July 18, 1986: They mostly come at night. Mostly.
by Diamond Feit
I fancy myself a filmmaker in that I love acting and dream of directing but the prospect of producing and releasing a feature film strikes me as daunting beyond all measure. Even a \"small\" project would require hundreds of hours and more money than I've ever handled in my life, to say nothing of what Hollywood spends in anticipation of reaping billions of dollars.
Truthfully, the entire motion picture industry frightens me thanks to the combination of lofty expectations and legends of studio interference. You could write a great script and sell it for a pretty penny only to watch helplessly as executives rewrite and retitle it to suit their whims. I often think of Peter Sagal's tale of his screenplay about a political drama set against the backdrop of the Cuban revolution that somehow turned into a belated prequel to Dirty Dancing.
I understand and appreciate the magic of collaborating with others. Preparing a podcast requires extensive notes but that document serves as a fraction of the finished product; the rest comes from the energy exchanged between me and my guests which shapes our conversation. Yet that's a world apart from Hollywood's top-down approach where entire finished films can vanish in a bid to reduce a corporation's annual tax bill.
Viewed from this slightly-pessimistic standpoint, I consider every movie a miracle regardless of quality. Yet occasionally, against all odds, a magical sequence of events leads to a miracle amongst miracles. One where years of delays, internal conflicts, and multiple walkouts somehow lead to an epic masterpiece. 40 years ago this week, James Cameron's Aliens set the bar for sequels and action filmmaking so high, it's still in orbit today.
Aliens opens with a tiny vessel adrift in space. We can tell the craft is undersized due to its lone occupant, and we know it's floating aimlessly because the only woman on board is lying still inside a tube. A generous amount of lustrous space dust covers every surface, so she's not just taking a well-deserved nap but has slumbered for a long, long time.
An automated proximity alert warns the unconscious traveller that she's got visitors in the form of a much larger ship. After locking onto the mini shuttle, cutting through the hull, and scanning the interior with a sick-looking blue laser, three astronauts in full suits waltz on board like they own the place. They probably thought they did as the moment they discover a living passenger, they declare their salvage operation a bust.
In just three minutes and with barely any dialogue, director James Cameron imparts a lot of information to the audience. If they've previously seen the movie Alien, then they'll recognize the sleeping woman as Ripley, the sole survivor of that film. Even without that knowledge, however, Aliens grabs viewers' attention with a mini-mystery: Who would travel through space alone in such cramped conditions, especially in a capsule easily misidentified as flotsam?
Ripley awakens in a hospital bed inside a facility orbiting the Earth, one that she doesn't recognize. She's out of sorts due to her \"unusually long hypersleep\" and got picked up purely by chance. Turns out she spent 57 years floating amongst the stars and has no living friends or family save for Jonesy, the cat who slept alongside her.
A debriefing scene in a boardroom allows Ripley to summarize the events of Alien for the benefit of the audience as well as her disinterested inquisitors\u2014one guy's doing a crossword puzzle and another's got his eyes closed. She claims her vessel tracked a beacon to a dead planet called LV-426 where they encountered an unknown spacecraft filled with living eggs. The eggs house parasites capable of incapacitating a human being long enough to implant an embryo inside them which, once gestated, kills its host and quickly matures into a hostile creature two meters tall.
The suits sitting around the table couldn't care less about Ripley's story, only expressing concern for the expensive USS Nostromo which she admits she blew up in a bid to destroy the alien. With no hard evidence to support her claims, they suspend her flight officer status, making her nigh unemployable. She pleads with them to survey LV-426 but they deem that unnecessary, stating that colonists have lived there for over 20 years without incident.
It doesn't take long for Ripley to get her wish. A company executive and a military officer knock on her door with news that they've lost contact with the residents of LV-426 and they're launching an on-site investigation. They want her to join them as an \"advisor\" which she rejects; if you had escaped a deadly alien assault in deep space would you want to return to the scene of the crime? However, since said mission would also get her flight status reinstated, she relents.
