On this day in 1986, one of the best ever sequels ever made was released.



Here is an ode to what is likely the best character, and certainly the most quotable, character in the movie, Bill Paxton (Private Hudson):



How It Should Have Ended:


Aliens was a sequel that I never expected to be made. And while I see the basic story of man vs beast as essentially the same as Alien, it comes with a far different tone and energy than Ridley Scott's masterpiece.

I'm a huge fan of the Alien franchise and even loved Prometheus.

This was probably the scariest movie theater experience I ever had as a 12 year old kid. I made my dad take me back two more times.

Edit: meant the thumbs-up emoji.

My favorite story about Aliens is the way James Cameron pitched his sequel idea to the studio.

He simply wrote ALIEN$ on a chalkboard and told them when they would start shooting.

Oh yeah, another memory of this movie happened in of all places, the Blocker building on the A&M campus, which at the time was home to the College of Business (I was a BANA major, so I spent a fair amount of time in that building).

It was the spring term a year or so after Aliens came out, and I was in a management class, one of those survey courses that all business majors had to take. MGMT 363, I think. I walk into the classroom and see that there is a video projector set up, which was an odd thing to see in that class. I remember thinking, what are we gonna watch, Aliens?

Lo and behold, yep, we were watching Aliens. The lecturer used the movie to display examples of both good (Ripley) and bad (Gorman) management. And to boot, the next exam contained 3-4 questions from the movie.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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On this day in 1986, one of the best ever sequels movies ever made was released.

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DallasTeleAg said:

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I must be missing something about Aliens. I really do not understand the hype it gets from everyone. It's fine, but people act like it's one of the best movies ever made.

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Your first sentence defines the problem.

DallasTeleAg said:

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I must be missing something about Aliens. I really do not understand the hype it gets from everyone. It's fine, but people act like it's one of the best movies ever made.

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It is

DallasTeleAg said:

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I must be missing something about Aliens. I really do not understand the hype it gets from everyone. It's fine, but people act like it's one of the best movies ever made.

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Have you ever been confused for a man?

DallasTeleAg said:

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I must be missing something about Aliens. I really do not understand the hype it gets from everyone. It's fine, but people act like it's one of the best movies ever made.

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I get that. People act like [insert movie] is the best ever. Just an opinion that you may or may not agree with. For instance, I enjoyed Pulp Fiction the one time I watched it, but it didn't appeal to me enough to watch it again. Yet it is regularly lauded here as one of the best ever. And that's okay.

For me, Alien is a top-5 movie of all time. Scared the crap out of me when I was 12. It was a simplistic, 50's-style science fiction monster movie, but its production design, its other-worldly environments and the critter, and the like elevated it well beyond any similar movie. It was a stand-alone film with a neatly wrapped-up ending. I never expected a sequel to that movie, but I figured that if one would ever be made, it would simply be a rehash of Ridley Scott's movie and would therefore suck.

What's really funny to me is that I do actually consider Aliens to be a rehash, at least in terms of the basic plot structure of people stuck in a secluded environment with something that wants to kill them. But Cameron dressed it up differently than did Scott, and gave it an accelerant that the first one did not have. Alien was a haunted house in space, very creepy, all of that, whereas Aliens gave us just a glimpse of that before turning into a war movie. A group of soldiers trying to survive while surrounded by [Indians],[Japanese soldiers],[Mexicans at the Alamo] etc. Cameron made a movie that is at times creepy, at times energetic with great action sequences.

The Debt said:

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DallasTeleAg said:

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I must be missing something about Aliens. I really do not understand the hype it gets from everyone. It's fine, but people act like it's one of the best movies ever made.

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Have you ever been confused for a man?

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I believe the line was, have you ever been mistaken for a man?