"This Time It's War"

Aliens (AKA Aliens 2)
Having just watched the first Alien movie, I decided to watch the second one as well. This one was quite different from the first one in many ways. The first movie was a suspense/horror/sci-fi thriller. This movie was an action/sci-fi/drama. There was definitely more action in this movie, which works well because there were more aliens in this movie. Ridley is woken up 57 years after the end of the last movie, and now people have started to colonize the formerly abandoned planet that had housed the alien in the last movie. They find the aliens, get killed, and the marines are sent in to figure out the situation. No one had believed Ridley that there was an alien, but now they think she may be right, so they take her along. Almost everyone dies, except for her, one marine (that she likes, if you know what I mean) and a little girl they find on the planet.
Really, I enjoyed this movie. It actually managed to carry the character of Ridley forward in her journey, something many sequels don’t manage to do. In the first movie, she starts out as a play by the book second- (or third-) officer on a spaceship. At the end of the second movie, she is a kick butt action hero, basically a marine herself. And after watching the two movies, I totally believe that it was a natural conclusion to make.
Again, there were some things I noticed. The explosion at the end of the movie was much better than the last film. Much better. I was amused when the marines woke up from their cryogenic sleep, and the leader (Sergeant? Captain? Really don’t know his rank) immediately puts a cigar in his mouth. The means he was frozen with it in his hand. Now that’s dedication to a vice. Also, there comes a time when Ridley rescues the little girl from the aliens, and then as she is trying to escape, she comes into a room and suddenly just stops. The camera slowly pans out and you see that she has stumbled into a room full of the alien’s eggs (which will hatch into “face-huggers”, which are the creatures that implant the baby aliens into peoples stomachs, which burst out a little later, killing the person and creating a new alien). The combination of terror, disgust, and hopelessness on her face is echoed in how the scene is played out. It is very understated, very slow, very methodical.
Making this movie into a more action driven film was a good idea, I think. If it had been a suspenseful film like the first one, no one would have cared. This changed things, which is good because people change, and situations change. Ridley was a different person, and as such she reacts differently to the situation. Likewise, the other people have more information about the aliens, so they have that experience and knowledge to learn from. What the alien looks like is not a secret, so there would be little suspense there. And the character actually shows growth, which, as I said, is rare in sequels.
I was also very interested to see Paul Reiser (of Mad About You fame) playing the main bad guy, a weasly business pencil pusher who’s only concern is the bottom line, making a buck. He gets his just desserts in the end, you’ll be happy to know. It was good to see that he was playing the character completely seriously, except for his hair, which was definitely going for funny (oh, snap!). Not so much funny ‘ha-ha’, as funny ‘oh dear Lord, no’. Actually, I was a little disturbed to see how close to his Mad About You character this man was. It really would make you look at the TV show a little differently. Or maybe not.
Either way, I’d say this was still a good film. It was a sci-fi movie not driven by special effects. There was action, but it made sense, it wasn’t just random explosions. I really despised one of the marines cuz he whined way too much, and his acting was annoying. But all in all, I’d say it was worth a viewing. Now we’ll see how part three stacks up.
And go.