Great for its time

Rating: Null/10 (26 October 2002)

Great for its time, highly ripped-off-from-since, but now, sadly, mostly showing its age. Particularly some special effects are now Thunderbirds-esque in their fakeness. (Miniatures that bounce around too quickly to be convincingly at real life-scale [hint: use slow motion to give small models the illusion of giganticness when moving], some really bad matte work). Whereas Alien did wonders under the constraints of feasible effects of the day and budget it had, Aliens is too-ambitious for the effects capabilities of the day. When it does work, it works great but it's still only at the level of what worked for the first Alien movie; suspense, good characters, good edits. Still, it's largely enjoyable and certainly important in both the context of the Alien series and space action films in general. It got far more right than it got wrong.