(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)
Making a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" should have been a disaster. This was a movie that defined a whole new sub-genre of outer-space horror, a perfectly structured scarefest that also introduced one of cinema's greatest-ever monsters to the world.Luckily, James Cameron — then one of Hollywood's hottest properties off the back of "The Terminator" — has never been a shrinking violet, and was brave enough to face the Xenomorph challenge head-on. Reinventing the franchise as a muscular sci-fi action movie, he created a whole new sub-genre of his own with a film every bit as memorable as its predecessor.So, as the peerless "Aliens" turns 40, here — in honour of LV-426, the moon where the movie takes place — are 26 reasons it's still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time.1. James Cameron’$ original pitch
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)With only "The Terminator" (and the long-forgotten "Piranha II") on his resumé, James Cameron was yet to ascend to "king of the world" status when he pitched for the "Alien" sequel. His subsequent meeting with studio execs has since become the stuff of Hollywood legend.The story goes that he turned over a copy of the script, wrote "ALIEN", added an S to the end, and then scrawled a couple of lines through the final letter. "ALIEN$" was a language the bigwigs understood, and you know what? Cameron was kinda right.2. A new genre
