It's been busy, and some exciting things are happening! A couple of companies are moving into the space solar power arena — something we've long advocated — and that's welcome progress. Starship is set to fly Starship test number 13, and a lot is riding on this — the system is overdue for some proof of concept to keep up with NASA's HLS contract.
An exoplanet spotted a decade ago has shown signs of a potentially habitable atmosphere; there are landslides — big ones — on Pluto, and evidence of "space candy" sugars in an interstellar cloud are in the news. Finally, SpaceX is doubling down on their big defense contracts with a well-funded US Space Force. Join us for all the latest!
This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?
Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.
It's almost inconceivable that 40 years have passed since what's been called the greatest sci-fi action filmof all time (and not just by us) assaulted theaters with the juiced-up sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, "Alien."
Director James Cameron's propulsive vision for a gung-ho military-style movie would call upon Stan Winston Studio's elite creature effects crew from 1984's "The Terminator" — a team that would later work on "Predator," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Jurassic Park," and "Predator 2."
Cameron's "Aliens" greatly expands upon the xenomorph life cycle with the inclusion of a matriarchal beast that his screenplay described as "a massive silhouette in the mist, the ALIEN QUEEN glowers over her eggs like a great, glistening black insect-Buddha. Her fanged head is an unimaginable horror. Her six limbs, the four arms and two powerful legs, are folded grotesquely over her distended abdomen."
The brilliant filmmaker and Winston's energetic gang would craft and operate this 14-foot-tall articulated hydraulic puppet fabricated from fiberglass, foam rubber, and plastic. It contained two stunt performers in the torso and puppeteers on the ground manipulating legs and limbs.
Production was led by Stan Winston, Shane Mahan, Alec Gillis, John Rosengrant, Tom Woodruff Jr., and Lindsay MacGowan, the core wizards who’d later found the acclaimed Legacy Effects firm with J. Alan Scott following Stan Winston’s unfortunate death in 2008. Gillis and Woodruff would eventually split off to form Amalgamated Dynamics in 1988.
We caught up with Mahan and MacGowan to have them offer memories of working on "Aliens" at Pinewood Studios and specifically constructing this magnificent drooling, hissing monster that's spawned countless nightmares since the blockbuster landed on July 18, 1986.
"It was 1983 when I started at Stan's on the first 'Terminator,'” Mahan tells Space. "I’d worked with Jim on a Roger Corman movie that Makeup Effects Lab was doing, 'Battle Beyond the Stars.' [...] During 'Terminator,' Jim had drawings of Sigourney and the Power Loader he'd brought into the shop. I'd see them out of the corner of my eye and knew exactly what it was supposed to be. It was clearly an alien of that world with Sigourney Weaver.
"I was intrigued by it all because four years before, when 'Alien' had come out, it was so amazing cinematically. The lifecycle of the creature, and the organic nature of it. I had no idea that seven years later we'd be in England doing a sequel."
Mahan and posse began working on the Queen's preliminary designs in Southern California at Stan Winston's shop, where they conducted the infamous 'garbage bag test' out in the back parking lot, so named due to the flailing puppet being wrapped in black plastic trash bags.
"It was a proof of concept of how that was going to work," he explains. "Moving to Windsor, England, and setting up shop at Pinewood Studios was extraordinarily exciting. We then started making the full-size process of making the Queen and all the other effects, and we met the English crew, and Lindsay was one of them."
MacGowan fondly remembers his experience on the ambitious project and being recruited to join Stan Winston and the rest of the guys.
"They were legends at that point for us. We were also young and goofy, and it's amazing they actually let us do what we did when we were that young," MacGowan notes. "I was at college at the time, and I’d skip off college and make my way to Pinewood. It was like here’s the rock ‘n' roll Americans, and then we have our more reserved English team that got influenced by the American team. It was a lot of fun and some of my favorite memories of starting in the business.
"I remember it being incredibly cold at Pinewood at the time. There was no insulation in the warehouse, and we had these giant propane jet heaters, and they kept going out. We’d be nice and warm, then suddenly the flame would be out. It was a great time to get to know Shane, John, Alec, and Tom. I look at them as my American brothers."
