Aliens
Review by Jason Gaston
How do you improve on an already classic horror movie? Director
James Cameron had the answer: make it bigger, better, and in-your-face
and that, my friends, is exactly what he did. Aliens is
one of those rare sequels that not only live up to the hype, but
actually out-does it's predecessor in sheer action, suspense, and
basic human drama.
Perhaps that is
why I like James Cameron so much. He always includes the basic human
element in every film he does from the mega-movie Titanic to
the ground breaking Terminator 2 to the tongue-and-cheek spy
joyride, True Lies. He never gets caught up in the expense of
sets or the marvel of special effects. Throughout all of his movies,
the spotlight is always on the people. Not the silver-morphing
computer-generated effects, not the huge steam liner, and not ever on
the mother-!#%$ing bat-butt!
Such is the case with Aliens. Not only do we have to deal with
not one, not two, not three... but (count them) hundreds of the little
acidic devils, but we have to deal with Ripley confronting her fears
and becoming a surrogate mother to lone-survivor, twelve-year-old
Newt.
It's just basic human drama that turns otherwise two-dimensional projections on the wall into living breathing people that we can identify and care about. It's not just Ripley or Newt either... Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, and Bishop are all well rounded and developed. From the tenderhearted Hicks to the tough-on-the-outside, cowardly-on-the-inside Hudson, to the Xena-esque Vasquez, and the soft-spoken android, Bishop... all of them (who didn't get pureed in the first battle) ended up becoming actual characters with actual emotions and actual lives that we hated to see ended.
Yes, I do believe that Aliens is better than Alien if nothing more than for it's greater scale. This is a movie that took the original idea of the first and made it bigger and better but never lost sight of the basic human struggle for survival.
...and who can forget the classic scene of Ripley confronting the alien queen with the power loader? Great movie moment that will always be a part of cinematic history!