Aliens (1986): how did a stalled sequel become a classic?

Aliens is without question one of the best action movies of all time and one of my favorite movies of all time. Here I look at how James Cameron's 1986 sequel, starring Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn, made it to the screen, and why I think it stands as one of the best sequels ever made.

Of the nine films in the Alien franchise, the first four star Ellen Ripley as the main character. Aliens is the second of those.

How executive changes and a lawsuit delayed an Alien sequel at Fox

The success of Alien led to immediate discussions within Fox about a sequel. Fox president Alan Ladd Jr. was supportive, but he left Fox to start his own production company. His replacement, Norman Levy, was not enthusiastic about a sequel.

The year was 1979, and sequels were not a proven thing yet. It wasn't until The Empire Strikes Back a year later that sequels were shown to have the potential to succeed. Levy, unwilling to make the investment, did not greenlight an Alien 2.

Brandywine Productions, the production company behind Alien, then sued 20th Century Fox in early 1980, seeking unpaid profits from Alien. That lawsuit further delayed a sequel. In 1983 it was settled and Levy had left the studio. His replacement was far more receptive to a sequel and began looking for a screenwriter in the summer of 1983.

James Cameron's Terminator script won him the Aliens job

Eventually the studio came across the script for the science fiction film The Terminator and fell in love with it. So they reached out to its writer, James Cameron, and had him write the sequel. In 1984, another new Fox executive, Lawrence Gordon, officially greenlit the project.

Cameron was working on The Terminator at the time, but that production faced heavy delays because of scheduling conflicts with Arnold Schwarzenegger. During that window, Cameron wrote a 90 page treatment for Aliens, which Fox executives received well.

Cameron was brought on to direct as well, which surprised many because of his relative inexperience. He had only directed Piranha II: The Spawning and hadn't yet directed The Terminator. After The Terminator was released and succeeded, more confidence was gained in him. Many were surprised Ridley Scott wasn't directing the sequel, but reports said he was never even asked.

During a meeting with Fox executives, Cameron famously wrote Alien on a whiteboard and added a dollar sign to the end. The sequel would be titled Aliens. He turned in his final script in February 1985, supposedly hours before a Hollywood writers' strike.

Sigourney Weaver's return and the fight over the Aliens budget

Cameron believed it would be impossible to repeat the horror and novelty of the first movie, so the sequel would focus more on action horror rather than pure horror. He also wanted a female heroine leading his films to set them apart from most Hollywood blockbusters. He asked Sigourney Weaver to return as Ripley, and she gladly accepted.

There was tension between Cameron and Fox, though. Fox did not want to meet Weaver's contract demands, and it did not want to give the film the budget Cameron asked for. That led to Cameron leaving the project unless his demands were met.

Eventually Weaver was paid and the film was given an $18.5 million budget, which prompted Cameron to return. In 2025 terms, that budget was roughly $54.5 million.

Tea breaks and a fired cinematographer made the Aliens shoot in England tense

After casting was rounded out, principal photography began in September 1985 and ran for 75 days. Despite the excellent final product, there was a lot of tension during production. Aliens was mostly filmed in England, and Cameron, a Canadian, had very little experience with British industry standards.

Apparently the crew needed tea breaks every day, which drove Cameron mad, as he saw it as an interruption for hours every day. Cameron was described as aggressive and assertive, which rubbed much of the crew the wrong way. Since he had so little directing experience, many on the crew felt he hadn't earned the right to be so aggressive with them.

One person who clashed with Cameron was cinematographer Dick Bush, who was passionate about the film being shot a certain way. Cameron eventually fired Bush and replaced him with his own cinematographer. Things got so bad that Cameron was determined to have Fox move the production out of England, which Fox rejected. Cameron described his crew as lazy, insolent and arrogant.

Eventually Cameron met with the crew, they aired their grievances and came to an understanding. Once production finished, Cameron famously said: "This has been a long and difficult shoot, fraught by many problems, but the one thing that kept me going through it all was the certain knowledge that one day I would drive out the gate of Pinewood and never come back." He finished the line with a jab that the crew would still be there.

