Rating (3 out of 5)
Scott wanted to watch this again, so we sat down and watched this together the other night.
Good action sequences and nice chemistry of the team makes for an enjoyable, albeit long, ride. This is a ride I enjoy on an annual basis.
Plot: After being awoken after she escaped in the first Alien movie, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is asked by the company to return to the planet to find out what happened to colony.
What I Liked: When you can write the plot of an action movie in one sentence, it already starts with a good foundation. This movie gets straight to the point and doesn’t waste a lot of time establishing a plot.
This movies follows the Power Ranger formula well, it has a great mix of characters. I remember when I first saw this and the character Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) just popped on screen. He was funny and scared all the way through to his eventual death.
There are other characters that round out the Power Ranger formula and they fill their roles well, but Bill Paxton does steal the show.
The director does a great job of showing us the tools that are important later in the movie and establishing a characters credibility. For example, Ripley’s ability to handle the cargo handler was established early on and was needed for the exciting end.
Love it when a bad guy is just pure relentless evil, and the Alien is the epitome of that evil.
Burke (Paul Reiser) is excellent as the corporate stooge who appears to want to help Ripley, but ends up being just another greedy corporate hack. Paul plays this role well, and then his ultimate death was great.
What I Didn’t Like: The movie got a bit long after a while. When Newt (Carrie Henn) falls down the ventilation shaft, and Ripley has to go find her, I was a bit tired of the action by then. Also, the last couple of scenes the special effects of the jet flying above the exploding building don’t hold up over time.
Conclusion: One too many action scenes pull this great action flick down to just an good action movie.
Note: This is definitely a product of the 1980’s. Today if you envision a future ship, weapons, etc., it isn’t how it is depicted on here. For example, they still work on green screens from a main frame computer. It probably looked really cool in the day. Where are the touch screens and voice activation…. it is little dated.