Bingowings said:
The thread and the forum are fine.
I voted before people made comments so I'll add this.
Aliens is a solid action film but it's cinematic and artistic merits are well below Alien in my opinion.
The first film is better directed, better acted, better scored, has better art direction and is better shot.
Aliens has the same B-movie roots as the first film but it is more of a direct translation of the films that inspired it (it's Them! 80's style).
Alien took a B-movie style plot and elevated it to a piece of serious cinema (it's only superficially It The Terror From Beyond Space for the 70's).
I think Aliens deals with some new meaningful themes that weren't present in the 1st one. It's definitely more than just Alien with more guns and more aliens. There's the motherhood theme present on Ripley's relationship with Newt after having "lost" her own daughter which meets its counterside on the alien queen, who was simply trying to protect her brood. The futility of war/disposable soldiers theme is also a major topic introduction and a direct critic to the ruthlessness of many governments/corporations when trying to protect their own selfish interests. For emphasizing this effect the art theme tried to make the soldiers look like a futuristic version of the vietnam era soldiers which, along with the quality of the special effects, also forces me to disagree with the better art direction on the 1st movie.
Again, the problem is overshadowing. The impact of the action scenes may lead the audience to ignore more meaningful aspects, but this doesn't mean Aliens lacks essence. The movie is as thematically deep, if not more than Alien. However it was Cameron's bad habit on adding cardboard-cutouts-for-characters (like he did on Titanic and Avatar, especially on the villain side) that lead to many other problems like poor acting.
As for direction, and shooting it's a bit hard to comment on which one is better considering MJpollard's opinion (as I haven't completely discarded it). Since one is more horror/suspense oriented while the other favors action, there's a different approach required for both.