Having everything under one roof, being created pre-shooting, was a great asset as it allowed Cameron to constantly oversee the process and monitor the progress being made.
"We were life-casting all the actors, various teams were doing the xenomorph warriors and the eggs and the facehuggers," Mahan adds. "It was a pretty big build list, and we had four or five months to get everything done. John Richardson was a great special effects man from the Bond films, and we all thought that was cool to work with guys that had done James Bond movies.
"That was my first time in England, so the setting was very new and exciting. Of course, we blew off a lot of steam occasionally, but we were very serious about just getting it all done. We knew we had a lot to live up to because of the first film. Very few people, if any, had come back from working on that first film. You don’t know how it's going to turn out. We all thought the 'Aliens' script was great. Jim had a lot of turmoil there and didn’t have a good time on his own for various reasons, but we weren't really privy to that."
Legacy Effects' Lindsay MacGowan between two armored supersuits created for 2008's "Ironman" (Image credit: Legacy Effects)
Before hopping across the pond to the UK, Mahan and his ace crew did molds and castings using a quarter-scale maquette of the Alien Queen sculpted at Stan Winston's shop for their design master.
"Back then, everything had to be done by measurements, by plotting out, and by eye. Today, it's so simple to have a computer generate and mill out a perfectly formed section. You had to use a really focused artistic eye to get exactly where we were supposed to be.
"We also had to make action suits, and there were a lot of them. I think there were 13 or 14, and then there were like eight eight-foot-tall puppets that were more spindly and long that were going to be used on wires and get hit and blow up and get shot. Then there was one articulated half-animatronic that would play in various scenes. You have to imagine an era that was pre-CGI. There was no reliance on rod removal or performer puppeteer removal. You had to hide everything and everybody in the frame. So in the dropship fight, it’s an enormous amount of people making the Queen operate, and you don’t see them.
"That all comes down to Jim Cameron and his magnificent eye for framing this action scene without seeing the crane or any of the support devices. Directors today, most of them don't even have any idea how to do that. And that was the magic of Jim Cameron and still is. He had the designing thought of shot composition and action that played off the best attributes of that hydraulic/actor-driven Queen. Because there were two guys inside and nine of us on her tail, her head, the cable, her hands, the feet. We were everywhere."
MacGowan took his role very seriously to get the fit and finishing perfect for this elegant egg-laying beast that would end up being the seething, android-ripping superstar of the popular 1986 sequel. -
"It was really just to honor what Giger had done in the past, but also to give Jim what he was looking for in his vision for the Queen," he recalls. "The Queen is really Jim's design and entire look. Our focus was making sure that we got what Jim wanted, but still make sure that fans of the original movie, which was all of us, could really appreciate."
As a mentor to his dedicated young crew of VFX creators, Winston schooled them in the subtle art of injecting personality and emotion into their creature performances.
"It's something they always reinforced, but if you’re a student of horror and science fiction films, you know all the great creatures and monsters have got some sympathetic or some interesting personality," adds Mahan. "Even the xenomorph in the first film, the personality is that it does not care. It's just going to kill you. But that’s still a personality trait.
"We were always taught by Stan that these are not effects; these are characters that we’re making; these are actors in the film. It just happens to be a creature from space, or a robot from the future, or a dinosaur. Whatever it is, it has to be believed, and we’ve always carried that philosophy through."
As to the mystery of exactly where the original Alien Queen screen-used puppet ended up, Mahan has a few clues, but sadly admits that most of it has unfortunately been lost to time.
Legacy Effects' Shane Mahan working on a xenomorph design for "Alien: Romulus" (Image credit: Legacy Effects)
"Jim has one in his museum, and I think collector Bob Burns did have a head," Mahan shares. "The rest of it might be that it's fallen into disrepair. I know when we left, a lot of it was put into containers at Pinewood, and it sat and rotted for years. We always wanted to get that back, but I’ve not seen a real Queen in a while.
While the classic design hasn't changed much over the years, Mahan notes that the materials used to make creatures like the Alien Queen have.
