The Most Awesome Movies of all Time: Aliens

I'm beginning a new column here at Awesometown. Bi-weekly, or whenever I feel like it, I will pick one of the most awesome movies ever created, and explain why it kicks so much ass. I will attempt to, whenever possible, keep my film choices somewhat relevant. Which brings me to the film that I have chosen for the inaugural edition of:

THE MOST AWESOME MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!


Eleven years before he directed Titanic and officially appointed himself "King of the World", James Cameron directed a sequel to Ridley Scott's terrifying 1979 science-fiction film Alien. With 1986's Aliens, Cameron accomplished the extremely rare feat of making a sequel that not only lives up to its predecessor (a brilliantly awesome film in its own right) but surpasses it on every level imaginable. Cameron sauntered up to this project, his watermelon sized testicles dangling between his legs, looked at each of the elements that worked for the original Alien, and then injected every one of them with pure testosterone.

I imagine there was a conversation that went something like this:

Ridley only had one alien in his movie, we need to have HUNDREDS of them! What did they use in the first movie to fight the alien with, flamethrowers? Well, I guess flamethrowers are cool, but we need some giant explosive-shooting future-guns for this one, go make them. Instead of a spaceship, lets have the action take place on a planet, instead of a cat, let's have Ripley protecting a little girl. Little girls are like cats, only bigger. Have you read Heinlein's Starship Troopers? I want the Space-Marines from that book in this movie!

AND GO DESIGN ME A GIANT ROBOT-SUIT! 

There are a lot of filmmakers working in Hollywood today who think that bigger means better. What separates James Cameron from the likes of Michael Bay and Rolland Emerich is that Cameron understands that a movie needs to have heart, in addition to explosions.

Aliens is the granddaddy of Avatar, and it holds up flawlessly twenty-three years after being made.

There is nothing about this movie that doesn't completely kick-ass

James Cameron has yet to make a bad movie. His worst movies are more awesome than most filmmaker's best, and this is one of his greatest achievements.

5 / 5 on the Awesome Meter