Again, Aliens communicates so much about its world, the characters in it, and the lives they lead in such a short time. All of the board members and corporate bean-counters shown on screen hold the same profit-first mindset seen in our present age; the only difference between today's c-suite and their future counterparts is a questionable fashion choice to pop their jacket collars upward.
Ripley tries to play along but finds herself confounded at every step, warning them that even a single alien could wipe out humanity all while they recite the dollar value of their lost property. Her emotional outburst during the meeting all but cements her as unstable and easily dismissed; nevermind the fact that throughout her deposition, a scrolling feed of her dead crewmates is displayed on the main monitor. If I had to spend hours reliving the worst experience of my life while images of my dead friends and coworkers stared back at me, I doubt I'd take it as well as Ripley does.
With orders in hand and a rifle-shaped starship, Ripley and the Colonial Marines set off for LV-426. Much like the company drones back on Earth, the soldiers scoff at Ripley's tale of an unstoppable killing machine; not because they don't believe her, but because they don't care. Ripley starts to recount her nightmare about seeing an alien burst out of her colleague's chest but the impatient troops interrupt her. \"I only need to know one thing,\" Pvt. Vasquez says as she points her fingers like a gun, \"Where they are.\"
These men and women make up an experienced combat unit, confident that their superior firepower and bad-assery can overcome any foe \"anytime, anywhere.\" Not even the prospect of encountering extra terrestrials can faze them, as Pvt. Hudson inquires if this outing will become \"another bug hunt.\" While trading stories in the mess hall over breakfast, one soldier even boasts of his interspecies sexual escapades. Clearly the American military of the future has the tools and the talent to slay or lay whatever the universe throws at them.
Upon their arrival on LV-426, Ripley and company hit the ground running. They storm the colonists' main complex with guns at the ready but find no one to greet them. The lights are on and crude barricades still stand but there are no bodies, living or dead. All signs point to a firefight against non-human intruders with acid for blood and the science lab holds two living alien parasites\u2014perfectly in line with Ripley's report.
Even as Aliens crosses the 40 minute mark with zero shots fired and no appearances of the eponymous antagonists, Cameron maintains tension by slowly releasing information to both the characters on screen and the rest of us watching from afar. The audience knows Ripley told the truth because Alien came out seven years earlier but the fate of these colonists remains a mystery. The marines open every door and search every room expecting a monster to jump out of the shadows so they're on edge which in turn puts viewers on edge.
The audio landscape of Aliens adds to this atmosphere. After a rousing percussive rhythm during the marines' approach to LV-426, the score quiets down as they make a visual pass over the compound. Yet once the troops emerge from their vehicles for an on-foot search, the music stops completely. We only hear what the marines hear: Rain, wind, mechanical locks uncoupling, and the pulse-like beat of their motion trackers which detect absolutely nothing.
It takes almost exactly one hour into the movie for the Colonial Marines to face off against the alien xenomorphs and the battle does not go well. The two forces meet in a steamy sub-basement featuring low visibility and cramped quarters. The motion trackers spring to life and signal that the squad is surrounded\u2014\"There's something moving and it ain't us!\" shouts Pvt. Hudson\u2014indicating that they marched deep into enemy territory without an escape route.
Ripley shouts at them over the radio to withdraw but it's too late. When the creatures literally emerge from the walls, they overpower the humans in seconds. Lt. Gorman tries to direct his forces remotely but between the shouting, gunfire, and chaos, no one can hear him or follow his orders. Despite her reluctance to even attend this expedition, Ripley demonstrates her resolve by jumping into the driver's seat and smashing their armored vehicle into the combat zone, opening an exit for the few soldiers still standing.
Woefully outnumbered and outmatched, the marines call for an evacuation back to their ship in orbit only to watch their pilot and her shuttle crash and burn atop their ground transportation. The remaining soldiers and civilians\u2014Ripley, corporate dweeb Burke, android Bishop, and a young girl named Newt whom they found hiding in the airducts\u2014regroup in the colony's ruins to assess their options.
