Interesting sequel, can't touch the original though

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2003)

James Cameron directs this sequel to one of the greatest science fiction films of our time: Alien. It turns out that Ripley has been floating around in Space for 57 years and when she lands aboard a space craft, she discovers that the setting of the original Alien film has been turned into a colony. When they lose contact with the colony, she's called in to go with a group of Marines to find out what's going on and to terminate the alien once and for all. There happens to be several accidents and Ripley and the Marines are stuck on the colony along with Newt, a young girl who the Marines nearly killed. As Ripley, Sigourney Weaver plays the part with a much heavier and brooding tone, and she even was nominated for an Oscar. It was a relatively new concept for the woman to be the leading action hero of a movie at the time, but she plays her part very well. The only really other note- worty cast member is Newt, who portrays emotions very well. Unfortunately, the script just falls flat. There is lot room for plot and it is wasted away with sequence after sequence of blasting away aliens. While Alien succesfully built things up, Aliens just decides to forget it all and blast everything. While the special effects are sharp, they don't feel quite as realistic as Alien, which had a much smaller budget. James Cameron directs shortly after making the cult Science- fiction film The Terminator, and he directs with a sort of chidlish ignorance. There are no powerful shots or wildly imaginitive attention to small details, and he just focuses on the action. However, he manages to at least keep focus on that, which ends up deserving some credit. However, even with these flaws Aliens still manages to be a somewhat good movie. The sheer velocity of Weaver's performance, and the finally crafted action sequences make more then up for the flat script and Cameron's direction adds in it a bit too. It's definitely not deserving of it's high status on the IMDb top 250, and should not even be on there nor compared to the original Alien. 8/10