Aliens, 1986

Five years before he’d follow up his own sci-fi thriller, The Terminator, with a balls-to-the-wall action sequel, James Cameron gave Ridley Scott’s pulse-pounding sci-fi horror film Alien similar treatment, amping up the franchise’s firepower immensely and delivering one of the most influential action films of all time. Previously we’d seen a xenomorph tear through the hapless crew of the Nostromo and it was terrifying, but those were just ordinary working folks, not space marines armed with all the futuristic weaponry money can buy. Surely these perfect specimens would be no match for an entire crew of heavily armed future soldiers, right? Right?!

Aliens takes the shadowy threat of the original film and makes it much more concrete, establishing that no matter what tools we may have at our disposal and how advantageous our position may seem, we are no match for the xenomorphs, and it does so through some of the loudest, most spectacular action scenes ever filmed. Crucially, however, it doesn’t lose the human element in all the bombast and carnage. Every actor makes his or her character vivid, distinct, and memorable, even those who get killed off early on, and we believe in the camaraderie and connection that binds the band of soldiers together. More than that, in the midst of it all, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley finds a kind of family with Michael Biehn’s Hicks and young survivor Newt, a dynamic with themes that resonate in a film which also introduces the Alien Queen, who we see laying her many, many eggs in wonderfully graphic detail. Oh, and the first film’s themes of corporate fuckery and the expendability of human life are alive and well, with Paul Reiser showing surprising range as a delightfully sleazy representative of the Weyland-Yutani corporation who definitely does not die a very satisfying death.— Carolyn Petit