Good despite some seriously cliche characters

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2003)

Having watched the original ALIEN movie, for the fist time, shortly before catching this one,I was struck by how much more 'Hollywood' the second installment is. The cast of the original were a mixed bag of US and British actors and the quality of acting and characterisation was high. Here the emphasis is on special effects, explosions, guts, gore, destruction and cinematic thrills. The all American cast portray a host of rather predictable characters, often little more than comic book cutouts. The "bad-ass" Marine corps who seems to have wandered in from the set of an overblown Vietnam epic are exactly what you'd expect in this kind of movie and fit the accepted formula. The women fight harder than the men, the big mouth becomes a coward when the chips are down and the rookie commander struggles to keep them in order while undergoing his inevitable rite-off-passage. Yeah yeah,seen it all before...it's well done but riddled with cliques. The action is relentless and ultra violent. The original boasts a good deal more depth in it's story and a level of claustrophobic suspense that really scares the aundience before the blood and gore fest even begins. In many way ALIEN is more traditional science fiction, and thoughtfull, intelligent science fiction at that, but ALIENS is a big screen video game in which the main aim is for the main character to survive an orgy of killing going on all around her! There isn't the thought or imagination of the original movie. In many ways it's a classic sequel - it reuses the "best bits" of the original - those remembered most vividly, but drops the vital background detail and characterisation that allowed those steller sequences to achieve their full impact. Hats off to the special effects people and the art department for a truly vivid nightmare of a movie, but after watching the original , one can see the inherent flaws in this movie, despite it's undoubtedly high production values and box office success.