"The head was fiberglass and had other foam rubber parts. The materials back then were not very sophisticated," explains Mahan. "The materials we have today, like what we did on 'Alien: Romulus', are like from outer space. They're translucent silicones, and they stretch well, and there’s lightweight plastic 3D-grown parts."
"Back then, the only thing we had was clear urethane that I got the cowl of her head to kind of move around. The original idea was that the skin on her face was supposed to be translucent. It ended up being foam rubber painted to look translucent. A lot of those materials have just fallen apart. On screen, it's pretty impressive.
"When we did 'Alien: Romulus,' Lindsay and I had not done an 'Alien' film since 'Aliens.' When that opportunity came up to revisit that world, the sensory memories came flooding back. It's one of those movies where I think I remember every day that I was on set for that film.”
"Aliens" is available to stream on Disney+ in the UK, and to rent and buy on various platforms in the US.
It's not known whether "Ulysses 31" was on Christopher Nolan's radar in his teenage years, but it's intriguing to think it could have influenced the director's decision to take on Homer's "The Odyssey".
This animated space opera, a French/Japanese co-production, delivered a crash course in Greek mythology to a generation of kids who grew up in the '80s. And, although it looks more like "Star Wars" than Homer's original tale, it had a decent stab at transferring the Classics to the 31st century (the clue really was in the title), years before the Coen brothers took "The Odyssey" to the Deep South in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
The cartoon's core premise would be familiar to any Greek scholar, even though purists would surely bristle at the hero going under his Roman pseudonym, Ulysses, rather than the original Greek Odysseus.
(Image credit: DIC Audiovisuel & Tokyo Movie Shinsha)
At heart, it's that old story of a ship's captain racing to get home from Troy (in this case, a starbase) before his wife, Penelope, marries another man. That voyage is soon waylaid, however, when Ulysses' son, Telemachus, is abducted to become a sacrifice to a giant robot Cyclops.
Ulysses quickly lives up to the promise of his famous theme song — "Always fighting all the evil forces, bringing peace and justice to all" — by vanquishing the one-eyed menace and rescuing Telemachus along with Yumi and Numinor (a pair of blue alien Zotrians who, as far as we can tell, do not feature in the original Homer).
Unfortunately for Ulysses and his crew, he messed with the wrong giant robot Cyclops, because this one happened to belong to the Greek sea god Poseidon, who's now taken up residence in outer space. The deity is so annoyed at the puny mortal's impudence that he gets his brother, Zeus (aka the head honcho in Olympus), to inflict divine retribution.
(Image credit: DIC Audiovisuel & Tokyo Movie Shinsha)
Ulysses is subsequently sentenced to "travel among unknown stars" (his ship, the Odyssey, has its navigational databanks purged) while his crewmates — referred to, in what now sounds like contemporary corporate jargon, as "companions" — are put into a perpetual slumber. If he's going to make it home to Penelope, he'll need to find the Kingdom of Hades before his 26-episode run comes to an end.
It's less an update of Homer than a riff on his greatest hits, with several other notable classics of the Classical period thrown in for good measure. In addition to slaying the Cyclops, Ulysses follows in OG Odysseus's footsteps when he meets the Sirens and Lotus Eaters.
But he also ventures beyond the confines of Homer's narrative when he encounters Sisyphus (fated to devote his entire life to a repetitive, pointless task), Orpheus (en route to Hades to rescue Eurydice, the love of his life), and three-headed dog Cerberus, reinvented as an interceptor satellite with, yes, three heads.
(Image credit: DIC Audiovisuel & Tokyo Movie Shinsha)
Many of the character names are also familiar. Priam, the commander of the Troy starbase, shares his name with Troy's last king in antiquity, while Nestor, Ulysses' second in command, is an advisor in the original story. Shirka, the computer on Ulysses' ship, takes her name from Circe, a sorceress.
But the show also adopts a pretty liberal approach to the source material. Homer's version of Telemachus spends much of the story separated from his dad, whereas "Ulysses 31"'s is a constant presence. While Odysseus's shipmates mostly wound up dead, here they're plunged into a state of literal suspended animation, lifelessly floating in the ship's hold.
And Ulysses is already aware of the Greek gods before he makes first contact — in one episode, he even travels back thousands of years in time to meet his famous namesake.
