SO Overrated!

Rating: 5/10 (26 June 2012)

So yeah, where do I start? First of all, I'd like to say that I absolutely love 'Alien', it's a brilliant, tense and exciting film. Easily a solid 5 star for me. And after watching the constantly praised follow up, I've came to the conclusion that 'Aliens' is the equivalent to 'Terminator 2' to 'The Terminator'. The only difference is, that T2 was actually a good film. I feel like I've wasted a good 2 hours of my life, and I have no doubt in my mind that 'Aliens' is one of the most overrated movies in existence.
The first thing that threw me off, and it is a very minor thing, so I'm not going into too much detail, is that we first find out that Ripley has awoken nearly 60 years after the events of Alien. This is fine, but my problem is, why announce this important piece of information in a dream? To my knowledge this was the first time we were told about the time jump, so wouldn't it be more PRUDENT to mention it in the 'real world' just to stop confusing people whether or not this happened or not.
Anyway, yes, the first 35 minutes of this are surprisingly good. I really enjoyed the hearing sequence, and I find it possibly the strongest scene in the entire movie. Once we get to the base though, I think this is where the film starts to go dramatically down hill, and this is why. I just don't care. I sat for 2 hours in that film, not caring about what was happening, not because I didn't want to, it was because it was unegaging and boring. First of all we're introduced to a group of Squad members, who are probably the most annoying group of people I've ever seen on screen. I'm not even going to waste my time talking about Blake, Husdon and Vasques. The first two really could've been the same character and the third spends the entire movie standing around dramatically looking like a really muscular Halle Berry.
Bar Ripley, Cameron has given us virtually no emotional connection to any of these characters. There were moments where soldiers were dying every 5 minutes and I just didn't care, and the fact that I didn't care completely took me out of the film, and made every bit of character motivation for me annoying, because I just couldn't feel it. No matter how urgent or how dangerous the characters tell me this entire situation is, it just doesn't feel threatening, and this is probably the worst thing about the film. The best thing about 'Alien' is that you did feel emotionally involved, it had genuine suspense and atmosphere, with 'Aliens' the entire thing has just been lost, there's virtually nothing in there at all to set this apart from other horror/action movies. The only startling imagery in the entire thing, was the scene involving the dead bodies cacooned in the cieling, and the woman turning out to be alive. This was quickly ruined however, by the obvious 'chest bursting scene', which I knew was coming and was waiting for it. The problems with most sequels is that half of the time they want to try something very new and inventive, and the other half of the time, they just repeat themselves. I had no doubt in my mind that a chest bursting scene would happen. Saying that though, I did enjoy the scene at the start, but I knew since when that happened Cameron was pretty much like "Ah nahh, I'm just kidding, wait for later!", so I spent the entire movie up to then, just expecting it, which I wouldn't of done if I actually was emotionally involved in the movie, which I wasn't, because this is pretty much something else that Cameron has ruined with his generic direction.
To me 'Aliens' pretty much consisted of one absurd action scene after another. I felt totally uninvolved, and the entire movie just had no heart at all. There's no sense of terror, no sense of claustrophobia, which I have to add the first film did incredibly well. It's just nonsense, with no emotional centre. I really did enjoy Sigourney Weavers performance though, even though I found it a little wooden in places. Other than that, I think she did a good job, and I was thankfull they kept her as the prominent main character and at the front of all the action. Other than that, very disappointing. How people see this as the 'definitive' Alien film is beyond me.