I am in the minority, I guess

Rating: 2/10 (26 October 2013)

Upon re-watching this film with a friend I was sorely disappointed in how different this film was from what I remembered. I first saw this film as a child and thought it was terrifying and now I just think it's...terrifying in a completely different way. I find the majority of the characters surrounding Ripley bland. James Cameron, for whatever reason, decided that it would be a great idea to add a child into the mix that Ripley could feel motherly to. I think he assumed this would make women connect more to the film somehow, by saying women are at their best defending children, or something? Yeah, no.
I think the child was just an annoying, cheap distraction attempting to pull at the heart strings, which for me just became a hindrance to Ripley's character rather than advancing her. I get that Ripley's daughter dies because it is the future, but Cameron did not NEED to try to convince us she was oh so motherly by giving us Newt. Hick's is not only so bland, but he is oddly one of the few male characters out there that's sole purpose in a movie is to be a romantic interest for a female protagonist. Newt and Hicks are just there to create this paper family dynamic with Ripley. I don't know the last time I rolled my eyes so much.
As for the rest of the characters? All of the marines are nearly the same, save gender difference and the somewhat entertaining and sometimes annoying whiner of the group "MAN!", who is differentiated only by his cowardice and catchphrase. Some may say to change my mind... "But it's an action film, not a horror film...it's a different tone..." As an action film, I believe it is a poor one. There was a lot of off screen fire and when the aliens were shown it either didn't look menacing or there was just a lot of flashing lights where you could hardly see them.
The soldier gear was clunky and illogical... predicting that sometime in the future, rather than going smaller in technology we would strap clunky cameras to helmets and large obnoxious looking flashlights to the shoulder rather than make them discreetly smaller or more convenient. Neither of those pieces of technology would be convenient for a scientist OR a soldier, one swipe of an alien claw would knock those cameras and flashlights out.
Oh and let's talk about the ending for a moment which is supposed to be a callback to Alien where a suited up Ripley knocks that pesky alien off into space through an airlock. Wait, wait, wait...back up for a second. In Alien, she suits herself up, but in Aliens, she not only doesn't consider how this would effect Bishop and little Newt, but she OPENS AN AIRLOCK INTO SPACE WITHOUT A SUIT. SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUFFOCATED OR SUCKED OUT...or more than likely BOTH. It doesn't make sense as "awesome" as it looks. It is actually QUITE stupid, but yay, the alien is dead and SHE doesn't get sucked out and BISHOP doesn't get sucked out and NEWT doesn't get sucked out...and ...that doesn't make sense.
Any redeeming moments were few and far between for me, but those moments simply move this film from one star to two. Yes it was the film that introduced the Alien Queen, but this "iconic moment" wasn't enough for me to enjoy the film as a whole. I consider this film one of the most overrated films out there undeserving of it's overall rating. So of course, at the end tralala, "family dynamic" survives along with the android and... blegh. I really did not like this film. Somewhere along the way in my life I must have confused this film with another that caused me to put it on some idealized nostalgia pedestal...
The best part of the entire film, which makes me giggle is "They mostly come at night, mostly..." I am just going to leave this review with that...