(Image credit: DIC Audiovisuel & Tokyo Movie Shinsha)
If this sounds like writers sanitising the story for younger audiences, well, it didn't feel that way if you watched the show as a kid. At times, "Ulysses 31" is genuinely freaky, from those levitating lifeless bodies to some truly grotesque monsters. The gods themselves are also an unnerving presence, omnipresent beings of colossal power who see humans as their playthings and view Ulysses' toils as some twisted spectator sport.
Besides, unlike "Masters of the Universe" and many of the other biggest sci-fi cartoons of the '80s, the good guys weren't always guaranteed to win. Being Ulysses — a single dad guiding his son and adopted daughter Yumi through the cosmos — wasn't easy.
Now 45 years old (though it didn't find its way onto British and American TV screens until the mid-'80s), "Ulysses 31" is showing its age. The animation is often rudimentary, particularly in outer-space scenes that are effectively a cut-out of a starship being dragged across a stellar background. The dialogue, meanwhile, is played hilariously straight — good luck finding a laugh among these uncharted stars — and often consists of someone shouting another character's name. "Telemachus!" "Father!" "My son!" "Yumi!" etc. Telemachus's small red robot pal, Nono, is up there with the most irritating "cute" sidekicks of the era — quite the achievement in an extremely competitive field.
(Image credit: DIC Audiovisuel & Tokyo Movie Shinsha)
But there's also plenty to like. As static as they sometimes look, the spaceship designs have the feel of a classic space opera book cover, particularly Ulysses' eye-shaped craft, the aptly named Odyssey. The series also borrows heavily from a more modern piece of mythology, namely the "Star Wars" saga. Ulysses may not be a Jedi (as far as we know), but his gun/laser sword weapon looks a lot like a lightsaber. Some of the incidental music even apes John Williams' score from a galaxy far, far away.
Which brings us on to the soundtrack, the main reason this show lives on in the collective consciousness of a generation.
The work of Denny Crockett, Ike Egan, and, on selected tracks, Shuki Levy and Haim Saban (the latter duo also composed for "Masters of the Universe", "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors," and many more cartoon classics), the music is a cut above. "The Curse of the Gods" refrain is loaded with menace, totally living up to its portentous title, and then there's that theme song.
Seriously, to people of a certain age — even those who remember nothing else about the show — hearing the name "Ulysses" is enough to get them singing "Ulysee-ee-ee-ee-ees" ad infinitum, an earworm truly worthy of the gods of Olympus.
Homer's tales may still be remembered thousands of years after he wrote them, but you can guarantee he didn't have a tune quite like that.
"Ulysses 31" isn't on any major streaming service, but there are fan uploads on YouTube if you want to experience the show for yourself.
Making a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" should have been a disaster. This was a movie that defined a whole new sub-genre of outer-space horror, a perfectly structured scarefest that also introduced one of cinema's greatest-ever monsters to the world.
Luckily, James Cameron — then one of Hollywood's hottest properties off the back of "The Terminator" — has never been a shrinking violet, and was brave enough to face the Xenomorph challenge head-on. Reinventing the franchise as a muscular sci-fi action movie, he created a whole new sub-genre of his own with a film every bit as memorable as its predecessor.
So, as the peerless "Aliens" turns 40, here — in honour of LV-426, the moon where the movie takes place — are 26 reasons it's still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time.
1. James Cameron’$ original pitch
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
With only "The Terminator" (and the long-forgotten "Piranha II") on his resumé, James Cameron was yet to ascend to "king of the world" status when he pitched for the "Alien" sequel. His subsequent meeting with studio execs has since become the stuff of Hollywood legend.
The story goes that he turned over a copy of the script, wrote "ALIEN", added an S to the end, and then scrawled a couple of lines through the final letter. "ALIEN$" was a language the bigwigs understood, and you know what? Cameron was kinda right.
2. A new genre
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Same continuity, same creature, same lead character… "Aliens" is undeniably a sequel to "Alien".
But while Ridley Scott's original film was already the definitive outer-space horror, Cameron boldly shifted genres to make the definitive outer-space action movie. Forty years on, fans are still debating which one is best.