Miniatures, alien suits and a 14 foot Queen puppet drove the Aliens effects

One of the most impressive parts of the final film is its effects. Even nearly 40 years later, so much of it still looks excellent. Like the first movie, Aliens used many miniatures, including shots of the colony and exterior shots of the Sulaco spaceship. Large sets were built too.

One of my favorite bits of behind the scenes lore is that the cafeteria scene near the beginning of the movie was filmed last. Cameron wanted the chemistry between the actors to be great for that scene, so he waited until the end of production, when the actors all knew and liked each other.

Many practical effects were used, including many of the vehicle shots and some background shots in other scenes. Cameron and his team spent a lot of time designing the military's weapons and vehicles. He wanted a slightly more grounded take on futuristic weaponry, so the weapons shoot bullets rather than lasers like in Star Wars.

So much detail went into the creatures. H.R. Giger was unable to work on the project, but that didn't slow Cameron's team down. Many alien suits were created, allowing more flexibility than the ones on Alien. The facehugger model was enhanced with full limb articulation so it could move in the scene with Ripley and Newt, and several facehugger and alien models were made simply to blow up and splatter blood. Back in Los Angeles, a giant 14 foot puppet of the Queen was built, which at times needed up to six people to operate. Cameron wanted the Queen to look different from the standard alien so there would still be some novelty at the end.

James Horner's score and the cuts Fox forced on Aliens

In post production, James Horner was brought on to compose the score, and that too was filled with drama. Horner and Cameron did not get along at all, with Horner calling it a nightmare. He was given only three weeks to score the entire movie, which is not a lot of time by any means. Despite that strained relationship, the two eventually mended fences, and Horner would go on to score Cameron's later film Titanic.

Cameron's cut of the movie ran 2 hours and 29 minutes. Fox did not like that it was two and a half hours long, so it forced him to make cuts, and the theatrical cut ran 2 hours and 17 minutes. Years later, a director's cut was released with Cameron's deleted scenes. Scenes cut from the theatrical version include Ripley learning about the death of her daughter, the colonists before the alien infestation, Newt with her family, and Burke alive in a cocoon.

Aliens released on July 18, 1986, roughly seven years after Alien. It's fair to say it was nothing short of a success for both Cameron and 20th Century Fox.

Why the new alien lore in Aliens feels like a logical progression

James Cameron correctly diagnosed what's wrong with so many sequels: there's no way you can top the novelty of the original. The original alien was so iconic that no single alien Cameron made could top it. The common solution is a bigger, more dangerous alien, or the same alien killing more people, but that often comes across as cheap and uninspired.

Cameron took some new liberties, but they seem like logical progressions. In Alien, we only saw the facehugger having acid blood; in Aliens, all the aliens have it. In Alien, it's implied the creature simply killed everyone; in Aliens, the creatures cocoon humans so more aliens can be born. Cameron probably looked at the deleted scene of Dallas from Alien and used it as inspiration to make the aliens more of a hive species, which was definitely the biggest addition to the lore.

It doesn't feel like an out of the blue change. As Ripley asks, if these aliens all come from an egg, then who lays the eggs? In both movies the aliens are smart, and maybe you could argue they're even smarter in Aliens. There's no overexplaining either. It's not like Prometheus or Covenant, where they try to establish a backstory. The aliens are a hive species, and the Queen is bigger and stronger. That's it. There's also something so clean about the titles Alien and Aliens. It's so much better than Alien 2.

A colony and a 57 year time gap raise the stakes in Aliens

Aliens raises the stakes in every way. Instead of one alien, there are many. Not only are there more humans, but they're better equipped to fight. The action is bigger, the location is bigger and the effects are better.