The survivors can't possibly engage in another assault nor do they have the resources to defend themselves from the xenomorph hive. Theoretically they could summon the idle shuttle sitting on their battleship to come get them, but they lost all their comms equipment when the first shuttle exploded. That same explosion also irreparably damaged the colony's reactor which will detonate in mere hours, adding a ticking clock to their list of grave dangers.
I'm in serious danger of repeating myself but Aliens keeps outdoing itself in raising the stakes for our heroes again and again. Viewers know the xenomorphs pose a serious threat but it's still shocking to see just how quickly they slaughter the marines. The shuttle crash both removes the humans' technological advantages and creates a new crisis. Meanwhile, with no chain of command to maintain order, it falls to Ripley\u2014\"not a soldier\" in her own words\u2014to take charge and look for a way out.
The xenomorphs make for good bad guys because they're terrifying at a glance. They're tall, they're always slimy, and they have two sets of mouths that look great on a poster. Yet as characters, the xenomorphs don't offer much depth. They lack any linguistic skills or complex motivations. In a straight fight, they wouldn't stand a chance against one human with an automatic weapon.
The original Alien got around this problem by pitting the unarmed crew of the Nostromo against a single creature running around in the dark. Aliens ups the ante with scores of xenomorphs who win via attrition, but the script also lets them take a back seat so panic and distrust can run rampant amongst the survivors.
I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that some of the protagonists do indeed manage to escape LV-426 before everything blows to bits. With their backs against the wall, the Earthlings hatch a risky plan to both get out of Dodge and wipe out the infestation. They might have pulled it off without further casualties too were it not for the machinations of Aliens' true villain, unchecked capitalism. After all, no one does a better job of killing humans than other humans.
Look at how the system pushes Ripley into one no-win situation after another. She makes it back to Earth and gets fired for vandalizing company property. She struggles to hold a job and lacks any support, so she agrees to go back to LV-426 in return for financial compensation. Of course, the only reason people live on LV-426 in the first place is to terraform it for the benefit of future settlers, which is also why the Colonial Marines get dispatched. They're not out here to mount a rescue, they're protecting corporate assets.
Aliens makes its message even more transparent through the actions of Carter Burke. He has no military training or technical know-how, so he's only out here as a proxy for the moneymen. When Ripley suggests nuking the site from orbit, Burke objects to any further destruction of company hardware. Even in the face of death at the hands of the xenomorphs, Burke gambles everyone's lives in pursuit of bringing an intact alien back to Earth.
Eventually Ripley confronts Burke and calls out his callousness, pointing out that he transmitted the coordinates of the alien ship to the colony which makes him responsible for hundreds of subsequent deaths. He defends his decision with talk of \"exclusive rights\" while still advocating for smuggling one of the parasites off the planet. Ripley spells it out for him and the audience: \"I don't know which species is worse,\" she says. \"You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.\"
The making of Aliens rivals Aliens in terms of drama. Fox knew they had a hit with Alien in 1979, but executives had little confidence a sequel could work so years passed with no further development. In the early 80s, buzz surrounding an upcoming sci-fi action saga called The Terminator brought that film's writer/director James Cameron to Fox's attention. He wrote them a treatment for a second Alien film but it didn't impress, so he returned to his own project.
A change in management at Fox and the success of The Terminator renewed the studio's interest in Cameron. Though still a relatively inexperienced filmmaker, Cameron won the job to write and direct the picture. He came up with a script that pleased the top brass, but when they lowballed him on the budget, he threatened to walk away. When he pushed for Sigourney Weaver to return as Ripley, money concerns again caused the studio to balk, and Cameron again said he wouldn't do it without her.
