^

Jibes aside, this does happen to be an intelligent shoot-'em-up.  Cameron did preserve the total lack of soul of the corporation that Ripley and the Nostromo crew used to work for.  Profit is all, and everyone is expendable in their goal of getting one of those aliens in a lab and bred as biological weapons.  Paul Reiser slimes his way through his role as a spokesman for The Company.  Later he became more well-known for Mad About You, but not to me.  Since Aliens, Reiser, to me, became forever a corporate weasel, doomed to be eaten.  Or so I keep hoping.

Ripley's nightmares about the Nostromo send her back to the now-colonized (see above re:  profit) planet where her crew had first made unintentional contact with the aliens.  The Company sends in Ripley, Reiser and a bunch of macho and macha space marines.  I'm no fan of military movies or mentality, and never will be, so the Marines came across as a bunch of stereotypes to me.  But hell, maybe they really ARE like they're portrayed.  Anyway, they think the mission will be a mere bughunt - in and out in a half hour, easy - but it's no bughunt.  Bit by bit the Marines are wiped out by a whole colony of aliens, thanks to a whole colony of humans to infest with eggs, until Ripley and Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) are left in charge.

There's a lot more to this movie, though, since it's long, as all Cameron films are, so something has to be explored.  We see Ripley's maternal side as she takes care of "Newt," the only survivor of the colony's incubation.  Even some of the Marine grunts show some development, such as Vasquez, Hicks, and even Bishop, the "artificial person" wonderfully underplayed by Lance Henrickson.

My favorites of this movie?  Bishop in general ("that thing with the knife" - wonderful!), Vasquez' death scene, and best of all, the reason behind all those eggs, the Alien Queen and Ripley's subsequent battle with her using a hydraulic powerlifter suit.  "Get away from her, you BITCH!"  That and Bishop getting torn in half, but still hanging on and even saving Newt from explosive decompression.  Hooray for artificial lifeforms!