"I am a huge Alien fan, but I can't understand the fascination with Aliens, it always seemed like a cheap action movie when compared with the true psychological

"I am a huge Alien fan, but I can't understand the fascination with Aliens, it always seemed like a cheap action movie when compared with the true psychological horror of the first one." Having seen both movies during their original release, I originally liked Aliens more; probably a side-effect of being in my teens and liking guns and explosions. As I've gotten older, as much as I've come to further appreciate the suspense and design of the original, Cameron's film is still one of my favorite movies and IMO is a rare example of a worthy sequel. In Alien, Ellen Ripley is a victim of circumstance. She's the smarter-than-average crewmember whose advice is largely ignored and despite doing the best she can barely survives an ordeal that should be guaranteed to leave her with a lifetime of PTSD. In Aliens, we quickly find out that Ripley is once again a victim of circumstance: her lifeboat drifted off course while she was in stasis, resulting in her returning home after decades. Nobody believes her about the Xenomorph, and she's considered a responsible party for the destruction of the ship in the first movie. Deleted scenes (restored in the director's cut, I believe?) revealed that her daughter died of old age before Ripley returned. She's in rough shape. Traumatized by what happened and relegated to menial work due to her perceived unreliability, she's given a path for redemption: go back to where it all started and help the military (which is revealed to be largely incompetent and impotent when things go south). Alien is a great horror movie, to be sure. But Aliens is, IMO, a redemption movie when you look past the swagger and gunfire. A smart character who should be in good shape (after being victorious in the first movie) is shown to be a fractured, vulnerable person who still summons the strength to face her fears, rescue another victim of circumstance (Newt), overcome her bias (against Bishop), presumably prevent the problem from ever happening again, and definitively prove that she was right all along. And all, IMO, without cheapening the first movie and by revisiting one of the strongest female characters to appear in a movie franchise. It nukes the Bechdel test from orbit. This is also why I hate Alien 3, as it was released, with a burning passion. It completely invalidates Ripley's character arc in Aliens with the lazy reverse deus ex machina of killing Newt, Bishop and Hicks in the first act. I'm not a huge fan of Gibson's screenplay, but it would have been much better than the dreck that was ultimately released.