The Best Adventure Movies: Aliens

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Outside Magazine, June 2005

Outside Goes to the Movies
A Perfect 10
Aliens

By Steven Kotler & The Editors

7. Aliens (1986)
Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) is a gothic, arty masterpiece, but James Cameron's Aliens is an even better ride. Marine private Hudson (Bill Paxton) descends through the atmosphere of planet LV-426 and articulates Cameron's ambition for the film pretty neatly, saying, "We're on an express elevator to hell." Not only did Cameron ratchet up the tempo with a parade of futuristic weapons and a relentless supply of slime-dripping, extendo-teeth space insectoids; he keenly picked up the predator-prey thread where Jaws left off. In the shark tale, a handful of humans lost their spot in the food chain. This time, our entire species has been demoted.

And who better to save us than Sigourney Weaver? Reprising her role as Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of the spaceship crew that got munched in Alien, she signs on to consult a squad of marines dispatched to investigate what happened to the suddenly radio-silent settlers of LV-426. (Take a wild guess.) Ripley doesn't want to be there, but when the crew discovers an orphaned colonist named Newt (Carrie Henn), her fires are reignited. From that point on, she's the toughest mother figure since Mommie Dearest and one of the baddest and bravest action heroes Hollywood has ever produced.

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