3. Nothing is wasted
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Anyone teaching action movie screenwriting should use "Aliens" as a core text. It's lean, it's efficient, and every line and moment is integral to the all-time classic whole.
It's no accident that Ripley shows off her Power Loader skills in the opening act — it's Cameron's version of Chekhov's gun.
4. The time jump
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Some sequels pick up immediately after their predecessor left off. But by leaving Ellen Ripley in hypersleep for 57 years, the universe has a chance to evolve around her. Indeed, that's enough time for Weyland-Yutani to colonize LV-426 and — just maybe — pay a visit to that mysterious spaceship with all those eggs in its cargo hold.
What could possibly go wrong?
5. Ellen Ripley
(Image credit: 20th Century Studios)
Ellen Ripley may have been the accidental hero of "Alien", but she's 100% proactive in "Aliens". At the beginning of the movie, she's still traumatized by her experience on the Nostromo, and her employers at Weyland-Yutani are doing little to help. But her cool head in a high-pressure situation puts highly trained Colonial Marines to shame, and by the final act, she's grown into one of cinema's greatest heroes.
Sigourney Weaver rightly earned herself an Academy Award nomination for her tour de force performance.
6. The Colonial Marines
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Cameron waited until late on in production to shoot the scene where the Colonial Marines wake up from hypersleep. It's a genius move, their real-life familiarity helping to establish a convincing camaraderie between these elite soldiers.
Even though most are lucky if they speak more than a line or two, Cameron's writing is so tight that we already know plenty — and care — about them when they inevitably become Xenomorph fodder. (Top fact: with the exception of Lt Gorman and Corporal Hicks, the Marines all share a first initial with the actor who plays them.)
7. The Dropship
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Physics purists can bemoan the science all they like, but there's something undeniably cool about the craft that plunges the Marines to the surface of LV-426. A wonderfully utilitarian example of pre-CG model work.
8. The slow-build
(Image credit: 20th Century Studios)
In the original version of the movie, an entire hour has passed before you see an alien. Cameron doesn't waste a second of that time, however, establishing characters (see above), introducing Newt, showing off the geography of the Hadley's Hope terraforming base, and building a creeping sense of dread.
Those acid burns on the floor can't be good news, right?
9. The shouldercams
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
In an era when cameras can be shrunk down into phones or even a pair of glasses, anybody can film anything. But when Cameron gave his soldiers shoulder-mounted video units, it felt genuinely groundbreaking. It provides a suitably chaotic Marine's-eye-view as the carnage unfolds, but you always know whose perspective you're following because, well, their names are written on screen.
10. The ambush
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
"Aliens" may take its time getting to the actual aliens, but when it does, it doesn't hold back.
The walls start moving, flame-throwers start flaming, and suddenly the Marines are on the back foot against a vastly superior enemy. Throw in an exploding bag of ammunition, and it's all so brilliantly disconcerting that you need several rewatches to work out what you've just witnessed.
Within a matter of minutes, Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, and Gorman are the only Marines left standing — and Gorman's technically comatose.
11. The Xenomorph drones
(Image credit: Twentieth Century Fox)
HR Giger's original Xenomorph is a design classic, but Cameron was more concerned about practicality than looks.
The new alien suits (usually occupied by gymnasts and acrobats) prioritized movement, as the director went big on research and development to make sure their motion was as inhuman — and as fast — as possible.
Remarkably, only six suits were built for "Aliens", but ingenious editing makes it look like Hadley's Hope is swarming with them.
12. The Alien Queen
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
We'd seen the eggs, the Facehuggers, and the drones. But, as Ripley pointedly asks, "Who's laying the eggs?"
The answer is a truly terrifying new stage in the Xenomorph life cycle, and arguably the last essential addition to the franchise's mythology.
Designed by Stan Winston (who'd worked with Cameron on "The Terminator" and won an Oscar for his work on "Aliens"), the Alien Queen is a towering apex predator who'll do anything to protect her kids.
13. Newt
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Introducing a kid to a hard-boiled action franchise can be a risky move, but Rebecca Jordan (known to everyone as Newt, played by Carrie Henn) is totally integral to "Aliens".
