- Directed by James Cameron
- Written by James Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill
- Stars Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 17 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSeQQlaCZgU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This one still has the horror elements on the back burner from the first movie, but it’s much more of an action science fiction thriller. It’s an awesome sequel, bringing back Ripley and expanding her character. The whole cast is very good, and the special effects are excellent.
Spoilery Synopsis
After the credits, we see the escape ship from the Nostromo from the first film. Inside are Ripley and her cat, still in cryo sleep. A giant ship shows up and opens the door. People come in, find the pod, and wake her up.
Back on Earth, Ripley wakes up and has a visitor. Burke comes in with Jonesy the cat, who is also fine. He tells her that she’s been asleep for fifty-seven years. She then grabs her stomach, and a chest-burster pops out– nope, just a fake-out nightmare.
Ripley wants to know whatever happened to her daughter after all these years. Amanda Ripley died at age 66, three years ago. She goes through repeated interrogations about destroying the Nostromo and the company suspects she may have murdered the crew.
Someone asks if there are any scary creatures on LV-426. The expert says no; she clearly doesn’t believe Ripley’s story about the Xenomorph. Ripley warns about the thousands of eggs on the planet. Mr. Van Leuwen says that terraformers have lived on LV-426 for twenty years, and they’ve never found anything unusual. They agree not to press charges, but she’s busted back to a civilian.
We cut to the colonists on LV-426. It’s an extensive base with lots of people. There are prospectors spreading out all over, and one family finds the alien ship from the previous film. They go inside and leave the two kids outside in the car. Dad comes home with a face hugger, so you know where this is going.
Burke and Lieutenant Gorman come to see Ripley; they’ve lost contact with the colony. They want Ripley to go with the marines to check out what happened. Burke lays on the guilt and offers to get her license back– if she goes. After a few more nightmares, she agrees to go back.
We cut to the marine’s ship, Sulaco, loaded with heavy equipment and bristling with weapons. The cryopods open, and everybody, including Ripley, Burke, Gorman, and a whole squad of marines, wake up. We get a few minutes with the marines to figure who they all are. Sergeant Apone is their boss, working under Gorman.
The marines get Bishop to do a trick with a knife, and Ripley is terrified when she learns he’s an android with white blood. Burke apologizes that he didn’t think of it being an issue for her. It’s standard to have a synthetic on board. “I prefer artificial person,” responds Bishop. She doesn’t like androids and makes that clear.
Ripley briefs the men about her story, but the marines don’t care about the details. Hudson is a wisecracker, but Gorman isn’t putting up with his crap. They all get ready to land, and Ripley works in a big loader machine, a sort of robotic forklift. Hicks and Apone are impressed. Literally everyone loads into the drop ship and they leave the big ship in orbit as they land.
Lieutenant Gorman admits he’s not very experienced, which doesn’t impress the marines much. They fly over the complex, but they don’t see any people. The dropship drops off the marine’s wheeled vehicle and then heads back off to land at a distance. There’s a lot of damage on the inside of the buildings; clearly everything isn’t fine. The marines disperse, and the civilians watch on monitors.
It’s all very quiet and they don’t see any action. Gorman brings the vehicle inside as Hudson gets the mainframe online. Terrified, Ripley goes inside with the others. They walk into a lab area, and Ripley sees several face-huggers in tubes. The colonists were trying to study the things. Something appears on the motion scanner; it’s a little girl, the one we saw whose father was the first victim. She’s Newt, and she doesn’t have much faith in the marine’s ability to protect her.
They find all the colonists’ implanted trackers, all bunched up in one place, so they all drive there. Once again, the marines deploy and search. This time, things are not so quiet. The whole building now looks very bio-organic rather than bare metal as it should. Ripley says the group is walking next to the nuclear powered atmospheric convertors, so they can’t shoot regular explosive rounds. Everyone gives up their ammo except for a couple of the marines.
They start finding the colonists, but they’re not all dead– not exactly. They watch a chest-burster pop out of one of the them, and the marines burn it. This alerts the main group of aliens, who now attack the marines. Things go South very quickly. Vasquez and Drake start firing live rounds as Hudson panics.
