[i] Ripley is rescued and debriefed by her Weyland-Yutani Corporation employers who doubt her claim about alien eggs in a derelict ship on the exomoon LV-426,[ii] now the site of a terraforming colony.

When the inexperienced Gorman panics, Ripley assumes command and rams their armored personnel carrier into the nest to rescue Corporal Dwayne Hicks, and Privates Hudson and Vasquez.

Ripley discovers that Burke ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship containing the alien eggs, intending to profit by recovering them for biological weapon research.

Pursued by the enraged queen, Ripley and Newt reach the dropship and escape with Bishop and an unconscious Hicks moments before the station explodes, consuming the colony in a nuclear blast.

With Cameron's collaborative scriptwriting efforts alongside Sylvester Stallone on Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Wilson was convinced to show the script for The Terminator to Giler, Hill, and Carroll.

[30][35][38] Cameron was a relatively new director, his only directing credit being Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), a low-budget, independent horror film, and the studio was reluctant to grant his request.

[35] Cameron believed in having a strong female heroine to distinguish his films from typical Hollywood action fare and wrote the script with a picture of Weaver on his desk.

[31] Weaver rejected initial offers to return and despite being interested after reading Cameron's script, she had to be convinced Aliens was not being made exclusively for financial reasons.

Remar left shortly into filming, ostensibly due to urgent family matters or creative differences with Cameron, but he later admitted he was fired after being arrested for drug possession.

He suggested wearing distinctive contact lenses to convey when Bishop was alerted to danger, but Cameron believed they would make the character appear more frightening than the aliens.

[11][54][55] Goldstein wore dark contact lenses and underwent an hour of makeup to cover her freckles and darken her white skin to portray a "Chicano" character; she studied Mexican-American gang interviews to develop her demeanor and accent.

[19] Fox and Hurd suggested removing a long opening scene detailing the lives of the colonists, Newt's family discovering the derelict alien ship, and her father being attacked by a facehugger, because it ruined the pacing and sense of mystery.

Brad Fiedel's synth-inspired tracks for The Terminator had allowed changes to be made quickly based on feedback, but Cameron had no experience managing orchestral music.

Conscious that the creatures would be seen by audiences as people in costumes, he enhanced the designs by extending their arms and often filmed them hung from wires or from atypical positions to make them appear more inhuman.

[94][101] Cameron said dinosaur influences were unintentional as he considered them "boring"; his goal was to extrapolate on Giger's warrior designs to create a large and powerful creature that was also swift and overtly female, describing it as "hideous and beautiful at the same time, like a black widow spider".

[123][124] Variety and Walter Goodman said it could not replicate the novelty of the first film, but Aliens compensated with special effects, technique, and a constant stream of set-piece thrills and scary scenes.

[129] Dennis Fischer wrote for The Hollywood Reporter that the unrelenting scenes of action and suspense worked for Aliens as they had in The Terminator; tension was created by placing the characters in successive, increasingly difficult situations.

[136][137][138] The film garnered four other nominations: Best Original Score for Horner; Best Art Director for Peter Lamont and Crispian Sallis; Best Editing for Ray Lovejoy, and Best Sound for Graham V. Hartstone, Nicolas Le Messurier, Michael A. Carter, and Roy Charman.

[159][160][161] In the late 2010s, National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA) released figures based on the film, including Newt,[23] Burke, and Cameron dressed as a Colonial Marine.

[185] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Nancy Weber wrote that as a mother, she saw in Aliens the constant vigilance required to protect her child from predators, sexism, and threats to childhood innocence.

[186] Leilani Nishime believed despite the focus on motherhood, the nuclear family is represented in Aliens with a mother (Ripley), father (Hicks), daughter (Newt), and a loyal, self-sacrificing dog (Bishop).

[32][34] The growth of female-led action films after the success of Aliens reflects the change in women's roles and the divide between professional critics (who perceive a masculinization of the heroine) and audiences that—regardless of gender—embrace, emulate, and quote Ripley.

[194] The hyper-masculine heroes played by Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Jean-Claude Van Damme were replaced by independent women capable of defending themselves and defeating villains in films such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

[200] Weber appreciated the change in female characters between the films, contrasting Alien's hysterical Lambert with the tough Vasquez (who sacrifices herself for her team, not only for the protagonist).

[186] Aliens has been described as an allegory for the Vietnam War; the marines (like the United States) have superior weaponry and technology that proves largely ineffective against an unseen, local enemy.

The power of the state has been superseded by the corporation, which also demands conformity for rewards and advancement and reflects a growing mistrust of corporatism; the company is represented by Burke, a self-interested opportunist.

"[208] Abbott said Aliens adheres to a radical ideology and condemns centrism; similar films were popular because they represented audience dissatisfaction with the social status quo.

[216] In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Spider-Man discusses the film with Iron Man, and the two use the xenomorph queen's defeat as inspiration for how to kill Ebony Maw and free Doctor Strange.

[220] Many cast and crew members reunited at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con to celebrate the film's 30th anniversary, including Weaver, Biehn, Paxton, Henriksen, Reiser, Henn, Cameron and Hurd.

[37][261]An early script for Alien 3, by William Gibson, was adapted as a 2019 audio drama, focusing on Hicks as the protagonist, with Biehn and Henriksen voicing their respective roles.