More Aliens Mean More Good, Wholesome Mayhem Stomach Churning

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 1999)

The joy in watching this sequel from director James Cameron is that not only is there more aliens, but there are also more humans. This airbrushes the staple gloomy, isolated feeling of the original and gives more leadway for lively fun dialogue (see Bill Paxton) and a kind of united human togetherness.
Until, that is, the aliens wipe them out.
But Cameron also gives us an improvement in the series. Sigourney Weaver's Ripley wasn't more than a survivor in the first film, just like Jamie Lee Curtis was in the first HALLOWEEN. Here, though, her character has more depth and growth. She is shattered by the horiffic tragedy taken place in the first film. She still has nightmares of the slimy, carnivorous alien. She is disoriented because she has been in a hyper-sleep for 57 years. Later on in the movie though, she ultimately recovers and becomes one bad mutha to be be reckoned with! The very first strong female character in film history who isn't contradicted with sex appeal. A true-blue butch heroine.
Unfortunately she is in rather comic-bookish company with a rag-tag troop of high-tech marines joing her to fight the beasts that are still in existence on a planet that has been inhabited by human colonists. The marines are all one-dimensional except for Paxton's character who goes from annoying comic relief to panicky weenie throughout the film. There is also Paul Reiser as a backstabbing employee of the evil company which wants to exploit the alien beings and Lance Henriksen, the naturally mechanical actor as Bishop, the well-meaning android, ooh I mean, "artificial person". But the rest of the cast is merely decoration for the intergalactic feast the hordes of aliens have later on in the movie.
The action sequences vary from stimulating to boring, especially in these sad Michael Bay overkill times, but Cameron handles this masterpiece with skill and intelligence as well as explosions and gore.

" Let go of her, you... !!" Ummm...heehee... maybe I shouldn't write that.