"At its heart, "Aliens" involves a myth deep in everyone's psychology, a war between a good mother and a wicked stepmother (the "Alien Queen"), and it ends with a tableau of the family triumphant, although this might be the weirdest family anyone's ever seen -- a gun-toting mom, a wild child and an android who's been sawed in half. But in that single image is the whole of Cameron's strategy -- to take what's familiar and permanent in ordinary life, and twist it, and twist it again. "Aliens," in other words, might be about a young girl who hates her stepmother and loves her mom -- it just wouldn't be nearly as much fun. Aliens, opening today at area theaters, is rated R, and contains violence and profanity."