Sergeant Apone gets killed, and Gorman doesn’t know what to do. Ripley takes over and drives the vehicle inside to save whoever’s left. After a super-hectic battle scene, the vehicle parks outside. A bunch of people died.
Ripley wants to nuke the entire site from orbit, and Hudson’s all in on that. Burke, on the other hand, says the facility is worth a fortune. Hicks in now in charge, so he calls the ship for an evac. The dropship, however, has been off eating lunch or something with the back door open, and an alien kills the pilot. The dropship crashes explosively.
Everyone takes some time to regroup and plan. Bishop speculates that there may be a “queen” laying eggs. He also tattles that Burke ordered him to pack up facehugger specimens to return to Earth. Ripley says she won’t allow it. Burke sent the colonists out to explore that ship; this is all his fault.
Bishop calls and says the machine gun fire ruptured the reactor cooling system. They only have about four hours until the whole base blows sky high. Bishop volunteers to go outside to the big dish and remote pilot the second dropship down to pick them up.
Hicks shows Ripley how to use a marine gun including the grenade launcher. Ripley and Newt stop to take a nap. Ripley wakes up and notices that two of the facehugger sample tubes are on the floor, empty and her gun is gone. They narrowly escape the little monsters, but the door is locked so they can’t get away. We see that Burke has turned off the video cameras and gone full weasel-mode. Ripley’s not stupid, however, so she sets off the fire alarm. The marines arrive just in time to save them.
Meanwhile, Bishop gets the process started on bringing down another dropship.
Ripley tells them all about Burke, who wanted to impregnate someone and smuggle the embryos back to Earth in cryo sleep while sabotaging the marines’ pods. The aliens approach once again, and this time, they are up in the ceiling. In the ensuing battle, Burke gets away, but not for long. Hudson gets killed as do Gorman and Vasquez. Newt leads Ripley and Hicks through the airducts as Bishop reports that the ship is on the way.
Newt gets lost, but she’s wearing a tracker, so Hicks tells Ripley that they can still find her. She carries the wounded Hicks out to the drop ship but then Bishop flies her back inside to rescue Newt. Bishop warns that reactor is going to blow in nineteen minutes.
Ripley gets her gun and goes down after Newt’s tracker. After much hunting and digging through goo, she finds and releases Newt. Things are blowing up all over due to the reactor going critical, so Ripley accidentally ends up walking through a big room full of eggs. She looks up and sees the thing laying all the eggs– the huge Queen!
Ripley and the Queen look each other in the eye and Ripley threatens to melt all the eggs. The aliens all back off to let Ripley pass. When one of the eggs starts to open, Ripley blasts the eggs anyway. The enraged queen pulls itself loose from its big egg sack and comes after the humans.
The final countdown to the nuclear blast begins as Ripley and Newt run through the tunnels to the dropship rendezvous point. The queen follows not far behind. Bishop shows up with the dropship and they make a very narrow escape back to the main ship in orbit.
They get out of the dropship, and Ripley approves of Bishop’s work. They’re friends now. Until he’s torn in half by the Xenomorph Queen, who came along with them somehow. Ripley briefly gets away but soon returns in the big powerlifter she was driving before. In her new motorized exoskeleton, she’s a physical match to the giant queen, so they fight.
Ripley opens the door to the airlock and drops the queen inside. The queen pulls Ripley and the lifter down with her. With few other options, Ripley opens the outer door to the airlock. Everyone holds on except the queen, who goes on a permanent spacewalk.
Ripley crawls over to Bishop’s top half, who saved Newt from going out the airlock. Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop get back into cryosleep to return to Earth.
Commentary
In the future, the United States still has a flag with fifty stars on it, and Mexicans are still called illegal aliens, even jokingly.
It could be argued that this is more science fiction or action blockbuster than horror, but it’s got a great bunch of monsters, lots of gore, and a few excellent jump scares. That said, as far as military sci-fi goes, this is unequaled on film. This is two hours and seventeen minutes of nonstop action.
The acting is perfect. Sigourney Weaver reprises her role and expands on it really well. Bill Paxton has his most iconic role here, as does Lance Henrikson. Paul Reiser had only done comedy before this, but he’s perfect as a smarmy corporate shill. As with the original, all the characters have names and personalities, so they aren’t just nameless victims.
Awesome!