The rocky road to Aliens continued once filming began in late 1985. Cameron clashed with the English crew over everything from lighting choices to union-mandated tea breaks. Actor James Remar got busted for drug possession weeks into the shoot and lost his job; Cameron had to recast the role and reshoot Remar's scenes. Yet despite all these hurdles, Aliens wrapped on schedule and within the budget.
Upon its release in July of 1986, the R-rated Aliens managed to dominate the summer box office for a full month. Critics praised the film and its cast, especially Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. Her performance transformed the character from a frightened passenger fleeing for her life to a no-nonsense leader willing to risk everything, and it earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
Even at the time, Aliens triggered discussion of whether or not it surpasses the original Alien. The two films differ drastically in terms of genre and mood: Alien paints outer space as a playground for our nightmares, a vast abyss of nothingness punctuated with tiny rocks where any number of horrors might await discovery. Aliens has scary moments but with its larger cast and high-energy combat scenes, the movie takes audiences on a more varied emotional journey leading to a fiery climax.
I didn't watch Alien or Aliens until I reached my teenage years, though an abundance of parodies and homages across other media meant I had already picked up the gist of things. Looking at xenomorph-themed movies and material released in the decades since, I think both Alien and Aliens have only improved with age and hold up to exceptional scrutiny. I can see the arguments in favor of Alien but in my mind there's no question which one I'd rather revisit.
Whichever film you prefer, the fact remains that Aliens had an immediate impact on pop culture with ripples that remain visible to this day. Surrounding a lead protagonist with a colorful cadre of character actors who kick the bucket one by one became standard practice in action films. Some even go so far as to include specific archetypes based on the most memorable Aliens' cast members, such as Bill Paxton's masterful \"cocky-guy-who-turns-cowardly\" routine as Hudson or Jenette Goldstein's ice-cold warrior woman Vasquez.
Aliens also proved eminently quotable, both amongst my friend group and Hollywood screenwriters. My personal favorite line reading remains Michael Biehn's gruff exclamation \"looks like a god damn town meeting\" when the marines locate the missing colonists, with Bill Paxton screaming about \"an express elevator to hell\" a close second.
Speaking of quotes, James Horner's triumphant score for Aliens caught on with the marketing department in a hurry, particularly the track \"Bishop's Countdown\" that plays as Ripley scrambles to escape from LV-426. The crescendo as the shuttle leaves the atmosphere right before the reactor goes critical turned into the go-to background music for dozens of action movie trailers.
Video game developers\u2014already fans of H.R. Giger's original monster design in Alien\u2014openly embraced imagery from Aliens in the years that followed. I'd wager the run-and-gun nature of Cameron's take lends itself better to gaming as the xenomorphs make excellent cannon fodder. While companies such as Square and Konami published licensed Aliens games, other teams didn't bother asking for permission.
Obviously I endorse watching Aliens for the first time or the 400th time in the present day. It fully lives up to its reputation as an 80s roller coaster, it remains fresh even after a plethora of imitations, and its message concerning humanity's mistaken priorities has only grown more apt with the passage of time. It's also a showcase for hand-crafted special effects filmmaking from an era before we over-relied upon computer-generated imagery for everything, a practice popularized at least in part by Cameron himself in the 90s.
I cannot imagine ever seeing another movie quite like Aliens. The xenomorphs are here to stay and James Cameron continues to churn out adventurous tales set in outer space, but Hollywood has changed too much. A big-budget sequel to a sci-fi horror movie aimed at adult audiences helmed by an unproven filmmaker and starring a woman in her late 30s?? The Carter Burkes of the world would never authorize that kind of action.
Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit has written professionally since 2009 and contributed to Retronauts since 2018. Look up feitclub on social media or visit Diamond's lofi website.
