Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Brian Richards | Film | November 13, 2026
When it comes to writer-producer-director James Cameron, there have been many anecdotes shared about him, and what he's like to work with and for, some of which should be taken with quite a grain of salt. There is one anecdote of how he filmed a scene for The Abyss that had Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio nearly drowning underwater, and when Harris got to the surface, Mastrantonio screamed at Cameron for his recklessness regarding their safety, and Harris allegedly punched him in the face. Another one describes how Cameron was unhappy with someone's cell phone ringing on set during production, so he took that person's phone, held it against the wall, and fired a nail gun into it, leaving it destroyed, and as a warning to any other crew members with questionable phone etiquette. But one of the most popular anecdotes about Cameron is his meeting with executives from 20th Century Fox about the possibility of a sequel to their 1979 film Alien. Cameron simply walked in, went over to a chalkboard, and wrote the word ALIENS, but he turned the S into a dollar sign, which was all that it took for those executives to be convinced that Cameron (who had just directed and co-wrote the critically acclaimed box office hit The Terminator) was the right person for the job, and that he would give them the sequel they wanted to see.
That sequel was, of course, Aliens (minus the dollar sign, obviously), which opened in theaters on July 17, 1986.
Alien ended with Ripley (and her cat, Jonesy) placing themselves in hypersleep and heading back to Earth in an escape shuttle after killing the Xenomorph that invaded her ship, the USS Nostromo, and killed five of her fellow crew members. (Ash being the sixth crew member and notable exception, as he was killed by Ripley and Parker after his deceitful nature was revealed.) Aliens, however, opens with Ripley and Jonesy in their escape shuttle, still in hypersleep, and found by a deep-space salvage crew. She awakens in a space station, and is greeted by Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), who ends up being the bearer of bad news as he tells Ripley that she has been in outer space for 57 years(!). As if that wasn't enough for Ripley to wake up to, her former employers from Weyland-Yutani are incredibly unhappy with her destruction of their expensive ship and cargo, and refuse to believe anything she says about the Xenomorph's existence making it necessary for the ship to be destroyed in the first place. Ripley is soon approached by both Burke and U.S. Colonial Marines lieutenant Gorman (William Hope), who inform her that Weyland-Yutani has suddenly lost contact with the hundreds of colonists on LV-426, the terraformed colony located on the exomoon where the USS Nostromo found the Xenomorph eggs in the first place. After she is assured that any and all Xenomorphs found on LV-426 will be destroyed, and not taken alive for scientific research, Ripley agrees to join the Colonial Marines -- which include Gorman, Sergeant Apone (the late Al Matthews), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), and Hudson (the late, great Bill Paxton) -- as a consultant to help them all become familiar with what they might possibly be facing.
Once Ripley and company arrive at LV-426, they find only one survivor of the destruction in their wake: Rebecca 'Newt' Jorden (Carrie Henn), a young girl whose parents and brother were all killed and/or taken by the Xenomorphs. And unfortunately for all of them, they find themselves outnumbered and outmatched when they discover a nest of Xenomorphs, who unleash hell on them without mercy or hesitation. Even Ripley and the Colonial Marines' attempt at escaping via dropship so they can destroy LV-426 with a nuclear blast is foiled, when the dropship crashes and explodes due to a Xenomorph killing the pilot, leaving them all with little weapons and ammo, and desperately having to come up with an escape plan when they realize that the crash has damaged LV-426's core reactor, and that it will explode and kill them all in 17 days. And if all that wasn't enough, Ripley and company must not only deal with one of their own attempting to sabotage their efforts, but having to find out the answer to the question: Who or what is laying all of these eggs that are on LV-426 that are hatching and causing more and more Xenomorphs to run loose and hunt them all down?
When Cameron decided to write the screenplay for Aliens, he knew that going down the same path that Ridley Scott and writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett did for Alien would be a huge mistake. If the first film is a haunted house movie in outer space (as it has often been described), Aliens is a war movie (particularly one that is an allegory for the war in Vietnam, in that it shows a highly skilled, technologically advanced group of soldiers who largely end up being defeated in enemy territory by a large group of cunning and severely underestimated combatants that move stealthily and in large numbers) that moves like a rollercoaster ride at breakneck speed that only slows down when taking a moment to terrify the audience and leave them wondering what will possibly happen next.
Much of that is thanks to Cameron's screenplay and direction, as well as James Horner's incredible and oft-imitated score, and a lot of the tension is simply provided by the beeps from the motion detectors used by the Colonial Marines, alerting the characters that something wicked this way comes, and it works like a charm. It's also another reminder that corporations, and the people who run them are not to be trusted (including the ones in leather jackets who refuse to keep their pulse rifles in their pants), and when it comes to choosing between the lives of their employees and the general public, or getting their hands on a harmful extraterrestrial specimen that could possibly make them billions of dollars? They will always choose to (in the alleged words of Elizabeth Holmes and her f-ckboy husband) get the f-cking money.
