Critics reviews

Thirty years hasn't dimmed its feverishness. If anything, this intensity stands out now more than ever in the age of the weekly blockbuster that's forgotten by the time one hits the bottom of the popcorn bucket. Aliens is an unhinged daydream of warfare, a film that's either profoundly unselfconscious or incredibly open about the inconsistencies of its political implications. Or most likely both. In the tradition of all fetishists, Cameron serves the fetish above rational concerns.

The film's obsession with weapons, hardware, and machismo all scream the '80s as well, in a decade that was heartily marked by all three of those qualities, both in movies and in the wider world. What Cameron adds to the table, in still-thrilling style, is just enough self-awareness to offer a female heroine that suggests a different path for the genre, one that would pave the way for the Jason Bournes and Imperator Furiosas of today.

Maybe the best place to start with Aliens is its conceptual audacity. James Cameron made a sequel to one of the great modern horror movies, and turned it into an action film. In Alien, a single creature took out the crew of an entire space vessel, leaving just Ripley standing. Sequels by nature demand an upping of the ante, and multiple aliens perhaps naturally suggest a shift in emphasis from horror to action, but the degree to which Cameron veers in that direction is startling.

a poet of hugeness: You watch Aliens with a sense of awe at how well the director has re-imagined and expanded a world you only saw bits and pieces of in the first film, and somehow done so without sacrificing any of its mystery or terror.