As the last known survivor of Hadley's Hope, she's resourceful as hell and has plenty to teach the heavily armed Marines about survival in a Xenomorph-infested world. She also brings out the maternal instinct in Ripley, a key theme of the movie that comes to a head in her famous face-off against the Queen: "Get away from her, you bitch!"
Speaking of which…
14. The quotable dialogue
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
"We're on an express elevator to hell." "They mostly come at night… mostly." "Game over, man. Game over." "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Few action movies — with the possible exception of "Predator" and "Die Hard" — are quite as chock-full of zingers as "Aliens".
15. The APC
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
The Armored Personnel Carrier is every bit as iconic as the dropship it calls home.
Part mobile base-of-operations, part all-terrain action vehicle, it's the reason the few remaining Marines escape their close encounter in one piece — even if its transaxles have issues dealing with concentrated acid blood.
It's telling that the Resources Development Administration hardware in the "Avatar" series is so heavily influenced by this timeless "Aliens" tech.
16. Facehuggers on the move
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
The Facehugger that jumped — and subsequently impregnated — Kane in the original “Alien was already the stuff of nightmares. But the parasites in the sequel are much more than some acid-blooded jack-in-a-box.
In “Aliens”, those spider-like legs allow them to scurry around to hunt down their prey, ensuring they're a clear and present danger — even if you're not foolhardy enough to put your face over an open egg.
17. Carter Burke
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
If there’s one thing the "Alien" saga has taught us, it's that you should never, ever trust Weyland-Yutani, chillingly referred to simply as "the Company".
If "Alien"'s Ash was the ultimate company android, Burke (Paul Reiser) is the epitome of the company man, a total scumbag whose friendly, "I'm-your-best-friend demeanor" can’t disguise the fact that he’d screw you over for a percentage, kiddo. The only character in the movie whose death by Xenomorph elicits a cheer.
18. The motion trackers
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
You don't need to see the Xenomorphs to know they're there.
The ominous beep of the Marines' motion trackers is a highly effective way of teasing the approaching menace — even when they're hiding in the ceiling.
19. A countdown to detonation
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
It's bad enough that you're trapped on a barren moon surrounded by a vicious hive of extraterrestrials who want to use you as hosts for their offspring. And that your primary choice of rescue has crashed on the surface, leaving you even more stranded.
Then, fate (or, to be more accurate, James Cameron) throws you a curveball in the form of an atmospheric processor about to go nuclear. The clock is well and truly ticking…
20. Bill Paxton
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
The late Bill Paxton was Cameron's lucky charm, also turning up in "The Terminator", "True Lies", and "Titanic". But "Aliens" is his signature role, as the famously pessimistic Private Hudson makes the most of his limited dialogue.
As an interesting sidenote, Paxton had the honor of being killed on screen by a Terminator, a Predator, and a Xenomorph.
21. The Power Loader
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Part Japanese mecha, part Transformer, Ripley's Power Loader is an instantly iconic piece of kit, so painstakingly designed that it looks like it could actually work IRL.
If you're going to go woman-to-woman with an angry Alien Queen, never leave the house without one.
22. Bishop
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Ash, the Nostromo's resident synthetic in "Alien", was a bona fide bad 'un, prepared to sacrifice the crew in the name of getting a valuable Xenomorph back to "the Company"’s weapons division.
It's hardly a surprise, then, that Ripley is suspicious of Bishop (Lance Henriksen) from the off. Luckily for everyone, he gradually proves his worth via his skills with the knife game, elite dropship-piloting abilities, and generally being an all-round good egg.
Not bad for an android… (Bishop is manufactured by Hyperdyne Systems, a nod to Cyberdyne in Cameron’s “Terminator” movies.)
23. The music
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
"Aliens" was James Horner's first collaboration with Cameron (he went on to write the scores for "Titanic" and "Avatar"), and the then-32-year-old provided the perfect musical backdrop for the action unfolding on screen.
Sure, some of the themes are derivative of the composer's own "The Wrath of Khan" soundtrack, but it's impossible to imagine "Aliens" without Horner's contribution.