", "contentSnippet": "July 18, 1986: They mostly come at night. Mostly.\nby Diamond Feit\nI fancy myself a filmmaker in that I love acting and dream of directing but the prospect of producing and releasing a feature film strikes me as daunting beyond all measure. Even a \"small\" project would require hundreds of hours and more money than I've ever handled in my life, to say nothing of what Hollywood spends in anticipation of reaping billions of dollars.\nTruthfully, the entire motion picture industry frightens me thanks to the combination of lofty expectations and legends of studio interference. You could write a great script and sell it for a pretty penny only to watch helplessly as executives rewrite and retitle it to suit their whims. I often think of Peter Sagal's tale of his screenplay about a political drama set against the backdrop of the Cuban revolution that somehow turned into a belated prequel to Dirty Dancing.\nI understand and appreciate the magic of collaborating with others. Preparing a podcast requires extensive notes but that document serves as a fraction of the finished product; the rest comes from the energy exchanged between me and my guests which shapes our conversation. Yet that's a world apart from Hollywood's top-down approach where entire finished films can vanish in a bid to reduce a corporation's annual tax bill.\nViewed from this slightly-pessimistic standpoint, I consider every movie a miracle regardless of quality. Yet occasionally, against all odds, a magical sequence of events leads to a miracle amongst miracles. One where years of delays, internal conflicts, and multiple walkouts somehow lead to an epic masterpiece. 40 years ago this week, James Cameron's Aliens set the bar for sequels and action filmmaking so high, it's still in orbit today.\nAliens opens with a tiny vessel adrift in space. We can tell the craft is undersized due to its lone occupant, and we know it's floating aimlessly because the only woman on board is lying still inside a tube. A generous amount of lustrous space dust covers every surface, so she's not just taking a well-deserved nap but has slumbered for a long, long time.\nAn automated proximity alert warns the unconscious traveller that she's got visitors in the form of a much larger ship. After locking onto the mini shuttle, cutting through the hull, and scanning the interior with a sick-looking blue laser, three astronauts in full suits waltz on board like they own the place. They probably thought they did as the moment they discover a living passenger, they declare their salvage operation a bust.\nIn just three minutes and with barely any dialogue, director James Cameron imparts a lot of information to the audience. If they've previously seen the movie Alien, then they'll recognize the sleeping woman as Ripley, the sole survivor of that film. Even without that knowledge, however, Aliens grabs viewers' attention with a mini-mystery: Who would travel through space alone in such cramped conditions, especially in a capsule easily misidentified as flotsam?\nRipley awakens in a hospital bed inside a facility orbiting the Earth, one that she doesn't recognize. She's out of sorts due to her \"unusually long hypersleep\" and got picked up purely by chance. Turns out she spent 57 years floating amongst the stars and has no living friends or family save for Jonesy, the cat who slept alongside her.\nA debriefing scene in a boardroom allows Ripley to summarize the events of Alien for the benefit of the audience as well as her disinterested inquisitors\u2014one guy's doing a crossword puzzle and another's got his eyes closed. She claims her vessel tracked a beacon to a dead planet called LV-426 where they encountered an unknown spacecraft filled with living eggs. The eggs house parasites capable of incapacitating a human being long enough to implant an embryo inside them which, once gestated, kills its host and quickly matures into a hostile creature two meters tall.\nThe suits sitting around the table couldn't care less about Ripley's story, only expressing concern for the expensive USS Nostromo which she admits she blew up in a bid to destroy the alien. With no hard evidence to support her claims, they suspend her flight officer status, making her nigh unemployable. She pleads with them to survey LV-426 but they deem that unnecessary, stating that colonists have lived there for over 20 years without incident.\nIt doesn't take long for Ripley to get her wish. A company executive and a military officer knock on her door with news that they've lost contact with the residents of LV-426 and they're launching an on-site investigation. They want her to join them as an \"advisor\" which she rejects; if you had escaped a deadly alien assault in deep space would you want to return to the scene of the crime? However, since said mission would also get her flight status reinstated, she relents.