From the guy that brought us The Terminator...

After 7 years, the Alien comes back to the big screen and this time, Ripley finds herself in the future! She had been in cryosleep for 57 years since we seen her last and the Weyland-Yutani corporation isn't listening to her about the alien and what it did to her crew. Now there's a colony on the planet and they haven't reported any hostile alien... That is until moments after Ripley hears about the colony! So the company decides to do the sensible thing and send in the marines to investigate as well as include Ripley as an advisor to the situation if the Xenomorphs are involved... Turns out the deadly aliens are in fact involved and pretty much everyone is dead or cocooned save for a young girl who calls herself, Newt. Do they even know what newts are in the future? Would they be alive? I'd imagine they'd be extinct from pollution or something.

"I wanna look around, I promise I won't get kidnapped in the sewer or killed in the first 10 minutes in the sequel or anything like that."
-Newt

So the marines look for the colonists only walk into a trap and get most of themselves killed and Ripley overcomes her fears to take charge and rescue the helpless marines in distress... Now that's cool, the fact that this time it's the other way around where the woman saves all the guys that think their hardcore and are gonna kick ass and take names. I think this is the film stuff like the Resident Evil movies try to emulate but they take it way too damn far and the action is overkill and rediculous. Anyways, so now the marines are stuck on this planet and they need to survive long enough either to formulate a plan or a rescue team arrives AFTER 31 days. So they barricade themselves in a room and sit things out... Until all Hell breaks loose and newt gets taken. Bishop, an android played by the awesome Lance Henrikson, saves the day by remote piloting a ship to pickup the survivors, but Ripley stays behind to save Newt and kill as many aliens as she can.

"Yeah guys, all those heroes you see in stuff like Contra, Tomb Raider, Riddick, Metroid, Tara Carmichael? They're just borrowing cans of badass from Ripley, she's practically THE action hero to rival Scwarzenegger and Stallone!"
-The Mad Wolf

It all ends in not 1 but 2 climaxes. One with Ripley saving Newt from the Xenomorph queen and being rescued in the nick of time by Bishop as the whole colony is going up in flames as the fusion reactor overloads and everything blows up and the shockwave is felt as they climb altitude and reach the safety of space. But this is merely the opening to the 2nd climax in which Ripley must take on the queen in an epic match between alien and, well, Ripley in a cargo power loader! You can't top that by punching and kicking zombies and flashing boobs in stuff like Resident Evil, just nearly not as badass as the Ripster.

"Why you little!"
-Ellen Ripley

Now despite this being my favorite of the Alien franchise, this one is drastically different from the first film. For starters, it's more action than horror though it remains suspenseful at times. What does upset me is the artist involved in the first film (The late, H. R. Giger) was not involved in this, his creature's design had been totally revamped, he wasn't even brought on as a consultant. Yet strangely, Aliens has been frequently emulated in action movies such as Resident Evil and Doom, games such as Doom, Contra, and Metroid. I personally like it as it was a new twist of action and horror, Predator hadn't even come out for another year so I think a lot of stuff really borrows from Aliens instead of doing it's own thing. To this day, I love watching it and give it 5 outta 5 doomed space marines.