24. The sound effects
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
The best sci-fi franchises are as recognisable for their sound as their visuals. So, just as, say, "Star Wars"’ lightsabers and "Star Trek"s transporters are aurally unmistakable, "Aliens" has its own distinctive soundscape.
Hear a pulse rifle firing or the squeal of a Xenomorph, and you know exactly where you are. Best Sound Effects Editing was one of the film's two Academy Award wins, and it's easy to see why.
25. The Special Edition
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
If you've never seen "Aliens", the tighter theatrical cut is definitely the place to start. But once you know what's waiting for the Colonial Marines on LV-426, the Special Edition is the definitive version of the movie.
From Newt's family making first contact with a Facehugger to a wonderfully tense sentry gun sequence, Cameron's extra footage enhances a classic. It also adds to the film's mother/child subtext when we learn that Ripley had a daughter, Amanda, who died just before Ellen was discovered by the Weyland-Yutani recovery crew.
Amanda would later be retconned to become the lead character in the survival horror video game "Alien: Isolation".
26. Cameron himself
(Image credit: Getty Images (Bob Penn))
Cameron's intense working methods famously didn't go down well with his unionized British crew, who famously made t-shirts bearing the slogan "You can't scare me, I work for James Cameron".
But whatever the on-set experience, it's impossible to deny that he marshalled proceedings to perfection. Even the director's lesser works — the "Avatar" sequels, for example — feature action beats of unassailable genius. "Aliens", however, demonstrates a filmmaker at the pinnacle of his powers.
Every sci-fi action movie ever made will be judged against "Aliens". Even the brilliant "Predator" lives in the shadow of a movie that remains untouchable — and endlessly rewatchable — four decades after its original release.
"Aliens" is available to stream on Disney+ in the UK, and to rent and buy on various platforms in the US.
After cracking into the animation world with family-friendly animated features from the "Despicable Me " and "Minions" franchise, "The Lorax," and the musical menagerie of "Sing," Illumination is finally setting their sights on outer space with next year's "Not Alone."
"Not Alone" isn’t due to arrive in theaters until Apr. 16, 2027 but this sneak peek — accompanied by David Bowie's somber 1969 anthem "Space Oddity" — sets a sweet tone telling the lively tale of an introverted rocket mechanic name Joe, and Fran, his astro-botanist colleague who has engineered the planet's first plant-based rocket, when alien fugitives toss their lives into chaos.
Xenomorph monstrosities and spaceship laser battles can often dominate sci-fi, so it's great to see something different on the horizon, and while a space rom-com starring Timothée Chalamet and Selena Gomez wasn't on our bingo card, the trailer has us really hyped for this one.
It's a wholly original story that's a definite departure for Illumination, but one that could strongly connect with audiences via the project’s colorful Euro style and humor. Vocal duties include the talents of Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Brett Goldstein, Rob Brydon, Jamie Demetriou, Diane Morgan, Allison Janney, and Lamorne Morris.
"When Joe and Fran are brought together to prepare for the inaugural launch of this revolutionary rocket, there are immediate sparks, but neither is particularly adept at romance," states the official synopsis.
Illumination's "Not Alone" lands in theaters on April 16, 2027. (Image credit: Illumination)
"Life becomes more complicated when three aliens—tiny, unruly, and adorable—take refuge in Joe's home. Dunk, Welly, and Shirm are on the interplanetary run from a zealous-yet-inept officer of the law named Zandro. The aliens determine that Fran’s rocket could provide their means of getting back home to safety."
The French animation factory recently launched an early trailer for this charming romantic comedy directed by Eric Guillon, Claire Dodgson, and Jonathan Del Val.
(Image credit: Illumination)
Guillon is an Illumination veteran whose career includes serving as lead designer for "Despicable Me" and "Minions," as well as co-directing "Despicable Me 3." Here he's joined by seasoned editor Claire Dodgson ("The Lorax," "Minions," Despicable Me 3," "Minions: The Rise of Gru") and Jonathan Del Val (co-director of "Minions: The Rise of Gru" and "The Secret Life of Pets 2").
This fun animated rom-com is produced by Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri and executive produced by Joy Poirel, Richard Curtis, and David Distenfeld.
Login
