also an action sci-fi. Scott's first Alien film was a much darker film with more elements of horror.
I am going to go against many fans (thank God IMDb doesn't list reviewers addressees!) but I was disappointed somewhat with this film. It's not a bad film by any means but I just don't think they were able to capture the same level of mystery or horror in this film which is also why I actually preferred the third one to this. I also felt this film to be to talky especially at the beginning. The marines where an overzealous, arrogant bunch much like the characters in Armagaden (although not that bad!). The crew in the first film were much more subdued in fact I'm not so sure they even liked each other! Anyhow, this is a good film overall but I am more of a fan of the first film.