Heads up, I Opted for the (for me) unseen “Special Edition” here that includes about 17 extra minutes of footage. Notes on this at the end. Otherwise, still a crazy fuckin ride. Cameron did what few have done, take a sequel to a different level. Where the first was basically a horror movie, this one is action, but served up with a nice side-plate of horror. Well done!
Ripley is found floating in space, 57 years after her spacesleep from the original encounter on LV-426. Immediately thrown into space court for her actions, lack of records, blah blah blah, you ain’t a space trucker no more. Time shift is something to contend with, and turns out, LV-426 has settlers on it now. WTF?!? But wait, there’s more! It just went silent! Call in the Space Marines, hey Ripley, you want to be a consultant there? Hell No! But those Goddamn chestbursting nightmares...Fuckit. Yeah. I’ll go. And yes, it’s kinda nightmare fuel. Again. With a lot of Explosions and a Newt.
You have a small pool of films to draw from for this particular level of action, suspense and evil shit goin down, at least for the time. Big budget, big action, big thrills. It doesn’t disappoint, even today. Ripley’s character arc steps it up a big step, but somewhat incrementally to be not total suck, but yeah, it’s a movie. The somewhat stereotypical secondary characters at least have some panache, most notably Bill Paxton as Hudson the kinda methy pussy Marine, and Michael Biehn as the reluctant leader. But Lance Henrickson as Bishop? Nails it. Pretty damn good job done by all to make this a pretty tense action flick once it gets into the shit. Great production and (mostly) decent storytellin makes this a very worthy successor to the original Alien. Plus the audio work, and the proximity beep? Wow. You manipulative bastards. Well done, again.
