40 Years Ago, Aliens Taught the World How To Action

40 Years Ago, Aliens Taught the World How To Action

Pop culture owes an endless debt to James Cameron’s raw action, unearthly tension, and wise-cracking space marines.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking James Cameron’s sci-fi action masterpiece Aliens is a modern film, even though it first appeared in theaters 40 years ago this week. Oh, there are a few telltale signs of its age if you know to look for them. The hairstyles, for one. There’s a lot of film grain. The special effects have obvious hints of pre-CGI tech, like stop-motion jerkiness and matte lines. The sets are drenched in shadow with stark illumination sources and loads of atmospheric smoke rather than being shot with flat lighting against a video wall. But in terms of pacing, structure, and dialogue? Aliens could have debuted as a new theatrical release in 2026 and no one would blink an eye.

In fact, it would probably be just as huge a hit today as it was when it first debuted 40 years ago. Horror is all the rage this year, and despite Aliens’ heavy emphasis on heavy weapons and planet-cracking explosions, its best and more gripping moments involve dread: the anticipation of an alien attack, or the uncertainty of wandering too far into the creatures’ lair.

Really, the only problem with Aliens as a 2026 release would be that the whole thing just seems so darned clichéd. Everything from the way its squad of intrepid space marines is (spoilers) slowly whittled down to a handful of survivors as the alien horde chews through the human ranks with their overwhelming numbers (not to mention their acidic blood and double-barreled jaws), to the sudden but inevitable betrayal by a sleazy corporate shill, to the constant nervous banter of the marines, to the climactic one-on-one showdown between Ripley and the alien queen final boss... it’s all just so done to death, you know?

But then again, if Aliens made its debut in 2026 rather than having shown up back in 1986, would those things be clichés now? Most of those clichés come from Aliens! Now, it’s not as though Aliens invented ideas like horror-tinged action or smartass secondary characters cracking jokes in the face of imminent death. But Aliens did those things so well, in such a perfect way, that it became a template for instant cinematic success. No one wants to use something like Krull as their template for fantastic action-horror—that movie’s dialogue was even more wooden than its props. And sure, the Ghostbusters’ droll banter worked brilliantly in that low-stakes comedy setting, but bringing it into a setting where every character stood a real chance of dying a gruesome death at any moment? Bringing the plot to a dead halt for the sake of a cute, wise, vulnerable child character, that bane of sitcoms and family dramas alike? Somehow, Aliens made all of these disparate components and signifiers of narrative disaster work... and made them work together... and made them critical components of its creative and financial success. Aliens should have been a dumb pulpy mess, not a masterpiece of cinema. And yet, here we are.

Aliens had a transformational effect on popular culture more or less the instant it first appeared on the silver screen. Sure, the original 1979 Alien was famous for its chestburster scene alone, but Aliens took that universe and its central characters (namely, Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and her xenomorphic nemeses) and made them icons that defined how entertainment work. And not just movies. Video games, too!

Video games especially. There have been lots of great games based officially on Aliens, but those are greatly outnumbered by all the games that liberally borrowed from Aliens without formally sealing the deal. Some game developers seemingly began borrowing enthusiastically from Aliens before the credits even rolled. Look at how many games featured creepy biomechanical creatures based on the paintings of H.R. Giger in 1985 (more or less none) versus, say, 1989 (dozens upon dozens). From action games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden (where you battled final bosses that owed a lot to the alien queen) to shooters like Alien Syndrome and Xenophobe (cooperative team-ups that let you and your friends be the Colonial Marines) to unlikely variants like Alien Crush (a pinball game... with aliens!) and even Aliens parodies (see: Monster Party or Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti), Aliens’ influence seemed to be everywhere in the late ’80s. And it never went away. On the contrary, it just grew more and more pronounced as tech advanced and games could borrow their creators’ favorite Aliens bits even more elaborately.

You could argue that Aliens references in games peaked 15 years later with the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved, a game where the player’s laconic super soldier Master Chief went into battle with squads of chatty space marines (including the tough-talking Sgt. Johnson, who was definitely not just a quick rewrite of Aliens’ Sgt. Apone, ha ha!) as they stood their ground against an unexpected alien presence fueled by sheer numbers and body horror. But you could make a better case that Halo simply marked the point at which Aliens became permanently embedded in the DNA of video games—subsequent hits like Gears of War and The Last of Us do their own thing, but you can see Aliens’ influence all over them. Even the mighty Nintendo hasn’t been immune to the siren song of borrowing from Cameron every now and then. Ever played a Metroid game?

There have been a handful of genre films through the years whose impact and influence transcends the normal bounds of their themes and reshaped the very nature of pop culture. Think Star Wars, Jaws, Star Trek, Jurassic Park, The Avengers, The Terminator. Aliens might top them all. And even if not, well—it’s still a staggeringly great film 40 years after its debut.