great action film, poor alien film

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2008)

SPOILERS For me this film merited only six stars because I felt it took the Alien franchise in completely the wrong direction. If it had stood on its own it would have received a much higher rating.
I understand why so many people here reviewing this film gave it top marks; it's action-packed, the acting is good, the storyline interesting, with excellent special effects and a dialogue that was filled with memorable quotes. But I can't help comparing it to the first film, and feeling that Aliens wasted an opportunity.
In Alien it was suggested that once you leave the safe confines of the solar system, space can be mysterious and hostile in the extreme. Out there, species and technologies exist that are completely incomprehensible to us. Set against the grubby realities of pay disputes and faulty equipment, crew discontent and bickering, the sight of the utterly bizarre organic derelict is actually a real shock, and the subsequent appearance of an eyeless, brutal nightmare is equally stunning, and leaves you wondering just what else is out there lurking amongst the stars.
In Aliens, the aliens become dumb canon-fodder, and have lost all the potential suggested by the first film's 'perfect organism'. In a way it took the franchise in the wrong direction, which we can still see repercussions of to this day with appalling duck-hunting that happens in AVP Requiem.
This is a real shame because as one reviewer here said, Aliens is a great war/action movie. It packs in some good storyline elements - the overconfident military summarily humbled; the inexperienced lieutenant falling in at the deep end; the wonderful interaction of the marines etc.
But why waste the potential themes suggested by Alien by developing the story in this wise-cracking shoot-em-up way? Why not develop the alien as being potentially intelligent? Explore the connection with the derelict more? (I suggest the excellent site www.planet-alien.co.uk as a fresh look at the whole Alien theme).
And much of this second movie felt contrived.
In the original, Ripley was just an accidental heroine - it could so easily have been any of the other crew members who survived. This made Alien feel believable and heightened the tension. In Aliens, her heroine status is a crowd-pleasing and key part of the plot, and you know she is going to be indestructible. At the back of your mind you know she will survive because the studios will make more money from a Weaver sequel than, say, a Goldstein sequel. A poor theme repeated in the films that followed. How is it that she outperforms trained soldiers here to save the day?
Another example is the alien queen. In an attempt to trump the original film and add something new, Cameron fell back on just using a bigger and badder monster to keep people interested. If he had made Alien 3, would his End-of-Film monster be 100 foot high?
And picking LV426 as a colony planet is just an unconvincing plot device to get back to the scene of the action. Why pick a hostile, cold, atmosphere-less, rapidly-rotating hole of a planet, as far away as 'the outer rim', as a good spot for a colony?
Cameron felt it necessary to repeat the following clichés:'chest-bursting', 'alien mouth punching through heads', 'acid blood effects'. This set a trend for the rest of the films of this series, as if there were now an unwritten law that subsequent directors must use this, this and this from the original film. An extreme example is Alien Resurrection, when the alien activates the frozen gas button to kill the worker with its mouth - why not just press down with its hand?
As a stand-alone, Aliens would have been a great film, but as a development in the Alien storyline it was poor.