Alien Extras.

Rating: 7/10 (29 April 2008)

James Cameron's follow-up to Ridley Scott's classic original is not so much a haunted-house horror movie as a shoot-em-up actioner. Cameron though does build up the tension excellently, enhancing the story and developing Weaver's iconic Ripley character while at the same time introducing a bunch of far more interesting characters rather than the simple fodder of the first film where the alien was the star of the show. They make the film entertaining, packing it with gung-ho machismo and bad-ass one liners but when the action comes it is, in my opinion, disappointing.
The alien as we found out in the first film is a terrifying horror Sci-Fi invention but here it plays second-fiddle, becoming nothing more than an extra being blown away like a bad guy in a Schwarzenegger movie. Also Cameron seems to cut away from the best action so you don't have an idea what is going on half the time and the film's latter half spends most of the time building to the inevitable predictable narrative peril scenario. However, Cameron is no doubt a deft-hand at creating palpable claustrophobia and a grand-stand finale and in this sense Aliens doesn't disappoint.