\nAgain, Aliens communicates so much about its world, the characters in it, and the lives they lead in such a short time. All of the board members and corporate bean-counters shown on screen hold the same profit-first mindset seen in our present age; the only difference between today's c-suite and their future counterparts is a questionable fashion choice to pop their jacket collars upward.\nRipley tries to play along but finds herself confounded at every step, warning them that even a single alien could wipe out humanity all while they recite the dollar value of their lost property. Her emotional outburst during the meeting all but cements her as unstable and easily dismissed; nevermind the fact that throughout her deposition, a scrolling feed of her dead crewmates is displayed on the main monitor. If I had to spend hours reliving the worst experience of my life while images of my dead friends and coworkers stared back at me, I doubt I'd take it as well as Ripley does.\nWith orders in hand and a rifle-shaped starship, Ripley and the Colonial Marines set off for LV-426. Much like the company drones back on Earth, the soldiers scoff at Ripley's tale of an unstoppable killing machine; not because they don't believe her, but because they don't care. Ripley starts to recount her nightmare about seeing an alien burst out of her colleague's chest but the impatient troops interrupt her. \"I only need to know one thing,\" Pvt. Vasquez says as she points her fingers like a gun, \"Where they are.\"\nThese men and women make up an experienced combat unit, confident that their superior firepower and bad-assery can overcome any foe \"anytime, anywhere.\" Not even the prospect of encountering extra terrestrials can faze them, as Pvt. Hudson inquires if this outing will become \"another bug hunt.\" While trading stories in the mess hall over breakfast, one soldier even boasts of his interspecies sexual escapades. Clearly the American military of the future has the tools and the talent to slay or lay whatever the universe throws at them.\nUpon their arrival on LV-426, Ripley and company hit the ground running. They storm the colonists' main complex with guns at the ready but find no one to greet them. The lights are on and crude barricades still stand but there are no bodies, living or dead. All signs point to a firefight against non-human intruders with acid for blood and the science lab holds two living alien parasites\u2014perfectly in line with Ripley's report.\nEven as Aliens crosses the 40 minute mark with zero shots fired and no appearances of the eponymous antagonists, Cameron maintains tension by slowly releasing information to both the characters on screen and the rest of us watching from afar. The audience knows Ripley told the truth because Alien came out seven years earlier but the fate of these colonists remains a mystery. The marines open every door and search every room expecting a monster to jump out of the shadows so they're on edge which in turn puts viewers on edge.\nThe audio landscape of Aliens adds to this atmosphere. After a rousing percussive rhythm during the marines' approach to LV-426, the score quiets down as they make a visual pass over the compound. Yet once the troops emerge from their vehicles for an on-foot search, the music stops completely. We only hear what the marines hear: Rain, wind, mechanical locks uncoupling, and the pulse-like beat of their motion trackers which detect absolutely nothing.\nIt takes almost exactly one hour into the movie for the Colonial Marines to face off against the alien xenomorphs and the battle does not go well. The two forces meet in a steamy sub-basement featuring low visibility and cramped quarters. The motion trackers spring to life and signal that the squad is surrounded\u2014\"There's something moving and it ain't us!\" shouts Pvt. Hudson\u2014indicating that they marched deep into enemy territory without an escape route.\nRipley shouts at them over the radio to withdraw but it's too late. When the creatures literally emerge from the walls, they overpower the humans in seconds. Lt. Gorman tries to direct his forces remotely but between the shouting, gunfire, and chaos, no one can hear him or follow his orders. Despite her reluctance to even attend this expedition, Ripley demonstrates her resolve by jumping into the driver's seat and smashing their armored vehicle into the combat zone, opening an exit for the few soldiers still standing.\nWoefully outnumbered and outmatched, the marines call for an evacuation back to their ship in orbit only to watch their pilot and her shuttle crash and burn atop their ground transportation. The remaining soldiers and civilians\u2014Ripley, corporate dweeb Burke, android Bishop, and a young girl named Newt whom they found hiding in the airducts\u2014regroup in the colony's ruins to assess their options.