By Far The Best Movie In The Franchise

Rating: 8/10 (20 May 2003)

I remember having a conversation with a work colleague in 1983 on horror films ( In those days video nasties like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and NIGHT OF THE DEMON were all the rage ) and he mentioned that he thought ALIEN was a great film . " Hmm " I replied " I didn`t think it was that good Benny . It would have been better if there was more people getting killed by lots of aliens and a lot more action " It could be that James Cameron over heard my conversation and decided he was going to make a sequel solely to please me , but it`s more logical to assume that he recognised the obvious faults of the pretentious arthouse original and went for a no holds action blockbuster
I really loved the action setpieces of ALIENS , the flames , the explosions , the gunfire , the high body count and the nerve jangling tension . Cameron does a great job and unlike his later films never goes overboard on the production values and a special mention should go to realistic little things like costume design . All too often directors shoot themselves in the foot by making the future look futuristic and fail because of it , check out UFO , THE GREEN SLIME and SPECE 1999 for a few examples , but here the costumes look very functional as opposed to futuristic . And Cameron has written a very good - though possibly overlong - script . Notice that it has - Unlike his script for RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART TWO - a slightly left of centre viewpoint with the marines being jingoistic American stereotypes and the bad guy being a corperate capitilist ? This no accident on the part of the screenwriter I`m sure
So with a few rare exceptions like MAD MAX 2 this is a film that outdoes the original . I know that some critics prefer Ridley Scott`s version and they`re entitled to their veiwpoint but Cameron proved the doom mongers ( And there was a lot of them in 1985 ) wrong when they announced that ALIENS wouldn`t come close to equalling never mind surpassing the original .
I`ve no idea what Benny thought of ALIENS though