I have a simple policy: if the movie entertains like it's supposed to, I give it 10 stars...
...That being said:
I'm going to give you two words: "Space Marines" That's right, "space marines" I can almost see the pitch for this. We are going to take the Alien movie, the classic horror movie in space...and we are going to turn it into an action movie in space and completely change the direction of the franchise to the point where people are going to be hesitant to go back to the horror in space formula that worked for alien.
And that is kind of what happened. The Alien franchise kind of lost its horror movie cred with Aliens to the point where Alien 3 got a lot of hate for trying to bring back the successful merger of horror and science fiction.
Aliens turned the franchise into a typical science fiction series...and that kind of hurts.
HOWEVER
You still have Ripley and Ripley is still a super cool hero. And Aliens doubles down on her character and brings her from the tough survivor to a tough as nails warrior.
And then you have a great addition of characters that quickly become beloved.
And even if it changed from a horror movie to a basic science fiction movie with space marines, it was still a stellar science fiction movie. It was still stylistic and fun.
So part of me hates Aliens for making that turn from horror to straight science fiction. But the other part of me recognizes it as a a very good movie for what it is with a great cast.
So I'm going to give it 10 out of 10 despite wanting it to be the same kind of film that Alien was. And, at the same time, I want to praise the risk it took for taking the franchise in a new direction.