Aliens Review

Review of Aliens (1986) by screenqueeen: 👍 3/5

I just can't feel anything for Cameron's refocus of what I'm certain Walter Hill could have done better here. The direction this takes in the first half is nice and fluid enough, and when the action kicks in it works. Until it just keeps going in the same velocity without any variations on the one theme it manages to eke out.

What is probably the most disappointing about this is how it attempts to address culpability in the shadow of the events of the first film very clearly, and seems to hold promises to see those through in a 'stick it to the man' mentality that would resonate so much with workers Kane, Lambert, Dallas, and Brett & Parker especially.

But it drops these as if the argument had never been brought up. It's replaced (rather infuriatingly) by an apparent need to adopt an equally foolish & near-identical endeavor in an utmost trust of a privatized military industrial branch that Ripley uncharacteristically falls for. She would never in Hill's script (and I'm certain the company is anti-union yet she would 100% be at the forefront of some kind of assembly somewhere had none of this Xenomorph shit ever happened), yet it comes about as almost a deus ex machina for Burke:

"You're going out there to destroy them, right?" "You have my word on it."