Of course, killing the alien was no reason to stop the producers from making a sequel. The cliffhanger from the end of part one (a rat with alien DNA might spread it like a disease) was completely ignored though. Although we were told in the original movie, the alien DNA came from light years away, it is now found on Mars (just around the corner in astronomical terms), and astronauts take it home to Earth. Since there was a bit of gore and sex in the first movie, there is a lot more gore and sex in the second one, as if that could improve the quality in any way. We get a lot of cliché characters, from the corrupt senator to the uncompromising general, and the survivors of part one are treated carelessly by the screenplay: Helgenberger lends a willing hand to cruel experiments, Natasha Henstridge returns as the alien's latest clone, but during the whole first hour of the movie, she has nothing to do except sit around in a glass cage. Madsen just needs to run around armed and look cool - he understandably gives a lackluster performance. The sequel was definitely not as intelligent as the original and tries to hide the lack of ideas with gallons of blood. I voted 8/5/6/7 for the 4 parts of the series.
Review of Species II
