Aliens (1986)

Now this is how you do a sequel. Not by retreading the same ground, not by playing it safe, but by taking everything that made the original great and asking what happens when you blow the doors off it completely.

James Cameron looked at what Ridley Scott built with Alien (1979) and made a decision that could have gone spectacularly wrong: swap the claustrophobic, slow-burn dread for full-throttle military action. The haunting isolation of one creature in a corridor gets replaced by wave after wave of them, and somehow, against all odds, it works. More than works. It absolutely sings.

What Cameron understood is that the terror in the first film was never really about the Xenomorph itself. It was about helplessness, about being outmatched, about having nowhere to run. He kept all of that intact. He just changed the shape of it. Now you've got an entire squad of marines, weapons, armour, training, and they're still not enough. That's a brilliant piece of filmmaking instinct. The monsters aren't scarier because there are more of them. They're scarier because more of them still isn't a comfort.

And then there's Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. I'd argue this is one of the great action performances, full stop. She's carrying trauma from the first film, she's the only person in the room who knows what they're walking into, and nobody's listening to her. Watching her go from barely holding it together to becoming the person who takes charge is genuinely moving. The bond she forms with Newt gives the film its emotional core, and it stops Aliens from being just a very loud, very good shoot-em-up. You're invested in these people. When marines start dropping, it stings.

The supporting cast deserve credit too. The chemistry between the crew feels lived-in, the banter feels real, and Cameron takes just enough time to let you get to know them before things go sideways. Some of them are sketched more broadly than others, sure, but there's not a performance in the film that takes you out of it. Even the more cartoonish characters serve a purpose.

The pacing is relentless in the best possible way. Cameron knows when to let a scene breathe and when to floor it. The build to the first proper encounter is masterfully handled, all flickering motion trackers and growing dread, and once the action starts it barely lets up. I can't think of many films that sustain that level of tension across a runtime this long without ever feeling like they're padding. It's lean where it needs to be lean and it earns every beat of the finale.

Is it the original? No. And I think it's important to say that clearly rather than try to crown one or the other. The first film has a quality of nightmare that's almost impossible to replicate, something primal and suffocating that Aliens isn't really trying to match. What this does instead is stake out its own territory entirely. Different beast, different register, equally influential. You can trace the DNA of Aliens through decades of action and sci-fi filmmaking, from the squad dynamics to the production design to the way it handles its female lead. Cameron did the same thing here that he did with The Terminator (1984): took a genre and quietly redrew its boundaries.

It's got iconic moments to spare, a villain you genuinely hate, a final act that still gives me a rush no matter how many times I've seen it, and a lead performance that absolutely should have won every award going. The fact that this and its predecessor exist back to back, two films that are equally great and completely different from each other, is one of cinema's finer pieces of luck.

Four stars. A classic in its own right, and one of the best sequels ever made.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 1986  | Watched: 2025-04-10

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from James Cameron: Titanic (1997) · Avatar (2009) · Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) · The Terminator (1984)
More with Sigourney Weaver: Avatar (2009) · Alien (1979) · Alien Resurrection (1997) · Alien³ (1992)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)