DGA Monthly

Aliens H A P PY A N N I V E R S A RY PHOTO: DGA ARCH IVES » "GET AWAY FROM HER YOU B****H!: James Cameron unleashes Ellen Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) maternal instincts in Aliens (1986). July 18, 2026 will mark the 40th anniversary of the release of James Cameron's thrilling sci-fi feature, Aliens. In his sequel to Director Ridley Scott's 1979 classic Alien, Cameron's 1986 fi lm brings back heroine Ellen Ripley — reprised by Sigourney Weaver — who has been in hypersleep since surviving the incidents on the Nostromo where an alien creature slaughtered the crew. 57 years later she is rescued by a deep-space salvage crew and horrifi ed to discover not only is her story not believed, but the moon on which the crew of the Nostromo fi rst encountered the Xenomorph is now the site of a new human terraforming colony. When contact is lost with the colony, she reluctantly teams up with a company executive and a squad of marines sent to investigate the situation and eliminate the threat. Speaking about his impetus for making the fi lm in an online interview Cameron confessed, "So here I am as this fanboy-turned-Director wanting to do the sequel to Ridley Scott's much vaunted Alien fi lm and everybody tried to talk me out of it. But I knew it would be cool because what Ridley had set in motion was the creation of the world and the creation of a kind of lived-in, blue collar future where what is happening on the screen feels so real and so palpable because the characters are so recognizable. Alien was a remarkable fi lm and it infl uenced a generation of fi lmmakers and I was one of them and I was as much doing an homage to what Ridley had created as as I was making my own movie but I did set out to do both in a balance." In a 2011 DGA tribute to Cameron's work, Director Jon Favreau spoke of Cameron's impact on his own work and expressed admiration in the innovation from shot-to-shot saying, "For the fi rst time CGI was used to act. It's the cherry on the sundae." Cameron was quick to reply, "The cherry was all we could afford," explaining that on 1986's Aliens there were no composites: the effects were achieved completely in-camera. Considered among the greatest fi lms of the 1980s and among the best science fi ction, action and sequel fi lms ever made, Aliens earned seven Academy Award nominations including a "Best Actress in a Leading Role" nod for Weaver and winning for "Best Effects, Visual Effects" and "Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing." J U L Y 2 0 2 6 I 3 3

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