Yes, but better?

Rating: Null/10 (19 March 2014)

The film starts with a title sequence similar to the first as the letters slowly spell out "Aliens". Ripley has been rescued, along with Jones, but it's been almost 6 decades and her only surviving daughter is dead. What's worse, the company professes to not believing her, and she is stripped of her license. She's forced to take a crap job. Some time later, the planet that contains the aliens has been colonized, but one of the colonists awakens the hive, and contact is severed. Ripley is recruited to join a group of marines on a rescue mission. They arrive but find only 1 of the 158 inhabitants alive and are soon assaulted by the aliens. Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a member of the company, is all the while trying to bring back one of the aliens. One by one the rescue party is killed. Eventually only Ripley, the surviving girl "Newt", and a badly hurt Bishop are able to make it to safety. The aliens appear to have been defeated, for now.
This movie has all the heavy hitting action that one would expect from a James Cameron flick. It stays true to the original in terms of plot, but it really is still a different movie. The first one was quiet where this is loud. There is a lot of gunshots and fighting and death. I liked seeing the devastation of the colony and, especially, the filth that Newt had to survive in. I liked that it created a separate world, albeit short lived, on the colony. We see the workers running around doing this and that.
Paul Reiser did a really good job as the sleazy representative (or whatever his job title was). He keeps this slight smirk on his face that makes you not trust him, although you aren't really given a reason until towards the end.
It's also great that a movie can have such good special effects 20 years after its debut (and before CGI). This movie is an achievement, although it works more like an action movie than a thriller. And I will say that I prefer the latter.
It's a big recommend.