Villian(s)  Xenomorphs

Actor(s):  Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen

Brief Description  Aliens (1986) is a landmark science fiction-action film written and directed by James Cameron. Serving as the direct sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien, the film shifts the franchise's tone from quiet, claustrophobic horror to high-octane military action and survival thriller. It stars Sigourney Weaver in her iconic role as Ellen Ripley, a performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress—a rare feat for a genre film at the time.

Plot:
The story picks up 57 years after the events of the first film. Ellen Ripley's escape shuttle has been drifting through deep space in hyper-sleep until she is finally rescued by a salvage crew. Upon waking, she discovers that her employers at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation are deeply skeptical of her accounts regarding the deadly Xenomorph creature that butchered her crew. Furthermore, she learns to her horror that the moon where they originally found the alien eggs (LV-426) has since been colonized and terraformed by human families. When the company suddenly loses all communication with the LV-426 colony, corporate executive Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) convinces a reluctant, PTSD-stricken Ripley to accompany a squad of heavily armed Colonial Marines as a consultant to investigate.

Arriving on the moon, the team finds the colony completely decimated, saving only one lone survivor: a traumatized 9-year-old girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn). The battle-hardened marines quickly find themselves completely outmatched and cornered when they discover that the colony has been transformed into a massive hive housing hundreds of Xenomorphs. With their chain of command shattered and their extraction ship compromised, Ripley must conquer her ultimate fear, take control of the mission, and protect Newt from the terrifying Alien Queen. While the original film focused on a single creature stalked in the dark, Aliens turns up the heat by throwing an overwhelming army of predators at militarized grunts, effectively defining the modern sci-fi action template.