Aliens (1986)

Is this movie better than the first? Well it all just depends, do you like horror or action more?

So Aliens takes the franchise into an action territory with stellar results. The movie takes place 57 years after the original Alien, with Ripley found by a salvage team still in cryo-sleep. She awakens to find that the original planet that her crew found the alien has been colonized, and they've lost contact. So send in the marines, with Ripley as their advisor to clean house, and rescue as many as people as possible. Yeah right. I can't even explain how the base looks on the planet, it's beyond description. The only thing I can say is, it's bad. But that doesn't cover it. The tension is brought on tenfold from the first Alien movie, since you know there isn't just one alien but hundreds if not thousands. Now the marines are the best part and it shows because even today they have a stallwart and heavily devoted fanbase, each marine brought on the force feels like real soldiers, they badmouth and talk shit to each other, but in the end you still know they are a tight team. Vasquez is one bad ass motherfraker, Hudson is just awesome (Thank you Mr. Bill Paxton for continuing to be awesome!), and the surprising thing is that there isn't tok much action in the movie. We have the initial encounter with the aliens, the fight in the nest which takes out damn near every marine, and then the escape from the planet, and the fight with the queen. And that kind of pisses me off, how easily almost all the marines are wiped out. Now I know the reason why, these guys are way too confident and are over their heads, not even slightly prepared for the threat. Acting wise, leaps and bounds better than Alien, not just with the character interaction with the marines but Ripley herself. I mean after all that crap she put up with in the first movie she is fed up with the bullshit, and she kicks ass! Obviously it goes deeper than that but we got to move on. Sets....whew. The sets, first movie ain't got nothing on this film. You thought they were ipressive before? You don't even know. The design is still the same even though we jumped ahead almost 60 years, which is fine but the less I say about the look of the film the better I think you will enjoy it. A feast to the eyes if I've seen one. The climax is impossible to forget, the action is great, characters are memorable, and many people consider this to be superior than the first. In fact, you could argue more people saw this movie than the first, due to it being a popular VHS rental so more people saw the sequel first. Action is more accesible than horror for most people, which is fine. I get that. I took me until I was about halfway through my teen years to start loving horror movies, I was a pansy as a kid. But interests grew through years and years of slowly being exposed to it, to the point where I greatly enjoy it. And I hope you enjoy these movies too, and look forward to seeing Alien Covenant in theaters tomorrow. I know I certainly am, first Alien movie I'll see in theaters. Well that's it for now, game over man. Game over.