Great Science-Fiction Action!

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2004)

I've been a big fan of the "Alien" series for many year. I even enjoyed the much-derided "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection". This has to be the best of the series to date, though. In this film director James Cameron does what he does best - hard-edged science-fiction action with great special effects.
Set 57 years after "Alien", series heroine Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) accompanies a platoon of space marines to planet LV-426 (where the original alien was found) to investigate the loss of contact with an Earth colony that has been established there. No prizes for guessing what has happened to them.
There is more of everything in this film, compared to the first: More aliens, more firepower, more humans to be preyed on. As a result, "Aliens" is not actually as scary as "Alien", but then it isn't really supposed to be scary. This is a war movie in space.
For a film that's nearly twenty years old, it has aged suprisingly well. Some of the aliens do occasionally look like men in costumes, and Paul Reiser's villainous yuppie is very 1980s, but otherwise it still looks great.
The Alien Queen is one of the highlights of the "Alien" series.