\nThe survivors can't possibly engage in another assault nor do they have the resources to defend themselves from the xenomorph hive. Theoretically they could summon the idle shuttle sitting on their battleship to come get them, but they lost all their comms equipment when the first shuttle exploded. That same explosion also irreparably damaged the colony's reactor which will detonate in mere hours, adding a ticking clock to their list of grave dangers.\nI'm in serious danger of repeating myself but Aliens keeps outdoing itself in raising the stakes for our heroes again and again. Viewers know the xenomorphs pose a serious threat but it's still shocking to see just how quickly they slaughter the marines. The shuttle crash both removes the humans' technological advantages and creates a new crisis. Meanwhile, with no chain of command to maintain order, it falls to Ripley\u2014\"not a soldier\" in her own words\u2014to take charge and look for a way out.\nThe xenomorphs make for good bad guys because they're terrifying at a glance. They're tall, they're always slimy, and they have two sets of mouths that look great on a poster. Yet as characters, the xenomorphs don't offer much depth. They lack any linguistic skills or complex motivations. In a straight fight, they wouldn't stand a chance against one human with an automatic weapon.\nThe original Alien got around this problem by pitting the unarmed crew of the Nostromo against a single creature running around in the dark. Aliens ups the ante with scores of xenomorphs who win via attrition, but the script also lets them take a back seat so panic and distrust can run rampant amongst the survivors.\nI don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that some of the protagonists do indeed manage to escape LV-426 before everything blows to bits. With their backs against the wall, the Earthlings hatch a risky plan to both get out of Dodge and wipe out the infestation. They might have pulled it off without further casualties too were it not for the machinations of Aliens' true villain, unchecked capitalism. After all, no one does a better job of killing humans than other humans.\nLook at how the system pushes Ripley into one no-win situation after another. She makes it back to Earth and gets fired for vandalizing company property. She struggles to hold a job and lacks any support, so she agrees to go back to LV-426 in return for financial compensation. Of course, the only reason people live on LV-426 in the first place is to terraform it for the benefit of future settlers, which is also why the Colonial Marines get dispatched. They're not out here to mount a rescue, they're protecting corporate assets.\nAliens makes its message even more transparent through the actions of Carter Burke. He has no military training or technical know-how, so he's only out here as a proxy for the moneymen. When Ripley suggests nuking the site from orbit, Burke objects to any further destruction of company hardware. Even in the face of death at the hands of the xenomorphs, Burke gambles everyone's lives in pursuit of bringing an intact alien back to Earth.\nEventually Ripley confronts Burke and calls out his callousness, pointing out that he transmitted the coordinates of the alien ship to the colony which makes him responsible for hundreds of subsequent deaths. He defends his decision with talk of \"exclusive rights\" while still advocating for smuggling one of the parasites off the planet. Ripley spells it out for him and the audience: \"I don't know which species is worse,\" she says. \"You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.\"\nThe making of Aliens rivals Aliens in terms of drama. Fox knew they had a hit with Alien in 1979, but executives had little confidence a sequel could work so years passed with no further development. In the early 80s, buzz surrounding an upcoming sci-fi action saga called The Terminator brought that film's writer/director James Cameron to Fox's attention. He wrote them a treatment for a second Alien film but it didn't impress, so he returned to his own project.\nA change in management at Fox and the success of The Terminator renewed the studio's interest in Cameron. Though still a relatively inexperienced filmmaker, Cameron won the job to write and direct the picture. He came up with a script that pleased the top brass, but when they lowballed him on the budget, he threatened to walk away. When he pushed for Sigourney Weaver to return as Ripley, money concerns again caused the studio to balk, and Cameron again said he wouldn't do it without her.