Excellent blend of sci-fi and action which is better than Alien

Rating: 9/10 (18 August 2013)

There is no doubt that James Cameron is a master film maker with such classic films as Terminator 1 & 2 and True Lies under his belt (which are all personal favourites of mine). He also created Aliens which is a near perfect follow up to the popular 1979 film Alien.
The film begins with a salvage crew discovering a ship which Ripley (Weaver) has been drifting in for 57 years as a result of being in some sort of hyper sleep. She still has her beloved cat Jonesey from the first film who presumably must have been in a hyper sleep as well.
We quickly learn that in the 57 years that Ripley has been asleep (I think only Sleeping Beauty has slept for longer than that)that there have been colonies of families that have been studying the planet where Ripley's crew discovered the Alien life forms in the first film. When contact becomes lost with the colony, a group of marines are sent in to investigate what's been going on - this is initially done as a precaution as they suspect that contact has been lost due to a faulty transmitter. Upon hearing this, Ripley isn't convinced that a faulty transmitter is to blame and she suspects that there is a possibility that the Aliens may have re-surfaced. This leads to Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Lt Gorman (William Hope) asking Ripley to join them as a 'consultant' as she is more knowledgeable about the Aliens and they believe that if they are out there, that she will be the best person to assist the Marines in eradicating the Aliens for good.
I think there are 2 main reasons why this works better than Alien. Firstly, the pacing; Aliens gets going a lot more quickly than Alien and never dragged or became dull - this was part of the problem with Alien - the action scenes were good in Alien, but the first 45 minutes were a complete bore. Second was the action scenes - James Cameron is just so much better at creating action sequences which ultimately made Aliens a much more exciting film. One thing that was great about Alien was the direction and the way the tension was created, but James Cameron even with the faster pacing and better action sequences still managed to create arguably greater tension and even crisper direction (but what did you expect from the mastermind behind the excellent original Terminator and the masterpiece of Terminator 2 that followed).
The only minor gripe that I had was the character of Hudson (portrayed by Bill Paxton). Whilst Paxton's acting was great, his character was really annoying with his constant whining and repeatedly saying 'Man' at the end of every sentence. Other than that, I will happily sing this film's praises! Whilst Aliens is undoubtedly a better film than Alien, I would recommend watching Alien before Aliens as you will have a better understanding of the themes contained in Aliens.