Megatons of FUN

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2014)

LOTS OF SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS FILM, DON'T READ THE REVIEW!!!
This is many peoples' fave of the ALIEN franchise, and with good reason. It has a deepening of Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) character (if you watch the version with lots of restored footage), more info about the girl Newt (Carrie Henn) and how she came to be orphaned and a lone survivor of a colony of over 100 people called Hadley's Hope, and lots of great characters. The prequel to this film had a pretty small cast and felt claustrophobic at times, but ALIENS seems to move more briskly, even though it's set on the same planet.
Boy, Weland-Yutani must be the epitome of evil, greedy, petty corporations. Nearly 6 decades after Ripley and Jonesy went into stasis after destroying the first Alien, this bunch of bureaucratic turds are STILL mad that she blew up the Nostromo. The oh-so-generous jerks decline to press criminal charges against her, but they revoke her license so that she has to start her life over again working at a crappy new job. Barely back on earth for a few weeks or so, she gets a knock on her door from one Carter J. Burke (Paul Reiser, before MAD ABOUT YOU) and an inexperienced Lt. Gorman (William Hope), who leads a corps of Marines. They practically beg Ripley to accompany them to the planet LV426 because suddenly the terraforming colony overseen by Weland-Yutani Corp. has not been heard from in a while and nobody can raise them. Suddenly, Ripley's account of the fearsome, acidic xenomorph seems to be a likely factor.
Among the many memorable characters are Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn, who is loved worldwide for his portrayal of this and his character in THE TERMINATOR), a low key, levelheaded marine who has to take over once Sarg Apone is killed, the obnoxious and hysterically funny Prvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton, another all time favorite of mine for 30+ years), Prvt. Vasquez (played by another Cameron/Bigelow regular, Jenette Goldstein, a wonderful chameleon of an actress), and the benevolent android Bishop (Lance Henriksen, yet another Cameron legend) who is nothing like the devious Ash of the prequel.
Needless to say, the entire colony, save Newt, has been destroyed. As I learned in the sequels, these aliens use humans not only as hosts with which to reproduce, they kill and use them for food as well. In the very first battle, most of the marines are slain, or worse, kidnapped and made into hosts for the facehugger parasites that hatch from eggs, leaving a handful of survivors. Their mission a bust, they attempt to leave the planet and make plans to "nuke the site from orbit" to ensure the annihilation of this hostile species. Suddenly Mr. Burke is very vocal about his opposition to these plans, and it's not long before he is revealed to be yet another corporate pig with greedy plans to get rich. He is the true villain here, and worse than Ash, because Ash was an android programmed to do what he was told.
Many harrowing but action packed battles later, many of our survivors are no more, and we finally meet "the bitch." Enough said. I had very high hopes about the ending...but I was in for an unpleasant surprise in the next installment of the franchise. Perhaps my 2nd favorite Cameron film. 10 stars.