Much like the first film, Aliens gives us a cast of characters who are memorable enough for us to care about as they all board the express elevator to Hell, going down: Apone and his cigar-chomping, no-bullsh-t authority; Gorman, the uptight, inexperienced company man who ends up running towards certain death to ensure that none of his people are left behind; Bishop (Lance Henriksen), who is polite, helpful and determined to prove to Ripley that, as an android, he is absolutely nothing like Ash; Vasquez and Drake (Mark Rolston), who won't hesitate to boast about how much ass they can kick, and that they're more than capable of backing that up; Burke, who is perfectly willing to stab everyone in the back to make his bosses happy; Hicks, whose quiet confidence and expertise allows him to step up as leader of his unit, and earn Ripley's trust (it also doesn't hurt that the two of them are clearly attracted to one another, and much like seeing Phillip Jennings use pliers to remove Elizabeth's damaged tooth in The Americans, watching Hicks teach Ripley up close how to use an M41A pulse rifle is much hotter and sexier than it has a right to be); Hudson, who is on the verge of panic about what's happening to him and to his crew, but is still willing to throw down when necessary; Newt, who has lost her innocence in the worst way imaginable, but is somehow able to persist.
Last but never least: Ellen Ripley, who has been left traumatized and hardened by everything that has happened to her, and once again seeing almost every warning and cautionary measure she gives being ignored by others. But she forces her fear to take a backseat, due to her willingness to arm herself with a pulse rifle and a flamethrower (Duct tape, much like Meryl Streep, really can do anything) to rescue Newt, and single-handedly face off against a towering, furious Alien Queen and her dozens of children in their own nest to protect her from harm. (Even her refusal to play ball with Burke and let him know that she will ruin his life for his despicable and predatory behavior is just as impressive to watch, and the only thing she has in her hands during that moment is Burke's collar when she pushes him against the wall in anger.) That same laser-focused determination is just as present in one of the greatest moments in a film filled with great moments, as Ripley is suited up in a giant Power Loader to square off against the Alien Queen who is about to attack Newt, and drops the line that still makes most viewers cheer and applaud to this very day.
One deleted scene that was removed from the theatrical version of Aliens revealed that Ripley not only learned from Burke that she was in hypersleep for 57 years, but during that time, she never made it home to be with her daughter, Amanda.
Aliens was acclaimed by critics and audiences, and was an undeniable box office success, as it took in between $130-$180 million worldwide. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver, and won two of them: Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Effects Editing. It also won four BAFTA awards, eight Saturn awards, and a Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation. It was another feather in producer Gale Anne Hurd's cap, and for female producers in Hollywood, that was nothing at all to scoff at, and it solidified James Cameron's reputation as a writer-director of action/sci-fi entertainment that Hollywood wanted to be in business with. It was also a reminder to both studio executives, and to Cameron's own crew on the set of Aliens, who seemingly had little to no faith in his ability to make an Alien sequel worth watching, resulting in many of them making his time on set a little more difficult than it needed to be: Never underestimate James Cameron, which continues to be a lesson that has been taught with every other film he has made since Aliens, including The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, Titanic, and the Avatar series of films.
There have been numerous sequels and spinoffs that have opened in theaters since Aliens graced our screens in 1986: Alien 3 (which was directed by a then-unknown David Fincher, and to say that this film was divisive, disliked, and polarizing during its original release would be a massive understatement, mainly because it made the decision to undo Aliens' hard-earned happy ending by killing off Newt, Hicks, and Bishop), Alien: Resurrection (which brought Ripley back to life, and made her part-alien), Alien vs. Predator (which pitted the Xenomorphs against the intergalactic hunters/ugly motherf-ckers that first appeared by terrorizing Arnold Schwarzengger in 1987's Predator), Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, Prometheus (a Ridley Scott-directed prequel about the origins of the Xenomorphs), Alien: Covenant, and most recently, Alien: Romulus. The Alien franchise made its debut on television screens last year with the FX/Hulu/FX-on-Hulu series Alien: Earth, starring Sydney Chandler and Timothy Olyphant.
The legacy of Aliens has made a massive impact across all avenues of entertainment. It can be seen and felt like video games like Doom, Halo, and Metroid (which debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System the same year that Aliens was released, but was more heavily influenced by Alien, even though the game also featured a malevolent queen alien for its heroine, Samus Aran, to fight), and their numerous sequels, and in countless sci-fi movies and television shows that have followed in its wake, from The Fifth Element to the film adaptations of Doom and Starship Troopers, to Stranger Things (particularly its second season), the critically acclaimed but short-lived Space: Above and Beyond. And good luck counting the many video games based on Aliens, and on the entire franchise as a whole. (Even Ripley's daughter, Amanda, was the protagonist of her own video game, in the form of Alien: Isolation, which takes place 15 years after Alien, and during Ripley and Jonesy's 57-year-long hypersleep.)
There are very few sequels to classic films that prove to be just as good, if not better, than their original films (The Godfather Part II, The Dark Knight, Magic Mike XXL), and Aliens definitely belongs in that category. Granted, if it were to be released today? There is a very strong likelihood that it would be considered "woke" for having a smart and determined female protagonist who gets the job done, whose sole reason for existing onscreen isn't to be a Fighting F-cktoy for the male gaze, and would be torn apart entirely by f-ckboys and Pick-Mes on and off the Internet who learned none of the right lessons from the genre classics they grew up watching and reading. Fortunately for everyone else with common sense and some Act-Right, their opinions carry as much weight as daylight, and we can simply look back on Aliens for the many things that were done right, the many ways that it inspired some artists to leave their own mark in the action and science fiction genres, and for simply being a scary example of how monsters are real, and that they mostly come at night. Mostly.
Aliens is now streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus.