The 57 year gap between the films also lets Aliens reset the status quo a bit. If it took place a year or two later, the movie would risk being redundant: a new crew would be sent to LV-426 and repeat what happened in Alien. Because of the big gap, not only does it serve Ripley's character, but it allows LV-426 to be colonized by hundreds of people. Instead of a single crew being attacked, you have an entire colony, which is a new and unique direction for an Alien story.

The vibe matters too. Alien reflected the more 1970s feeling of being cheated: Ripley was failed by the big corporation and was lucky to survive. Aliens feels much more triumphant, which matches the tone of the 1980s.

Ripley's arc in Aliens is built on motherhood and trauma

When it comes to character, Cameron lucked out. Many sequels struggle to give their main character a new arc, because if a character completes an arc in the first movie, a new one risks regressing them. In Alien, the characters had no arcs and little development, so there was nothing for Ripley to regress from. The only way they could have regressed her is by making her an idiot or a coward, which they didn't. Instead, they added so much humanity to her.

The extended edition scene of Ripley learning she lost her daughter is crucial, and I cannot believe Cameron cut it from the theatrical version. In the original, Ripley was a unisex character who didn't express motherly tendencies, unless you count saving a cat. In the theatrical Aliens, you assume she cares for Newt because she's a good person. In the extended cut, she carries deep rooted guilt: she told her daughter she would be back for her 11th birthday, and not only did she miss it, but her daughter died of old age. Finding a scared, alone girl, she won't let her feel abandoned. Both Ripley and the Queen are metaphorically fighting to protect their children, a strong contrast for the ending.

Cameron balances Ripley's masculine and feminine traits. She's no special person and isn't well trained enough to fight aliens. What she has is resolve. Strapping a gun, a grenade launcher and a flamethrower to yourself and taking it to the heart of the enemy was, especially at the time, a very macho thing to do, and Ripley is an ordinary woman doing exactly that. Yet the whole ending is rooted in her saving a little girl she's protected all movie. By the end, the men are either dead or neutralized, and rather than escaping as she did in the first film, she actively fights back and defeats the Queen.

Ripley also deals with her problems in a very 1980s way. In 2025 we'd probably get a scene of her going to therapy, but she overcomes her demons by going back to the scene of the crime and confronting the Queen of her nightmares. While Ripley was a neat character in Alien, Aliens makes her one of the toughest characters in any action movie, with depth and humanity that still resonate 40 years later.

Newt, Hicks, Bishop and Hudson give Aliens a standout supporting cast

Something so many later Alien movies have failed to accomplish is a strong supporting cast. In Aliens, we care about each member of the main crew for different reasons, and many have arcs. Cameron was smart with Newt. Kids in these movies can be very annoying when they feel like a burden, but Newt is an asset: she provides valuable information, helps out, and leads the escape through the tunnels. When she's captured, it's not through incompetence; she's knocked over by the blast from Gorman's grenade. It helps that she doesn't talk much.

Hicks is the standard good guy. He's in the military, but unlike his comrades he comes across as kind and humble, supportive of Ripley even when the other Marines mock her, and by the end he's teaching her to use the guns. Bishop serves as a redemption arc, which only works because Ash betrayed the group in the first movie. There was tension over whether we could trust him, hence the brief fake out where he seems to fly away and leave Ripley behind, but because he proved he was different from Ash, we love him.

Maybe the most popular character is Hudson. He's funny and his lines are iconic, but he also has an arc: he acts tough, panics once he realizes how doomed they are, then goes out guns blazing, so he didn't die a coward. Vasquez is tough from start to finish, yet becomes more of a team player, humbled from her overconfident early comments. Gorman seems incompetent for most of the film, but we grow to respect him when he goes out of his way to save Vasquez and gives his life. Even Burke we care about, differently: we want him to die for what he did to Ripley and the group, so his death by alien feels gratifying. That excellent character work across the board is maybe the biggest triumph of Aliens.

Aliens was a box office success in 1986

Aliens was a massive success for 20th Century Fox, grossing $131 million at the box office on a budget of just $18.5 million, and it scored 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.

For me, it's a masterpiece, and without question one of the best action movies of all time.