A sequel that simply does not seem to stop for a breath.

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2011)

This is the sequel to the Ridley Scott movie Alien. James Cameron has taken the original movie, kept the dark and dirty setting and added his own touches which makes James Cameron the film maker that he is. The main difference is that where the original was one alien against a crew of a freighter, this movie is thousands of aliens against a unit of US marines. Cameron does his characters quite well. Hudson (Bill Paxton) is memorable and seems to represent the general mentality of the marines. At the start he is a loud mouthed big head who thinks he is invincible because he is a marine. After the aliens attack, he becomes a scared, helpless human being who cannot handle what he us up against. Most of the marines put their faith in themselves and this collapses, especially with Hudson, when they realise that they are not as mighty as they once were. The evil of the corporation comes out in this movie as I am told it does in the original. It deals with their greed as they are interested more in capturing an Alien rather that destroying them as they are a threat. They see the aliens as a resource that could be exploited and used if controlled. Burke (Paul Reiser) is corporate representative. His character is willing to kill all of the marines and Riply, yet is against destroying the facility as it is worth a lot of money. To him a human life is worth far less than a new product for the corporation. Even though Burke is quite ruthless in his actions, we are shown that the aliens do not care who people are, they are willing to kill Burke as much as a marine. He attempts to flee, leaving the marines to their fate, only to be torn apart by an alien only minutes later. His act of cowardice was finally his downfall. Aliens also shows us that we are not in control of our world. Even though we may think that a team of crack marines can solve anything, the reality is far from it. They are trained to the point where the people in power believe that they can handle anything, but all of their training means nothing in the field. One of the marines is asked how many drops he has been on; the reply is that he has been on about thirty drops but all but two were simulated, and the current one is his second. Even though they are going out to face danger, the marines are very blasé about the whole event. When they get out of their sleeping capsules, they are more interested in joking about slippers, complaining about food, and rescuing colony girls from their virginity. When they are first told about the alien threat, Hudson's response is "How do I get out of this chicken ... outfit". Nobody takes the threat seriously. This reflects us. We live our lives in a very blasé way. We don't realise that death may come any minute. When we hear of the truth of Christ, our response is like Hudson's, that is get lost. We don't want to hear about the judgement Christ is going to bring to the world and are surprise when things such as earthquakes and death happen. We curse God and turn our back on him and when everything falls apart, we are ready to put a gun to our head and kill ourselves. This is clearly seen in the 1929 stockmarket crash, people throwing themselves out of windows because of the belief that all their money, the thing they based their entire life around, is gone. God is by far different. By following him does not mean that we won't suffer or die, but death does not have to be fearsome. We understand the world and realise that even though we suffer here, we will not suffer when we meet God after our death. All of the things of this world become meaningless; just because we loose all of our money does not mean we loose out. God is always there; he can never be taken away from us. What do we do, we don't take a Hudson attitude and write him off, but rather take a Riply attitude, by understanding the true nature of the threat and preparing yourself when it comes.