The best sci fi/action ever made

Rating: 10/10 (18 November 2006)

If Alien is the best sci fi horror ever made then Aliens is most definitely the best sci fi action ever made. James Cameron made sure that his film was a different movie from the first and succeeds greatly.
57 years after the end of Alien, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley is found floating in space and bought back to earth where her story is greeted with disbelief and the planet where she met the Alien is now a colony. And this is just the fist ten minutes of the movie. Once contact is lost with the colony, the story ramps up a gear as Ripley accompanies a team of marines to the planet. Did, I say ramp up a gear, I mean goes into overdrive.
The suspense on arrival at the planet does well at building up the tension and also means that we get to actually know the characters, the incompetent lieutanent, Jeanette Goldstein's bad ass Private Vasquez, Bill Paxton's comic relief Hudson and Michael Biehn's Corporal Hicks. And once the aliens attack we're treated to a non stop roller-coaster ride of a movie. There's also a good human storyline as Ripley take's charge of the only colonist remaining, eight year old Newt (Carrie Henn in her one and only role) while the marines are slowly picked off and Ripley is forced to confront her demons.
Despite being 20 years old now, this film still stands out. Sigourney Weaver was nominated for an Oscar for her performance while the effects did win. Despite massive advances in CGI and effects since 1986, the effects in Aliens still stand up and actually work better. The Alien's aren't computers, they do exist even the monstrous Alien Queen, making for the mother of all show downs.