\nThe rocky road to Aliens continued once filming began in late 1985. Cameron clashed with the English crew over everything from lighting choices to union-mandated tea breaks. Actor James Remar got busted for drug possession weeks into the shoot and lost his job; Cameron had to recast the role and reshoot Remar's scenes. Yet despite all these hurdles, Aliens wrapped on schedule and within the budget.\nUpon its release in July of 1986, the R-rated Aliens managed to dominate the summer box office for a full month. Critics praised the film and its cast, especially Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. Her performance transformed the character from a frightened passenger fleeing for her life to a no-nonsense leader willing to risk everything, and it earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.\nEven at the time, Aliens triggered discussion of whether or not it surpasses the original Alien. The two films differ drastically in terms of genre and mood: Alien paints outer space as a playground for our nightmares, a vast abyss of nothingness punctuated with tiny rocks where any number of horrors might await discovery. Aliens has scary moments but with its larger cast and high-energy combat scenes, the movie takes audiences on a more varied emotional journey leading to a fiery climax.\nI didn't watch Alien or Aliens until I reached my teenage years, though an abundance of parodies and homages across other media meant I had already picked up the gist of things. Looking at xenomorph-themed movies and material released in the decades since, I think both Alien and Aliens have only improved with age and hold up to exceptional scrutiny. I can see the arguments in favor of Alien but in my mind there's no question which one I'd rather revisit.\nWhichever film you prefer, the fact remains that Aliens had an immediate impact on pop culture with ripples that remain visible to this day. Surrounding a lead protagonist with a colorful cadre of character actors who kick the bucket one by one became standard practice in action films. Some even go so far as to include specific archetypes based on the most memorable Aliens' cast members, such as Bill Paxton's masterful \"cocky-guy-who-turns-cowardly\" routine as Hudson or Jenette Goldstein's ice-cold warrior woman Vasquez.\nAliens also proved eminently quotable, both amongst my friend group and Hollywood screenwriters. My personal favorite line reading remains Michael Biehn's gruff exclamation \"looks like a god damn town meeting\" when the marines locate the missing colonists, with Bill Paxton screaming about \"an express elevator to hell\" a close second.\nSpeaking of quotes, James Horner's triumphant score for Aliens caught on with the marketing department in a hurry, particularly the track \"Bishop's Countdown\" that plays as Ripley scrambles to escape from LV-426. The crescendo as the shuttle leaves the atmosphere right before the reactor goes critical turned into the go-to background music for dozens of action movie trailers.\nVideo game developers\u2014already fans of H.R. Giger's original monster design in Alien\u2014openly embraced imagery from Aliens in the years that followed. I'd wager the run-and-gun nature of Cameron's take lends itself better to gaming as the xenomorphs make excellent cannon fodder. While companies such as Square and Konami published licensed Aliens games, other teams didn't bother asking for permission.\nObviously I endorse watching Aliens for the first time or the 400th time in the present day. It fully lives up to its reputation as an 80s roller coaster, it remains fresh even after a plethora of imitations, and its message concerning humanity's mistaken priorities has only grown more apt with the passage of time. It's also a showcase for hand-crafted special effects filmmaking from an era before we over-relied upon computer-generated imagery for everything, a practice popularized at least in part by Cameron himself in the 90s.\nI cannot imagine ever seeing another movie quite like Aliens. The xenomorphs are here to stay and James Cameron continues to churn out adventurous tales set in outer space, but Hollywood has changed too much. A big-budget sequel to a sci-fi horror movie aimed at adult audiences helmed by an unproven filmmaker and starring a woman in her late 30s?? The Carter Burkes of the world would never authorize that kind of action.\nWriter/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit has written professionally since 2009 and contributed to Retronauts since 2018. Look up feitclub on social media or visit Diamond's lofi website.", "guid": "164131779", "isoDate": "2026-07-19T11:00:10.000Z", "itunes": { "duration": "1690", "image": "https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/164131779/13bb25a673844536bbbe08a2dad22bb6/eyJkIjo3MiwiaCI6MzAwMCwic3RyaXBfYWxwaGEiOjEsInciOjMwMDAsIndlYnAiOjB9/1.jpg?token-hash=Vo5p7RNHKCX8Ys2XBkduwKTfk5nh1Fh6-PKnWsO-JnM%3D" }, "itunes_duration": "0:28:09" }