"[W]here "Alien" focused on the creature itself, "Aliens" centers on Ripley, whom a "deep-salvage" team finds floating in space after a 56-year "hypersleep." The anonymous Company, as represented by Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), is pretty steamed that Ripley destroyed the mother ship (with the alien in it). But when the radio silence of one of the Company's colonies points toward another alien outbreak, Burke enlists Ripley in a search mission. So she's thrown together with a company of Marines, including Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), a burly, tough-talking woman machine-gunner; quiet Hicks (Michael Biehn) and noisy Hudson (Bill Paxton); a gravel-voiced, enigmatic android named Bishop (Lance Henriksen); Sgt. Apone (Al Matthews), a cigar-chomping top kick; and Lt. Gorman (William Hope), the group's callow and effete commanding officer. As a screenwriter, Cameron has an uncanny ear for the way these trench rats talk, their banter and swaggering bravado. He has the same instincts as George Lucas did in "Star Wars" -- make the future seem real, and lived in -- but he pushes it further. The surroundings are different, the weapons are fancier, but as the soldiers razz Lt. Gorman or ready themselves for battle, it might as well be Vietnam. The humor is a way to get us to like these characters, so that when they're thrown into danger it's not just a cheap thrill. And it's a way to draw you into the early going, without squandering any of the cliffhangers -- it allows Cameron to pace his movie along a perfectly accelerating curve, to pack the excitement into the last 45 minutes (which is almost all climaxes) without losing the audience at the beginning."