James Cameron's Powerhouse Sequel to "Alien"

Rating: 8/10 (31 March 2008)

Say what you will about James Cameron's attempts at more "serious" film-making ("Titanic"? Ha!), the man does know how to put together an action movie. He takes a completely different approach to this second film in the "Alien" series than Ridley Scott did to the first -- whereas Scott's film was slow, creepy and scarier for what you didn't see than for what you did, Cameron's is nearly non-stop hard-core action. It works though, and for all the difference in their styles, the two films cohere very well together.
In this sequel, the focus moves away from the science/research angle of the first and instead focuses on a group of marines sent to a ghost town of a space station to investigate the disappearance of the colonists. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is along for the ride again, and Cameron uses her fear of what they could potentially be walking into effectively. Whereas in the first one, we were scared because we shared the scientists' cluelessness about what was going on and only learned things as they learned them, in this one we're scared in the same way Ripley is, precisely because we know what's going on and how terrifying it is. And Cameron ups the ante here -- instead of one single alien as a nemesis, this group of marines has to deal with hundreds of them.
I'm not really a fan of the subplot involving Newt, the little girl the marines find and who forms an attachment to Ripley. But the story does give Ripley's character a lot of motivation and makes her stand off with the aliens much more personal.
I've seen this film a few times, so you'd think it wouldn't hold any suspense for me now, but I just watched it again over the weekend and damned if I wasn't on the edge of my seat.
Grade: A