exciting follow-up to a classic

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2009)

I once made the observation that 'Aliens' deserves an award for panache for trying to outdo 'Alien.' It would be more accurate to say it takes the story of Ripley and those slimy, malevolent lifeforms in a direction that the first movie didn't even try to; specifically, into the realm of action/adventure/combat flicks. To its credit, it keeps much of the original's look and feel, in art direction and sound. But the volume (so to speak) is cranked WAY up, as is the violence quotient, and the last 45 minutes or so feel like a roller-coaster ride through hell. Opinions differ whether or not this is an improvement; my own feeling is that 'Alien' is the superior film, hands down. But 'Aliens' certainly won the box office battle and has always been more generally popular. The plot has Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) going back to the deadly planet with a squad of 'colonial marines.' It is 57 years later (she slept that long in suspended animation before being discovered) and the planet is now inhabited by humans in a small, desolate community. The aliens (and there are a bunch of them now) never bothered the colonists until recently and when contact with Earth ceases, the marines are sent in and Ripley goes with them as a reluctant 'advisor.' The marines themselves are a colorful group of stereotypes, straight out of an old WW2 war flick- the tough-as-nails sergeant, the quiet loner, the two bad-ass machine gunners, the whiner, etc. They are led by an ineffective lieutenant who we soon discover isn't up to the challenge. Also along for the ride is the 'company man,' Burke (Paul Reiser, in a nice turn as a complete slimeball). After an early encounter with the aliens cuts their number in half, Ripley more or less assumes command by sheer force of personality. (And Weaver out-acts the pants off whoever she shares the screen with.) There are plenty of slam-bang shoot-'em-up sequences, all very well staged and very intense. But somewhere along the way, 'Aliens' diminishes the essential creepiness of the creatures just slightly by making them so often exploding targets. And the audience realizes long before the marines that it doesn't matter how many of them you kill, there are always more. A single colony survivor, a young girl named Newt, is adopted by Ripley and the others and proves more savvy than any of them. There is a funny, scary moment early on shortly after Newt is found; Ripley asks her if she wouldn't feel safer staying with Ripley and the others. The little girl just shakes her head no. Ripley goes on to say these are soldiers, and Newt responds, "It won't make any difference." After chases, explosions, more gunplay and one false climax, we get the final showdown between Ripley, in one of the spaceship's loaders, and the alien queen. (Trying to distract the queen from pursuing Newt, Weaver spits out her famous line, "Get away from her, you bitch!") The fight itself is fairly brief, and the queen is finally dispatched off out into space, much like the alien in the first film was. Director James Cameron certainly deserves credit for not making a boring sequel; 'Aliens' is anything but. It would probably be hoping for too much to expect a second film to be as wondrously terrifying as Ridley Scott's original; like capturing lightning twice, almost impossible. So Cameron wisely shifts gears and takes us on a different adventure altogether, and it's a very exciting one.